Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,23
“Bellyache” by Billie Eilish. Maybe Mrs. O’Shea had some teenage grandchildren who were visiting. I listened, trying to determine if the music was coming from upstairs. It wasn’t. I walked down a short hall, poked my head into the front room, and came face to rump with, not kidding, a glittery pink bottom.
“Ah!” I cried and fell backward with my hand over my heart.
The front room was bare of furniture except for three stripper poles placed in a line in the center of the room. All three of the poles had women draped on them in various poses, and all three of the women were spinning to the music.
“Well, hello, dear,” the owner of the pink tush yelled over the music as she twirled with her head down and her posterior high, the pole clasped by one hand and one leg. “You must be Chelsea Martin.”
I nodded. I stood frozen, unblinking, as the woman uncoiled herself from the pole and landed in a split on the ground. Her long gray hair and gently lined face put her in her sixties at least. I wondered if she’d hurt herself. Should I give her a hand? I glanced at the other two women, still on their poles, who did not seem concerned in the least.
The woman in front of me popped up to her feet, reached over to a small Bluetooth speaker, and turned down the music. She had on a black sports bra with the bedazzled pink boy shorts, and that was it. I glanced at her arms, legs, and abs—they were all muscle. Wow.
“I’m Darby,” the woman said. She used a hair band from around her wrist to tie her hair into a high ponytail. “Welcome to the cottages.”
My mouth opened and then closed. So much for a knitting cat lover. I tried to shake off my shock and said, “Thanks.”
Darby’s brown eyes sparkled as she took in my expression. “Fancy a go?” she asked and jerked her thumb at a pole.
“Uh, no.” I shook my head. “But thank you.”
“You change your mind, you let me know. I teach pole dancing. I can show you how.” She turned to the other two women and said, “Keep practicing.”
The women continued twirling. They were considerably younger than Darby, and I noted that one of them had an orangey glow to her skin, the sort that looked like it came from a can of spray-on tan.
“Follow me,” Darby said. She grabbed a blue towel and draped it around her neck. I fell in behind her, completely entranced by the way her muscles bunched and released beneath her skin as she walked to the porch.
“Sorry to interrupt your class,” I said. “I knocked but no one answered.”
Darby waved her hand at me. “It’s no trouble. I teach classes all day long, so most people know where to find me.”
So many questions. I felt as if I were going to bust if I didn’t say something. “So, pole dancing, huh?”
Darby moved behind the small desk and smiled at me. Her entire face lit up, and she said, “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Amazing, for sure,” I said. “How did you happen to take it up?”
“Oh, that’s a story,” Darby said. “The short version is that I found my lying, cheating, no-good husband in bed with another woman, so I kicked him out.”
I nodded.
“He had the bloody nerve to tell me it was my fault that he’d cheated, because I’d gone soft.” Darby patted her ripped abs. “This after I’d borne him two sons.”
“Bastard,” I said. Maybe I was overtired, but I was really in sync with Darby’s rage toward her ex.
“Then my boys tried to tell me that I should sell the cottages. My father built these cottages. They said it was too much work for an old lady, and I was feeling old and achy in my heart and in my bones. I was this close to selling and moving in with my sister.” She held up her thumb and her index finger. “But then a young lass from the States came to stay for the summer, and she was a pole dancer. She took me to a studio in Killarney to try it, yeah, and I loved it.
“I started taking classes, and I was getting stronger and stronger, and I was feeling so sexy. Then my ex, he came sniffing around, wanting me back, and you know what I told him?”