Highest Bidder (Salacious Players’ Club)

Daisy

Geo keeps looking at me. His curious green eyes are tracking me between drinks, his lips ready to ask what happened. But I can’t tell him. It’s only a matter of time before Ronan tells Emerson Grant about my secret, how I essentially stalked him all the way to the club, and I’ll lose my job. Might as well get in one more night of tips before that happens.

As soon as I walked in, Geo could tell. There’s not a touch of makeup on my face. My hair is a disheveled mess. I finger-combed it into a messy bun, before getting out of my van behind the club. Honestly, my appearance might be grounds for firing anyway. No one wants to have their martinis delivered to them in an exclusive sex club by a walking hot mess express like me.

I don’t make eye contact and I can’t even force a genuine smile as I work. My eyes are on the door every chance they get, but Ronan never passes through that curtain. I don’t know if I want him to or not.

My eyes are craving the sight of him, but even I know that if he comes to the club tonight, he won’t be spending it with me. Just the thought of him with another woman has me wanting to throw up.

He will, though.

A man like Ronan doesn’t stay lonely. I hope for his sake that he’s not torn up for long. The idea of him being even a little unhappy guts me to my core.

“Okay, what the fuck?” Geo ambushes me on my way out of the storage room, and I stare up at him with wide eyes.

“What?” I act naive as I try to move around him.

He steps in my way. “What happened with Ronan?”

“Nothing,” I blurt out, sounding less than convincing.

“Did you break up? Get in a fight?”

“Geo!” I snap, but the moment I look into his eyes, my throat starts to sting and I struggle to form any words without completely losing it. So I just stare at him through moist lashes without speaking.

“Oh, Daisy.” His shoulders slump and his head tilts as he pulls me into his arms, hugging me tightly.

And I lose it. Silently, I cry into his shirt, my chest shaking with my sobs. He holds me long enough to let this round of tears complete before he pulls away and wipes my hair out of my face.

“You don’t have to tell me anything. Unless he hurt you,” he replies, leveling his intense stare on my tear-soaked face.

I shake my head as I wipe my cheeks with my sleeve. “He didn’t hurt me.”

“I didn’t think so, but I had to be sure.”

“It was my fault. It’s all my fault.”

With his firm hands on my shoulders, he leans his head down, so I’m looking at him again as he says, “Everyone fucks up, Daisy. Everyone.”

I force a sad smile. “I know. But not everyone fucks up as bad as I did.”

“I’m a bartender. I hear it all, and trust me…yes, they do. And I don’t even know what you did.”

A wet laugh escapes my lips. I feel about a hundred pounds lighter, but not a whole lot better. I still have to face that floor full of customers, and I’m not ready.

“Take a few minutes to get yourself cleaned up. And after work, I’m taking you to that stupid fucking piano bar to cheer you up, okay?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to. Marianna will cover for me. It’s slow tonight, and she’ll love the extra shift.”

“Okay, fine,” I reply.

Geo presses his lips to my forehead before disappearing through the door and back out to the floor. I stand in the hallway for a while before heading to the bathroom to clean up and return to work.

Marianna takes the shift, and when I’m cut around midnight, Geo and I walk arm in arm down the dark streets toward the bar.

I didn’t think I’d be in the mood to drink and have fun tonight, but the minute the bartender brings me my whiskey sour, I realize all I really want to do is get as drunk as possible. The bar is already packed, and I feel as if everyone is way ahead of me in their path to intoxication. So the first one goes down fast.

Geo and I find a table, by some miracle, and we sit down to watch the dueling pianos on stage. The crowd is wild, singing along and dancing as the two musicians play. By the second song, I’m ordering my second drink…but the moment she delivers it to our table, I can’t seem to stomach even a sip. I want to throw up already. I feel pathetic.

Geo is watching me like a hawk, until his second drink is gone, and then his attention is stolen by a handsome man sitting with a table full of rowdy couples. Judging by the trucker hat and bootcut jeans, I’d say he’s barking up the wrong tree, but I trust Geo to make the right call on that.

The piano bar isn’t easing my pain the way I wanted it to. If I could stomach more than a few sips of this drink at a time, maybe I wouldn’t feel anything. Instead, I’m doomed to suffer through this heartache sober. I’m singing along like my life depends on it and scribbling request after request on the slips of paper they leave on the table, in hopes that I can savor an ounce of distraction.

Geo and I sing and laugh together. More than once I catch him texting someone on his phone and I lean over, trying to see who it is, but he pulls it away.

“Who are you texting?” I ask with a teasing smile.

His grin is tight and thin as he shrugs. “No one.”

After his non-response, I turn back to the stage to watch the piano players, and my mind wanders on its own, trailing down memory lane without permission. It’s the tip jar that does it. Seeing someone slip a bill into the jar on the piano calls back memories of Paris, playing that dirty old piano on the street and watching as someone dropped a bill on the top of it for me.

Ronan’s proud grin as he watched me play.

I nearly start crying, just as one of the musicians calls out my name. Then he breaks out in a rendition of “Hey Jude,” one of my requests, but instead of singing along, I break out in tears.

“Are you okay?” Geo asks, and I try to focus on him, but my stomach turns instead.

“I’m fine,” I reply.

“Why don’t we call it a night, Daisy? It’s late.”

“Go home, Geo. I’ll be fine,” I say, my voice strained.

“Yeah, right,” he says with a laugh, just as the noise and music and drinks become too much.

When I bolt up from my seat, I do it too quickly and the chair falls to the floor behind me. I stumble as I try to pick it up, feeling as if I’m going to pass out again.

“I’m fine!” I shout at Geo as he tries to help me. He gives me a shocked expression.

The music of the pianos is still blaring around us, the room still happy and energetic, although I feel as if I’m dying inside. When the fainting turns into an urge to throw up, I tear myself away from Geo and sprint to the bathroom.

It’s crowded, girls gathering around the mirrors and talking loudly. I rush straight into the stall and the moment I see the toilet, I fall to my knees and throw up everything in my stomach. By the time I’m done, I’m sobbing and struggling to keep myself off the floor.

I’ve been in here for a while. I don’t want to leave. Time melts and morphs, until it doesn’t exist, and I’m resting my head against the bathroom stall, wishing I could just close my eyes and not have to face reality anymore.

Then a deep voice calls me back to life.

“Sorry ladies, excuse me,” he bellows, and my eyes pop open. “Daisy, where are you?”

There must have been something in that one drink because Geo sounds a hell of a lot like Ronan right now.

“Ronan?” I mutter.

The stall door shakes.

“Open it, Daisy. Now.” That authoritative command sends a chill down my spine and I nearly start sobbing as I reach up to flip the lock on the door.

A moment later, it’s open, and I’m staring up from the grimy bathroom floor at the sexiest man in all of Briar Point.

Of course, he looks gorgeous in the dive bar bathroom lighting.

“Jesus,” he mutters angrily. Then I’m being lifted into the air by two strong arms, and I find myself melting against his chest. I swallow down the taste of shame on my tongue. He sounds so disappointed, and I try to shield myself from it.

The room is still spinning, while the scenery around me changes from bathroom to bar to cool night air. Then the inside of Ronan’s car.

And just like that, everything feels right again.