Chapter 1 #2
“No,” I say, shaking my head and pointing at the wad of cash concealed in his fist. He’s already trying to give it back to her while hiding the size of the bundle from me. “You are not using Gallo’s to sell drugs, I don’t care what Travis promised you. And if you brought meth into here, I swear—”
Kristen’s eyes go wide as she stares at me. “It’s not drugs, Lou. That’s not what—I mean, I…” a deep scarlet rolls over her face. “It’s been so hard since the divorce, you know? I haven’t felt wanted. Even in my marriage. And I’ve never…”
“Done meth?” I ask. God, this is giving me a headache. “Maybe don’t do that.”
“Had an orgasm,” Kristen blurts out. “I hired Clay to…help with that.”
Oh.
OH.
My head is going to explode. Travis letting some outsider sell drugs out of my office is plausible. Travis turning my office into a bordello with a male sex worker is not on my Travis Gallo Bingo card. Guess I lack imagination.
“Just take it,” Kristen is saying to Clay, pushing it into his hand again.
“I can’t,” he says in a surprisingly gentle and warm voice. “Services weren’t rendered.”
She blushes again, eyes glued to the floor. “Services were rendered. A few times.”
I’m going to bleach every surface of my office the moment these two get out.
“We were interrupted,” he insists in that same soft tone. “I didn’t deliver what I promised—”
“You really did,” she insists.
“But—”
For fuck’s sake. I snatch the wad of cash they’re pushing back and forth between them. “How many times did you come?” I ask Kristen as I count the bills.
She blushes harder, but her lips tip into a dreamy smile. “Three.”
I can’t remember the last time I got three orgasms. Even the charge on my toys doesn’t last long enough for that.
“So three orgasms. Let’s say that took at least an hour.
” I don’t know how long their refractory periods are, but fucking on my desk isn’t all that comfortable, so I doubt they’ve been at it for hours, plural.
“Before that, maybe an hour of conversation, a drink, and some foreplay. Sound about right?”
Kristen nods uncertainly. The man gives me a bored look.
“Let’s say you had ten minutes of fucking left when I walked in”—judging by the moans, Kristen was very close, but he’s a professional and might have planned to edge her a tiny bit—“plus twenty minutes for your post-coital activity of choice.” My voice trails off at the end.
I’m holding four hundred dollars.
Kristen Donnelly was willing to pay this man four hundred dollars to experience an orgasm.
Every time her good-for-nothing ex comes into my bar, I’m going to make sure I give the top of his beer bottle a little tap after I hand it to him so it explodes in his fucking face.
“Three hundred, for services rendered,” I give a stack of bills to the man, and a smaller stack to Kristen.
“One hundred for you since you didn’t get the full package. ”
Kristen’s gaze travels to his crotch, and mine hitches a ride. He’s still hard, if the bulge is anything to go by.
“I got the full package,” Kristen murmurs.
Christ.
I snap myself out of staring at his dick print and cross my arms again. “You can go somewhere else to earn that last hundred, or to argue about it. But if you don’t leave, I’m going to charge you both for using my office and wasting my time.”
“I’ll walk you out,” he says to Kristen, then turns to me. “Meet me at the bar. And pour me a bourbon.”
The fucking nerve.
I need a drink more than he does, so as he turns to let Kristen out the side door, I turn to walk the short hallway to the bar, and the surprises keep coming.
“What the hell happened here?” I mumble as I walk past chairs neatly upturned on tables.
The old floorboards squeak under my feet, but the soles of my heeled boots don’t stick to them.
The tap handles gleam in the light streaming through the windows—windows that used to be plastered up in beer advertisements.
Even the cobwebs in the corners are gone.
I walk around the bar. Everything is tidy and in the wrong place.
He took down the longhorn skull that’s hung over the door to the kitchen since Gallo’s opened almost a hundred years ago.
There used to be a small pendant of a gold horn—a cornicello—that belonged to my great-grandfather to ward off bad luck hanging from the right horn, and that’s gone too.
As are the celebrity prayer candles featuring George Michael, Cher, and Dolly Parton that belonged to Rita.
The photo of Rita with her mother is also missing.
I don’t like this.
It takes me a minute to find where he moved the maraschino cherries. I drop four cherries into my rocks glass, along with a single cube of ice, then fill it with bourbon and a splash of cherry Coke.
It might be before noon, but it goes down like a treat. I pop a cherry in my mouth as I pour myself another. Mystery gigolo can pour his own. And pay for it.
What is taking him so long?
I tap my chipped nails on the bar and stare at the hall while I sip my second drink.
Maybe he’s fucking her out the back. He could have her pressed against the wall, her skirt up around her waist as his lips coast over the shell of her ear.
Skilled fingers playing her to perfection while he thrusts into her from behind.
My stomach twists because if anyone deserves to get railed out the back by someone who cares about giving their partner pleasure, it’s me.
Okay, it’s Kristen, too. At least I’ve had orgasms before. Goddamn her ex sucks.
I pluck another cherry from my glass. As long as they aren’t fucking on my desk, I don’t care if they do it outside. Everyone in Havenwood knows someone who was conceived in the backseat of Gallo’s parking lot, so I hope for Kristen’s sake he put another condom on.
“Well, Ms. Gallo,” he says in that annoyingly calm voice as he strides into the bar with my abandoned handbag. “It seems we have a problem.”