Chapter One

A male strip club! Seriously. Who could possibly believe that shy, color between the lines, follow every rule, Veronica Cooke had gone to a strip club? One called Hardbody! She gripped the strap of her purse in a chokehold. Why hadn’t she told her friends no?

“I can’t believe you’re bringing me here!” Veronica looked around. The total darkness was only occasionally lit by tiny pricks of light. The noise came complete with pounding music, throbbing beats and raucous, intoxicated women having too much fun.

“You’ll have a great time,” Gina Ross told Veronica. She wound the group through tables and chairs to get a table right up close to a dimly lit catwalk stage attached to the proscenium that cut right into the excited women in the club. “Trust me.”

Trust her? Ha!

“Here we are.” Gina grinned. “Veronica, you’re sitting here.” She pulled out the seat closest to the stage.

Oh no. “I’m okay over here.” She reached into her bag and rummaged for her inhaler.

“You are not.” Andi Kelly, another of Veronica’s friends, pushed her into the seat.

As Veronica’s legs had turned into noodles, she dropped on the chair. She took three big hits off the inhaler. She held the last blast in her cheeks and mentally counted to ten.

Her friends had all dressed casually in jeans and cute stylish tops. Veronica looked down at her own outfit of loose fitting gray slacks and crisp, white, classic blouse, with a sailor collar. She’d scraped her ordinary brown hair back into a ponytail and decorated her ears with simple amethyst studs.

She wasn’t a memorable person, so she felt it best not to try to get noticed. It had worked well for her in the past, so she didn’t plan to change anytime soon.

Veronica didn’t see the waitress come to their table. She did notice her leave. “She didn’t get my order.”

Ainslie Mason, friend number three, shot a smug looking smile. “We ordered for you.”

“What? What did you order for me?”

Gina rubbed Veronica’s back. “Our mission tonight is to get you to relax and have fun, which is a foreign concept to you. We’re here to show you there’s a lot more to life than numbers and balance sheets.”

Veronica sighed. “I like numbers and balance sheets,” she muttered.

“Of course you do,” Andi soothed. “But every once in a while it’s fun to take a walk on the wild side and blow off some steam.” She took Veronica’s hands. “I learned that the hard way.”

“I’ve heard they’ve got some new guy dancing and that defines hot. Hotter than hot.” Gina fanned herself.

Ainslie lifted a dubious eyebrow. “I didn’t know my husband decided to moonlight as an exotic dancer.”

Gina and Andi cracked up at that. Ainslie’s husband Dave was movie star handsome, but the idea of him dancing on a stage, taking his clothes off in front of a roomful of cheering woman just didn’t track.

Veronica laughed along with the others but she had to force it out of her mouth.

The waitress came back. “Here we go, ladies. Four Cosmopolitans. Enjoy!”

Gina, Andi, and Ainslie lifted their glasses. Veronica hesitated but picked up her glass. “Salud!” Gina held her Cosmo a little higher. “Salud!” Andi and Ainslie replied.

“Salud.” Veronica knocked her glass against the others. She took a sip of her bright pink beverage and shuddered, but swallowed gamely. The alcohol burned as it went down her throat and she coughed. Andi slapped her back.

She took stock of her surroundings. She didn’t see anything that matched up with her idea of what a strip club looked like. The room was dimly lit, like most bars, and bright multi-colored lights punched through the darkness at random intervals. Loud dance music thumped from speakers around the room. The clientele were all women—professional looking women—clearly there to have a good time. They screamed and laughed and danced together around the bar and the tables.

There was no stripper pole to be seen. Really, it could have been a hip dance club anywhere in the area north of Boston.

A brilliant beam of white light illuminated the stage. The music changed to slow and sultry, but with the same throbbing bass and drum licks that rumbled through her body from toes to the top of her head. Every pulse heightened her awareness and, God help her, anticipation.

A blond man in a cowboy hat, a mask made of a bandana over the lower half of his face, and long duster, strode onto the stage. He tipped his hat so his face was in shadow and looked down at his feet.

Without warning, the man tipped his hat back and shrugged out of his floor length duster, revealing an amazing set of abs and a set of shoulders that could only have been carved in marble.

Veronica’s cowboy—when the hell had he become her cowboy—was spectacular.

He undulated his hips in slow circles, his thumbs hooked into his belt. The music’s tempo picked up and he moved in response, his motions fluid and sensuous, meant to seduce a woman.

Her throat went dry, like she’d just spent months in the Sahara. The man was drop-dead gorgeous with the face of a fallen angel, hell-bent on bringing a woman to sin.

The tempo of the music picked up, and he slid to the end of the stage, leaned back on his haunches, one hand behind him, the other on his hat, which he then threw into the screaming, whistling swarm of women, who clutched fists of paper money to throw at him.

Leaping back to his feet, he flew across the expanse of space to the side opposite from where Veronica sat. His routine was athletic, full of twirls, spins, and acrobatics.

He spun to her side of the stage, heaven and hell in a pair of chaps. He dropped to the floor and did the coffee grinder then jumped abruptly to his feet and did another gymnastic combination worthy of the Olympics.

Veronica worked hard to swallow.

His oiled abdominal muscles and wide chest made a girl think of sex.

Sweaty, heart pounding sex.

Oh, my.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away, even if she’d wanted to.

Then he looked straight at her with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. She wished she could see his mouth. He moved away from her quickly leaping to the end of the plank. With one swift, expert motion he snapped off his jeans, right down to a black satin G-string.

Gina leaned over to her. “Breathe. Can’t have you swooning now, can we?” She laughed.

Breathing sounded like a good idea. Inhale, exhale.

Out goes the bad air, in comes the good.

The cowboy undulated his pelvis side to side, back to front. He finished his act in time with the hot pounding music and…boom!

Just like that he was gone.

The ladies in the club went crazy, screaming and whistling, trying to get him back on stage. A hunky construction worker came out instead.

Veronica couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for the next dancer. She was still mesmerized by a pair of azure eyes.

****

Simon West took a hand towel and wiped the sweat off his face. He shrugged into his dark terry robe and leaned his back against the whitewashed brick wall. Really, it was just a normal night, just a regular show.

Then he’d locked eyes with the gorgeous brunette who sat stage left.

He hadn’t really seen her, not clearly because of the stage lights shining in his eyes. But damn! He’d sure as hell felt the pull of attraction between them.

No, no, no, no, no. Forget the whole thing. She probably wouldn’t be back after tonight and that was a good thing.

He only took this job as a way to put food on the table and pay the rent. His job as an adjunct professor of dance at Barrett University paid diddly. He had high hopes for snagging a job as choreographer for the Addington Ballet Guild’s next performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, otherwise known as The Rite of Spring. Then he’d be set.

Simon had so many ideas he wanted to put into play, adding his own spin on Nijinsky’s original dance maneuvers. He’d spent his entire life itching to choreograph that ballet, especially because of all the controversy it had caused in 1913.

He wasn’t embarrassed about his job as an exotic dancer. They paid well and he got to dance.

Not like those non-major dance classes at the university. Even if teaching did lend him an air of seriousness and dignity which stripping definitely did not, the sooner he got out of that situation, the better.

It did lend an air of seriousness and dignity that stripping definitely did not.

Whatever. He’d do what he had to do to get his dream of being the director of choreography at a prestigious dance company. For that to happen he had to avoid diversions on his path to fame.

No more thoughts of magnetic, attractive brunettes.

Eye on the prize, boy. Eye on the prize.