“You’re really counting every cent there, Jaycee Kirk.”
Glancing over her shoulder, Jaycee saw Guy, one of the basement-bar bouncers, coming up beside her. With her tips spread out on the surface of the bar, she was sorting them into their denominations without shame. Yeah, he was right, every single cent was important.
The AD, also known as the Artists’ Dungeon, was a dark, but intimate space lit by yellow fairy lights and flickering candles. The walls were a tapestry of art created by those who graced this little-known establishment with their presence. Anything went, as long as patrons added respectfully or found their own virgin space.
Once in a while, photographs would be taken and anything that could be removed would be kept. Then the walls were painted or papered and everyone started again. She’d been told that happened once every few years. Jaycee hadn’t been around long enough to see it for herself.
The bouncer, Guy Smith, turned his back to the bar and hooked his elbows on it to scan the room. It was after closing, so the servers were bussing tables and cleaning up. Her job as the lounge singer meant she was exempt from putting the place back together. Guy was supposed to be on the door making sure customers got out of the building and into cabs. Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood to do his job tonight.
Except she’d been counting her tips for quite a while, so when she perused the room, all she saw were vacant seats and empty glasses. When the customers were here, everyone sat so low that they may as well be on the floor. The couches didn’t have feet and the tables were only knee-high. There were beanbags and customized armchairs, nothing matched, but the décor added to the cozy, though sometimes pretentious, atmosphere of the place.
Tips were good and she was allowed to make her own hours, so Jaycee liked it here. If she wanted to come early and hope for more tips, she could, and if she needed to duck out before closing, no one gave her shit. This was the best place to work to supplement her daytime work as a masseuse.
The first thought she had in response to Guy’s statement was, ‘Just trying to figure out if I’ll be able to eat this week.’ Jaycee didn’t say that, of course, she just folded the bills and tucked them into her wallet before scooping up the coins to add them in. “Can I help you with something, Guy?”
“Need me to walk you home?”
“Nope,” she said. “I’m crashing at Pete’s tonight.”
The way his lips pushed out in amusement betrayed he was hiding a smile, though he wasn’t doing a good job of it. “Sure you are.”
“What is that look?” she asked, swatting his elbow with the back of her hand.
“You and Petey… you know…”
“Uh, no,” she said. Facing him, Jaycee rested her side against the bar and folded her arms. “There’s no me and Petey… I don’t even call him Petey… maybe there’s something between you and Petey.”
“Maybe,” he said, keeping his eyes on the room. “Maybe that’s why I’m over here, sniffing out the competition.”
Joking or not, she reassured him with sass. “Well, honey, don’t you worry,” she said, leaning in. “I’ll be sleeping on the couch, so there will be plenty of space next to Pete in his big bed. I swear, I won’t repeat anything I hear.” Crossing her heart, Jaycee picked up her purse and slung the strap across her body.
“Maybe we’re thinking about sharing a feline sandwich,” he said, stopping her before she moved away.
“A feli… Oh, that’s funny, Guy. You’re a funny guy, anyone ever tell you that before?”
He pondered her question for less than a second. “Not really what people say about me, girl, no.”
Backing toward the door, she shook her head and waited for him to smile, but he was scrutinizing her, peering at her like he was a creep or she was a weirdo. Whatever, she wasn’t interested in figuring him out.
Leaving like she’d planned to, Jaycee didn’t give much more thought to the peculiar bouncer. When she’d had her apartment up the block, sometimes she’d gotten one of the guys to walk her home, especially if there were rowdy customers around. But she’d lost her place, she’d been evicted, and was couch surfing at the moment, relying on colleagues and clients’ kindness. She’d find something, soon… Something cheap, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Wondering again about Guy’s odd look, she decided she shouldn’t spend much time trying to decode it. Having only worked at AD for about a year, Jaycee was one of the newer staff members, Guy had been around when she started. They chatted like colleagues did, but it wasn’t like they spent time together. Jaycee wouldn’t consider him a friend, but she wouldn’t cross the street to avoid him either. He was just… there. As far as she was concerned, he could keep being there, in the periphery, as long as that was where he stayed.
Jaycee caught Guy doing the staring thing ten times over the next two weeks. It went from creeping her out, to irritating her, to amusing her, to just plain pissing her off.
Guy was known for keeping to himself, not saying much, just doing what needed to be done and going home. So why was he suddenly preoccupied with staring at her like he was trying to read her mind?
One of the nights she had to leave AD early, Jaycee moved through the crowd of drunken patrons and squeezed into the narrow stairwell to run up to the entrance. At the start of the evening, bouncers would be outside checking people, but as the night progressed, they would go down into the bar to mosey around keeping look out for trouble.
Closing was still an hour away and there was one bouncer standing just inside the entrance on sentry duty. And tonight, that guy was Guy.
Leaning against the wall with a foot propped against it, he was examining the latest piece of art on the wall opposite his position; a scribble that she hadn’t had the time to look at herself. At least, it looked like he was looking at it, but he could just be staring in that general direction, gazing into oblivion.
Guy was built of lean muscle, quick and capable. She’d seen him take big guys down faster than a lot of the bulky bouncers employed at AD. Apparently, Guy was the resident arm wrestling champion too, not that she ever hung around afterhours to see what the others got up to. Jaycee always had an early day and valued her sleep. Her partying days were long gone.
“I half expected to see you drawing moustaches and glasses on the figures,” she said when she got to the top of the stairs to see that he was indeed looking at an impromptu group portrait, an artist’s idea of a selfie.
“Got a pen?” he asked.
Guy didn’t come across as the type of person who’d know anything about art or have much of a creative bone in his body. But she’d never really considered what his day job might be. Everyone who worked here had a day job. Unfortunately, that was why it was called the Dungeon. This was the place for tortured, persecuted artists, who believed in their art, but failed to earn a living with it.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to exit.
The doorway itself was barely big enough for one person to walk through, let alone anyone trying to get past a guy resting his shoulders on the wall with his hips a foot from it. Guy put his propped foot on the floor and stood straight to give her some more space, though she still had to turn to the side to fit between him and the doorframe.
But when her face aligned with his chest, Jaycee stopped. “Something up?” he asked. “You want me to walk you back to your place?”
He was supposed to be on shift, not wandering the streets with women. Not that it mattered, that wasn’t why she’d hesitated. Since they had this private moment, Jaycee figured she should take advantage of it.
“Why do you keep staring at me?” she asked, forcing herself to look up. The intensity of his eyes made her breath catch in the back of her throat, but she was used to brooding and severe around here, so she recovered from their influence fast. “Honestly, I work here a whole year and we say ten words to each other, then suddenly in the last two weeks it’s like I’m the latest Beckett Trent.”
His brows quirked just a millimeter. “You like Beckett Trent?”
What a prick, was he laughing at her? Yeah, as far as he was concerned she was a dumb singer, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate beauty. “His earlier stuff, sure,” she said. “I think he lost his vision with his latest piece.”
Guy scowled at her. “What the hell do you know?”
Prodding his chest, she was momentarily surprised to feel how solid his pec was beneath his shirt, but now wasn’t the time to notice his body, she was pissed. “I know you keep staring at me and I’m telling you to stop it. You are not getting into my panties. I’ll say it again, slow, ‘cause I know sometimes meatheads only hear every other word. You’re. Not. Getting. Laid… Sex. Jaycee. Guy. Absolutely. Definitely. Not. Happening.”
The humor in his eyes didn’t turn his mouth, but it riled her. “Every other word, right, uh… You’re getting sex, Guy. Definitely happening.”
“What?” she asked, realizing just what she’d said to him when he picked out every other word. “You… I…”
When he patted her arm, he kind of looked pleased, but it was tough to tell what the condescending gesture was meant to convey, other than his irritating arrogance. “Don’t worry, girl. I promise I’m not interested in sleeping with you. Actually… you just said exactly the right thing.”
“What the hell?”
“Do you know the warehouse by the river on Bank?”
Should she? What kind of question was that? Folding her arms, Jaycee accidently brushed his torso, but she wasn’t going to let him know she even noticed the contact, so didn’t retreat. This guy was a piece of work. First, he laughed at her, questioned her knowledge, then pretended his creepiness was innocent.
“No,” she said, “no, Guy, I don’t know any fucking warehouse on the river. I’m not a fucking hooker, do you think I hang around on the docks looking for sailors on leave?”
His eyes tapered as his head tilted. “Do you curse a lot?”
“What are you my mother now? Does that make me less attractive? Fuck. Shit. Balls. Bullshit. Crappy. Cunty. Bastarding. Asshole…”
Feeling triumphant, she was about to stalk off when his head tilted further. “I don’t think balls is a curse word,” he said.
“Context!” she said, clenching her fists at her side. “It’s all about context! And what do you know anyway, did you go to Harvard or something?”
“Do they have a curse class at Harvard? Damn, I’ll have to look that shit up.”
Offense made her mouth open. “Oh, so you can swear, but I can’t?”
Why did he seem to be enjoying this? “Just trying to put you at ease, girl.”
“Stop calling me girl,” she said. Why was her blood pressure rising? Damn. She had to be more stressed than she realized if she was letting this random person get under her skin. In truth, she didn’t usually swear this much at all. “It’s insulting.”
“You just called me a fucking, cunty, bastardy, whatever you said.”
“You don’t remember that but you can recite every other word when I mention sex?”
He shrugged and folded his arms over his chest. Wow, those arms were big, Jaycee wondered if it would be possible to fit both hands around just one of his upper arms. “I’m a guy.”
“You just said you didn’t want sex!” she said. “Why would you notice a woman who you don’t want to have sex with mentioning sex?”
“You just said the word sex three times in the same sentence,” he said and dipped a fraction closer. “Can you repeat the question without using that word? Makes it difficult for meatheads to concentrate when you say it over and over.”
“It was two sentences, jerk-off,” she said and lost her train of thought when he breathed in deep, making his chest expand. “Wh… What was I saying?”
“Something about jerking off,” he said.
It was getting tough not to slug this bastard right across that stubble-roughened jaw of his. “You’re the jerk-off, Guy. Stop being a perv.”
One corner of his mouth quirked. “A perv? You think I’m checking out your tits or something?” he asked and did her the courtesy of not sniggering aloud as he drew his eyes off her cleavage. “You’ve seen Halle, right? G-cup, that’s what you’re competing with in the bra department down there, girl. Yours are cute, but…”
When Jaycee squeaked and slapped her hand to her cleavage, he took his fed-up eyes toward the door. Was she boring him? Halle’s boobs were super-enhanced because she wanted to model… glamor model, playboy model, but yeah… The server was the most beautiful woman Jaycee had seen in her whole life, living, dead, real, fictional, didn’t matter. Even she’d struggle to say no if Halle tried to seduce her, any human would be powerless to resist that body.
Jaycee shuffled another step to the side, and couldn’t even remember why the hell she was still standing here. “Now your ass on the other hand…”
His deep voice stopped her and she lifted her glare to him. “What about my ass?”
She didn’t see anyone coming in, but he hooked an arm around her neck and stood up straight to pull her against his chest. “Yep,” Guy said to someone, his voice rumbling from his chest to her face that was pressed into him.
He smelled good. Clean and warm. Like laundry detergent, male deodorant, and something… was that a solvent smell?
The moment Jaycee’s eyes closed and she realized she was breathing him in, she thrust her hands to his chest and shoved him away so hard that she stumbled against the opposite wall.
Guy’s hand shot out to steady her, to prevent her from falling down the stairs. But he didn’t have to actually touch her, and when she regained her composure, he held his hand a little further away. Paused. Then propped himself against his own wall again.
“Come down to the warehouse,” he said, gazing out the door again, either so he didn’t have to look at her or because there was something interesting going on out there. “Just whenever you’re ready.”
“For what?” she asked.
Dropping
his chin, he smiled at her. “To make a shitload of money, girl.”
(C) Scarlett Finn
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