Read Online What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) by Hannah Ford - Free Book Online Page B

the door,
almost like they wanted to run away.   But I forced myself to turn back.
    And then I opened the door and walked into the
club.

 
    ***

 
    There was no one inside.  
    Actually, that wasn’t true.
    There was a girl behind the bar, drying beer
glasses with a cloth.
    The girl glanced at me as I walked in, and then
immediately ignored me.
    I looked around, taking the place in.   Long red velvet couches lined the huge,
oval shaped room.   There was a stage
in the center, with an aisle that led out from behind a black and white leopard
print curtain.   A spotlight moved in
a lazy pattern over the shiny black stage.  
    Even in here, it didn’t look like a strip
club.   It looked like a really fancy
bar, or one of those big tents where they did fashion shows on America’s Next
Top Model.  
    Part of me had actually been hoping it was
going to be completely skeezy .   If Loose Cannons had been gross and
dirty and disgusting, I would have had an excuse to run out of there as fast as
my legs would carry me.   It was
almost worse that it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined.
    “We don’t open until seven,” the girl behind
the bar yelled across the room.   “The girls will be going on then.   We don’t do a day service.”   From her clipped tone and snotty pout, I could only assume she’d been
the one I’d talked to on the phone.
    “Oh.”   I cleared my throat.   “I was
told that I could come in anytime to try out.   That it didn’t have to be during normal
hours.”   I didn’t want to try out
during normal hours.   Who knows what
they’d make me do during normal hours?   Maybe put me on stage in front of a bunch of people.
    This got the bartender’s attention.   She looked up sharply from the glass she
was drying, and her eyes slid up and down my body.   I could practically feel her judgment
permeating the room, and I wondered for a moment if she had some kind of pull
over who got a job here.
    Maybe Loose Cannons was one of those strip
clubs that was run by a woman. I pushed my shoulders back and marched over to
the bar.
    “Hi,” I said, giving her a smile.   “My name’s Olivia.”
    The bartender had bright blue eyes, and she
looked me up and down again. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she mumbled under
her breath.   She was wearing a tight
black leather vest with nothing under it.   It ended just under her breasts and her stomach was tight and
toned.   She had a tattoo of angel
wings around her belly button.    She reached over and picked up a cordless phone that was sitting on the
bar.  
    “Colt,” she said.   “Someone’s here.   An audition.”   She paused and scrunched up her
nose.   “Definitely not.”   She hung up the phone.    “Colt will be out in a minute.”
    Colt must have been the owner.   I pictured him as an older man who wore
shiny button-up shirts and lots of gold chains.   Hopefully he would be nice.
    I heard him before I saw him.
    He came up behind me, his voice as smooth as
silk.   “You here to see me?”   My pulse sped up and my heart started to
race.   I turned around and came face
to face with the most gorgeous man I had ever seen in my life.
    He was younger than I’d imagined –
probably only twenty-six or twenty-seven.   Everything about him was dark – dark eyes, dark hair, beautiful tan skin.   His eyes looked right into mine and one side of his
mouth slid up into a grin .   His jaw was chiseled, with just the tiniest bit of a
stubble .   There was a small
scar on the top of his lip, but it didn’t take away from his looks – if
anything, it added to them.   The
rest of him was so gorgeous, that the scar kept him from being too
model-pretty.   He was wearing jeans
and a black t-shirt   -- it was the
kind of t-shirt that was supposed to look casual, but you could tell it was
expensive from how beautifully it was cut, how it hugged his ripped biceps and
broad chest in all the right places.
    He smelled like a