“I’m here to audition, Ted,” she said. The tone of her voice had a genuine brightness to it, a brightness he feared dancing at Platinum’s would destroy.
He loved Platinum’s and loved working there, but he’d seen how the dancers changed - especially debut dancers. None of them were exactly innocent, but within weeks if not days, their demeanors would change, and it always seemed like a little bit of light left their eyes.
He forced himself to focus on the job at hand, ripping off a contestant number and handing it to Savannah. He held it out and arched a brow. “Puncture, not Ted.”
She froze, her eyes held his but from the blank look on her face he suspected she didn’t know what to do next. He stared up into her brown eyes. “Good girls like you aren’t cut out for this.”
“Keep it movin’, Punc. We don’t have all day,” Beast muttered.
Against his will he jerked his head toward the doors to the main room to signal where she should go next. He watched Savannah’s sexy-as-sin body ease inside.
As the glass door crept closed behind her, he heard Tundra’s voice.
“You can change or get your makeup on in there. If you got a specific song, add it to this list with your dancer number.”
Faintly, he heard her say, “Yes, hopefully you have ‘Cult of Personality’ by Living Colour.”
He refused to dwell on her song choice, even if it was a damned good one.
Fifteen minutes later, the last prospective dancer meandered into the club.
“You mind dealing with this folding table, Punc? Volt asked me to be the tiebreaker vote between him, Turk, Blood, and Yak. I need to get inside,” Beast said.
Punc stood. “Yeah, I got the table.”
“Cool.”
While he’d memorized Savannah’s assigned number (three-zero-eight-two), he couldn’t remember how many other women had lined up before her.
He didn’t want to see her dance.
He didnot.
He’d never been good at lying to himself.
He couldn’t fucking wait to see her dance, but he wasn’t going to let himself do that.
Tundra wandered out, stopped short, and frowned. “What the fuck man? You still alive in there? Never seen you that spaced out. Don’t even have the table folded up and you’ve been out here almost five minutes.”
Punc shook his head and tilted the table on its side. “Yeah, man. I’m fine. Just need more coffee.”
While the auditions went on, he and Tundra checked kegs and liquor bottles behind the bar. They’d been at it for over an hour.
Punc hadn’t heard Savannah’s number yet, but he suspected she’d be on stage any minute.
Before he could make a break for it, Tundra said, “I’m hittin’ the john.”
Punc nodded.
The recorded voice opening of “Cult of Personality” came over the speakers and Tundra stopped mid-stride.
With a head shake, he looked over his shoulder at Punc. “We fucked up. Shoulda told Prime that during auditions, we cut the weird intros for certain songs…like this one. Fuck. I’ll send him a text message.”
Punc shook his head. “Nah, man. I’ll do it.”
It would give him a reason to move to the far end of the bar, outside the view of the stage.
With his head bowed to his phone, he texted Prime about editing songs.
