Page 13 of Plunge into Obsession

Both Kaia and I had gotten serving jobs, and they paid really well most nights.

The job was also legitimate when I had been expecting anything but.

Everyone was working here because they wanted to.

If Gabriel had ties with the cartel, he wasn’t acting like it.

He looked more like a businessman than anything else, though he was a little rough around the edges, something even his three-piece suits couldn’t hide.

It also couldn’t hide his huge athletic frame.

I had him pegged at six-foot-three of pure muscle.

And he was incredibly handsome.

And incredibly young.

He was only thirty-six years old and had already owned many successful businesses around New Mexico, Southern California, Arizona, and Texas.

We were given an informational package that skimmed over Gabriel’s bio. It was pretty generic facts about him, but I had memorized everything as if there would be a test at the end.

If that had been the case, I would have aced it with flying colors.

I didn’t miss the fact that most of the businesses he owned were in states that bordered Mexico.

Was it a coincidence?

I knew better than to stick my nose in his businesses, even though I had briefly entertained the thought of snooping and looking for blackmail material.

But that thought only existed in my fantasy, where I couldn’t get hurt physically or otherwise.

I went to one of my tables. The man who had grabbed me when I was setting his drinks down was gone.

On the table was enough money to cover his tab and a hundred dollars in tips.

Despite his atrocious manners, at least he was a good tipper.

I pocketed the money and went to close the man’s tab and check on the other men in my section. They weren’t paying me any attention. Their eyes were glued to the stage because Piama had just come on.

She was our most popular dancer, and I could see why.

She was beautiful, yet it wasn’t the in-your-face kind of beautiful.

It was the beautiful that attracted attention and demanded we stop what we were doing just to look at her.

She was also the kindest woman I had ever met.

A single mom to the most adorable five-year-old little girl.

Her gray eyes caught mine from her spot on the stage, and she winked at me.

I smiled and wiped down the table, resisting the urge to wave at her. Our manager, Corey, was a fucking sleazeball, but he was a strict sleazeball, and if he caught me doing anything he deemed was distracting “his best dancer,” I would no doubt be berated in the back.

I brought the empty glass to the back to be washed and met Kaia on the way. She walked close to me.

“Took you long enough in the back. Did you get lost on the way or something?”

The teasing note in her voice told me she wasn’t trying to be mean.

---