Keeley followed suit, the tart liquor puckering her lips. Yum. The trendy bar they were drinking in made the coolest cocktails. Since it was Sunday night, the crowd was a bit lighter, but more casual than Friday or Saturday night. The weekend was basically over, so people were more relaxed and not trying so hard to hook up with each other.
“Thanks for treating me to dinner and drinks, Keeley. It’s fun to get dressed for a girls’ night out. I got stuck working Friday night and last night, so I could use a break before my Monday morning class.”
“Thanks for suggesting we come here, and you’re welcome. It’s the least I could do after you treated me to lunch last week.” After getting Binky’s first check, she had a bit of breathing room.
“But that was lunch, not dinner and drinks. You must have had a great tax season. Or maybe Binky’s gig panned out and you’re doing his audit?” Sugar swiped some butterscotch sauce off the rim of her martini glass and licked her finger.
Keeley hesitated, client confidentiality keeping her from spilling her guts.
“Oh, come on, Keel. You know Binky tells me everything.” She dug in her purse and held up her cell phone. “I can call him to give you permission if that would make you feel better.”
“If you want to know that badly, go ahead.”
Sugar pressed a couple buttons, and Binky’s name popped up on her phone screen.
“He’s on your speed dial?” Keeley whispered.
“Anyone with eight or nine zeroes in his bank account is on my speed dial,” Sugar whispered. “Hello, Binks, sweetie, how are you?”
Binky was apparently fine and wanted to tell Sugar all about it. Keeley slugged back the rest of her limoncello while Sugar made appropriate cooing noises. That was the trouble with dancers seeing customers outside of the club. They got way too involved with each other’s personal lives, and things could get messy. On the other hand, Binky’s fraternization with strippers had landed Keeley a job with him, so who was she to complain?
“Binky, I’m here with my good friend Keeley, but she’s superprofessional and won’t tell me a thing about your situation until you give her the green light.” She listened and handed the phone to Keeley. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Hello?”
“Binky Bingham, here. Please feel free to take Sugar into your confidence, my dear. She has one of the best business brains I’ve run in to. In fact, on that unfortunate day when she steps down from her entertaining career, I’ve told her she can have carte blanche of positions at Bingham Brothers.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bingham. I take my clients’ confidentiality very seriously—”
“Of course you do. Could you ask Sugar when she’s next scheduled to perform at Frisky’s?”
Keeley rolled her eyes but did as he asked.
“Wednesday. I’ll be looking for you, Binky!” she called into the phone.
“Excellent. Goodbye, and good luck, Kelly.” Binky hung up.
Close enough, as long as his check cleared.
“So who is Binky’s mysterious protégé?” Sugar leaned closer over her glass.
“You know him—Dane Weiss. I start working with him at Bingham Brothers tomorrow.”
“My, oh, my, Bridget’s brother!” Sugar whistled. “And how is the very virile viking these days?”
Keeley wondered if Sugar had ever been close to Dane’s “virility.” “You know him well, then?”
“I’ve met him a few times at Bridget’s functions, but never outside that.” She giggled and wiggled her perfectly groomed eyebrows. “Don’t worry, sweetie. He’s not a regular of mine. In fact, he thinks I’m a bad influence on his sweet little sis. She came to Chicago fresh from the family farm and fell in to designing stripper outfits for rent money. Of course, that’s how she got her big break, but that’s neither here nor there to him. He disapproves of the whole business.”
“Dane doesn’t like strippers and he’s a friend of Binky’s?” Keeley asked skeptically. “Binky does enough business at Frisky’s to list their address on his tax return.”
“Yeah, considering how much money he spends there, Tony the manager would offer Binky a lap dance himself to keep him happy.”
Keeley shuddered at the idea of short, fat Tony gyrating above Binky in his shiny gray suit and open-neck black shirt, his gold chains glittering. “I need another drink to get that picture out of my mind.”
Sugar hailed the waiter, who practically vaulted over three tables to get to her. He took their reorder and galloped back with their drinks.
Keeley took a sip of her limoncello cocktail. She loved the fresh lemon liqueur, a grown-up version of the el cheapo powdered lemonade she and her sister drank on hot summer days when they were kids. Lacey used to set up elaborate lemonade stands for the neighborhood kids while Keeley kept a protective eye on her. At least the lemonade stand had never been robbed, unlike the convenience store where their mom worked.
Dane Weiss had grown up on a dairy farm. She bet he never had to worry if his dad was going to come home from the barn or if a cow would pull a pistol on him.
“That was a pretty heavy sigh, Keel.” Sugar, an expert at reading people’s moods, eyed her over her martini rim. “Don’t worry about this gig with Dane. He’s a real straight shooter.”
Keeley shook her head. “If he’s such a straight shooter, I don’t know how this will all turn out.” She leaned over the table. “I’m going in undercover as his secretary.”
“Undercover or under the covers with Dane?” Sugar whooped.
“Ha, ha.” Although she had definitely considered the second possibility. Dane was so big, so strong and handsome…She drank most of her limoncello to try to cool off.
“If you don’t want him, I’ll give him another try. Maybe he likes blondes.”
“Hands off, honey,” Keeley snapped without thinking.
Sugar giggled. “Well, well. I haven’t heard that tone of voice from you in a long time.”
“Just slipped out,” she mumbled. And she couldn’t even blame the cocktails, since it was only her second.
“Keeley, darling, please put yourself first for once. Ever since we’ve known each other, you’ve been all work and no play. Helping your sister, putting yourself through school and finally taking that dreadful CPA exam—how many hours was it?”
“Fifteen long, torturous hours sitting in front of a computer terminal.”
“Ugh.” Sugar shuddered. “And I thought my MBA classes were bad. So when was the last time you got any?”
“Any what? Sleep?” Sugar was right. She had been going nonstop for months.
“You know what.”
“Oh,
