Page 1 of Dragon in Boots

CHAPTER ONE

“I can do this. Icando this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Jacquelin Flanagan parked her pickup outside the Dallas strip club, feeling the sorts of nauseous waves any woman might for her first shift at a new job. Not that there was much to bartending. If she smiled, treated customers well, and gave generous pours, the tips generally followed.

She hoped.

It’ll all work out. The money will come. It has to.Of course, that was the kind of hopeful bull crap that had led her here, to the sort of job that said to the world:I make crazy-bad life choices.Today, however, was a new low. If rock had a bottom, this was rock’s stinky diaper.

Seriously. Screw my shitty life. She sighed and gathered up her snacks, cell, and three-legged giraffe keychain, shoving them all into her enormous canvas purse.

Stay positive, Jac. It’s the only way you’ll get through this,she told herself.

It wasn’t that slinging drinks was beneath her, but it was a far and humbling cry from where she’d planned to be at age thirty-five: vet school, business degree, running a successful nonprofit for animals, and maybe even married with two smooth-skinned critters, aka kids. Those had been the dream. Not slinging drinks at a strip club.

What would her parents say if they were still alive? Nothing good.

Thank God my sisters are too busy with their lives to get in my hair.Heather and Holly—both opinionated, fiery redheads with green eyes, like Jac—were in their forties, dealing with teenagers, careers, and husbands. They had no clue that Jac had been lying for years about how bad things had gotten, and Jac would make sure they never found out. Not only would her older sisters give her hell, but they would try to help and then hold it over her head. Heather and Holly were both control freaks, though they weren’t always wrong when they gave advice.

For example:“Go to school first, Jac. Get it out of the way.” “Don’t support a man before you can support yourself.” “You’re bananas for taking over an animal sanctuary with nothing more than a broken wing and a prayer.”

It was sage advice that Jac had ignored, and now she was feeling the shame of it on every level, about to work her first shift at a place where the pants had Velcro, the sausage was free range, and the customers checked their brains at the door.

To boot, the owner, Mrs. Peepers, said they were trying “something new” by hiring Jac, a woman.

When Jac had asked why something as common as a female bartender was a novelty, Mrs. Peepers had simply leaned back in her pink chair, plopped her glittery pink cowboy boots onto her hot pink desk, and removed her long pink wig. Peepers then rumpled her flaming red hair—not at all similar to Jac’s natural red with golden highlights—and then put the wig back on. Backwards.

“Welp, sweetheart,” Peepers had said with a blatantly fake Texan accent, “let me put ’er like this: them-there customers arrive with their panties in o’ bunch—life’ll do that to gal who has too many doughnut holes because ain’t nobody poking them out. But when they leave the Pink Pit of Pleasure, well…they’re like randy sailors after spending a week with a mermaid on El Corazón Island.”

What the hell does that mean?Jac had thought.

“Great question!” Peepers had erected her pale index finger in the air, followed by wiggling her red eyebrows.

“But I…didn’t…say anything,” Jac had muttered.

“Didn’t you?”

“No. But I think you were trying to explain that the women get rowdy, or something like that,” Jac had said.

“Rowdy? Oh, no, Jac-hammer. Think: women blowing offyearsssof steam. Honestly, this club is no place for a lady.”

But they cater to women.Jac had shrugged off the strange conversation, not giving it much thought. After all, women had the right to release pent-up frustration like anyone else. So what if they did it while staring at men marinated in baby oil?

At the end of the day, this was a job, and Jac needed money. Caring for abandoned exotic animals wasn’t cheap, and the donations didn’t always come when she needed them. Take last month, for example, when Wanda the orangutang fractured her hip. Poor thingwaspretty old.

Anyway, with Jac providing care for her critters seven days a week and also giving private tours during the day to help support the sanctuary, that only left her with a few hours each night to earn extra cash. So here she was, hoping the money would be as good as Mrs. Peepers claimed. If not, those poor animals would have nowhere to go.

Dressed in jeans, brown cowboy boots, and a bright pink T-shirt with the club’s flaming peach pit logo, Jac made her way to the heavy double doors of the Pink Pit of Pleasure and then followed the dimly lit hallway. Along the walls, framed posters of the male dancers gave her a taste of what she was in for tonight. Most of the men wore costumes—fireman, tiger, caveman, beaver, etc.—and they all had six-pack abs (or a large tail), but in her opinion, not one was sexy. Not even Dash, the headliner.

For her, attraction was all about a man’s character. Confidence, intelligence, and generosity were high on her list, but nothing compared to a man who was fearless. A fearless man wasn’t afraid to step up and take care of the people he loved. A fearless man knew how to fight for what was right, and he sure as hell wasn’t afraid of commitment.

Stupid Stanley.They’d broken up almost four years ago, but when they were together, she had quit school and busted her butt putting him through law school, only to get dumped the day he graduated.“Sorry, babe, but I’m just not ready to commit.”

Son of a turd!They were supposed to have gotten married after he found steady employment. Then it was going to be her turn to finish school.

All lies…

The biggest kicker was that Stanley had encouraged her to take over the animal sanctuary after the owner, Salome, died. At the time, Jac’d been bartending nights to make ends meet and working at the sanctuary during the day. She’d wanted the experience with animals, and Stanley had convinced her it would all work out.

“It’s not rocket surgery, Jac. You host fundraisers, you hire people to care for the animals, and we gain clout in the community.”

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