He still had a self-satisfied look on his face, but had the decency to stop laughing. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Vince. What happened in there? What did you do to chase her off?”

  “Nothing!” I snapped. “It was pretty damn near perfect. We fucked, we talked, and then we fell asleep. I woke up and found some bullshit letter on the pillow like some...” I shook my head. It was so cliché I couldn’t even bring myself to continue.

  “Well, something happened,” he said calmly. He folded one leg over the other and leaned back, arms crossed behind him. “Fucked, isn’t it?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?”

  “Love. It’s fucked.”

  I choked out a laugh and shook my head. “You think I love her?”

  He nodded. “I know you do. Rational men don’t tear up a million-dollar suite because a piece of casual pussy walks away.”

  My eyes widened. “You motherfucker,” I roared. “Cameras? You have cameras in there? Were you watching us, you sick fuck?”

  He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “It’s my suite.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Flynn was a freak.

  “Has she talked to Jayne? Just tell me.”

  He shook his head and gave me a critical look again. “You’re going to have to respect her decision. She’ll be fine.”

  Who the hell was he kidding? “Oh, like you did with Jayne? You fucking hunted her. She flat out refused you, and you forced her arm.”

  The corner of his lip lifted into a smirk, and he shrugged his shoulders carelessly. “I didn’t force her into anything. I was creative and encouraged her to give me a chance. There’s a difference.”

  I groaned. “That was conniving, not creative.”

  “Semantics,” he said dismissively. “I didn’t give up, and it worked out for me. I never pushed her away. I never denied her anything. I laid it flat out, and it worked out for us. How is Kelsey supposed to know what’s real and what’s not? You’ve been a complete idiot. You have to face that, and leave her alone.”

  “Over my dead body,” I mumbled to myself. “Fuck it. You’re right. I have shit to do. I can’t worry about this kid anymore.”

  I stood and wiped my hands on my pants. “You’ll let me know how things go?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I will. Take care of my girl, will ya?”

  “I always do.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The air was different—cleaner, crisper, and earthier. I’d taken to sitting on the long porch adjacent to my house every morning just to breathe it in.

  It took some getting used to, but it ended up being just what I needed. I could feel the tension and the anger drain from my blood a little more every day. Not that I was over everything I’d left behind in Vegas, but I was beginning to understand what Jayne meant by the freedom. It was nice not having to fight for my life, or someone else’s—for a change.

  My main objective was to forget about what happened with Kelsey. It was a done deal. Of course, that was easier said than done, but at least I was trying.

  Along with that, there were lingering issues with the casino business, as well as the other endeavors Cherise and I had been cooking up. Flynn had paid off Logan and assured me that he had everything under control, but I had my doubts. It’d been almost two months, and he still hadn’t left the city.

  I also couldn’t help but wonder if Kelsey was okay. It had become habit. I refused to acknowledge any other reason for it, but I did worry.

  To put those thoughts out of my head, I buried myself with work and kept busy with other distractions.

  When I’d first laid eyes on the place, I wanted to tear it down and start from scratch, but I knew if I sat around for months with nothing to do, I would go insane.

  I couldn’t sit around and wait.

  Jayne felt the same way. She was a mess with Flynn so far away, and she had very little interest in going back to Vegas, even for a short time. He was vague about how long he’d be there, and she couldn’t see herself packing away her little oasis in the mountains. She was happy where she was, even though she missed him terribly.

  She tried to convince me that it was better that way. They’d closed themselves off from the world for a long time after they reunited, and with a wedding to plan for, she felt it was a good idea to have a little space.

  I didn’t get it, but she was very different than I was. She’d never been alone for long. As worthless as her father had been, he’d always lugged her around. He never passed her off or left her alone for long periods of time, and of course, she had me.

  She didn’t need constant companionship. She felt stifled, and I think it was her only way of coping. She needed time to get out of her head and just... be. I was completely the opposite. I spent most of my childhood hiding away from my family, and the other part being ignored. When I moved in with Jayne and her dad, I felt wanted and safe. I thrived with them. They were my family.

  I didn’t like being alone—at all. To most, it seemed that way, only because I closed myself off from them. But physically, I was always around someone, be it a friend, client, one of my girls, or Jayne.

  When she moved to California to start over, it almost killed me. Sure, I still had Sam, but he wasn’t a replacement for his daughter. She was my best friend. My road-dog. My confidant.

  In some ways I was jealous of the relationship she had with Flynn. It was one of the reasons I encouraged her to keep him at arm’s length. I’d known about his infatuation with her for a long time, and I’d managed to dodge questions and inquiries from him about her for years. When her dad disappeared, I knew it was do or die. It didn’t take long to figure out which way she’d sway. The first night she came back after meeting with him, I knew. They had that very unusual connection, the same connection I thought I had with Kelsey.

  I groaned. It wasn’t a good idea to start my day off thinking about her. It made bad decisions look way too damn good. I tossed my now cold coffee over the railing and got up and went back inside. It was time to get back to work.

  I’d kept a few of the girls to stay on in the dump until I could get more, and until I finished building the new club. They were pretty worn out, but Jayne insisted that we work with the women and not send them out flat on their asses. They were lucky she had compassion. I did not. I was there to make money, not to house a bunch of over-the-hill hookers.

  I met with a contractor, and between him and the architect, plans were drawn up and building started within a few weeks of my return. Instead of burning the sorry excuse of a whorehouse to the ground, I had them work around it, and once it was done, the old house would become the parking lot.

  I’d also put out word that I was looking for girls. A few of my girls were coming up from Vegas, but the majority of them didn’t want to give up the money, and I didn’t blame them.

  I still wasn’t sure how it was going to go. I had a clear vision, but it had taken me more than fifteen years to build my business in Vegas. I was basically starting from scratch, and in a completely different environment. I couldn’t imagine the everyday men that visited houses like that would be willing to shell out thousands—or millions of dollars for pussy. I would have to rely on quantity and return, and that was never a given.

  I drove to the club—or house as Jayne wanted me to call it—to check out some new girls. I was doing pretty good business with the few I had, but if I didn’t work fast, they’d be laid out and worked over within a week. With the knowledge that there was a new owner as well as fresh meat, business was already booming.

  That’s when I realized I really had to act fast. As the landscape passed me by, I thought about all the things I had to take care of. It was a massive list, way more work than I was used to. Literally building a business from the ground up was hard work. It’d been a long time since I’d had to juggle so many balls.

  I parked out front and stared up at the shack, shaking my head. It was such a piece of shit. It concerned me. If I was looking for a lucrative job, that place would be the last place I’d look.

  I was hoping my reputation—and Jayne’s—would get us through. We had several women coming in to audition, and I just hoped there were a few we could hire.

  The lobby was empty, but I could hear voices toward the back. Jayne’s car was out front, so I knew she was lurking around somewhere.

  “Janie!”

  I heard her heels as she walked toward me, and then she appeared with a bright smile.

  “There you are. I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  She stood on her toes and kissed my cheek. “I thought we were starting at nine-thirty? It’s already past ten.”

  I rolled my eyes. I woke up with a terrible hangover thanks to a bottle of Flynn’s 18-year-old single malt and bad memories. She was lucky I was up and functional at all.

  “Turn down the bitching today, sweetheart. Daddy’s grumpy as fuck.”

  She huffed. “O-kay. What crawled in your underwear today?”

  “Nothing pretty,” I said, smirking. “How many girls showed up?”

  She gave me a self-satisfied grin. “About fifteen. Not bad for the first day.”

  I nodded. “Anyone with promise?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Never know until we give them a shot to tell us about themselves. You want some coffee? Cheyenne started a pot earlier.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. No cream or sugar, and put it in a big-ass cup.”

  Cheyenne was one of the house girls who ended up pregnant and no longer able to work. The previous owner put her to work doing odds and ends, and Jayne didn’t have the heart to send her away either, so she was helping us as well. It was a shame she was out of commission because she was a treat.

  I left her to deal with my caffeine and walked back to the makeshift office I’d set up. The original office looked like a pig sty. It was disgusting and full of trash. It was going to be the first room I threw my sledgehammer through.

  My office setup was in one of the back bedrooms. We’d gutted it and brought in some furniture, and even though it wasn’t fancy, at least it was clean.

  A few minutes later, Cheyenne walked in with my coffee and some sort of breakfast rolls. My stomach growled, and I smiled up at her gratefully.

  “Thank you, sweetheart. Just set those down over there.”

  “Thank you again for giving me a job, Mr. Donovan. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  I waved her off. “You make great coffee. I appreciate it.”

  She looked down and rubbed at her belly. Her long brown hair fell over her breasts and just about hit her waist. She had really beautiful, golden-brown eyes and the deep indent of a dimple in one cheek. Many times I wondered what brought her to a dump like the “Wagon Wheel Chalet.”

  “How long do you have?”

  I wasn’t sure why I was interested, but the way she rubbed her stomach, so tender and loving, touched me in a strange way. Maybe I just felt protective of her, as I did with most of my girls, or maybe it was something else.

  “I’m eight months along. Not very long to wait.”

  I smiled, nodding. “Do you know what you’ll do... after?”

  “Not sure,” she said, frowning. “My boyfriend was supposed to get a job in Reno, but it fell through. He’s working odd jobs, but there’s not much around here right now.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded slowly. “How big is this boyfriend of yours?”

  Her eyes widened. “I don’t know... I mean, what do you mean?”

  I laughed. “I mean maybe I could put him to work when we open the new building.”

  “Are you kidding?” she asked. “Oh my God! That would be amazing. He could do it. He used to work at a saloon a few years back, so he’ll know what to do.”

  She bounced over to me and kissed me on the cheek before retreating from the room. Taking a deep breath, I shut my eyes and counted to ten—slowly. It was going to be a long fucking day.

  ****

  “Send another three in.”

  Jayne nodded, but I could tell she was irritated with me.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “You’re pissing me off,” she hissed under her breath. “Why do you have to treat them like cattle?”

  A cynical laugh escaped me, and I gave my head a shake. “I wouldn’t treat them like cattle if they weren’t a bunch of spoiled cows. Half of them should already be sent out to pasture. I’m not running a damn pity farm here. This is a whorehouse.”

  “Jesus,” she snapped.

  She was getting on my last nerve. She was already bossy on a good day, but at that moment she was trying to pull a mommy on me, and that wasn’t going to fly.

  “If they’re not fuckable, no one will pay to fuck them. If no one pays to fuck them, I make no money. See how that works? Stop playing mother hen and act like you give a shit about this business!”

  She glared at me a long, hard moment and then nodded. “You need to come over to my house for dinner tonight. We need to talk—and I think we’d do better if it was away from the stench of stale sex. You need to check your damn self.”

  She swung around without letting me say another word and yanked the door open, waving in the next batch of girls.

  One by one, tall, short, curvy and slight, they stood on the makeshift stage in front of me.

  Again, nothing spectacular. I’d seen almost twenty girls already, with about ten more that showed up late waiting in the front lobby. I was exhausted and frustrated. So far, they were either way too used up, clearly on drugs, or too ugly to touch. My opinion wasn’t a popular one, hence Jayne’s attitude, but I wasn’t hiring dime-store hookers, no matter how nice Janie thought they were.

  Beauty happened to be a requirement of mine. Jayne didn’t get it, but of course she wouldn’t. As many times as I tried to explain that a man was visually stimulated first and foremost, she always fell back on her sensibilities that they were all human beings.

  As true as that was, men weren’t going to come to our establishment to play chess or talk about current events. They wanted to sink their dicks in something soft and wet, and preferably with a face that wouldn’t kill their boner on the spot. They wanted a good time—for their cocks, not their brains.

  Sure, there were guys that would turn out any broad willing to spread her legs, but I wasn’t one of them. That’s why I was rolling in several million a year, and they were chasing crack-heads down on the strip.

  Plus, she was being a hypocrite. Something in her brain must have defaulted when she gave in to the soft side and became a civilian again. Her crop in California held some of the most beautiful and elite escorts I’d ever seen. She’d handpicked them one by one. Yeah, she’d definitely forgotten her roots, and our freaking purpose. To make money.

  She had to knock that shit off and get with the program. She had it made with her sugar daddy, but this daddy needed to make some cash. Fast.

  I looked the girls in front of me over with a critical eye. It was a quick decision. “Those two go, she stays. Send in two more.”

  She gave me another dirty look, waved the two rejects out and sent in the other two.

  One of them was tall; legs for days with shiny black hair cut short to her chin and a decent handful of tits. The other two were blonde; curvy, nice enough looking in the face and easy on the eyes.

  “You in the middle,” I said, pointing at the taller of the two blondes. “Come over here.”

  She stepped down carefully in her heels and sauntered over to me with a sly smile.

  The corner of my lips curved up, but that was all she was getting.

  “Let me see your tits.”

  Without hesitation, she pulled the small triangles of her bra away and exposed her chest. They were fake, which I usually didn’t care for, but hers were done well. Not too big, not too round.

  I let my eyes travel downward and took in her slim waist and the slight curve of her hips. She had shapely legs, a little more ass than I’d expected up close, but nice.

  “Have you done anything like this before? Fuck men for money?”

  She nodded. “I have. I’ve been at it about a year. I worked at another house in Pahrump.”

  “Hmm,” I hummed. “So you’re already licensed with the state? Will there be any issues getting you a card in this county?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. I have a clean record—both legally and physically. I brought my current test results.”

  That was good news. The regulations were there for a reason, even though some of them were a bigger pain in the ass than I was willing to deal with. Disease was a big issue, but at least with the legal brothels, it was mandatory for licensing and employment, and there were no exceptions.

  I’d never had a problem with my girls, but I was lucky.

  “I’m looking to schedule girls two weeks at a time, five days off. You have somewhere to go?”

  The previous owner ran the place like a boarding house. I wasn’t interested in running my business that way. They would have their own space while they worked, but then they had to go.

  “I do,” she said, nodding.

  “I’ll be designating your hours. Do you have a problem with that?”

  She laughed. “No. I’m not picky.”

  I smirked. “Wrong answer.”

  I hiked my thumb, signaling her to leave and then cocked my finger for the other blonde to come over.

  “Send in a couple more, Jayne.”

  The tall one with the black hair looked nervous—cagey. I liked the way she looked, a lot, but I didn’t have time or patience to train anyone. She was either down, or she wasn’t. I wanted to test her to see how long she could hang under my scrutiny.

  The other blonde stood in front of me, shifting from foot to foot as I examined the black-haired girl. It was a good test of her temperament. I didn’t do impatient or bratty, so the longer she stood still, the better.

  More girls walked in, but I barely glanced at them before turning my attention to the blonde.

  “Hands and knees,” I told her. “Make sure that ass is nice and high.”

  She obeyed—a good sign—and I let myself enjoy the way her skin glowed under the florescent lighting.

 

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