Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,6
that by fooling around with some guy you met in a strip club?
Gillian shrugged. “Right. Like Jeremy won’t take it while he can still get it.” She turned back to the stage and peered at Brandon. “He’s yummy and totally hung. So what if he’s just some himbo dancer? This is my night. And what I want, I get.”
In a burst of determined activity, she opened her purse and extracted a business card.
Leanne watched as she quickly scrawled a note on the back. She was too far away to read what it said but it wasn’t hard to guess its contents. She bit her lip to stay silent when Gillian called over one of the servers and held out the card between manicured nails.
“Could you see that my note gets to the dancer who’s on stage right now? I’d like to talk with him after the performance and was hoping he’d have a little time to spare me.” The waiter nodded and Gillian slipped the card—and some cash—into his front breast pocket. The whole party watched as the young man wove his way through the tables, toward the door marked Employees Only.
Gillian smiled and smoothed her flawless hair before whipping out a compact to daub her nose with powder. Shame her morals weren’t as perfect as her makeup, because there was no compact big enough to hide those flaws. Turning back to the stage, Gillian watched the dancer possessively, a tight, predatory smirk on her enhanced lips while the rest of the hen party tittered and gossiped.
Leanne’s heart sank. When it came down to it, she didn’t like Gillian. She never had. She’d seen firsthand how she lied and manipulated the people around her to get whatever she wanted. Over the years, Gillian decided rules of fair play and honesty only applied to other less deserving people, not her. She played up her beauty and her delicate blond appeal for all it was worth—and in Gillian’s mind it was worth an amazing amount. To date, it seemed as though she was right, because she’d never been called to account for her flagrant transgressions and grandstanding. But Leanne liked Jeremy. He was, despite his wealth and family connections, a good guy, straight-up and honest. And for some unknown reason, he was crazy about Gillian.
Personally, Leanne thought he could do better marrying just about anyone else. But she wasn’t comfortable sitting by and doing nothing while Gillian planned out-and-out infidelity. Maybe if she appealed to the dancer’s better nature, she could stop this whole mess from going any further. If not…Well, at least she would have tried. She’d learned the hard way that Gillian didn’t brook open defiance of her dictates, but that didn’t mean she had to abdicate her own standards either. She just had to go about it more subtly this time.
“Excuse me. I—I have to go to the washroom.” Their eyes fixed on Gillian’s anticipated conquest, no one at the table even bothered looking up when Leanne grabbed her purse and hurried toward the door that led backstage.
A quick glance assured her that the bouncers were occupied at the entrance and the bartenders were overrun with drink orders. Now all she had to do was convince the dancer not to take Gillian up on her offer. Then she could leave and her awful night would finally be over.
Backstage was a rabbit’s warren of small rooms and dimly lit corridors. Leanne discovered the cleaning supplies, bar stock and the mechanical room before she finally located the door with a handwritten sign marked Dressing Room.
Pushing it open, Leanne found herself in a tiny room with makeshift counters and a motley collection of furniture, including a battered sofa that bore years of wear and tear and a small fridge that hummed noisily in the silence. Along one wall, above the worn countertop, someone had hung a bank of mirrors and above them, a row of small globe lights. They were off and a single fluorescent fixture illuminated the utilitarian space.
Gillian’s business card was propped up against the mirror, next to a small radio handset and a neatly folded pile of street clothes.
Moving quickly, Leanne pocketed the card but not before reading the note Gillian had penned on the backside.
I like what I see and I’d be happy to make it worth your while if you’re willing to show me more. G.
Ugh. Leanne couldn’t imagine propositioning any man as baldly as Gillian had—she really did have no qualms about going after anything she