She let her lashes drift down over her eyes. “When I was seventeen, I snuck into Tampa with a girlfriend of mine. We were hanging out in the big city, loitering on the street with pretty much nothing in our pockets, when a girl came up to me, a dancer from the hottest nightclub in the city. She told me I should apply for a job there. That I could make good money.”
She twisted her hands in her lap and stared down at them. “You have to understand we were dirt-poor, my family. My father was an alcoholic, was off the job more than he was on. My mother was doing all she could to make ends meet, but her hair salon wasn’t bringing in much. So when that girl—when she told me how much money I could make dancing, I was flabbergasted. I had dance training. It was one of the few things I was able to do because the local teacher let me study without paying because she thought I had potential.”
He blinked. “So you started stripping?”
She nodded. “I made more money in a week dancing than my mother made in a month cutting hair. I took it home, paid for things. But when my father found out what I was doing, he hit the roof.” Her mouth turned down. “They weren’t making ends meet. My sister had no clothes but my money was dirty money. So he kicked me out.”
A frown creased his forehead. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen. And believe me,” she said bitterly, “nothing was ever so good. My father was not a nice drunk.”
His gaze darkened. “God, Bailey, you were a baby. How were you even allowed to be in a bar?
“I lied. Got a fake ID.”
He sat down beside her, rested his elbows on his knees and pressed his hands to his temples. “So you move from Tampa to Vegas where you go to school? And you keep stripping?”
“I moved there to dance. To pay my way through school. The money is fantastic in Vegas if you know what you’re doing. I danced at a couple of different clubs, learned the industry, then I landed a slot at the Red Room. Every girl wanted to work there. It was very burlesque in the way we did the shows, they had the most beautiful women, and it was where all the high rollers hung out. I made a ton of money, easily paid for school every year.”
He scrunched his face up. “Didn’t it bother you the way men looked at you?”
“Like I belonged in the bedroom?” She threw his words back at him with a lift of her chin. “It was a job, Jared. Like any other occupation. I went to work, made a lot of money and got out when I could.”
“You took your clothes off in front of strangers. That is not a normal job.”
Heat rose up inside of her, headed for the surface. “My body was all I had. That was it. My sister, Annabelle, is still in Lakeland, working a ten-dollar-an-hour job and dealing with an alcoholic husband of her own.” She stared at him, her frustration bubbling over. “I had dreams, Jared. Just like you had. Except you had a brain and I had my body so I used it.”
His gaze darkened. “You also have an incredibly sharp brain. Why didn’t you use it?”
“I didn’t know that.” Frustration grabbed at her, tore at her composure. “As far as I was concerned, I was low-income trash from the swamp. And no one ever tried to convince me differently. Not my teachers, classmates, not the girls who wouldn’t let me into their cliques… I was the poor Williams girl who was never going to amount to anything. Well, dammit, I did.”
He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “St. John is not your real name?”
She shook her head. “I changed it when I left Vegas for California.”
“Is Bailey your real name?”
“Yes. My mother named me after her favorite drink.”
His eyes widened at that. He was silent for a long time, head in his hands. When he finally looked up at her, his expression was bleak. “When you say high-end stripper, what does that mean?”
Did she do favors for her clients on the side? Something inside her retracted. Curled up before it could be killed off. Before she showed him exactly how much that hurt.
“You want to know if I slept with the men I danced for?”
“Yes,” he answered harshly.
“Would it make any difference if I said yes?” Would it make the stigma of what she’d been worse?
“Goddammit, Bailey, answer the question.”
“I danced,” she said stonily, “and then I went home and studied. Nothing more. Ever.”
He let out a long breath. “Where does Alexander Gagnon fit in all this?”
She laced her hands together and stared into the hissing, sparking fire. “Every week at the Red Room, the owner would have his favorite dancer do a special number at the end of the night. You were the star attraction, wore fancy red lingerie, got tons of tips for it. That week, he chose me.” She registered the speculative look on Jared’s face and chose to ignore it. “Alexander came to the Red Room for the first time on a Tuesday night. He gave me a huge tip and asked me to have a drink with him. For some reason, I refused. He was well-dressed, had this aura about him you couldn’t ignore, but there was something I didn’t trust. And in that business it was all about instinct.