Page 44 of That Girl is Trouble

Easy. Unless it isn’t. Then I’ll have to improvise.

Deviate from the plan, and I’ll know.

Okay, but how will he know?

A man sitting at one of the back corner tables catches my eye, and I bite back a grin. Leather jacket but no Sinner insignia. Dark, slicked back hair. Tattooed hand wrapped around a glass of whiskey.

I saunter over to him and drop into his lap before he can stop me.

“Hey, Preacher,” I say, finally letting my smile take over.

He stills, lifting his hands away from me as he scans my short pleated skirt, my fishnets, the barely there blouse tied under my boobs. “Hey, Kitty. Lookin’ to get me killed tonight?”

I slide my hands up his chest and wrap them around his neck. “Not sure what you mean.”

“I think you do,” he says, tilting his head. “And I’d rather keep my hands if it’s all right with you.”

“You here to spy on me?”

“Was told I’m here to make sure you park your car near a lamppost and that you get out of here in one piece.” He takes a sip of his drink and angles as far away from me as physically possible.

“You know, if you were a paying customer, you’d be enjoying this. Try not looking at me like I’m what a cat barfed up. You’ll sell it better.”

A sigh slides from his mouth, and he drops his shoulders, placing a hand on my thigh. “Will you come to my funeral?”

Shifting, I pull closer to him. Never fucking touch what’s mine. Maybe I want to test those words. Maybe I want to understand what they mean. “Relax, Preach. Axe isn’t here.”

He lifts a brow and jerks his chin to the ceiling. “No, but he’s watching.”

I follow his line of sight to the security camera in the corner across from us. My heart leaps, and I slide my hand down Preacher’s shoulder in the same way I do with all the men who walk in here. Suggestively, seductively, with a hint of hesitation because most of them don’t like a woman who’s too forward. They like to chase me a little, even though there’s always a promise of payment hanging over us.

Preacher swears and tilts up his hips so he can dig his vibrating phone out of his back pocket. “Yeah,” he says, pressing it to his ear. A muffled angry voice sounds on the other side. Another sigh. “For you.”

Axe is barking at me the second the phone is in my hand. “Stop distracting your fucking babysitter and do what I told you to do.”

“He’s not even here yet,” I hiss.

“He is, Kat. You’d have noticed if you weren’t rubbing your ass all over Preacher’s lap like a little…”

“Like a little what?”

His sigh crackles down the line. “Stick to the fucking plan. Were you even listening when I was talking to you? I told you to—”

I hang up and hand the phone back to Preacher.

He shakes his head and chuckles. “Trouble, Kitty. You’re in for it now.”

“Counting on it,” I say as I push off his lap. “See you, Preach.”

Mr. Rich Dude is sitting at a table close to the bar. He’s ordered bottle service, and a mostly empty glass sits to his right, next to an expensive bottle of gin. Three other girls are working tonight, but the man goes unnoticed. Which is odd. Guy like this is about ten steps up from the usual Wednesday crowd. The girls should be crawling all over him.

He doesn’t look up from his phone when I slink into the seat across from him. Maybe he’s pretending like he’s here to relax, to simply have a drink. Definitely not to ogle half-naked women and drop a couple bucks to have a pair of tits pressed into his face. The “I’m not here for that” routine that men sometimes pull thinking that will make this a little more real for them.

“Hey there,” I try.

He responds with silence. It’s a thick sort of silence, one that would make me squirm if we weren’t in a noisy room with music and clinking glasses and fake laughter. I sit through it, waiting longer than I should.

I wait.

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