Pier Lights (2 page)

“Neither do I. Give me real music.”

He skimmed her as though he wasn’t sure she
was worth the time. She knew he would give in. She waited him
out.

“Charlie
. Take two.”

The music stopped. Strains of a good slow
rock beat started. This, she could use, even if she didn’t
recognize it. The singer sounded familiar, a male tenor. She’d
heard him.

Caroline weaved around the tables from the
back of the room to the stage and dropped her bag on a chair up
front. She could barely see Hayes from there, which she figured
would make it easier. It struck her that she saw him about the same
as she saw Mr. Big Sword the night before on the beach. He was
shadowed, but his form was still obvious.

The thought of the big sword and the body in
control of it filled her thoughts as she melted into the soft
sophisticated sound of the male voice talking of how overjoyed he
was or would be. Generally, she paid more attention to the words
and danced to them, but the sword interfered. She danced to it
instead, to the movements of the sword and its human body. And she
danced the way she did in her apartment after a long day’s
practice, loose and free, unwinding, unleashing the tight control
of sharp manipulated steps and forms and lines into soft sensual
earthy movements.

As she relaxed into it, she made it more
sexy, added more hip movement, more bends, with the facial
expression to match. She tugged her slinky lightweight sweater off
each arm, slowly, suggestively, never losing the beat or the
movement. Under the sweater, her tight tank top showed her
physique, the carefully kept dancer’s shape and muscle. She knew
her biggest obstacle would be her breasts. They were well shaped
enough, but they were ballerina size, not stripper size. Even with
her red lace push up bra that showed through the thin skin-colored
tank, they wouldn’t pull much attention.

That only meant she’d have to make up for it
with skill, and with attitude. She had plenty of both.

Hayes ambled closer, to just in front of the
stage, eyeing her every move and different parts of her scantily
clothed body. “Keep going.” He glanced at her leggings.

Caroline stopped and faced him. “Not without
a contract.”

He snickered. “How do I know if I want to
offer a contract if this is all I see first?”

“I have no scars. No stretch marks. It’s all
toned muscle and smooth skin. You know I can do it. I know you can
see in my attitude that I can, and I will, if I decide to take the
job. This is as far as I go without being on the clock.”

Hayes continued to skim her body and stopped
at her breasts. He frowned and scratched his chin. A power play.
She knew it for what it was. “I’ve never hired a stripper that
small.”

“I bet you never hired one with as much
talent as I have, either.”

“Don’t overestimate yourself. I have lots of
talent here. Your kind is less valuable to me than most of theirs.
Remember that.” He picked up her sweater and tossed it back to her.
“Let me show you around the rest of the place. We’ll talk as we
walk.”

She’d taken the job.

Caroline felt slightly sick
to her stomach. She’d worked so hard to get as far as she had, and
she’d been so close to being a prima ballerina. And now this. She
was down to being an exotic dancer in a club very close to her
hometown which she’d tried very hard to escape. That song,
Overjoyed
, would be
forever burned in her brain as her road to perdition song. It was
unfair of her, Caroline supposed, to brand the song that way. The
singer’s voice was nice. The song was brand new and nice enough.
She’d heard of Matchbox Twenty but generally paid more attention to
female singers. She shouldn’t stigmatize them due to her own
choice. And maybe, as Hayes said, she was overestimating herself.
Her road to perdition started long before the audition.

Of course she could take the more normal
road and look for something in an office job or in retail or... She
shuddered. She’d been there. It wasn’t her. She was a dancer. Maybe
she was no longer a ballerina, but she was still a dancer and she
would be the best one at the club. How hard would it be to work her
way up to top spot at a stripper club? Caroline set her goal to get
there by the end of the month. On top, where she always told
everyone she would be.

Her mother would be so proud.

Caroline chuckled as she walked down to the
pier. It might be worth it just in the hopes someone would find out
and tell her mother.

The thousand a week wouldn’t hurt, either,
as a starter. She had no doubt she’d soon work up to the high end
pay scale instead of the starting end. Hayes was putty. Like most
men. Putty and bluster. Once you learned that simple fact, the rest
was easy enough.

For now, she would start small and turn on
the charm. She’d learned that well during her professional days.
Charm counted for a hell of a lot.

Three days.

Hayes wanted her to start in three days. It
gave her enough time to find a place other than the B&B, she
supposed, but she liked it there. She couldn’t stay. It would eat
into her budget too fast. She could always go back and stay now and
then.

Before she started to apartment hunt,
Caroline wanted to celebrate. Lunch at Snapper Jack’s and then a
swim in the ocean. Or vice versa. And then tonight, she would walk
back to the pier and see if Mr. Big Sword was out again.

Amazed she found an apartment within walking
distance of the beach elegant enough for her needs, furnished, and
barely within her budget, Caroline donned a tan bikini, wrapped a
sarong over it, grabbed a towel, and headed back to the beach. Dusk
approached. Her earlier swim was cut short by her growling stomach.
Feeling as accomplished as she did already, she figured a second
swim would add to that. It was good exercise. And it was easy on
her feet. Her right foot ached although she hadn’t walked as much
as she used to walk. Walking was her thing. She’d had a reputation
for it when she was in school. So many rides offered and none
accepted. She wanted to walk. They thought she was too stuck-up to
accept a ride when she didn’t have a car of her own. She didn’t
have need of a car back when she lived where everything was walking
distance from the house. She liked to walk. They could think what
they wanted.

With a shake of the head to rid herself of
the thoughts, Caroline crossed the street with a slow jog and sank
into the sight of the water, the beautiful blue green gray expanse
stretching to the sky, held back softly by the gray white brown
sand. There were the irksome couples hand-in-hand again but she
looked past them. It was quieter without the dance on the pier, a
special occasion locals and tourists looked forward to and Caroline
both enjoyed and detested. The music she loved. The people she
didn’t.

Caroline dropped her sarong and her towel
near one of the wooden sentries and heal-toed into the water. She
walked in up to her knees, waited to let her body get used to the
cold, then up to her thighs, then bent and lunged in with an easy
breast stroke. She swam under the pier, in between the large poles,
her favorite place on the beach, even as a child. Her mother warned
her to go out into the sun; there were more likely starfish to
bother in the coolness of the shade from the pier. It only made her
more determined to stay in the shade and keep an eye out for
starfish to add to her collection. Her mother hated when she took
the things out of the water or off the beach.

Not today. She didn’t look for starfish
today. She wanted the stretch of her muscles, the exertion of her
body, the physical activity that was second only to dance on her
love list.

Caroline told a fellow dancer that once,
that dance was her first love and swimming her second as far as
exercise went. Then walking. The dancer laughed, said she missed
one. The giggling shallow girl said sex was her first choice of
exercise and dancing her second, but it was safer to get paid to
dance and it all worked together well.

That had been the first and last
conversation with that back line dancer. Although Caroline knew
many of the girls felt the same, or close to the same. Dance and
sex. Sex and dance. The two filled their entire worlds. What was so
good about it, anyway? Caroline had yet to understand their
fascination with having a man in their beds all night. It only made
it harder to sleep. They snored. Or they tossed and turned. Or they
insisted on throwing a heavy sweaty hairy arm over top of her body.
Or they got what they wanted and moved far away to the other side
until they hauled their big asses out of her bed first thing in the
morning.

Swimming was far more sensual.

The water caressed her skin. It both pushed
against her and held her up. It rushed over her face to stroke her
cheeks and made her close her eyes in defense and in pleasure. It
made her heart beat fast. It pumped blood through her system. And
it was there for her to decide when she wanted it and to avoid when
she didn’t. Its soft splashing and rushing and receding and lapping
was far, far better than a man snoring in her ear.

She felt far more gratified sitting or lying
on her towel after an intense swim than she had ever felt beside a
man after a round or two in bed.

Maybe she was made wrong, or missing
something. Or maybe she was mentally off, as she’d been accused of
more than once. It wasn’t like she didn’t enjoy men at all. At
times she did, for short times. Very short times. Too often she
ended up trying very hard not to tell them to just finish already
and get off.

She didn’t have to tell the water that. The
water was hers to manipulate as she pleased, when she pleased, for
as long or as short a workout as she pleased. And it left her clean
and refreshed, not sweaty and tired. It was hers only.
Privately.

As ballet had been, before she joined the
dance school and had to abide by their routine, their schedule.
Their rules.

If Hayes thought he would control her as
much, he would learn fast how wrong he was. Some of the girls got
to choose their own music. They had to work up to that privilege,
he said.

In three days, when Caroline went to Exotica
and turned into Lina – pronounced Leena – from New York, she would
take her music with her. He would have to deal with it.

Dry enough to replace the sarong, Caroline
shivered in the night air and shook her towel out. She headed
toward where she saw Mr. Big Sword the night before. It was a long
shot he’d be there again, she expected, and after it had frightened
her, she didn’t know why she made herself look again, but she had
to look again. Or try.

More disappointed – far more disappointed –
than she expected upon not finding him there, she sighed and walked
back the other direction. The couples ahead made her gag and she
wanted to be no closer to them.

She supposed she should go on back to her
room. Tomorrow was moving day, not that she had much to move, but
then she would have to shop for basics. Toilet Paper. Basic food. A
pan or two. A spatula. She had nothing but her clothes and her
music, a few favorite books, most still stuffed tight in the trunk
of her old gray boat disguised as a Montego, and her starfish
collection. The car was a hand me down handed down several times.
She picked it up in New York just before she left. New York was
fine on foot or with public transportation and she preferred that,
but on Folly Beach, outside Charleston, personal transportation was
a must. If she worked days, she could catch a bus into the city,
she supposed. Not with her night schedule. They stopped running
before she would be off work.

And it made for good storage room while she
needed it.

A sparkle in the water caught her eyes and
she paused, then wandered closer, slowly. He was there. Out farther
in the water and harder to see. But he was there. Caroline got as
close as she could and spread her towel on the sand. Lowering,
again slowly, so as not to catch his eye the way he’d caught hers,
she crossed her left leg in front of her, the right leg out
straight, and gazed out at his motion, his elegance, his skill. His
dance.

He was a Man of La Mancha dancer except with
more focus on the sword movements than on the dance techniques.
Caroline frowned. Maybe that wasn’t true. The dance technique for
him was the sword movement. The sword was an extension of him. His
skill was every bit as trained as her own, his body every bit as
controlled and precise. He would be a good dance partner.

And if his big sword, the shiny hard long
extension of his body, was any clue as to the rest of him, he might
be good at other things, also. She was tempted to swim over to his
boat and find out.

Then again, he could be as much putty and
bluster as nearly every other man she’d met. Better to admire him
from a distance and make believe he would be worth sleeping beside,
worth her energy and patience and skill.

Not that she was terribly skilled in that
way. She had other skills she cared more about and skill in that
department wasn’t terribly necessary that she’d found. As long as
she complimented her mate, she came off as skilled enough. They
cared more about their own skill, real or not, than hers. She just
had to be there.

Putty and bluster.

Maybe Mr. Big Sword wouldn’t be either. But
some things were better left unknown.

She needed to leave. A yawn told her she’d
reached her limit for the day’s energy. Rising slowly, still
watching the man she could barely see, she froze when he stopped.
He set the tip of his sword down, again between his slightly spread
thighs, or just in front of them. And he stood still, faced her
direction.