Page 80 of Surrender
I laughed, tilting my head to look up at Nate. He was less happy about the declaration.
“Roxie, you’re on in a few. Go get ready,” he said gruffly, and she giggled as she slipped out of the booth.
“Ladies, I will be back in around fifteen minutes with cocktails and shots,” she announced, hands on her hips with a broad smile, her red lipstick bold and bright. “Blue, it’s been a pleasure, as always.”
“The highlight of my fucking week, Rox,” he shot back at her.
She turned on her mile-high heels and strutted back toward the bar, her hips swinging like she was on a runway.
I smirked up at Nate. “I like her.”
He groaned like it physically pained him.
“God fucking help me.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
DARCY
“How long have you been stripping?” I asked Roxie as I played with the tiny umbrella that had come with my cocktail.
It was almost two in the morning, and the club was empty, apart from the three of us girls and the staff.
Nate and Match were helping the bar staff stack chairs so the cleaners could come through in the morning. Thankfully, Nate had gone about his business earlier in the night, after he finally got used to the idea of Roxie and me getting along.
And we really had.
Once she let down the wall she had up, Lucy and I never stopped smiling.
“Well, I started during law school to pay my fees, and I was nineteen then,” she said, and my eyes shot open. “So, six years?”
“Law school?” Lucy choked out in shock.
She nodded, lifting her martini glass to her lips and throwing back what was left. “Mm-hmm,” she answered with a nod. “I wanted to be the opposite of your ex. I wanted to defend the little people who were being put inside over petty theft charges. People who can’t pay the hundred-dollar bail so they sit in cells for days and weeks, waiting for their court date.”
I slumped back into my seat. “The world could do with more lawyers like that. What happened?”
A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “One of the rich kids in my classes came by the club I was working at on a friend’s bachelor’s night and caught me out.” She sighed, swirling the empty glass in her hand. “He said, either I fucked him, or he told the dean.”
My jaw dropped open. “He didn’t.”
“He did,” she said, her head bobbing. “I said no. He taddled. They canceled my enrollment because of unprofessional behavior that could reflect bad on the school.”
“Don’t tell me you let him get away with that,” Nate said with a stern frown as he stepped up to the booth, Match right behind him.
Roxie met my eyes across the table, her weak smile growing into one that was a lot stronger and more confident, more her. “I didn’t.”
I leaned in. “Tell me.”
“I fucked his rich dad a couple of weeks later.” She scooted out of the booth and tugged at the mini dress she had on. “And then I spent two months living in the house with him and his dad, making them both call me Mommy.”
Nate glanced away, trying to hide his laughter but failing.
“Anyway, now I’m stripping to torture Blue a couple of times a week,” she teased, nudging him with her elbow. “Oh, and the money. I’m about six months from a one-way ticket to England. I want to buy a little cottage in the countryside, adopt a dog called Archibald, and have a couple of chickens.”
Both Match and Nate looked at her like she’d lost her mind.
But I think I got it.
