Page 55 of Lawless in Leather

She shut down the mail program and put the computer to sleep. “Enough of dickheads past. We have a club to run.”

Chapter Twelve

The day passed in a blur of work and a nap to make up for her lost night’s sleep and then rehearsal. She’d emailed all of the Angels to congratulate them on the job they’d done and to remind them that there was practice the next morning. She’d received an excited text from Marly, who announced that she had ten thousand new Instagram followers. And an annoyed message from Ana about why it was Marly’s picture that all the papers had used. And then, more pleasingly, a call from Mal in Baltimore. She’d managed to avoid telling him about Jeremy. He didn’t have long to talk but somehow, in a few short minutes, he managed to make an innocent-seeming request for her email address seem like a proposition.

By the time she’d hung up the phone she’d been turned on and missing him all over again. Which was when she’d decided to go to the club and try to work him and everything else out of her system with four hours of dance rehearsal.

It had helped a little but now it was Sunday night, the club was opening its doors, and she was sitting in front of the mirror in the dressing room and still couldn’t manage to focus all her attention on the performance and emceeing. It took her three attempts to get her false eyelashes on, and that was something she could do in her sleep.

Brady wandered past her mirror while she was finally getting the lashes into position. He stopped and studied her face. “More glitter,” he pronounced. “If you’re wearing the black dress, go for more glitter on the cheeks and eyes and dark-red lips. And the peacock earrings.”

“Really? With the black?” The new black dress he’d made her was alternating bands of black satin and lace. Some of the lace was backed by not-so-sheer fabric the same color as her skin. Some of it wasn’t. Which made watching her wearing it an exercise in guessing which bits of her body you were really seeing. Exactly the effect they had been aiming for. Sexy but mysterious.

The lace bands had tiny black crystals sewn over them, picking out some of the flowers and flourishes of the fine fabric.

“The crystals throw off peacock shades in the light,” Brady pointed out. He leaned over and lifted the peacock earrings from the rack they were hanging on. Shaped like a male peacock sitting in a silver hoop, the colors of his feathers picked out by crystals and enamel, they were extravagant to say the least. Large even before taking into account the chains of crystals that fell from the bottom of the hoop, fanning out to form the tails of the birds.

The earrings had originally been designed for the outfit—such as it was—she’d worn for a peacock-themed fan dance she used to perform, but she hadn’t done that routine for over a year now. One of the other girls had reused the feathers in the fan for another routine but Raina had never quite been able to give up the earrings. They were too gorgeous.

They also weighed a ton.

“Maybe just for the first half,” she said. “Then I’ll change the look.” Otherwise her ears might fall off. Brady was a genius costume designer but he hadn’t ever experienced the peculiar pain of earrings that weighted your ears down like lead.

He shrugged. “Your call. Are you going to sing tonight?”

“Probably not. We have enough going on, don’t we?” She didn’t perform an actual routine or sing more than a few times a week these days. And without enough sleep, she didn’t want to push her voice.

“If everyone gets back here, we do.” Brady said.

“Who’s missing?” She frowned at him—or his reflection—as she picked up a vial of fine silver glitter powder and a brush.

“Glynna went to go check on her kids for an hour or so,” Brady said. “Her sitter rang, said the little one—what’s his name?”

“Ty,” Raina said, patting glitter over her eye shadow.

“Right, Ty. He’s got a fever or something. So she wanted to check on him.”

“Well, she’ll come back. She always does.” Glynna was a few years older than Raina. A retired Broadway dancer, too, she had settled down with the guy and had babies, and then found herself with an irresistible urge to perform again. Which had led her to burlesque. She was one of Raina’s star solo performers who came up with wicked routines with ingenious regularity. The audiences loved her. So she needed to make it back.

“She does,” Brady agreed. “Okay. I’ll go finalize the run sheet. Luis told me to tell you there’s a queue at the door already.”

“Really?” She blinked in surprise, causing glitter to flutter down onto her cheeks. Which saved her putting it there later. “It’s not even eight.” Madame R’s opened its doors at eight but the show didn’t start until nine. And there were rarely more than a few people through the door before eight.

“Gotta love baseball,” Brady said. “Now get glittering and I’ll bring you back tea with the run sheet. And don’t worry. Luis has all the exits covered. Jeremy wouldn’t get in even if he was dumb enough to turn up here. Which he won’t be.”

She summoned a smile, trying to convince both Brady and herself that she believed him. She mostly succeeded. “What would I do without you?” she said. “Now go while I finish my sparkle.” Brady kissed her cheek and hugged her with one arm before heading out of the room. Raina turned her attention back to the mirror and picked up her vampiest red lipstick. Full house, huh? Stage Raina was needed for a full house, so real-life Raina and her obsession with Malachi and worries about anything else were going to have to just take a back seat for the next five hours.

Of course, forgetting about Mal would have been easier if the first people Raina spotted when she stepped out onto the stage to open the show hadn’t been Maggie Jameson and Sara Charles, sitting with a couple of friends at one of the very front tables. What the heck were they doing here? Sure, she’d offered to leave Maggie’s name at the door—and she had—but she hadn’t thought that Maggie would actually come down here. Besides which, shouldn’t she be in Baltimore?

Maggie and her friends whooped and clapped when they saw her. Raina sent a smile in their direction and then got on with the show.

During the first intermission, curiosity burning, she worked her way around the room, greeting regulars and saying hello to first-timers—so many first-timers—until she ended up by Maggie’s table.

Maggie jumped out of her chair and hugged her quickly. “Raina, this place is fabulous. And the show is even better.” She sounded extra revved up, even for Maggie. Raina shot a quick glance at the table. There were tall glasses in front of each woman. Filled with bright-pink liquid. Which meant they were drinking the killer Madam R cosmopolitans that Brady had invented. Cranberry juice and three different kinds of flavored vodka and a kick of St-Germain for extra oomph.

She grinned as Maggie let go. The four women were going to be sorry about this in the morning. She knew from experience. Brady had invented the killer Cosmo for one of her birthday parties. She’d felt far far older than her years when she’d woken up with the hangover from hell the morning after. “I thought you’d be in Baltimore,” she said as Maggie stepped back.

Maggie shook her head, her long dark hair, which was tamed into perfectly blow-dried waves tonight bouncing with the movement. “It was my birthday during the week and my dad wasn’t home. He got home last night so he wanted to do birthday lunch today. It’s our tradition. And then the girls decided we should go out tonight to keep the celebration going.”

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