Cold Fusion (6 page)

There’re dozens of files on the hard disk, and their names are initials. I have no time to look at what they are now. I decide to copy whatever the disk will hold. I watch the screen like those idiots who stare at the elevator floor numbers lighting up one at a time.
 

“What are you doing?” Slider asks, locking up the file cabinet after putting everything back.
 

“Copying fucking files,” I snap. “They don’t have a printer, and if they did, that would take too long anyway. I have no other choice.”

“Hurry,” he says.
 

As if I want it to take so long. I throw up my hands because as far as I know, there’s no way to speed things up. He goes to check on Suzy. I hear hushed voices in the adjacent room. Ten minutes pass, and Slider looks into the office.

“Still working on it,” I say. “How long will he be out for?”

“Who knows?” Slider says. “That stuff helps me fall asleep, but it doesn’t knock me out the way it did him.”

Right, but then again, Slider probably doesn’t take his sleeping pill with hard liquor.
 

In an ideal world, I’d make a list of the file names I copied, and I’d compare it to the files on all the disks, but this office is bare. There’s no paper, no pen, no stapler, and from what I’ve seen, there’s not much more in Slider’s office. Whatever mail comes to the club goes on an “inbox” pile on his desk to be picked up by the Wizards accountant who indirectly supervises Slider’s management.

I’m trying to think of a way to make the list when all hell breaks loose. There’s a flash of light, then thunder strikes so close that the entire building shakes… and the power goes off.
 

Slider and I go through a cursing competition, and he wins. I keep repeating “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” whereas he has a more impressive repertoire. Suzy walks in holding a weird-shaped candle. Where did she pull that from?

“I don’t smoke, but I like to do stuff with wax,” she offers as an explanation to the question I didn’t ask.

“Give it to me,” Slider says. “I’ll go look at the fuse box.”

“It’s not the fuses,” Suzy answers, pointing out to the window of Slider’s office across the hall.
 

It’s pitch black outside. No one else has any electricity.

“A paper clip,” I growl. “I need a stupid paperclip to dislodge this disk from the computer drive.”

“I don’t have that in my goodie bag,” Suzy says.

“Was there a disk in the drive when you started?” Slider asks.
 

I nod.
 

“Then we’re leaving and locking up behind us. We’ll figure out a way to get the disk out before or during one of their next visits.”

“I could drive—” Lightning immediately followed by thunder contradicts me. We’re not going anywhere for a while.
 

I listen to Slider’s voice of reason, put the disks back in their box, and let Slider check that the room is precisely as we found it. When we finish locking up, there’s not much left of Suzy’s candle. We make use of the little time left to put the belt back on Zach’s pants. We’re just in the nick of time too because he starts stirring.

Suzy blows out the candle as he asks, “What the fuck happened?”

“First you went out cold on me,” Suzy says, “and now the power’s out. But I think I can still make you see the light!”

Slider and I sneak out of the room, leaving the door open. I think he’s with me on this one—there are some things we don’t want to witness, even in the dark!

Mimi comes around on Friday night, twenty minutes before show time. I’m at the door when she arrives, and I don’t even try to hide how glad I am to see her. The feeling’s not mutual.

She doesn’t return my smile when she growls, “Happy now?”
 

I can’t help but grin. God, she’s even hotter when she’s mad! Following her as she marches in, I play dumb and say, “What’s the matter?”

“Right, you have no idea why I’m mad. Don’t tell me you didn’t purposely scare the manager of my restaurant to get me fired!”

She looks so upset that I feel a bit guilty. But not enough to offer to go intimidate the man into giving her her job back. I put on my best innocent look and turn up my hands. That sends her into a fit of rage.
 

She stops and turns toward me, jabbing her finger into my chest. “Next you’re gonna tell me that those weren’t your guys following to every single interview and making sure no one else hired me.”

I bite my lips to hide the smile that’s likely to pop on my face. Good for Slider. I like a man who makes sure he gets his way, ’specially when his way could make one of my fantasies come true. I’ll get to see her every day and show her what a nice guy I really am.

She glares at me, and all I want to do is hug her to bits. Instead, I grab her hand and bring it to my lips.
 

She jerks it away as if I’ve bitten her. “What’s with you?”

“Mimi, I swear to you, I didn’t intimidate anyone but that pretentious man at the hotel.”

“Well, if not you, then those were goons of yours,” she says.

“I claim sole responsibility for their actions,” Slider says, cutting in.

She turns around to face him, and I’m happy she’s no longer directing her anger at me.

“I’ll take the job under three conditions,” she says after taking a deep breath to calm herself.

Slider looks around to check that no one is within earshot. When he’s sure Vic, the barman, is nowhere to be seen, he invites Mimi to speak with a movement of the head.

“First, I don’t do lap dances.”
 

Slider nods, raising his shoulders as if he’d never expected that of her.
 

“Second, I’m out of here by midnight no matter what.”
 

Slider shakes his head sideways and pucker his lips.
 

“And third, you actively keep looking for a replacement, because on September first at the latest, I’m out of here.”

“I’ll sure look for a way to replace you as soon as possible, but while you’re here, you’ll need to stay later than midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.”
 

Mimi frowns. “Fine.” Then she struts toward the dressing room, waving at the barman.

Vic’s wheeling in a beer keg and yells, “Welcome back, Starla.”
 

The man badly needs glasses. Mimi has at least thirty or forty pounds on her sister. Where Josette’s ass was bony, Mimi’s is luscious and—fuck, I already have a boner just from looking at her walk away.
 

“Get a grip, man, or you’re gonna lose it when she comes on stage.” Slider snickers. I look at him sideways, and Slider slaps my back real hard, laughs, and says, “Not your boner, man, your cool.” Then he leaves me with my frustration to help Vic with the keg.

I walk outside for a bit of fresh air. Well, it’s not actually fresh—it’s hot and muggy—but I need to clear my head. My hard-on subsides as I try to come up with a way to get that stupid floppy before Zach and his partners return and realize someone’s messed with their computer.

Sally arrives in the death trap she calls her car and comes up to me with a big smile. I give her a hug and mess up her hair. I’ve been treating her like a substitute for Lisa, since I know Slider’s got dibs on her. She’s cute, but she doesn’t hold a candle to Mimi.

Crap, whatever I try to think about, my mind always returns to Mimi.
 

Sally mock-punches me. “Is Slider here already?”

“Yeah, he was helping Vic a minute ago,” I tell her.

“Cool,” she says as she passes me.

“Hey, Sally, Mimi’s here too,” I say.

“Oh, I’m happy Slider talked her into coming back!”
 

“Well—we kinda forced her hand—”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” she says. “No one has ever forced Mimi to do anything she didn’t want to do, not even Josette standing on the ledge of a tenth-floor window.” She doesn’t elaborate before she scoots inside.
 

I follow her in. It’s dinnertime for the mosquitoes, and unlike Mimi, they think I’m the sweetest thing around.

I hang around the bar waiting for the show to begin. I’ve never been so anxious. I’m like a kid on Christmas morning who sort of knows what’s in the package under the tree but still needs to find out if it’s precisely what he wants. I have no doubt Mimi has everything I want and all in the right places, but I want to see what she’s like with the wrapping off. The only drawback is that all these other guys will get to look at her as well. But I have an advantage—I get paid to slap around anyone who tries to get frisky with her.
 

The bar starts to fill in with a huge crowd. The upcoming spring weddings are bringing in the wild bachelor parties, and this Friday is no exception. The guys in the party aren’t very much younger than me, but I can’t help but feel that I’m a lot more mature than them. They look as if they’ve never had to care about anything more than getting good grades and keeping their parents happy. Heck, they make me feel downright ancient.

I shake away that stupid nostalgic feeling about the carefree youth that could have been mine if a drunk driver hadn’t killed my father. No use dreaming about what might have been. I don’t regret a single day I spent taking care of Lisa nor my time in the Army with Brian.
 

The
Rawhide
theme that announces the beginning of Sally’s cowgirl routine derails my train of thoughts. I watch the crowd while she does her number. The young guys are more vocal but much rowdier than our usual clients. That may change at any time because they’re downing shots as if drinking’s going out of style. Sally gets a lot of “yeehaws,” but the kids are behaving.
 

Slider’s standing close to one side of the stage. His gaze flies from Sally to the young men, and every single time one of them slips her a bill, he cringes. She ends her number with a flourish of applause and cat calls. Sally bows low, which makes her breast jiggle in a cute way, and when she stands back up, she blows Slider a kiss. His face remains neutral, but I can almost feel his relief as she vanishes from the stage.

It must be really hard to watch the woman you have the hots for get undressed in front of a bunch of other guys. It takes me about one minute to understand that “hard” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Fuck, it’s pure hell!
 

My hands clench into fists as Mimi steps on stage. It takes all my willpower not to thrash through the crowd, cover her up, and take her backstage. Her number starts slow. Mimi steps toward the pole, dressed in white. It’s a Sunday-best white dress with lace, somewhere between an old-fashioned first communion dress and a bridal dress. Everything about her screams that she’s pure and innocent.
 

Her eyes are cast down and her hands joined in front of her. There’s no music. What’s playing is some sort of outdoor sound track—a river and birds and maybe wind in the branches—but then the music hits, and it’s hard metal. She tears away the dress and reveals a light pink corset, white stockings, and a garter belt. She wraps herself around the pole and dances in such a lascivious way that I want to take an ax to that stupid pole.
 

By the time she starts untying her corset, I’m hard as a rock, and I have to look away. I take a few deep breaths and remember that the whole point of me being there is to make sure the talent is safe. I force myself to look back at the stage. Mimi is strutting around the podium, crouching in front of the group of young men, and I only realize how clenched my jaw is when I catch Slider’s gaze. He still standing on the other side of the podium, and he’s observing me with an ironic expression.
Yeah, right. Now I get it.
I won’t make fun of him anymore.

When Mimi’s done with her number, I realize that if his classes are as good as he says, I desperately need to take some of Brian’s Dom training courses. I’m going to need all the self-control I can muster and then some if I have to watch Mimi do that every single night and twice on Saturdays.

Saturday night is worse than Friday night, but I get to let out some steam because the Bush Fire has two bachelor parties, and they go a bit crazy. Punching one nasty, aggressive, entitled drunk makes me feel a lot better.

Mimi finishes her last round at midnight, and Slider lets her go. It’s pouring out, and the crowd is thinning. I check that Slider is by the bar before I walk her to her car. She’s swapped her fuck-me pumps for plastic boots, and I still think she looks hot as hell! 

I carry a very large umbrella in one hand, and under the pretense of making sure she doesn’t slide on the muddy asphalt, I hold her waist until we reach her car. She doesn’t pull away. She even leans into me a couple of time, and her curves feel just right molding against my side. 

She opens the driver’s door under the protection of the umbrella and turns to face me. Mimi’s a little smaller than me in flats and has to tilt her face to look me in the eyes. “I owe you an apology.”
 

I simply blink and wait for her to elaborate.
 

“The girls told me you were great with Toussaint,” she says.

I smile. “I like your nephew. He’s a good kid.”

“They also say you actually tried to help Josette.”
 

I nod.
 

“You chased away some of her pushers?”
 

I nod again.

“And you weren’t even sleeping with her.” The end of the phrase is somewhere between a question and an affirmation, and her voice is almost a whisper.

I lose myself in her chocolate-brown eyes and answer her indirect question.

“No, I think a woman should have a lot of flesh on her bones.” I slowly cradle her face and caress her lower lip with my thumb. “I was never interested in your sister. But I really like you. I find you much more…” I shake my head because I’m afraid to scare her away. “You’re the most beautiful and desirable woman I’ve ever met.”

She lowers her eyes as if she’s embarrassed by my confession, or to ponder what to do next, then stands on her toes to kiss me. She aims for my cheek, but I see her coming, and I slide my hand to her neck while I tilt my face. Her lips land on mine, and they’re softer than I imagined. I nibble on her lip, and her mouth opens as she welcomes me in. She’s so sweet that I curse the rain. She shivers, and I want to pull her against me to give her my warmth, but I’m holding this stupid umbrella. As if reading my mind, she leans against me, fisting my T-shirt and sliding her other hand under my leather jacket.