Chapter One
Lucy
Watching my bestie stick her tongue down a bouncer’s throat before we’re admitted to a place called Club Cocky is not my idea of fun. But it’s my twenty-first birthday and according to Scarlett, that means I need to go out and celebrate becoming a grown woman. Apparently, the way we celebrate this is by watching sweaty men gyrate across a stage. It doesn’t exactly strike me as sexy.
I’d rather be in our hotel room and going to bed early so I can finish reading the mountain man romance on my tablet. I’m pretty sure that the stoic hero is going to tie his best friend’s little sister to the bed and do dirty things to her body.
“I wish I had your confidence,” I tell Scarlett as I follow her into the strip club and ignore the sign announcing it as ladies’ night. I’ve never been in a club before and I blink in the sudden darkness. I’m way more introverted than she is. Plus, I have no experience with guys or dating.
After my dad passed away when I was ten, everything changed. My mom fell apart and went into a deep depression. I spent the next eleven years taking care of her and I’m just now moving out on my own.
Sort of on my own. I’ll be a live-in nanny in a small town soon. With the money I’ll save by not having to pay rent, I can finally start saving up for college. I don’t know what I’ll do with a degree, but I’ve always liked school and learning.
“I’m not confident.” I try to take a seat in the back booth, but she scowls and grabs my arm. She pulls me toward a different table, one that’s in front of the stage where a man wearing a cop’s uniform is thrusting his baton. Yeah, that one. Looks like I’m going to get a front row seat to tonight’s debauchery whether I want it or not.
She pushes me into a seat and hands me some crinkled dollar bills. I don’t know where she got them, but they already have body glitter on the surface. She wiggles her fingers at a cute guy, and he appears. She rattles off a drink order and adds on two waters when I give her a warning glance. She knows I don’t want to be hungover tomorrow. We still have to make the drive from Asheville where we’re crashing in a motel for the night to Courage County, the town where I’ll be living.
I’m thankful that she’s come on this road trip with me. As soon as I told my bestie I got the job, she was already mapping our trip. She’ll drop me off tomorrow and she’s already me promise to call her if I decide I don’t like the job.
But I’m not too worried. I went with a reputable nanny company and I got the call yesterday that I was placed. Normally, there’s a lengthy interview process where you have a video meeting with the parents.
This was a sudden placement as the previous nanny had a family emergency and wouldn’t be able to start her job on time. The agency managed to send me a little paperwork on the kids and hopefully, I’ll be able to bond with them quickly.
Since I’ve been working in a day care for the past three years, I know how to handle young kids. Plus, I’m excited about getting the chance to meet Leo and Lyla, the four-year-old twins I’ll be looking after.
“I’m not confident,” she repeats again with a shrug that shows off her bare shoulder. Now, she’s digging in her oversized bag for something else. Like me, Scarlett is a curvy woman. But all of hers are perfectly proportioned. I’m flat as an ironing board up top and all fluffy belly and chunky thighs after that. “You just have to pretend when you’re with a guy. You fake it until you make it.”
I think about what she said. I’ve always just assumed her confidence was natural. I never thought it was something she was faking or something she has to work at. My tone is filled with curiosity when I ask, “And that means sticking your tongue down the hot bouncer’s throat?”
“Sure! Did you see his beefy arm muscles?” She produces a sash from her enormous bag. I manage to catch the words ‘Birthday Girl’ in hot pink glitter before she’s slipping it over my black blouse and beaming at me like a mother whose child just won the beauty pageant.
“I don’t—this is not—you know how I feel about this stuff,” I mutter. I want to take it off, but this is Scarlett. She’s been there with me through everything and I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for the world, so I sit here in the sash and pretend it’s not annoying. Maybe if I’d had a normal childhood and teenage years, this whole thing would be more exciting. Most days, I already feel more like I’m seventy-one instead of twenty-one.
“What if tonight you were someone else?” Scarlett challenges after she’s taken three hundred selfies of us together.
I pause, the idea taking root. I could pretend to be sexy and confident and beautiful for the evening. Maybe I could step into that role. “Someone like you?”
“Why not?” She has that smile on her face she gets when she’s about to lead us both into trouble. “What’s wrong with pretending you’re carefree tonight?”
She’s the one who pushed me to apply for jobs out of state. I love living in Charleston. I love the salty sea air and the seagulls that cry out as they fly overhead. I love the smell of honeysuckle in late summer and the feeling of the hot, gritty sand against my toes. But she’s right. If I don’t get out now, I never will. I’ll be stuck in that tiny trailer, taking care of my mom forever. I wonder if she even noticed that I left today. The thought puts a pang in my heart, but I push it back. Tonight’s supposed to be my night, a fun night.
“OK, I’ll do it. I’ll be you for the night,” I tell her just as the drinks arrive. There’s nothing wrong with being Scarlett tonight. It’s not like anything life-changing is going to happen. “Who’s up next?”
She glances around the room then at the stage where Officer Hottie is finishing up his act. His abs are glistening under the stage lights from either too much body oil or sweat. Sadly, it’s not doing anything for me right now. “I didn’t see a roster. The sign said it’s amateur night. Some type of contest for a cash prize.”
The guy on the stage finally struts off and I take a small sip of the margarita that Scarlett pushes toward me. The sour, citrus taste isn’t horrible, but I still reach for my bottled water. Nothing tells people I’m qualified to watch their kids like showing up on the first day with a hangover.
The music changes to a slow, sensual beat. It’s not annoying and thumpy like the last act’s was. No, this song has the women and a few of the men in the audience swaying in their seats and watching the stage with breathless anticipation.
When the curtains part and reveal a man dressed in firefighter gear, my heart skips a beat. I haven’t even seen his face and yet there’s something about the way he moves his hips to the beat. He’s a man confident in his skin and even though firefighters don’t normally do anything for me, I feel a bolt between my legs. I shift in my seat and squeeze my thighs together, hoping that Scarlett won’t notice.
He reaches for his bright yellow jacket peeling it off in slow motion as the crowd screams their adoration. When he drops the jacket to the floor, he’s standing in a white muscle tank and with red suspenders holding up his bright yellow pants. He continues dancing across the stage, thrusting his hips as he goes.
He squats, giving the audience a show of his tight, toned ass and he’s only a few inches from me. If I wanted to, I could reach out to touch him. I ball my fingers into fists to resist the urge.
But it’s when our gazes connect that I can’t breathe. I’m staring into the darkest gaze I’ve ever seen and even though it doesn’t make sense, I feel like everything changed in this moment. My lungs don’t work right anymore, and I don’t even care.
Scarlett lets out a whoop and points to me. “She’s the birthday girl!”
He takes the fireman’s hat from his head and places it on mine. His fingers slide against the hot skin of my cheeks as he tips up the hat so I can see. The way he’s looking down at me makes me feel different. Devoured. Owned. Possessed.
I think it must all be part of the act, that he just happens to be really good at what he’s doing tonight. But then he holds out his hand and gives me a wicked grin, “Ma’am, for your safety, I have to ask you to come with me.”