The scrape of stool legs against the floor interrupted his thoughts.
In the mirror behind the bar, he observed a young woman taking the seat next to him. Even in this dim lighting, her hair gleamed like metal. Dye job or a wig. She wore so much eye makeup he couldn’t tell if her eyes were brown, black or gray.
His gaze dropped to her top, two triangles of material that sheathed round, pert breasts. A flicker of heat leaped in his chest as he caught the outline of taut nipples, one straining a triangle decorated with white stars on blue, the other overworking a triangle with red-and-white stripes.
She looked like a Fourth of July celebration about to pop.
“Like my top?” she asked in a southern drawl.
With Sally, he’d been rusty at interpreting female signals, but he picked up this woman’s more clearly than if she’d banged a gong in his ear. Just the kind of wake-up call to get outside of his funk, get back to the present.
“It goes with my skirt,” she continued as though it was a two-way conversation.
He knew better than to look, but it was like telling Bambi to stay out of the forest. The skirt was thigh high and red. Below it, shapely legs in fishnet stockings ended in a pair of black stiletto heels with some kind of symbol on the side.
“It’s a fleur-de-lis,” she explained, pointing down at her shoe with a frosty-pink fingernail, “for my boys, the Saints.”
Took him a moment. “The New Orleans Saints?”
“Who dat!” She grinned so wide, he saw she had a slightly crooked front tooth, which almost gave her a sweet, naive quality.
The operative word being almost. Sweet, naive types didn’t wear fishnet stockings, stiletto heels and small, tight triangles into dive bars.
Clunk.
He looked stupidly at his phone lying on the floor.
“I’ll get it,” she said cheerfully.
“No—”
But she’d already scooted off her stool, a mass of red, fleshy curves and stars and stripes...and it was all he could to sit there and stare.
She straightened slowly, a funny look on her face.
He held out his hand for the phone.
But she didn’t return it. Instead, she shifted closer, so close he could see that her eyes were brown. A rich, warm color, like melting caramel. He inhaled a slow breath, caught her scent. Fresh and soapy, as though she’d just stepped out of a shower. Surprising. These girls usually poured on the perfume.
“I’m getting a pulsation,” she whispered.
Took him a moment to realize it was an incoming call. “I don’t like ringtones,” he said. “Keep it on vibrate. Give it to me.”
“It’s not a call. It’s a pulsation...” She waggled her fingers in the air. “From out there.”
“Through my phone.”
She nodded. “I’m getting a message.”
Message. He glanced at her outfit. Was she a stripper from Brax’s club? Someone sent over to deliver a message to him?
“From Braxton?”
“Who?”
“Yuri?”
“I...don’t know a Yuri.”
This was starting to feel like another damn twenty questions and no answers from one of Brax’s employees.
“Are you going to tell me?” he snapped.
“I think it’s from...your father.”
Drake felt numb, frozen. Couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Finally, something inside thawed enough for him to speak.
“Impossible.” His heart banged so hard and fast, his chest ached.
But she was off someplace else. She swiveled slowly on her stool, her head tipped as though listening to a faraway tune.
“He says he loves you very much.” She smiled at Drake.
Enough! As though jolted to life by an electric prod, he bolted upright and blew out a lungful of air.
“Give me the damn phone.” He snatched it from her hand. He didn’t need this. Not from some whacked, high-woo-woo messenger. Was this Yuri’s idea of a sick joke?
Those big brown eyes implored him. “I didn’t mean to—”
“How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much money did they give you to play this game?”
For a girl who liked to talk, her silence was a message in itself. She was holding something back, but what? He no longer thought she worked as a stripper at Topaz—Brax liked his girls to wear sleek outfits, not castoffs from a Yankee Doodle Dandy parade. Plus, Brax liked to do his own talking. He would never send someone, especially this someone, to do it for him.
Yuri, on the other hand, was crafty, pathologically so, but immature. Maybe the Russian got the itch to dig at Drake, throw him off, so he’d hired this girl, maybe minutes before she walked in here, with hasty instructions to play on his father’s death. Maybe she was hard up for money, feared the thug or both.
“Why don’t you stick to what you’re good at.” He gave her a scathing once-over. “Although anybody who has to advertise to that extent probably isn’t all that good. Who hired your sorry ass?”
She opened her slick red lips to say something, but nothing came out.
Sally appeared, pushed a coaster toward his neighbor. “What can I get ya?”
Miss Who Dat swerved her stricken gaze to the bartender. “I, uh...”
He set down his bottle, hard, on the bar. “Order something. We have some talking to do.”
“Cherry cola?” she asked in a wispy voice.
Sally gave him a what’s-up look. He flashed her a mind-your-business one back.
“Maraschino juice in a cola okay?” Sally asked.
“F’sure. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Sally. And you’re?”
“Uh...” Her gaze darted across the bar. “Remy.”
“Nice to meet you, Remy.” She pointed to Drake’s bottle. “Another?”
He shook his head as an old Sinatra tune, “Luck Be a Lady,” started playing in the background.
Remy tapped her fingers on the bar. “I like this song.”
“Fine. Who put you up to this?”
She gave him a blank look. “Nobody.”
“Sticking to that story, eh?”
The way she lowered her thick black lashes, then raised them slowly, made him think of a theater curtain. He wondered what show he would see next.
“Like I told you,” she said, oozing earnestness, “I don’t know a Brassell or Yuri.”
“Braxton.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He’d pulled that same stunt a hundred times. Mispronouncing a name to pretend he didn’t know the person. Playing dumb when you actually knew everything about the person, from the city where they were born to their cat’s name.
She