Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chloe Baughman
San Diego, California
“Sorry, sorry. I know I’m late. Summer traffic is the worst,” I grumbled as I rushed past one of my bosses, Ryan Strong, who unfortunately was a dead ringer for the actor Ryan Gosling, which made him distracting in an ‘I can’t stop thinking about banging you’ kind of way.
“You’re five minutes early,” he contradicted.
“Five minutes early is ten minutes late,” I countered.
My dad had taught me that back before the dementia had started eating away at the man who’d been the wisest person I knew. Now there were days when he barely recognized me.
Stop.
Recalibrate.
“I’ll be out on the floor in a minute,” I told Ryan, as I pushed into the locker room our awesome management had given us, taking half of a storage room to give the female staff members a fully kitted-out place to change and store their stuff.
Pete had even put a couch in the room that was super comfy.
“Hey, Chloe,” Poppy greeted from in front of her locker.
“Hey.”
I busied myself opening my locker in an attempt to ignore my friend.
I could feel her giving me the side-eye, and I was not in the mood for another lecture.
She’d given me one last night before our shift ended, and again this afternoon when she called me.
Luckily, I was at my other job and had a valid excuse to cut the talk short.
“You can’t keep this up, Chloe.”
Here we go.
I tossed my purse into my locker and pulled out my pen holder and notebook, diligently focusing on my tasks.
“You were up at five this morning,” she told me, something I knew. “You worked until three. Now you’re here and won’t get cut until after one. After you cash out, do your side work, and drive home, that leaves three hours’ worth of sleep if you’re lucky.”
She wasn’t wrong, and I was feeling every hour of sleep I’d missed out on this week. But I needed the money. I had no choice but to work two jobs or move in with my mother, and as much as I loved her, I would rather work seventeen jobs and never sleep another wink.
Just because I loved her didn’t mean she didn’t drive me batshit crazy. I’d last approximately three days, give or take a few hours, living with her before I’d give up the comforts of a bed in favor of a cardboard box.
“I can get you a job at the Vault.”
Not this again.
“No.”
“I work a three-hour shift and walk out with a minimum of five hundred dollars. You make twenty an hour at—”
“I know how much money I make.”
Sadly, I couldn’t forget my twenty-dollar-an-hour job didn’t even cover my rent on my one-bedroom apartment.
Maybe I should see if there were any studios coming available in my building.
That would save me a few hundred dollars a month.
That would go a long way, and maybe I’d be able to afford a to-go coffee again one day in the next millennium.
“You’d be perfect—”
“Poppy, I love you with all my heart, but I’m not cut out to take off my clothes in public.”
“You say that like the Vault’s a strip club. It’s not. Think Coyote Ugly but themed.”
Every time Poppy tried to sell me on the idea of going to work in the bar nestled up in the hills with a steep cover charge and a drink minimum I couldn’t afford, she always referenced the movie where the bartenders and servers danced on the bar top in cutoffs and crop tops.
The movie was the bomb, but I didn’t think I could even manage to climb on a table or the top of a bar.
And showing copious amounts of skin wasn’t my thing, unless I was in my bikini on the beach. But that felt different, especially seeing as I was a SoCal girl and grew up running on the sand and in the surf.
“How about this,” she continued. “Tomorrow night, come with me. Just watch the show we put on, and if you really hate it, then I promise to never mention it again.”
I’d do anything to get Poppy to stop mentioning the Vault. “Fine.”
She slammed her locker, bopped over to me, and kissed my cheek. “You’re gonna love it.”
I wasn’t, but I did love seeing my friend smile.
“Yeah, yeah.” I waved her off. “See you out there.”
I heard the door close and dropped my chin to my chest. I was exhausted. So tired I was becoming delirious. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep up this pace.
“We’re going to have to move him, Chloe. We have no choice,” my mother had shared with tears in her eyes.
We did have a choice—me working two jobs so I could help pay for my father’s home that the insurance didn’t cover.
I’d looked at the home the insurance company had suggested. Over my dead, broken, tired body would my father move an hour away from the women who loved him and live in a small white box of nothing. And that was what the rooms were—boxes. White, boring nothingness.
Hell to the no.
The truth of my situation penetrated my fatigued brain—I was going to have to work at the Vault.
For my father, I’d dance around half dressed.
For my mother to keep the love of her life close, I’d swallow my pride.
I swiped away the only tears I’d give in to and headed out to the floor.
Ryan Strong
“Yo!” Pete called and waved me over to a table in the corner he’d commandeered before the early evening rush started.
I took the chair opposite his. “What’s up?”
“Shep called. He needs us to look into something for him.”
The team had been home from Dubai for a month. It wasn’t unheard of for us to go out for back-to-back missions; neither was it abnormal for us to be home for a few months. So I didn’t understand the look on my friend’s face.
“Where we going? I’m up on rotation. Mase sitting this one out?”
We rotated who stayed stateside to manage the bar. Since Mason now had Calli and they were newish, it made sense he’d be the one to stay behind.
“The Vault,” he said, weirdly.
“The Vault? The gentlemen’s club?”
“Not so much a gentlemen’s club as it is a private club.
The servers don’t strip, and they don’t show any more skin than on an average Friday night here.
Membership is astronomical, but twice a month, they allow nonmembers to pay a cover charge.
Shep has intel there might be a member there scouting. ”
Scouting for women to sell, right in our backyard.
Hell no.
“When’s the next nonmember night?”
“Next Wednesday.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chloe walk out into the bar.
Beautiful, smart, hilarious Chloe Baughman—the woman who set my blood on fire and haunted my dreams.
My employee.
If I was a different man, I’d fire her just so I could have the woman.
Unfortunately, I had scruples . . . and a case of blue balls to go with my morals.
Needless to say, my condition was painful.