took money from men on an almost-daily basis, but not from a Calloway since fifteen summers ago when she had clerked part-time at the Copper Lake Lumberyard, owned by Rick’s uncle Garry. He’d paid her in cash, folding the money in exactly the same way, delivering it with an oily smile and a look in his eyes that had made her feel small and insignificant.
At the end of that summer, Robbie had made her feel even worse.
But Rick’s look wasn’t any different than usual and he’d saved her the trouble of folding the bills herself. Accepting them, she slid them into the thin slot barely noticeable in the platform of her left shoe. Tip-jar shoes, they were called, giving a dancer a secure place to keep her tips when she was onstage…or in a back room.
“Thanks,” she said, then lowered her gaze to the book again, expecting him to leave.
He didn’t. “Do you think Julia will loosen up enough to actually get on a stage?”
Proust would have to wait for another day, Amanda acknowledged, closing the book and removing her glasses. “I don’t know. She says she wants to. A lot of people will do whatever it takes to get what they want.”
Like her. She’d worked hard to get what she wanted and she firmly believed the struggle would make the success that much sweeter.
“Do you think you could persuade Harry to give her a shot here?”
“You want to watch her dance in front of strangers?” There was that ick feeling she’d experienced earlier in the day.
“I want to keep an eye on her. She’s not used to places like this.”
“I can ask, depending on how the next lessons go.” Amanda had worked with Harry for years and she’d rarely asked favors of him. Because of that, and because she was popular with his customers, he would likely give Julia a shot without sending her to one of the smaller clubs first.
“Does your boyfriend ever come and watch you?”
She glanced at the clock, then stood, balancing on the eight-inch platforms as naturally as on bare feet. “No boyfriend.”
“What about the guys you date?”
“None of them, either. I’ve had priorities,” she said as she checked her appearance in the mirror, adjusting the headband. “Save money, buy my house, finish my degree. There will be time to worry about relationships when I retire.”
Rick’s brows raised. “You plan to wait another thirty or forty years before you look for a guy?”
She turned away from the mirror and replaced his reflection with the real thing. “When I retire from dancing. Five weeks and five days from today.”
He still looked surprised. “Then what will you do?”
She couldn’t contain the smile that spread from ear to ear. “When the spring semester begins in January, I’ll be the newest English lit teacher at the James C. Middleton College of Liberal Arts.”
He thumbed in the direction of the main room. “The old guys out there? The budget committee?”
She nodded. “Dean Jaeger, the one who wears the bow ties, was my advisor. When the job opened, he suggested I apply. I did, and they hired me.”
“And they don’t mind your dancing?”
Any traditional school would have found her background objectionable. Amanda had been prepared for that. She had even considered more than once changing her major—had acknowledged that to get a teaching job anywhere, she would have to gloss over her background at best, flat-out lie about it at worst. “They take the liberal part of their name seriously. Having a former stripper teach English lit seems perfectly reasonable to them.”
“Wow. I never had teachers like you in college. I might have paid more attention if I had.”
She hadn’t thought about his own college degree. Higher education had been a given for all Calloways, and the University of Georgia had been the place. They went on to successful lives. Amazing what advantages could do for a person. And yet Rick was tending bar in a strip club. How had that happened and how did it sit with the family back in Copper Lake?
The questions were nothing more than mild curiosity, she told herself, and she brushed them aside as easily as she gestured toward the hallway behind him. “Break’s over. I’ve got to go.”
He stood there a moment longer, then stepped aside. “Got to go entertain the budget committee,” he remarked, an odd note of something in his voice.
She didn’t try to figure out what it was, but slipped past him and went down the hall. When she turned into the dressing room doorway, he was still standing there. When she came out a moment later, he was gone. Relief seeped into her muscles, though she wasn’t about to examine why his presence—or absence—even registered.
As she approached the stage door, a new song started. Pop was the music of choice at Almost Heaven, though on occasion she opted for blues or something Latin, sensual and sexual and steamy. At the moment, even with no sign of Rick, she was happy to have the pop. It would keep things cool.
Keep her cool.
The stage lights were bright enough to make the customers shadowy, but there was nothing muted about their reception. There was a whistle or two, some applause, a murmur of encouragement as she wrapped herself around the pole. She used the pole much as a woman might use her lover, swaying around it, rubbing against it, sliding down until her knees were splayed, then rising again, twisting until the pole was centered in her back, repeating the long, languid slide down.
Her eyes were half closed, her lips half curved, as she let the music surround her. Dancing came as naturally to her as breathing. She heard a note or two, and her body began to sway. She didn’t have to think, plan or concentrate. The music took over, and everything else faded into the background. The voices, the heat that formed a sheen over her skin, the gazes and leers…none of it mattered. Only the music.
She loosened the chain around her waist, letting its length trickle between her fingers into a small mound at the base of the pole. The hook that secured her dress was next to go. With a shimmy, the gold lamé puddled at her feet, leaving her in a strapless black bra and a thong. The act brought the usual reaction, still muted in her music-dazed brain…then her muscles went taut. A shiver rippled along her skin, making her feel exposed; heat followed in its wake.
Opening her eyes, she searched for the gaze that could create such awareness through the haze, knowing before she saw him that it was Rick. He stood off to the side, just inside the door that led to the back hallway, arms crossed over his chest. He looked formidable enough to be a bouncer and drop-dead sexy enough to be any woman’s fantasy.
And he was watching her with enough intensity to make her feel like his fantasy.
She turned her back to him. He was a Calloway. He worked at the club. He was involved with Julia. More than enough reasons to keep her distance. But that didn’t stop the warmth from seeping deeper inside her. It didn’t stop her nipples from drawing into hard peaks. It didn’t stop the rush of desire that welled in her belly.
She felt like a newbie, experiencing the power of her own sexuality for the first time. Fine
