It was a translucent dress with an opaque black band around the breasts and the more delicate places. No way I was going to put that on.
“You will wear it. And you will wear it with the shoes.” Janson put a pair of red stilettos on the desk next to the dress. They were shiny and tall, and everything I hated about being designated “eye-candy”.
“I don’t think so. Do you even know what my uncle would do if he heard about this?” I asked. It was one thing to serve drinks; it was another entirely to have to wear a getup like that. No. Absolutely not. I could just imagine the look of anger on this face as he screamed at them. It would start a war.
One they were on the brink of anyway.
“I think the very first thing your uncle would do would be to ask exactly why your father went to us for a loan. He’s the brother of the most influential man in the O’Brien family. Your family. So why did he come to ours for money, Jo?” Janson stood and leaned over the table, his bulging muscles and stubborn eyes daring me to keep arguing.
“Fine.” I grabbed the clothing and pulled them across the table. The fabric on the dress was odd and stretchy and entirely foreign. “I’ll do it, but this counts as double time for my dad’s damn debt, you hear me?”
“I do, I can give you time and a half.” He was already prepared for the argument, the sly grin planted on that pretty boy face. Well, not totally pretty boy, he did have the telltale signs of some rough tumbling and fighting. A nose that had been broken too many times, a jaw that was stubbled and rough. It took a long stare to decide if I thought he was handsome or not.
It made him look like a totally bad boy. Just not my kind of guy. Janson was too hard, too scary.
He was too honest.
“Good, it’s the boss’s card game, so you’ll want to keep to the same rules.”
“Which boss?” I asked. James or Greyson, which one?
“Greyson.” The sexy dark bad boy with no soul. Of course it was him, his father had never been anything but respectful, I was eye candy, sure, but I was at least mostly covered. “He requested you specifically.”
The one Janson warned me to stay away from. Fuck, he noticed me. Exactly what Janson warned me away from. “It’ll be all young guys. I’ll be there, so you’ll have protection if they get handsy.”
Janson was a man of his word. It didn’t make him a good man, but when he said he was going to do something he did it. Didn’t matter if that meant he was going to protect you, or break off all your fingers.
If he said he was going to do it, he did it.
“Alright. Rules?” I asked, clearing that image from my mind.
“Same as before. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not try to look cute, you are there for scenery. Do your hair and makeup like previously instructed, got it?”
I nodded, I got it. I didn’t like it, but I got it. “Is there anything else, boss?”
“Yeah, you wear that dress and those heels. Nothing else, you got it? That was a specific request.”
“Nothing else?” I asked.
“Nothing.” The timber of his voice scared me. “Orders from the boss.”
Greyson.
My blood turned to ice.
Chapter Two
Joanna
I tugged at the skirt of the little “number” I was being forced to wear, it fit just right and hugged my curves exactly. That didn’t make me feel any better. I knew the way it fit me everyone was going to be looking at me. Leering at me.
That was my purpose after all. I regretted agreeing to the entire thing. Coming to the party, agreeing to my father’s request to work for the Fitzgeralds. I hated the way they pimped me out like I was nothing. Maybe to them I was nothing, just a pawn easily used when needed. My father was a good man, but he was weak. And he’d used me in the past.
This time, though, I wasn’t just talking his way out of a scrape. I was working off his debt for him. And it made my blood boil.
I’d gone to the address Janson gave me, a hotel in the middle of Inner Harbor, and took the elevator to the top floor. The presidential suite. It didn’t matter if this was the nicest part of town, at the nicest hotel, I didn’t want to be here. Still, I knocked on the door in front of me; a fake smile plastered on my face.
“Jo?” Janson greeted me and then ushered me in, he whispered, “you just made it.”
“You told me to be on time. I am.”
“On time means early, Jo. At least to Greyson.” The hand on the small of my back made me nervous. I side-stepped him and shrugged.
“I did what you told me.”
“Well, now I’m telling you to get into the kitchen and make sure you have all the necessary tools for the wet bar. The guys will be here any minute.”