CHAPTER TWO #3
But I still would love to be part of the advertising and marketing team for CaveSphere 4, the much anticipated fourth installment of the game.
It would be a dream job, but there was no way I could ask for an internship.
Even a free one, and I really needed one that paid.
I was too scared of the ogre who was probably going to freak out on me because he didn’t have croutons for his soup.
Nia was still holding onto me, trying to make me see how great this opportunity was. I pulled loose from her surprisingly strong grip. Nia was both thinner and taller than I was. I rubbed my arm. “You’re stronger than you look.”
“I can hold my own,” she shrugged. She looked over her shoulder. “Old Man Dinardo better not get mad if I’m a few minutes late. I’ll just walk you to the lobby and then hurry back.”
“Thanks,” I said, giving her a quick smile.
We walked along companionably for a couple of blocks to the Lancaster building.
I carefully filtered what I told her. Nia knew some of my problems, but she didn’t know the full extent.
She knew about Myers, the ex who’d cheated on me.
She knew I had money problems. Anyone who worked at Sugar, the high-end strip club that was part of a group of connected gentleman’s clubs that Nico and Carmen Salazar owned, had money problems.
But she didn’t know how bad they were.
And I hadn’t told her about my stalker. At first, I hadn’t wanted to worry her.
But that had changed into wanting to protect her.
I was glad Nia and I only had one job together, we weren’t roommates anymore, and I rarely saw her at night since I was usually working.
She was safe from him—or I hoped she was.
“You’re quiet. What’s going on?”
I clutched Jack Lancaster’s weird lunch order—piping hot tomato soup in summer—to my chest and squinted my eyes up at the sun. “Nothing, really. Just… same old stuff, you know?”
“Yeah,” she kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk with her Chuck’s. “Sometimes when you look at all these people, do you feel invisible?”
I knew exactly what she was talking about.
The people around us were wearing high end suits and designer work clothes, headed to their office buildings after a working lunch.
And there were tourists from the beach and bay area shopping at the high-end stores in West Bay’s thriving downtown.
“Absolutely.” We were just two girls working our way through college, wearing cut-off jean shorts and Dinardo’s Deli T-shirts.
The only people we weren’t invisible to were the men who took double and triple takes as they saw the two of us walking together.
Our shorts were short and our shirts were tight.
That’s the way Old Man Dinardo liked us to look, and, honestly, we got better tips that way.
I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them recognized me from my night job.
Being a hostess at Sugar paid well, but it had its drawbacks.
I didn’t make the big money because I didn’t strip and I didn’t ‘entertain’ men in the VIP rooms, but I did serve them plenty of drinks.
And while I did it, I wore very revealing uniforms, flirted, and ignored it when the men got a little handsy.
I figured they knew me from that, as I made unintentional eye contact with a handsome forty-something man in a bespoke suit.
The hunger in his eyes was unmistakable.
I smiled at him, not wanting to piss off a potential high tipper if he knew me from Sugar.
Or he might just think I was hot.
I looked at Nia, quirking my eyebrow as I saw a couple of men basically salivating over her, too. “Well, maybe not absolutely invisible,” I said. Nia might not work at Sugar, but she was truly one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Men tended to notice that.
She laughed ruefully. “Wonder how many of them are married or have girlfriends.”
“Too many.” I hadn’t been so jaded before Myers had cheated on me and I’d started working for the Salazars.
I knew a lot of the men who frequented their high-end gentleman’s clubs were not single.
Yet they hung out at Sugar, or Cayenne, the infamous sex club, on a nightly basis.
I wondered what they told their wives, or if they said anything at all.
Hell. Maybe their wives didn’t care. Rich people lived differently, and it seemed like affairs were just a normal thing for them. I’d never be able to stomach that, though. Myers cheating on me had been awful. I’d loved him. Or thought I had at one time.
I would never go out with a good-looking guy known to be a player again.
Myers had convinced me I was the girl who would change his ways, the girl he’d marry.
Either he’d lied from the start and had never intended to change, or he was just going to be a cheater no matter what.
Who knew? It wouldn’t be me he cheated on. Not anymore.
We had reached the Lancaster building, and I felt butterflies in my stomach. “God, I’m nervous. I don’t think I can do it.”
“Can we talk about how you’re the only woman in America who’s not nervous to meet Jack Lancaster because he’s hot as fuck, but because you want an internship with his gaming company?”
I laughed. “Jack Lancaster is the kind of handsome who wouldn’t even notice us.
” I looked at her out of the corner of my eye.
“Well, me at least.” Nia was the second generation of her family to be born in America, but they were Eritrean originally.
She, and her whole family, were completely fucking gorgeous. “We all know…”
“Eritrean women are the most beautiful women on Earth,” she finished, giggling. She’d told me that several times, only half-joking.
“And the guys aren’t so bad, either,” I said, thinking of her incredibly handsome, but very happily married, older brother.
“Ew. Don’t even say that.” We came to a stop at the same time. It was time for me to deliver Jack Lancaster’s lunch.
“I probably won’t even see him,” I said looking up at one of the tallest buildings in West Bay.
“But you might. And if you do, you have to ask. Or lay the groundwork, at least.”
My stomach turned a flip. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. I couldn’t go up to Jack Lancaster, one of the most famous video game developers in the world and just ask for an internship as I delivered his tomato soup.
“Oh God.” I smacked my forehead. “I can’t ask him for anything.”
Nia gave me a look, the breeze coming up from the ocean blowing her voluminous, dark curls around her face. She looked like a mermaid, escaped from the sea. Except for the Chuck’s and skimpy waitress uniform. “Why the hell not?”
“Because Ivan burned the damn cheddar croutons.”
She winced. “Oh.” All of us knew about Jack Lancaster’s need to have the exact same order every day. And he had flipped his shit when Old Man Dinardo changed the crouton recipe a couple of years ago. “Yeah, girl. Maybe wait for a better time.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t good at asking for things, anyway. “Thanks for walking me over.” I started to walk inside, but Nia grabbed my arm.
“Do you think I could get a job at Sugar?”
My eyes widened. “What in the world would you tell your family?” They were super traditional, and as far as I knew they paid for her tuition. She lived at home, too, so she didn’t have to worry about room and board. I thought she worked at Dinardo’s just so she could have some spending money.
I frowned. Maybe I’d been wrong.
“And what about Cinnamon House?”
My eyes widened. “Are you for real right now?”
She nodded.
Cinnamon House was a beautiful mansion I lived in rent-free with several other girls, all of whom worked at Salazar clubs or restaurants, mostly Sugar.
It was the type of home I’d never thought I’d live in—elegant, the kind that would be featured on the cover of a magazine.
A maid came in twice a week, we had a chef, our groceries were delivered each week, I didn’t pay utilities, I didn’t have to share a room.
It was amazing. But there was a price for living there.
To live there, each woman had to agree to enter the Cinnamon Auction within two years. It had taken me a long time to decide that I would do it, and it was taking me even longer to get up the nerve to actually go through with it. But my two years were almost up, and I desperately needed the money.
The auction was… complicated. “Why would you need to do all that?”
“I don’t know.” She bit her lip. “I just… Oh my God, Daze! It’s almost eleven fucking thirty.”
I gasped. I couldn’t be both late and missing the croutons! “We’ll talk about it later,” I assured her.
“Go! Run!” she gestured wildly.
I did. I clutched the bag close to me and took off running through the fancy lobby of one of the tallest, most luxurious buildings in West Bay.
I was really pushing being late. To save a little time, I was about to slide on the waxed tiles and jab the elevator’s up button. But then the doors opened.
“Yes,” I hissed to myself, picking up speed. I ran straight into the elevator, not even looking to see if anyone was inside.
And that’s when it happened.
Disaster. Complete fucking disaster. I ran right into a brick wall of a guy wearing some sort of fancy-looking golf clothes.
The bag holding the tomato soup was crushed between my chest and his.
Piping hot, red liquid went everywhere.
“Ow!” he said, shaking soup off his arms. “What the actual fuck is happening?”
“Oh my God… I’m so, so sorry,” I said. Then the guy and I actually looked at each other, and I gulped.
I knew what Jack Lancaster looked like, of course. Everyone in West Bay did. He was one of our most famous citizens. He’d been in People magazine, featured as one of their most beautiful people. He deserved it, too. He was ridiculously, deliciously, outrageously handsome. And tall. And built.
And so fucking smart. How could one person be blessed with so much?