Page 53 of Lawless in Leather

“Yup,” Brady said. “And that’s not the best part. Luis just finished going through the reservation system. All the reserved tables are booked out for two months solid.”

“You’re kidding.” They often sold out the reserved tables on Saturday nights, but most nights only a few of them were booked in advance. Given that there was an extra charge for the prime position of the reserved seats, having them all booked out for months was a nice chunk of extra change. If everyone ended up turning up, of course. The club scene anywhere around New York was pretty fickle.

“Not kidding. I think we’re going to be turning people away at the door,” Brady said. “I called Paolo. He said he’s going to put in a booze order today. And bump up the catering.”

“Huh,” Raina said. She’d taken the job at the Saints hoping that it might lead to some extra choreography gigs here and there. That and a bit of publicity for the club. Turned out she’d underestimated that part. “But how do they even know about us?”

“You haven’t read your email, have you?”

“I read a couple of the news stories but that’s it so far.”

“You got mentioned as the choreographer in a few of the stories. And some of them talked a little about you. Including the New York Times and USA Today.”

“USA Today?” She blinked, wondering if she was still asleep. But apparently not. “That’s crazy.” She paused. “Have you read any of the stuff on the sports sites? I didn’t start those yet.”

“Luis is looking now.”

“What’s he saying.”

“Mixed reactions. Some liked it. Some raving about the end of baseball and society as we know it. About what we expected. Lots of pictures of the squad. Even the ones who were complaining seemed to manage to include lots of those.”

“No such thing as bad publicity, I guess,” she said.

“Nope,” Brady agreed. “So you need to get all the girls in here early today so we can run some extra numbers. If we’re going to be packing them in then we need some new stuff. More things to throw into the mix.”

“I take it you have some ideas?” she said.

“Well, there’s a baseball number to start with. What’s a good song for a baseball number?”

“I don’t know. Who sings about baseball? ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ isn’t exactly sexy.”

“Agreed. I’ll have a look. There must be something.”

“There’s that song from Smash. Didn’t the Marilyn musical in that show have a number about baseball?”

“It did,” Brady said. “So that’s an idea.”

“Or Pat Benatar,” Raina mused. “‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot.’ Only don’t go getting ideas about unison baseball bat swinging or anything. That stuff is hard to pull off. Too much practice required.” Having been on the wrong end of a fumbled cane or two in various dance routines in her time, she had no trouble picturing disaster scenarios involving baseball bats.

She started scrolling through her email again, looking to see if anything looked like it was about something besides the Angels.

“Not even one?”

“We’ll see. Surely someone makes inflatable bats or something. Use one of those.”

“No one needs to see a deflated baseball bat mid-routine,” Brady countered. “Speaking of equipment, how was?—”

“No comment,” Raina said firmly.

Brady laughed and she started to say “Shut up” but the second word never made it out of her mouth as she stared at the email address on her screen. [email protected]. Fuck. Jeremy.

Her heart started pounding.

“Raina? Raina, what’s wrong?” Brady’s voice sounded like it was coming from a distance.

“I got an email from Jeremy,” she managed.

Brady swore. “Don’t open it. We’ll be right there,” he said and left Raina staring at the screen with silence in her ear as he hung up.

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