“Thank you,” I say again, tucking the paper into my purse.
“There is more where that came from,” she calls after me as I walk out of her office.
I make it outside the building before I’m pulling the paper back out to read over everything she’d written down. Two thousand dollars for a private lap dance.
“Bam,” my stepbrother calls, and I turn around. He’s in a different car than the one he dropped me off in. “You good?”
Am I good? No. He got me into this mess, and I’m nowhere close to good.
“Whose car is this?” I ask, walking over to it.
“Get in,” he orders without answering my question.
“Is it stolen?”
“Get in the fucking car. Jesus.” I do as he says, not wanting to have a fight with him in the street. “You get the job or not?” He cuts right to the chase as his hands clench the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turn white.
“Yes.”
“I knew you would.” He pulls out of the parking lot and looks pissed, but this was his idea to begin with. He needed quick cash, and this would get us that. “When do you start? The sooner the better.” How do I always let him get me into these messes?
Probably because I owe him. If it wasn’t for Jero, I would have been on the streets or in the system a long time ago.
“Tonight.”
He glances over at me and tugs the end of my long, braided ponytail. “We have some work to do then. I promise this won’t happen again.”
It’s his mess, but I’m the one stuck cleaning it up. Maybe it’s mine too because he makes me feel that way when he brings it to our front door. He said he had to get the loans because he was on a hot streak at the casino, but of course he lost it all. Bills needed to be paid to keep a roof over our head, and my current job is a drop in the bucket.
“I’ll walk a straight line after this, Bam, I swear. We just need to get the five grand and I’m done.”
I’m not sure if he’s trying to reassure me or himself, but for once I actually don’t believe him.
Chapter Two
Angus
“Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ll be there in fifteen. You guys order a bottle for me.” I hear the sounds of the club on the other end of the phone and Franky shouting, “You know what, make it two!”
“See you soon, bro.”
Franky hangs up and I laugh as I turn off the water to the bath and take off my shirt. I’m not going anywhere tonight, but if I told the guys that, they’d come back to this suite and drag me out with them. I already spent hours in the poker room buying drinks and gambling. I don’t like either of those things, but it’s Franky’s bachelor party, and we agreed to whatever he wanted.
Franky is a childhood friend of my brother Rogue and me. We kept in touch as we got older, but it’s not always easy with how demanding our jobs are. Rogue lives here in Vegas as one of the biggest divorce attorneys in the country while I’m up in Northern California in the middle of nowhere. It’s always good to see my brother, but after a night or two living it up in Vegas, I’m ready for my cabin in the mountains with peace and quiet.
I text Rogue to make sure he’s okay, and all I get back is a “K.” He saw a cocktail waitress at the casino tonight and went headfirst after her. That’s my brother. He’s strong and steady and unmoving, but if something changes his mind, you better look out. This waitress turned his head, and he was done for. I’ve never seen him look at a woman that way, and I think about our mom and dad. The same thing happened to them, and our dad warned us our whole lives to be prepared. I always thought that was crazy talk, but after seeing Rogue tonight, I’m second-guessing my stubborn attitude.
Shaking the thought away, I strip down, get into the tub big enough for a whole group of people, and lean back. I close my eyes and let the hot water ease the aches in my muscles. I run an adventure company that takes people into the wilderness and leaves them there for survival training. It’s my job to make sure they don’t die…just push them to the edge and see if they can make it back. I had a group of four CEOs earlier this week, and all of them tapped out after four days. I was left to hike out all their gear from some rough terrain because they got in over their heads. The two moms I had the month before outlasted their asses and passed with flying color. Women really should be running this world.