Page 1 of Home Body
CHAPTER 1
DALIA BLACKBURN
She didn’t want to do it. But do it she must.
Dalia Blackburn forced herself to get out of her truck, bulky bag in hand. She slammed the rickety door shut and paused, staring at the seedy place in front of her, the monstrous neon sign on the roof blinking red light like a sinister dragon spitting fire on a damsel in distress. Oh how she despised the place.
Especially now since a deputy sheriff from her small hometown, Farmdale, had taken a side job as bouncer there a month earlier. Who would ever have guessed that someone from an hour away would show up in this dump in Detroit?
Her aim had been to do this job without anyone back home knowing about it. She’d lied through her teeth to her mama for the first time in her life, knowing there would be hell to pay if the truth came out. Her mama believed she waitressed in the city at a “big, fancy restaurant” where she made great tips. Dalia had to make certain her secret stayed safe.
To that end she had on her fire-engine red wig, her sparkly makeup that included sequined eyelashes, a short red skirt and orange tank top, and stupid red stilettos so tall they felt like walking on stilts.
But still, there was the pesky problem of that deputy, one Brody McIntyre. She felt certain he hadn’t recognized her – at least not yet – and she must do everything in her power to keep it that way. It wasn’t like they knew each other back home. He’d only been in Farmdale for a couple of months, and she’d only seen him a handful of times, mostly at the Farmers’ Market on Saturdays. He’d strut through the cozy outdoor market in full knight-in-shining-armor-deputy-sheriff gear like some kind of god that women should drool over. He’d probably be happy if they fainted at his feet. The one time they’d briefly met, he’d stared at her so intently she’d turned away.
Men like that made her scoff. Too full of themselves, that’s what they were. But so far at this place he’d done nothing but his job, praise be.
She sighed and shoved the annoying shoulder-length, red wig hair behind her ears to get it away from her face. Time to go inside. The parking lot was packed, as usual, which portended a prosperous night. In only two more months she’d be able to dump the dump never to return because then she’d have all the dough she needed.
She tromped up to the employee’s back door, her stilettos clicking on the pavement to make each step a taunting reminder that she hated this. The boisterous music drowned out the outer world as she flung open the heavy metal door to Babette’s Gentlemen’s Club and went inside. The door clanged shut behind her, shutting out reality. It was time for Dalia Blackburn to become Scarlett Blaze, relinquishing her soul to the sordid world of striptease.
CHAPTER 2
KENYON O’BRIEN
She couldn’t believe this was happening. Why was it happening to her? Why now?
Kenyon O’Brien couldn’t breathe, her lungs refusing to function. She gasped so loudly half a dozen people looked her way, even in the din of raucous rock music.
“What is it?” Her friend Jessa asked. “Damn. We shouldn’t have had those third mojitos. You okay?”
No. She was not okay. And it had nothing to do with a fancy Cuban rum drink with a silly sprig of fresh mint floating on top. The instant flash of what she’d just witnessed tore out her heart, shattered her dreams, and tossed her future into the trash.
Trash. Like the stripper who sat on her fiancé’s lap down there near the stage, facing Chad with a leg on either side of his hips, her tongue jammed down his throat. He took a turn with the tongue thing and Kenyon thought she might die right there sitting in the balcony of Babette’s Gentlemen’s Club. The headline would read, “Bride-not-to-be keeled over dead upon spying intended groom in a sloppy, salacious act of betrayal.”
They hadn’t planned on following Chad to a strip joint. After all, his bachelor party was supposed to have been a poker game in a buddy’s basement back home in Farmdale. The bacheloretteparty had been held at an elegant supper club in the city. Kenyon had wanted to enjoy a nice meal with her maid-of-honor Jessa and matron-of-honor Tamara and get home early for a good night’s sleep in preparation for all the life-changing activities to come.
It'd been a total fluke when they saw Chad, who’d been alone in his flashy Mercedes, drive by as they pulled out of the supper club parking lot. He’d been headed away from their small hometown.
Jessa, the maid-of-honor and designated driver, had flipped a U-turn and followed him. And there they were, three young women in the balcony of the tacky strip joint, spying down on the groom-to-be.
At first, Kenyon had been mad that he’d lied but still expected he’d be meeting up with his buddies. She’d not expected this.
She and Chad had been so devotedly, doggedly in love. Well, that naive belief just bit her in the butt. The harrowing sensation of being a chump swept over her – a pea-brained, gullible sucker. Momentarily stripped of any shred of cognitive ability, she sat there stunned, dumb as a rock.
Jessa stood up to try to get a gander at what Kenyon had seen that shocked her so. But the dim main floor of the club was so jam packed with rowdy partiers her eyes didn’t land on the debacle of the supposedly upstanding young lawyer being ravaging by a dame with bare breasts the size of beach balls, a scanty G-string the only thing rendering her “dressed.” Mostly Jessa only saw the stripper on stage who wore a neon red polyester wig, giant red stilettos, and a glittery red bikini. Not that she was tacky or anything. Jessa missed Chad and his floozy altogether.
Kenyon’s emotions volleyed between devastation and fury, with fury winning out by miles. She jumped up and stompeddown the stairs, the lopsided faux bride’s veil stuck into her lush black hair fluttering behind her as she went.
This night had been meant to be a celebration of the glory of the most important day of her existence, the wedding that would lead to a bright happily-ever-after life to come. Well, that fantasy had exploded. Obliterated in one fell swoop. The Happily-Ever-After she’d savored in romance novels ever since she’d been a teen turned out to be a cruel farce.
She swept past the studly bouncer who guarded the entrance to the main floor. “Hey!” he hollered gruffly. “You can’t come in here!” He reached for her arm but Jessa and Tamara intervened, sloughing him off as they, too, slipped by.
No one in the audience even noticed as the murderous woman in a chintzy bride’s veil, with two staggering accomplices on her heels, trounced across the floor in front of the stage. Those cavemen merely cocked their heads to look around the flashes of intrusion so as not to miss one moment of the drop-dead-gorgeous stripper decked out in red from head to toe, on stage gyrating wickedly to some song about a hoochie coochie man.
Kenyon made it halfway across the floor, her irate glare clued on her target, when an intimidating man in a suit approached the rutting couple and gestured an admonishment for their behavior in public, which seemed to be against the rules even in this tawdry place. He jabbed a thumb toward a mottled metal door. Chad and the slimy slut dashed out of sight.
Kenyon fled past the suited man, who tried to stop her, and hit that door with a shove so hard it banged against the brick wall of the alley outside. There he was. Chad Damon, the popular young lawyer whose billboards touted him as “the moral choice.” The love of her life had his immoral wang out, ready to drill into the busty dame. Right there in a stinking, dank alley next to the trash bin.
