Ben looked up from his desk as Quinten swung the door closed behind him. “I’m heading back to the house to finish painting the bedroom and bathroom.”
Ben raised a quizzical eyebrow. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? You hate painting.”
Quinten explained the exchange he’d just been party to. Ben listened calmly until Quinten explained the way the three men treated her. “They’re all in love with her, or at least they were. Didn’t look like they’d mind exploring the possibility in the future. The really big guy looked at her like she was a goddess.”
Ben nodded and quoted her. “‘Work is work and pleasure is pleasure.’ They must’ve heard that line too. She has high standards. You’re sure they aren’t just old coworkers catching up?”
“Positive. My gut’s telling me they were all three in love with her. I don’t want to be the schmuck looking at her two years from now, wishing that I’d taken my chance sooner rather than waiting until it was too late.”
“Even if you finish painting, the bed and the rest of the furniture are going to be a few more days.”
“Yeah, but this is something I can do in the meantime. The only reason you can be calm like this is because you didn’t see the way they look at her—all three of them. We’ve got competition, and she doesn’t work with them anymore.”
“But they have potential to work for her. Keep that in mind. She won’t cross that line, not if it means she’d have top-notch security. I knew she wanted to open a club, but I didn’t realize she wanted to go that far away.”
“She’d have to move, Ben. She’d be out of here. With them. And they looked persuasive.”
“Fuck.”
“The fact that she’s wearing a barely-there outfit doesn’t help matters either. They looked like they wanted to eat her up.”
“Remember they’ve seen her in a lot less—”
Quinten put a hand up to stop him. “La-la-la-la-la! Not helping.” He wouldn’t be so casual once he saw how those guys looked at Camilla. The one thing he could say for them was that they looked as though they’d gladly kill to protect her. “She’s driving me crazy with those skimpy outfits. Did you see what she had on last night?”
Quinten recalled in Technicolor detail the skimpy outfit their tiny dancer had worn. Short-shorts, a skimpy top that was a cross between a bikini and a push-up bra, and flashy cowgirl boots. Camilla was so beautiful it made his heart palpitate—along with every other hot-blooded, single male’s in The Dancing Pony.
Ben groaned softly and rubbed his forehead with his palms before replying. “Yeah. I kept getting glimpses of that temporary lip print tattoo she stuck on her right butt cheek every time she put a drink on the bar.”
Some of the other waitresses had also gotten on the bandwagon with wearing costumes, but it was Camilla who was driving them crazy. Anytime Camilla joined Grace and the girls when they took to the dance floor, Quinten worried that some asshole was going to mistake her costumes as an invitation.
The outfits were too low-cut for his comfort level. And too revealing. Entirely too much of the woman they loved exposed—
Don’t go there. She’s not your woman yet.
Playing devil’s advocate, Ben added, “But she’s making a killing in tips. She brings in lots of customers, and she does a good job.”
“I don’t like that much of her showing while she’s working.”
“I know, but we don’t have a right to tell her she can’t wear them. She’s not doing anything that’s out of the ordinary in our industry. And face it, she’s hot. She was accustomed to wearing a lot less for work—”
Quinten held up a hand. “You gotta stop, Ben.”
Camilla had put herself through college by working as an exotic dancer at the Dollhouse gentleman’s club in Morehead. It wasn’t a traditional job, but she’d graduated debt-free, which Quinten respected.
One of his big concerns, however, was that a lot of the customers at The Dancing Pony knew she’d worked at the Dollhouse. With enough liquor in him, a man could forget that her work as the assistant manager at The Pony had different boundaries. He’d never visited the Dollhouse while she’d worked there, but he’d heard about her abundant talents from the nightclub patrons who’d been there. It pissed him off that so many of them knew what she looked like naked. But Camilla had been up-front and professional with them and with any customers who wanted to talk about the old days. She’d hung up her stripper heels for good.