Rumor (Renegades #4)(7)
Author: Skye Jordan

“Grace, wait.” He called behind her, half demand, half plea.

She cringed at the use of her real name but kept moving. Adrenaline surged, burning along her limbs. She ducked between the drapes and hurried down the walkway, her heels clicking loud on the concrete.

“Grace, stop.” His voice sounded right behind her at the same moment he grabbed her arm and spun her around. He gripped both arms and pushed her back against the wall.

After one long, stunned second, she shoved at his chest. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re the last person I expected to manhandle me. Let. Go. Now.”

He instantly released her and stepped back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Scraping both hands through his hair, he paced. “I just don’t know what to think. I’m worried about you, Grace.”

“Stop calling me that. I don’t want people knowing my real name.”

He flung his arms out to the side and let them drop to his thighs. “If that doesn’t scream problem, nothing does.”

She crossed her arms, all the hurt and judgment from the past resurfacing like grease on water. “Why do you insist there has to be a problem when I’m telling you there’s not?”

“You’re working in a strip club, Grace. You’re dressed in…” He gestured toward her, then groaned out, “God. This isn’t right. This isn’t you.”

“You haven’t seen or spoken to me in a year. A lot has happened in that time. You have no right to decide what’s me and what’s not.”

“I’ve known you for seven years.” He was growing edgy, a little frantic. “You couldn’t have hidden this.”

She rolled her eyes at his absurdity. “My ex-husband still doesn’t know I got my bachelor’s degree while we were married. The truth is that we all become the people we need to be to get by, the same way you and Isaac became killers to survive as SEALs. I never held that against either of you, and I damn well deserve the same respect, regardless of what work I choose.”

“Whoa, whoa…” He put his hands up, his expression twisted in confusion. “Where in the hell is this coming from?”

“It’s coming from you, walking in here and passing judgment.” She twirled her finger in the air. “So just turn your sweet ass around and get the hell out.”

She turned and started walking again, fisting her hands, clenching her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut to force the new wetness back. Chanting let him go in her head when she ached to wrap her arms around him for a bear hug. Just to feel him close again.

“Okay, hold on.” His hand wrapped around her arm again, but gently. “Let’s back up. I didn’t mean to turn this into a fight.”

No, no, no. That soft, congenial voice tried to crawl into her heart. She couldn’t let that happen, because he’d just reject her again. Walk away again. Leave her alone again. It had taken her months to find solid ground after he’d moved to LA. And she was barely holding on to her crazy life now.

“Look,” she said, softening her voice and pressing her hands to his chest. His hard, warm chest. She drew a breath. “There is nothing for you to worry about. I truly love this job. I love the club, my boss, my coworkers. The work is fun, challenging, and rewarding. Even the customers appreciate what I do.”

“Yeah,” he huffed, disgusted. “I could see that.”

She threw her arms out to the side and stepped back. “I don’t need a fight tonight.”

He looked at the ceiling and rubbed a hand over his face with a troubled exhale. She might have toughened up and found her latent sexuality over the last year, but her heart was still as soft as it had always been, and it was killing her to see him so frustrated.

“Put your pea-sized brain to rest, Josh,” she told him. “I’m not stripping.”

One golden brow lifted in disbelief, and his gaze skimmed down her body.

“God, you’re such an ass.” She crossed her arms again. “I talk to the men. They tell me what moves and routines they like to see from the dancers. I train the girls to do what the men like, which makes them more money. And when they make more money, I make more money. I’m. Their. Choreographer.”

That wasn’t the job title her boss had given her, but it was the one she’d built around her position as house mom. So, in addition to managing all the girls’ needs backstage, which included being a surrogate mother, a psychologist, a makeup artist, a troubleshooter, and a comedian, Grace also taught them how to dance. How to tease and please. And her work had pushed the club onto the top-ten list of strip clubs in San Diego. It had also helped the dancers pay for medical care and school tuition and quality daycare for their kids.

And if the plan she’d put into motion spun out the way she’d planned, she’d slough off the house mom part of the job and take over her very own lucrative niche as dance instructor and choreographer to the area’s top entertainers.

But Josh didn’t deserve to know her secrets or her dreams.

He gave her a dubious slant-eyed gaze and planted both hands at his narrow hips. “Your job description doesn’t matter, Grace. You’re still here, still dressed—Jesus, I can’t breathe looking at you in that—and you still have to walk across that parking lot where some guy was gutted last week. Strip clubs breed crime—”

“So do liquor stores and Planned Parenthood pickets and TV violence, for God’s sake.” She was tempted to tell him to go back to the part where he couldn’t breathe, but she was sure the tease would have been wasted. “We don’t stop driving because someone dies in a car accident. And I’m not going to give up a good job because some assholes drank too much and got in a fight.”

Songs switched again—the fourth change since she’d set eyes on Josh, which meant she’d been gone from the dressing room too long.

She continued the rest of the way down the hall, but paused before turning the corner and glanced back at him. Hands on hips, shirtsleeves rolled up on his forearms, tension drawing all six feet of his amazing body up tight, he looked every bit the commanding presence he’d always been. Overhead lights made his wheat-colored hair shine like the sun. Her heart felt like it was being cut into tiny little pieces, and she cursed herself for one: falling in love with him in the first place, and two: never falling back out.

Her whole chest ached.

“Go home, Josh. There’s nothing here for you.”