Page 14 of Vamp
With one last coat of Blood Kiss on my lips, I sat up straight and fluffed the pin-curls I wore in my hair for my first performance.
A wolf whistle called from behind me, and I looked past my reflection in the mirror to Charlotte standing behind me. “You’re doing the number night? Ilovewhen you do the number!”
The numberwas a solo performance I did with a pair of large feather fans that hid my body most of the time I was on stage. I wore a racy little costume made to look like a slinky negligée made of strings of pearls. Flesh-toned Lycra made up the spaces between, providing modesty but giving the illusion I was wearing nothing underneath.
It wasn’t a number I performed often, but I was always excited when McKenna, or Mac as we all called her, put it on the schedule. It was one of the few I had choreographed myself and seemed to be a real crowd pleaser. It made me feel feminine and sexy and totally fierce.
“You always look so damn hot up there on the stage when you do that number,” Marin said from a couple stations down from mine. “Like a real femme fatale.”
That was exactly what I needed to hear, what I was trying my best to emulate. God, I had the best friends in the universe.
The door to the dressing room was thrown open, and Sloane came bursting in, cheeks flushed, eyes wide and bright with excitement.
“You’re not going tobelievewhat Silas just told me! Okay, well, he didn’t really tell me so much as I overheard him briefing the rest of his security team, but still.”
Asher, fresh from her honeymoon and all tanned and glowy, held up her hand to slow a frantic Sloane down. “Whoa, whoa. Just take a breath.” Sloane did as ordered, her chest heaving with a massive breath. “All right. Now tell us what’s got your eavesdropping panties in such a bunch.”
Sloane rolled her lips between her teeth for a second and hopped from foot to foot like she could barely contain herself. “No one is supposed to know this, but there’s actually a celebrity coming in tonight.” She finished on a squeal so high it could have shattered glass.
A shutter of excitement filled the dressing room. “Did you hear who it was?” Layla asked.
Sloane’s face pinched up with a sour expression. “No,” she answered with a pout. “He caught me before getting to the good part and made me leave. The stupid jerk,” she ended on a grumble.
I turned back to the mirror and went about my routine, uninterested by whatever celebrity felt like coming to our bar. There’d been a time in my life where it wasn’t uncommon for me to rub elbows with famous people or people on their way up. I’d learned enough to know that most of them weren’t nearly as impressive as people made them out to be.
It really was amazing the way a person’s ego could inflate with just the smallest bit of fame. That was all it took to turn a person unrecognizable. To make someone you might have loved once a complete asshole, and I had no desire to set a single foot near that world ever again.
McKenna came into the dressing room just then, breaking up the conversation. “Five minutes to stage, Alma. You ready?”
“Just about,” I assured her.
I placed the finishing touches on my look, made sure my costume was in place, and mentally ran through the number as I made my way to the back of the stage. When the lights went out, I took my first position, my back to the audience and my fans held in such a way as to obscure me until I flicked them closed.
I breathed deeply, waiting for that hit of adrenaline, only tonight it was weakened by a different feeling. One I hadn’t experienced in all the times I’d walked onto this stage. Instead of my blood feeling like it was on fire with the need to dance, I felt a tingle beneath my skin, as if someone was watching me. Which was ridiculous since I was standing on a stage in front of at least a hundred people. But this was different somehow.
I couldn’t quite explain it. It was more centralized, as though one single pair of eyes was piercing my skin and seeing deep inside of me.
I shook off the strange sensation just before the spotlights flared and the opening beats of the song started. Then I pushed everything else away.
* * *
Roan
There was no use denying it, the set up at Whiskey Dolls was impressive as hell. I’d been to my fair share of clubs and bars, but this was a first. The club was done up in dark, rich wood, the walls draped in deep crimson velvet. The ambience gave the feel of stepping back in time, during prohibition. That, coupled with the way the staff was dressed, felt like I was sitting smack in the middle of a speakeasy in the 1920s.
After talking to Lincoln, I’d done a little digging on the Whiskey Dolls, the club as well as the performers who made the place so damn popular, and after what I read, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of this place before.
It wastheplace to be almost every night of the week, to the point I worried about getting in without blowing my cover. Fortunately, one of Linc’s guys knew the guy working head of security here, and with one phone call, they set it up for me to come in through a private entrance in the back, and from there, I was escorted to a table in a dimly lit corner of the club.
Everyone in the building was there to see the women who’d made this club famous, so no one was paying much attention to me, thank Christ, since this place had a strict dress code that didn’t allow for my sunglasses or baseball caps.
I’d traded in my signature uniform of jeans, cowboy boots, and T-shirt with an unbuttoned flannel over top, and dressed in slacks and a button-down tonight. It wasn’t something I was known for wearing. I was branded as a country boy through and through, so it was rare for me to wear suits and even rarer to be seen in a tux. Only for red carpets.
But as I got ready in my room at the inn earlier that evening, I felt the need to do something different. Something special. The Alma I’d known in the past knew how much I hated dressing like some well-off prick, and I wanted her to know that I’d taken our first time seeing each other in a decade seriously. I wanted her to know it was special to me,shewas special. So I’d done more with my hair than simply running my fingers through it right out of the shower. I’d trimmed up the beard I’d been growing since my arrival in Hope Valley. I wore the goddamn monkey suit, all for her. And as I sat at that table, waiting for my first glimpse of her in ten years, my heart beat against my sternum so fucking hard I thought it might bust right out of my chest and onto the table in front of me. I could barely hear anything over the whoosh of blood pumping in my ears.
Christ, I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d ever been this nervous, and I couldn’t stop the thought that, despite the weeks leading up to this moment, I hadn’t fully prepared myself for this night. For what it meant.
The show hadn’t even started yet, but I was unable to tear my eyes off the darkened stage, knowing it was only a matter of time. From the corner of my eye, I saw a waitress approach, dressed in a 20s cigarette girl uniform to go with the theme of the club. The head of security, Silas, stopped her before she made it to me and bent to speak quietly into her ear.