Ivan the Terrible?

“What?” I asked.

“The dude beat the shit out of his daughter-in-law because he didn’t like what she was wearin’. His son tried to intervene. Ol’ pops cracked him on the head, killing him. And the woman was pregnant, so she miscarried. That’s quite an afternoon for Ivan.”

Okay, I had to take a sec because …

How had something that had started strange, gotten so much more strange?

“My dad isn’t Ivan the Terrible,” I pointed out.

“Only ’cause he’s not a tsar. If he had carte blanche, where would you be?”

This was a chilling question.

“We’ll let that go …for now,” he allowed. “We’ll let Pantera go for now too. You had dinner?”

“I was actually going to fast tonight,” I told him, and not because it seemed he might ask me to dinner, but because I was going to fast that night.

His head ticked sharply. “Why?”

“Why?” I parroted, since he was looking right at me.

“Your fuckin’ dad,” he bit out, his tone suddenly alarming.

Right, this had to stop.

“Mr. uh …”

“Brett,” he spat. “And tell me, you see the women at Smithie’s?”

“Pardon?”

“Women go there. A lot. And not just since Ian switched shit up. Also not only lesbians gettin’ their groove on. All kinds of women go there to party and to watch.”

I nodded. “It’s a thing. Women have embraced strip clubs.”

And this was true, though I didn’t get it. Maybe female camaraderie. Maybe they thought it was edgy and cool. Whatever it was, we had nearly as many bachelorette parties as we did bachelor ones.

“So what do you think it says, they see a woman with a healthy body flyin’ through the air five feet off the ground, the back of her head nearly touching the heel of her foot?”

I again went still.

He answered his own question.

“It says they can stop eating that bullshit people been feeding them. They can be in shape and do magnificent things and they don’t gotta be ninety pounds to do them. So, I’ll repeat, you had dinner?”

“No,” I answered.

He nodded. “We’re goin’ out.”

“Brett—”

“Hattie, listen to me,” he cut me off, his tone again different. This time gentle, coaxing. “You don’t get this, you never had experience with this, and I’m seeing it’s my place to show you the way. All men are not created equal. There are men who give a shit. Ryn tells me you’re set for Pantera. I can’t go there. And just sayin’, that ass, those curls,” he tipped his head to me, “you’re cute. Normally, I’d be all over that. But Ryn says it’s gotta be Pantera. So this is not that. We’re lettin’ that go. We’re lettin’ your dad go. You’re lettin’ the fast go. And I’m gonna take you to dinner and you’re gonna be around a man who doesn’t treat you like shit. Start you gettin’ used to that. We’ll go from there. Yeah?”

I didn’t know what it was.

I didn’t know why I did it.

But I didn’t hesitate to say, “Yeah.”

He smiled at me, and that decided it.

He was definitely cute.

I walked his way and he escorted me out of my own place like it was his.

The henchman was out there, folding out of the sleek Lincoln town car at the curb in order to open the back door for us.

We got in, and after Brett settled next to me, he declared, “I feel like a steak. Do you feel like a steak?”

“Who doesn’t feel like eating a steak?” I asked.

“Atta girl,” he muttered.

His driver glided from the curb.

And call me crazy (and I’d be the first person to do that), but when we did, I thought for the first time in a long time that things were looking up.

“At dinner, we’ll talk about you wastin’ your time in that studio. And we’ll talk you into spendin’ time that you don’t waste in that studio. Got a coupla folks I know who own galleries. Your shit is good. Time to stop fuckin’ around with that and let the world know you got talent.”

My lungs seized.

Brett called out to the driver. “Call ahead. We’re not waiting for a table.”

Okay, maybe I was wrong about things looking up.

But for the life of me, even after what he’d just said about my studio and knowing people who own galleries, I felt I was right.

CHAPTER TWO

I Blew It

HATTIE

Sitting in my Nissan Rogue outside the studio the next morning, I again scrolled through my texts from last night.

Lottie:

Where are you?

Pepper:

Are you coming?

Ryn:

Girl. You are missing out!

Elvira’s boards are EVERYTHING!

Evie:

OK. Now you’re worrying me.

Strike that, you’ve been worrying

me. Now you’re SERIOUSLY

worrying me.

My reply, copied and pasted to each of them:

Something came up! I’m SO

sorry! I hate to miss it!

Have SO MUCH fun!

xo♥♥♥

I knew I needed to give it a minute (or a hundred hours of professionally directed time while sitting on someone’s couch) to try and figure out why I was so terrified of spending time with them again after what Axl and Ryn saw when I was dancing.

I had just, until then, refused to give it that minute.

But sitting in my burgundy Rogue, giving it that minute, I realized it wasn’t just because it was embarrassing.

It was because it was weak.

See, Lottie had it together. She totally knew who she was and she made no apologies (not that there were any to be made, she was awesome, still, she was a stripper, and before that she’d been Queen of the Corvette Calendar, and by my estimation, 99.9 percent of the population was judgy, so they’d think she had apologies to make).

She loved stripping, made a ton of money doing it and was at one with her looks and her body. She also had a great house she’d pulled together herself, as well as the love and devotion of Mo, who might look terrifying in a could-be-one-of-Brett’s-henchmen type of way, but he was a softie.