Silver Bastard (Silver Valley #1)(25)
Author: Joanna Wylde

Danielle smoothed on my dark red lipstick, smacking thoughtfully.

“Is this too much for me?”

Glancing at her, I shook my head.

“No, you can pull it off.”

I heard a squawking, and looked up to see a line of geese flying overhead. Summer was ending too fast . . . Soon the snow would fall, bringing a slow commute and winter power bills. Despite its charms, living in a hundred-plus-year-old building had some downsides, and heating was one of them. How much money would Mom need to get away, realistically? Could I afford to help her?

“Blake promises the tips are good. I’ll bet they’ll be better if we show some skin. If not, there’s always the fallback position.”

“What’s the fallback position?”

“We’ll work up at Shanda Reed’s place, of course.”

My eyes widened, and I turned to her, scandalized.

“Isn’t that . . . ? I mean, I’ve heard rumors, but . . .”

“It’s a bordello, all right,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “Or so they say. Girls can make a lot of money that way.”

“You are so fucking full of shit. You’d never work there!”

Danielle burst out laughing, shaking her head.

“You should see your face!”

“God, you freaked me out,” I replied, smacking her shoulder. She smacked me back and suddenly we were pushing each other so hard I fell off the bench. Danielle came after me, and we rolled to our backs, still laughing.

“It really is a whorehouse,” she said. “Blake told me all about it last night—he was super drunk. He said they never take local girls, though. It’s an old hotel up past Quincy, way back in the woods on an old lake. Used to be a little resort or something, back before the interstate went through. He told me that Shanda Reed has it set up as a bordello, and that the women working there make a shit ton of money. Guys from the mines, and coming in from Montana.”

“Why doesn’t the sheriff shut it down?”

“Oh, like that’ll happen. When’s the last time the sheriff sent anyone up here? Quincy is another fifteen miles past Callup, he’s probably forgotten it exists. Hell, Shanda would shoot him if he stuck his nose in her business. She’s a total bitch—my mom went to school with her. Hates her. Nope, I’ll bet Shanda pays them off and they stay away. Win-win. So that’s my new fallback plan—if all else fails, we can start whoring.”

I sobered abruptly.

I’d already been a whore. Maybe not one who got paid, but I knew all about servicing men. So did my mom.

“Being a prostitute isn’t a good thing,” I said abruptly. I sat up and started gathering the makeup that’d spilled out across the grass. Danielle stared at me, her face startled.

“Are you okay? I was just joking, you know. I’d never do that. If I ever get desperate, I’ll just go work at a strip club. No need to go full whore when you can just wiggle your ass and collect money.”

I shrugged, forcing a fake smile.

“Sure, I’m great. It’s about time to start work, though. Let’s hit the bathroom and then go get ourselves started, sound good?”

FOUR

My first night at the Moose started out well, which was a damned good thing given my afternoon. It was busy, too, which I appreciated. The more I worked, the less I had to think about the Mom Situation. This was good, because the Mom Situation made me think of California, leading to memories of my extraordinary night with Puck.

Sexy Puck. Scary Puck. Puck pushing me against his truck and shoving his cock into my stomach, growling in my ear . . . It’s a particularly fucked-up twist of fate, having your best sexual memories tied together with the kind of pain, suffering, and fear I’d felt the night we met. One of those gifts that keeps on giving, you know?

Maybe that’s why Joe did nothing for me—he’d never hurt me.

So you’re fucked up, I reminded myself. You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last. Let it go.

Teresa started out by giving us each a navy blue apron, which was the closest thing they had to a uniform. The first few hours were a whirlwind of trying to learn the new menu and computer system. Blake clocked in an hour later, and the fact that he knew most of it already helped a lot. Not only that, Danielle could turn any job fun. Good thing, too, because we had a full house.

The shift didn’t start to go south until around ten that night. By then, the dinner crowd was gone and the kitchen had shut down. Now we were settling in for the long haul with the night’s serious drinkers. That’s when a group of students from the Northwoods Academy showed up, obviously slumming.

I knew a little bit about the school because Earl had worked there as a groundskeeper for the last year. None of it was good. It’d been founded in the late ’90s, and the place was full of rich, spoiled brats who should’ve been in high school and college. They’d been sent “back to nature” by their wealthy parents as an alternative to jail time—nothing like paying off a judge to keep your record clean.

Of course, some just had families who wanted rid of them because they weren’t convenient. A few even had movie stars for parents, at least according to Earl. Whatever their reason for landing in Idaho, they were almost all unpleasant and entitled as fuck.

They’d gained a bad reputation around Callup for taking advantage of locals, too. Earl always told me to stay the hell away from them. I’d even heard stories of girls getting lured up there and raped. Were they true? No idea . . . I didn’t want to find out, either.

“They can’t be legal,” I said to Blake, eyeing the group. Thankfully they’d settled in Danielle’s section, so it wasn’t my job to card them. They looked like the kind of people who would bitch long and hard if their waitress asked for ID. “Why can’t we just throw them out?”

“We don’t know they aren’t legal,” he said, shrugging. “Think they take students through twenty-two up there. Online classes and shit—just depends on how desperate they are to avoid doing time. I’d take boarding school over a jail cell, too.”

“Are you going to card them?”

“Hell no. They have lots of money to spend and nowhere else to spend it. If we ever get questioned, we’ll just say we thought we checked them all. At least a few of them must have fakes. That’ll cover our asses. Remember, those little shits are rolling in it—tuition is a fuckload. We’ll make good tips and pretend we never saw them. Everyone wins.”