LITMIR.BIZ

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right,” she agreed. She picked up the tray and started away, then turned back. “You should have asked first. I would have settled for twenty-five, thirty bucks.” She gracefully strolled away, tray balanced on one delicate hand.

      When she was out of earshot, he murmured, “You would have sold yourself cheap, darlin’.”

      She was a beautiful woman. Smart. Capable. She could do anything she wanted, yet for twelve years she’d settled for this. Why?

      He’d learned early in his career that asking why people did the things they did was an exercise in futility. Why did a seventeen-year-old honor student decide the profit margin versus risk in selling drugs made it a good choice? Why did a gangbanger open fire on a crowd of strangers—kids, no less—as he drove down the street?

      For the most part, Rick had lost interest in the why. His focus these days was on delivering the consequences to people who broke the law.

      But he couldn’t help but wonder about Amanda’s why. Why was she a stripper? Why hadn’t she pursued a more respectable career? Why wasn’t she married and raising kids? Why was she spending her nights in a place like this with people like him?

      The club had about two customers too many to rank as a slow night. Rick made drinks whose recipes he could now recite in his sleep, watched the customers and talked for a minute here or there with the dancers. It was casual conversation—drink orders, a little flirting. You have any plans when you get off? Want to join me for dessert? Unless he made an effort to see the girls outside the club—too risky—he had no real chance to get information from them. It was tough to subtly say, “A margarita on the rocks, a whiskey sour and, say, do you remember a girl named Lisa who used to work here?”

      That was why Julia was coming onboard. Dancers talked to each other. Hopefully, they would talk to her about Lisa Howard, Tasha Wiley and DinaBeth Jones.

      Three dancers, all having appeared on the main stage at Almost Heaven, all disappeared over a three-month period pretty much without a trace until parts from Tasha’s and DinaBeth’s cars had turned up in a chop shop on the northern side of Atlanta. The chop shop happened to belong to Roosevelt Hines, who also owned Almost Heaven and its four sister clubs.

      Rosey, he called himself, and no one laughed. He stood six-six, weighed three hundred pounds and didn’t give a damn about anyone but himself. He’d started with petty theft when he was ten and worked his way up the food chain. The strip clubs were the most legitimate of his businesses. He said he liked his girls, claimed he kept the bad stuff away from them.

      Would Lisa, Tasha and DinaBeth agree?

      “Hey, Calloway, time for a break.”

      He glanced up to find Chad, bouncer and relief bartender, standing at the other end of the bar, flirting with a little blonde named Dawn. Rick had walked in on them in the storeroom his first night on the job, in the men’s room the next night. He’d seen enough to make a point of always knocking first.

      There were dancers on all three stages, the budget committee was having a good time and there was no sign of Amanda. On her own break? Where Rick would have normally headed straight out back, this time he detoured past the dressing room. The door was always open; there was no false modesty among the dancers.

      The room looked like an explosion of colors, leathers and metals. Bright lights circled the makeup mirrors and cosmetics spilled across the counters. Lockers lined one wall, holding the mundane jeans, T-shirts and running shoes that turned exotic dancers back into everyday young women.

      Only one of the chairs in front of the mirrors was occupied, by a gorgeous Jamaican woman who was adding a coat of something to already-thick lashes. “Hey, sweetie,” she greeted him. “You lookin’ for someone in particular, sugar? Or will Eternity do?”

      She could ask that question of a thousand guys and get nothing but affirmation from every one of them. He grinned apologetically. “I wanted to ask Amanda something.”

      Her dark gaze narrowed. “Amanda, huh. I was betting Monique would be more your type. If Amanda’s not out front, she’s in study hall.”

      “Study hall?”

      “That empty little room near the back door that no one ever uses.”

      “Thanks.” He took a step out the door, then stopped. “Which one is Monique?”

      “Brunette. Short hair. Triple D’s.”

      Oh, yeah. There was a time when she would have been his type. A time all of them would have suited. “I have a girlfriend.” It was a lie, but it sounded good.

      Better to him than to Eternity, if her look was anything to judge by. “You think all them guys out there don’t, chico?” she murmured as she turned back to her makeup.

      Rick’s jaw tightened as he followed the narrow hall to the rear of the building. He knew better than to equate a relationship with fidelity. His father had had a girlfriend or three, along with a wife. The only good thing Rick could say about the bastard was that he’d been discreet in his affairs. His mother hadn’t had a clue until a heart attack had dropped the old man in his tracks and she’d found out that her sons had a half brother living down in Mississippi.

      Sara had been a better woman than anyone had expected—than Gerald had deserved. She’d welcomed Mitch into the family and made a place for him in her own home. She loved him like one of her own. Too bad she’d loved Gerald, too.

      Rick had been eleven when his father died and his mother’s heart had been broken. He hadn’t felt anything decent for Gerald since.

      Reaching the closed door just ten feet from the rear exit, Rick knocked.

      A moment later, the door swung open. “Getting formal, aren’t we, Eternity? You always just barge—Oh. Sorry. No one usually bothers me back here besides—” Hugging her arms across her middle, Amanda finished with a grimace.

      He would have invited himself inside if the space hadn’t been so small or the idea hadn’t seemed so bad. Instead, he leaned against the doorjamb and gave the room a quick scan. The walls were painted the same shade as her living room and the one-armed sofa looked a match to the one he’d seen at her place. There was an oval mirror on one wall, a floor lamp and a small table that held a bottle of water, a clock, a book, a pair of reading glasses and t-rom a trick-or-treat-size candy bar.

      “Study hall?” he asked, bringing his gaze back to her.

      She glanced at the table, too. “When I was in school, I studied in here on breaks.”

      “Getting your GED?”

      A pained look slid across her face. “About eleven years ago. This summer I finished my bachelor’s degree.”

      “Congratulations,” he said, then added, “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”

      She shrugged. “A lot of us didn’t get to finish high school.”

      But that was no reason to automatically assume she hadn’t.

      She’d traded tiger stripes for a filmy gold Grecian goddess thing that left one shoulder bare. She’d kept the gold coil around her arm. Her hair was piled on top of her head, curls spilling down, with a gold patterned band circling her forehead. Fabric draped loosely over her breasts, then gathered at her waist, belted by a thin gold chain. The skirt was barely deserving of the name, short, insubstantial, revealing peeks of the black thong underneath. The leather laces of a pair of platform sandals crisscrossed her calves.

      And just about finished him.

      What the hell was wrong with him? He’d been watching the girls dance for weeks now, first at Rosey’s Marietta club, then here. He’d seen them fully dressed, damn near naked and everything in between. It had become so commonplace that he hardly noticed anymore.

      So why had he suddenly started noticing Amanda?

      Breaks were few and Amanda had

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