Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(46)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Ha! I’m not that drunk.” He sipped his soda, made a face, and set it down.

Wendy was very glad Lorelei was now hanging out with classy young actresses instead of the reality star and the celebrity hairdresser. These girls had spotless reputations. And they were now taking turns getting instructions from the stripper on how to tackle the pole. In their company, Lorelei wouldn’t look bad when she inevitably tried it.

Sure enough, Lorelei came bounding up to the booth. She asked Wendy, “Am I allowed to pole dance?” Her face fell. “Don’t look at me that way. It was a fitness craze a few years ago.”

“I know,” Wendy said. “Like boxing!”

Daniel pinched her.

Lorelei still stood in front of Wendy, looking unsure.

“Go ahead,” Wendy said. “I think it’s an okay PR move. Even I know how to pole dance.”

“Yay!” Lorelei jumped up on the small stage. The men in the party gave each other knowing looks as they slid into the booth with Lorelei’s friends to watch. There was an interim while the stripper offered Lorelei some pointers and the men poured Lorelei’s friends some shots. Then Lorelei braced herself on the pole as Colton had. She couldn’t hold herself very long at all, but her dismount was a lot more graceful. She curved her body around the bottom of the pole. The men cheered for her.

“Five point five,” Daniel whispered to Wendy in his dead-on British accent, sounding exactly like an announcer in the summer Olympics. “Five point six. Five point five.”

Wendy was laughing so hard that she didn’t realize Lorelei was standing in front of her again until Daniel nudged her. “What?”

“Your turn!” Lorelei exclaimed. “You just said you knew how to do it.”

“Immersion therapy,” Daniel murmured to Wendy. “Hair of the dog. I dare you.”

Wendy raised her eyebrows. “Oh, you dare me, do you? You just want to see me do a pole dance.”

“Duh,” he said.

Wendy told Lorelei, “Let us negotiate for just a second.” She whispered in Daniel’s ear, “We’re supposed to be together. Isn’t this going to ruin your reputation with these guys?”

“Ruin my reputation? You just made my reputation. It’s every man’s dream to be with a nice lady who just happens by accident to know her way around a stripper pole.”

“Every man’s dream, or every fourteen-year-old boy’s dream?”

“That kind of fantasy doesn’t change with age.”

“Is that right?” She examined him more closely. “Are you okay?”

“Very.” He grinned at her. “Why?”

“You don’t seem like yourself, even taking the drunkenness into account. It’s not like you to tell me what you’re thinking. Suddenly I’m finding out that your mind is as dirty as mine.”

He raised his brows. “You doubted this?”

“Yes.”

He gave her a small, naughty smile. “Never doubt this.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “You’re sure you’re okay? I just heard a little hint of British accent.”

“Uh-oh.” He covered his mouth with one hand.

She set her forehead against his and asked, “If I do this for you, what will you do for me?”

His eyes widened, filling her vision, black like the darkest night. Suddenly this bargain had turned serious. His lips parted, but he didn’t say a word.

“Kidding,” she said breathlessly, scooting away from him. “This one’s gratis, in celebration of your newfound fun.” She turned to Lorelei. “Get the DJ to put on some Missy Elliott.”

“Um . . . kay.” Lorelei scampered away.

As Wendy slipped out of the booth, Daniel slid to the seat where she’d been. “Your stripping soundtrack is Missy Elliott?”

“She was very big in 2003, and this was my small protest against the patriarchy. While stripping. I know. Shut up.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he said. “Please don’t fall on your injured head.”

“Don’t worry about me. Though bare skin gives you traction. I think it’s going to be harder to do with my clothes on—”

“Keep your clothes on,” he stressed.

“I love it when a man says that to me. So sexy. Instills a lot of confidence.” She laughed at the face he made at her. “Anyway, I don’t think I’ll have trouble. I haven’t done it in ten years, but I’m sure it’s like riding a bicycle, except without the carefree innocent overtones.” The creepy beat of her favorite Missy groove pumped through the speakers. “That’s my cue. Here I go.”

The helpful stripper waited onstage for her. “I don’t need any pointers, if you know what I mean,” Wendy told her. The girl swept her arm toward the pole: all yours.

The cheers from her booth had gotten so loud that they were attracting the attention of the rest of the bar. Shadowy figures turned their backs on their own pole-dancing ladies and approached their corner of the club, curious. Wendy would have felt intimidated if she hadn’t been good at this.

With a wink at Daniel, she braced herself on the pole as the losers had done, then hefted herself up, splitting her legs on either side of the pole and pointing her toes. The booth was whooping, but she couldn’t pay attention to them. Pole dancing took concentration. She allowed gravity to spin her body down the pole. Then she launched herself up again and wrapped herself around the pole this time, spinning down. After a quick calculation of whether she could hold herself upside down on the pole by her ankles in these particular high-heeled boots, she took a chance on the affirmative.

The hard part was holding herself up by the arms while she balanced her body upside down in the first place. But it looked like the real trick was letting go with her hands and hanging there by her feet. She could tell by the slight resistance that her hair was touching the floor, which, strangely, she was beginning not to mind. All of Vegas was finding its way into her hair, and all of Vegas had taken a piece.

The applause for her was growing wild. The thought passed through her mind that if she got fired from Stargazer, maybe she really could go back to her first career. She could laugh at this now, almost, because she had hope of salvaging Lorelei’s image.

She did a few more tricks, until her head wound began to throb from all the blood rushing to her brain. She dismounted from the pole, curtsied ironically, high-fived the stripper, and jumped down from the stage. The table went crazy. The women kept screaming “Wow!” at her and the men were agog. She focused on Daniel, who’d been laughing moments before but now looked dangerous, his face full of dark shadows, the smudge under his eye still visible.