I know she’s not Penny.
And yet, as I race my black Navigator down the street—with the air-conditioning cranked to max—toward Cherry’s apartment, to deal with impending disaster, the name Penny plays over and over inside my head. Those blond curls, those full red lips, the eyes outlined in heavy black kohl that make me wonder what she looks like without makeup. Decent body, my ass! People pay thousands to have that beautiful hourglass figure. And those tits are fucking perfect. Plastic surgeons would use her as a design model. She doesn’t even need a bra to keep them up. She obviously wasn’t wearing one today when she slid her dress off.
Just like Penny that first day she walked into my dive of a club, asking for a job.
I don’t fuck my staff. Ever. I’m here to help them get on their feet and away from the sex trade, not drag them down further by being the sleazy boss who treats them like whores. From that day almost nine years ago, when I laid down the payment for The Bank—the club I owned before opening up Penny’s—I’ve maintained that code with stoic resolve. Of course, a young guy surrounded by strippers throwing themselves at him daily was a true test of willpower.
I had a lot of cold showers those first few months.
I figured I’d be fine. Then Penny walked in and, well, she was impossible to ignore.
Impossible not to love within seconds.
And if I had just stuck to my policy and stayed away from her in the first place, she wouldn’t have ended up with her head bashed in just steps away from my office.
If Penny’s death did anything, it stopped me from ever getting distracted from my purpose in this business. It sure as hell isn’t love.
Here I was, thinking I had put that tragedy behind me and moved on. Until tonight, a Penny lookalike walks in and blows my recovery to smithereens.
What did I do? I gawked at her like a fucking pervert. I stared at her body, I avoided her polite handshake, I made her squirm under my gaze.
And then she dropped her dress and that spark—the strange concoction of intrigue, hope, and lust that’s so much stronger than just a waiting naked body should provoke—hit me. The one I have felt only once before. When Penny walked into my office.
I went hard as a rock in an instant.
Ginger was right, though. She’s different. Unreadable, for the most part. Not cold, but she’s either very skilled at controlling her expressions or she’s not expressive at all. Aside from that blush when I pulled her dress up, she seemed unfazed through the entire ordeal. And that’s not normal. In all the years, in all the interviews, I’ve never seen a woman so calm as she asks for a job in my club. The women are always nervous. They’re usually flirting heavily. Once in a while, I’ll turn my back for a second and find them spread-eagled on my desk.
Not this woman, though . . .
She has never worked a private room. I caught that hard swallow when she stated that she’d like to work both. Either that or . . . she has worked a private room before and something bad happened. I’m keeping her out until I find out which it is.
I’ll certainly be passing her paperwork on to my private investigator. The one who does the kind of in-depth background checks average employers don’t bother with. I know it’s not normal, but I’m not normal and I won’t let any illicit shit get dragged into my place, derailing everything I’ve worked so hard to build.
Speaking of illicit . . . I pull into the parking lot outside Cherry’s apartment complex, wondering how long before this goes sideways.
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