their thing for the early crowd. Most of the patrons are businessmen, and there’s maybe a professor or two since BB’s is only a few blocks from HU. My gaze gets hung up on the familiar curve of the profile of the girl currently sliding down a pole.
I stop in my tracks.
What the hell?
I march over to the front runway so I can get a good look at the petite, bosomy girl who’s currently got her eyes closed as she cups her breasts, gyrating to the music. She’s wearing a silver lamé corset, fishnet hose, and platform metallic shoes—one of the stock outfits Mara keeps for the new girls who don’t have the money to get their own things yet. A guy in an expensive grey suit is watching her with a hooded expression on his face as he sips on a drink.
I move in closer to make sure I’m not crazy.
Holy cow.
“Julia?” My mouth opens. “What the hell?”
Mr. Five-Thousand-Dollar Suit sends me a questioning look, glances back at Julia, and smiles. “Julia.” He says it like he’s tasting it, and I want to smack him upside the head for the lascivious way his gaze is eating her up.
But…I know her, and she’s barely twenty-one. Most of the other girls have a few more years on them.
Her eyes flare open and red steals up her throat and to her face—which honestly surprises me. She tends to not get embarrassed.
“What are you doing here?”
I know, I have no right to worry about a girl I barely know—especially after my lecture to Z—but last night there was a vulnerable bent to her shoulders.
“Dancing.” She shakes her ass, and the suit stands up and stuffs a twenty in her bikini underwear. I glare at him.
“So this is your new job?”
“You gave me the idea.” Her lips tighten as she returns my scrutiny, her sharp eyes daring me to say anything else, an aura of vicious determination in her features.
“Well, I didn’t mean to!”
She does a shimmy thing with her shoulders, which looks hella awkward.
“You’re not doing that great,” I say, frowning. “This isn’t the place for you to earn extra money.”
She blows a kiss at someone.
I exhale. “I’m not judging, you know. I’m just worried. Some girls come here for extra money and never leave. I don’t want that for you.”
Besides, isn’t she a rich girl like everyone else at HU?
She swings around and her corset drops down, revealing a tiny silver bra, showcasing boobs bigger than I gave her credit for.
“I’m fine.”
When a woman says she’s fine, she is not fine.
“She’s beautiful,” the suit says from his seat at the bar where he’s watching her.
“Just go away, Sugar,” she murmurs before turning her butt toward my face and shaking it. “You’re interrupting my routine.”
With a final look at her, I sigh and head to Mara’s office. This isn’t the place to have a real conversation with Julia.
“Did you get back with Bennett?” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth when she sees me. Smoking a Marlboro Light, she’s sitting behind her oak desk, blonde hair rolled up in big curls that frame her face. Wearing one of her velour tracksuits, her legs are jiggling. The computer is open to her accounts, and I figure she’s been working on payroll.
Luis, her boyfriend, sits in a recliner to the side, his eyeballs plastered to the TV as he watches an episode of Shark Tank. A little pudgy with a receding hairline, he’s no Clint Eastwood in his heyday, but he’s a nice guy and not once have I ever seen him give one of the dancers a second look.
I plop down in one of the other recliners. Mara and Luis practically live here so it’s all about comfort. “Now why would you ask me that?”
She waves her hands around her face expressively. “You’ve got this glow. An aura.”
“Do I?” I blush.
She takes off her glasses, pushing them up to her hair like a headband. “Was it the fellow you made the cherry pie for?”
I smirk. “He doesn’t even like cherry pie.”
She pops an eyebrow. “Smart guy. I like him already. But did he eat it?”
“For me, he took a bite, even tried to lie and tell me he liked it.” I grin.
She points a long pink nail at me. “You had sexual relations, didn’t you?”
Color blooms on my face. “Do you have to call it that? Whatever happened to s-e-x?”
Luis gives us a look, gets up, stretches, and leaves the room.