Neck & Neck (9 page)

She was a symphony of curves, in fact. The full breasts narrowed to a slender waist, then she flared out nicely once again at her hips. Her arms bore the musculature of a woman who hefted heavy trays for a living, her shoulders, biceps, and triceps all clearly delineated as she went about her task. Where Russell would have thought such an obvious sign of physical strength in a woman would be off-putting, he instead found it rather . . . erotic. Her legs, too, were long and muscular, from the camber of her calf to the arc of her thigh.

And suddenly, he found himself thinking he might like to dance after someone’s shift, after all. Just not with the dancer.

He lifted his glass to his lips again, then remembered it was empty. Stoller and Franklin were still enthusiastically occupied with their dancers, so Russell didn’t bother to ask if they wanted a refill, too. Unfortunately, just as he approached the redheaded waitress, she lifted her tray and levered it onto her shoulder. So he watched her as she made the rounds of her tables, setting each glass before its appropriate owner, amazed at the fluidity and ease of her movements as she completed the action. He winced as one of the men at a neighboring table reached over and grabbed her ass. But she was completely unfazed by the man’s groping, just reached behind herself to remove the offending hand and returned to her drink deliveries.

Clearly, this was a woman who had made her living as a waitress in seedy dives for some time and was utterly comfortable in the role. Better still, she didn’t have any tattoos immortalizing anyone.

Oh, yes. She was looking like the perfect
dance
partner indeed.

Just as she relinquished the last of her drinks, the two men seated at one of her tables rose to move closer to the stage, so Russell made his way hastily to one of their vacated seats. The waitress was about to move off in the opposite direction, so he called after her, “Excuse me, miss?”

She turned at his summons, looking vaguely surprised to be addressed as
miss
. Russell tried to guess her age, but with all the face paint, it was hard to pin down. He could discern no lines around her eyes or mouth, however, something that suggested she was still in her early twenties, which made her even more attractive, because it meant he would have almost nothing in common with her.

She made her way back to the table, smiling at him in a way that was surprisingly charming, considering the fact that, barely a moment ago, a man had grabbed her ass in the most insulting way. Since it was safe to assume that that was probably a nightly—perhaps even hourly—event for her, Russell would have thought she wouldn’t be particularly amenable to the opposite sex, even if her livelihood depended on it. Clearly, she wasn’t saddled with something as heavy or inconvenient as self-respect.

In a word,
Yay
.

He noticed then that, like the other waitresses, her name was stitched into the vinyl of her halter top.
Amber
, it read. He wondered if that was her real name.

“What can I get for you, sir?” Allegedly Amber asked.

Her voice was touched with just a hint of a Southern accent, but it wasn’t like the other accents he’d heard since arriving in Kentucky. This one was a deep Southern accent, the kind he’d heard in places like Georgia and South Carolina. She wasn’t a Louisville native, he guessed, but a transplant. He found himself wondering what brought her here.

Then he wondered why he would care. She was a waitress in a strip club wearing a barely there outfit who didn’t mind having her ass grabbed by strangers, and who was too young for him to be interested in what was going on in her head.
That
was what he cared about. Nothing more.

He held up his empty glass.
“Un autre Delamain cognac, s’il vous plait,”
he said in flawless French. The fact that Minxxx even had it on the menu was the only concession he was willing to make that the place might, maybe, perhaps, possibly indeed be a gentleman’s club.

He’d hoped his order would impress Amber the waitress—surely she was familiar enough with the menu to realize how expensive it was—but she only gazed at him blankly, her smile never faltering . . . or offering the merest hint that she knew what the hell he was talking about. Obviously, she didn’t speak French—no surprise there—but neither had she figured out simply by hearing the brand name
Delamain
what he was ordering.

He smiled at her indulgently and clarified as simply as he could, “That means I’ll have another glass of cognac from the bottle that has the word Delamain, spelled D-E-L-A-M-A-I-N, on its label.”

She expelled a sound of relief and lifted a hand to her forehead, her smile now going supernova. “Thank you
so
much for translating that, sir. Sometimes those things just go right over my head.” She punctuated the statement with a giggle that made something in Russell’s midsection start buzzing with anticipation. “I’ll get that for you right now, um . . .
monsieur
.”

She pronounced
monsieur
as
MON-sure
, something that delighted him even more, because it only hammered home that she was, ah . . . not the brightest neon light in Minxxx.

Still, it was better than being called
sir
, he thought as she turned to fill his order.
Sir
was how anyone who wasn’t a friend or colleague addressed him. Employees, board members, the media, Max’s friends, Max’s teachers . . . everyone. Not once had Russell been comfortable with such address, but he tolerated it because he knew others expected him to. Somehow, it had bothered him even more than usual to hear
sir
rolling off of Amber’s lips. Maybe because he knew she doubtless addressed all of her customers that way, and he didn’t want to be lumped in with them. Even if, he made himself admit, he was here for the same reasons they were.

Stoller and Franklin joined him at the table then, each man wearing the sort of grin that indicated they were having a very good time, even with the bikini thongs and pasties covering up the good parts of their entertainment. Russell experienced a moment of envy, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had as much fun as those two were having right now.

Amber returned with his drink and asked what the other gentlemen would be having, calling each of them
sir
, too, when she addressed them. On her way to fetch those drinks, she was summoned by a half-dozen more men, each of whom who, at best, ogled her openly and who, at worst, tried to cop a feel. But Amber ignored the ogling and deftly side-stepped—or simply removed—the hands, moving fluidly through all of it as she crossed the crowded room to the bar. She had to thread her way through lap dances, reeling drunks, and more than one flying beer can, but she remained completely unfazed by all of it.

Amazing, Russell thought. He’d met plenty of cocktail waitresses in his day, but none who moved with that kind of grace or whose charm was so infectious. She even managed to carry herself with dignity, in spite of the
in
dignity of her outfit. Had he not known better, he would have thought Amber the cocktail waitress spent her days as the reigning monarch of some small, sovereign nation and never went out without her white gloves, her unctuous entourage, or her corgis.

Okay, now he was determined to, ah, dance with her.

He watched her until she returned with the other men’s drinks and placed them on the table before each, but before he could say anything, she asked him if he wanted to run a tab.

“I’d love to run a tab, Amber,” he told her. “Especially if you add yourself to the total at the end of the night.”

She didn’t seem in any way shocked by the suggestion. She simply smiled again and dropped her weight to one foot, fisting her hand on her upturned hip. “Oh, MONsure,” she said in a phony scolding voice that reminded him of Minnie Mouse. To punctuate the fake censure, she removed the hand from her hip to wag it at him playfully. “Now, you oughta know that’s not a service Minxxx provides.”

“I’m not asking Minxxx to provide it,” Russell said. “I’m asking Amber to.”

She shook her head and made a teasing little
tsk
ing sound. “Well, Amber is
very
flattered, but it’s not a service she provides, either.”

Russell met her gaze levelly and smiled what he knew was the most charming smile he claimed in his ample arsenal. “Oh, I bet you would if you knew who I am,” he said.

Still smiling that adorable little smile, she bent over,
waaaay
over, holding the tray in both hands in a way that thrust her breasts together, a sight Russell found quite . . .

Well. Suffice it to say that Amber had accomplished with a single pose what whatshername the dancer hadn’t been able to do grinding her pelvis into his lap and rubbing her pasties against his chest.

She moved her mouth right next to his ear, so close that he could feel her warm breath dampening his neck and could inhale the musky scent of her. Certain she was about to tell him that if he wanted the service he was clearly asking her to provide, then the two of them could arrange it out of earshot, he tilted his head closer to hers so that he could hear—and agree to—whatever terms she laid out.

Very, very softly, she said, “Oh, I do know who you are, Mr. Mulholland. We all do. The not nearly as reclusive as the media would lead us to believe billionaire. And where any other woman who works here tonight would be more than happy to take you up on your offer, I’m
not
any of the other women who work here.”

Russell wasn’t sure what surprised him more: the fact that Amber was turning him down or the fact that she’d known his identity all along and hadn’t taken advantage of it. Usually, when people, especially women—especially women who worked in places like Minxxx—realized who he was, they went out of their way to either flirt with him or take advantage of him or out and out offer themselves to him in whatever capacity he needed them. Or just snatch a hundred dollar bill out of his wallet and be done with it.

There was one thing, however, that definitely did surprise Russell more than either of those things. And that was the way that Amber was suddenly speaking without a trace of the Southern accent he’d found so appealing, and with all the confidence and poise—and articulation—of that fictitious monarch he’d imagined her to be.

So astonished was he by this development, that, for a moment, he had no idea what to say. So Amber took advantage of that and added, even more quietly than before, “Don’t make assumptions about people by the way they look or act, Mr. Mulholland. That kind of thinking will come back and bite you in the ass every time.”

When she drew back again, she was smiling that vapid smile. And the Southern accent was every bit as convincing as before when she added, “Welcome to Louisville,
MONsure
. Your tab.” She slapped a scrap of white paper onto the table, and it clung to a wet ring near Russell’s hand that had probably been there for a while. “One Delamain cognac, spelled D-E-L-A-M-A-I-N, one Johnnie Black on the rocks, spelled J-O-H-N-N-I-E-B-L-A-C-K, one Sam Adams, spelled S-A-M-A-D-A-M-S.” She started to turn around, then added, “Oh, yeah. And
no
Amber. That’s a big ol’
N
and a big ol’
O
.” At that, she did pivot on her stiletto and gave Russell her back, then strode imperiously away.

And a very nice back it was, too, he couldn’t help thinking as watched her departure. Seemingly acres and acres of silky skin marred only by the purple string of her halter and the hot pink miniskirt that twitched enticingly with every hip-swinging step she took.

“So what did she say?” Stoller asked eagerly.

“Yeah, and does she have any friends?” Franklin added.

Russell barely heard them. He was too busy wondering why a woman who seemed to have both intelligence and self-respect would be working in a dump like this, pretending to have absolutely no intelligence or self-respect.

“Sorry, boys,” he told them as he reached for the tab, picking it carefully up by the corner. “I got shot down.”

“Too bad, boss,” Stoller said.

“Yeah,” Franklin agreed. “She seemed like a nice girl.”

Russell chuckled at that. Of all the things Amber the waitress might be—curvy, lush, unflappable, and, ultimately, halfway intelligent and in no way deferential—he could safely say that
nice
wasn’t one of her qualities at all.

Which put Minxxx at the very top of his sightseeing list while he was in town. Because Amber the waitress, he thought, was just too lovely—and intriguing—a sight to miss seeing a second time.

 

 

GINNY COLLINS CINCHED THE LOCK ON HER LOCKER in the back room of Minxxx, the nightly ritual that officially transformed her from Amber Glenn back to her usual self. And, as she did every time she clicked the padlock into place, she reminded herself that her profession was a totally honorable one for women and had been for more than a century. She was, after all, an actress. Five nights a week, including weekends—especially weekends—she performed her role as a cocktail waitress in a strip club. And she performed it so convincingly that she should be nominated for a damned Tony. Amber Glenn, cocktail waitress, was every man’s idea of a good time. Ginny Collins, on the other hand . . .

She made her way to the back door, pausing to inspect herself in the cracked mirror to double-check for any lingering traces of Amber. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, and the red wig was sitting atop its foam head in the locker, right next to the case holding her brown contact lenses. Her pale brown hair was in a ponytail now, and her faded blue eyes looked as unremarkable as ever. Her vinyl costume—because what good would a Tony-worthy actress be without a costume?—had been replaced with faded blue jeans and a loose-fitting black T-shirt, the stilettos traded for a pair of well-worn hiking boots. She was herself again. Thank God.

Now she could go home.

Two of the dancers had finished their shifts, too, so she waited for them to get dressed so they could all walk out to their cars together. Even though the lot for Minxxx’s employees was fenced and locked to keep out the riffraff, Ginny was hesitant to ever leave by herself. She waved to the other women as they all got into their cars—and locked them—with the precision of a Greek chorus, and they all waited to make sure everyone’s engine started before heading to the exit to enter the code that would allow them to escape.