Creek stared down at her, not understanding why she was so angry. “Look Violet, I can understand if you were trying to keep this below the radar. It isn’t exactly legal.”
She poked his chest again. “Names!” she practically yelled.
He threw his hands up into the air. “Fine! Me for one! I’ve paid! And won’t do it again!”
She gasped when he said those words, the pain jabbing down deeper. “I’ve never asked you for money! Never! The only cash that has ever been transferred in my presence was that first night when you paid for the pizza! And I didn’t get any of that money!”
He was disgusted now and he wasn’t going to take her anger. With his hands fisted on his hips, he glared down at her. “Are you seriously going to stand there and pretend that your stepfather hasn’t been pimping you out? He showed up at my house last Friday and demanded payment for the previous nights! I only paid for that first night, and was disgusted with myself. But by the following morning, I thought I’d misunderstood. I thought there was no way you could be doing something like that,” he grated out, so furious now that he couldn’t hide his anger. “But who showed up on my doorstep five days ago, but your pathetic pimp, George, breathing whiskey fumes and telling me that you needed payment for the all the nights we were together.” Creek shook his head. “No way, Violet. I’m not paying. I thought...” he stopped and snapped his mouth shut as he glared at her. He loomed down into her face. “I’m finished paying Violet! I can’t stomach it any longer!”
Violet heard the words but couldn’t believe them. Everything he was saying, each new revelation was like a knife piercing her heart. Anger wasn’t really what she was feeling at the moment, although she wasn’t exactly sure what emotion was choking her at the moment. Everything he was saying, his words and the possibilities…they couldn’t be true! “My stepfather was pimping me out?” she whispered, trying not to show how hurt she was, how much pain was lashing at her at this moment. “You paid him for…” she stumbled as their conversation started to make sense, “you paid him for my services?”
“Yes! He showed up, I wrote the check and he walked away, even giving me directions to your damn house, like he’d done this several times for other men who had shown up. He even cautioned me to treat each night like a real date. Explained this was your specialty and if I wanted something raunchy from another woman, he’d get that for me. But I needed to respect your specialty.”
Violet pulled back as if she might be sick, more hurt than she’d thought possible. “You paid for me,” she repeated. “You bought me. All those nights that I thought were special and amazing,” she said in a small voice, still not sure she could handle the reality of what he was saying, “they were just nights you owned me.” She lifted her blue eyes up to his, unaware of the hurt emanating from her eyes. “How much did you pay him?” she asked.
Creek sighed, running his hand over his face again. He was starting to doubt everything he thought he knew about this woman. From the look in her eyes, he was starting to suspect that he’d messed up. Royally!
“Five thousand,” he told her, needing to see the expression in her eyes, to detect the truth. What he saw made him feel almost sick to his stomach. The hurt and pain reflected in her eyes was unbearable. He wanted to fold her into his arms, tell her that it was okay, that he’d take care of her. But how could he? She probably financed her business with her nighttime efforts.
And then the solution occurred to him. Moving closer, he took her arms, ignoring her efforts to get away from him. “Violet, if you gave up spending your nights with other men, I could help you with your business. You wouldn’t have to sell yourself any longer.” He watched as a tear slipped over her long, dark lashes.
“You paid five thousand dollars to my stepfather for five nights with me,” she whispered, standing stiffly in the warmth of his embrace and not sure what to do, how to react.
Creek hesitated, thinking she should already know the answer. And he was irritated that she was pretending that she didn’t know. “Five thousand per night,” he snapped.
He heard a groan from behind him, as well as from the corner and looked around. Tucker was still changing out the bottles behind the bar, and Tyla was working intently on her computer. But he knew both of them were listening.
“Violet, let’s go somewhere private to discuss this.”
Violet pulled her arm out of his grip and stepped back. “You paid my stepfather twenty-five thousand dollars?” she hissed, still stuck on the money. “To have sex with me?” Her head was spinning. The pain was now gone, replaced by the horror of what he was telling her. He’d paid money to have sex with her? It seemed too crazy for words. “I think I should be flattered.”