My heart leaped. “Do you know who?”

Beth shrugged. “Don’t know his name. He was here with Mr. Venkatesan the other evening—you remember. White guy, blue eyes. He said he wanted to talk to you.” She formed air quotes around the work “talk.”

God. It was definitely Mr. Sutton. “He’s still here?”

“Yeah. Room 4.” She gave me a narrow-eyed look. “You be careful. These rich men are trouble. Don’t let him push you into doing anything you don’t want to do.”

She walked off before I could respond. I took a deep breath and went to room 4, to see what Mr. Sutton wanted to say to me. Or do.

He was standing beside one of the sofas, reading something on his phone, but he looked up when I opened the door. I wondered if I would ever get used to him looking at me. Meeting his gaze felt like touching a live wire: devastating, electric. “Regan,” he said.

“Beth said you were looking for me,” I said. He looked incredible—he’d taken off his suit jacket, and his crisp white dress shirt was rolled up to his elbows, revealing his tanned forearms. With one layer stripped off, he looked more approachable, like someone I could actually talk to or get to know, instead of a mysterious business mogul.

“I was indeed,” he said. “You’ve considered my proposition?”

What a way to put it: proposition. It sounded oily. Like some sort of under-handed deal. “I thought about it, yeah.”

He raised his eyebrows. “And?”

“What is it that you want me to do?” I asked. “Walk around with my shirt off? There has to be something else.”

“I don’t get the impression that you would allow anything more,” he said. His mouth quirked in a way that was becoming familiar to me. He was amused, or—rueful? “I’ll try to explain. These are business gatherings, of a sort. Tedious. My companions are interested in things that don’t particularly interest me. So I’d like to have an aesthetically appealing distraction, to keep me somewhat entertained.”

“And that’s me,” I said. An aesthetic distraction. What kind of weird person had business meetings at a strip club? Was that something rich people did on a routine basis? Nothing about Carter Sutton made any sense to me. I could smell his cologne even from where I was standing, several feet away, and it made me feel light-headed. I hated that he had such an effect on me; it made me feel helpless, like I had no control over myself. Like I wouldn’t be able to tell him no.

“Yes,” he said. “My guests won’t touch you, or harass you in any way. You presence will be for my enjoyment alone.”

He was kidding himself if he thought those other dudes wouldn’t look at me at all, but I wasn’t about to say that to him. “You want to look at my breasts while I serve you drinks, and that’s it,” I said. I wanted to be absolutely sure that we were on the same page. No unexpected late-night gropings. Not that I would be opposed to it, necessarily. I just wanted to know that it was coming.

“That’s it,” he said. “And I’ll give you five thousand dollars.”

I looked at him. He was so good-looking, and so absurdly rich. He could have any woman he wanted, any socialite, any actress, anyone at all who appealed to him. He would just have to look in her direction and she would come running. I couldn’t figure out why he would spend money to have me, some working-class nobody, stroll around topless for a few hours. What did he get out of it that he couldn’t get elsewhere?

It had to be some sort of kinky sex thing. Maybe he was in a long-distance relationship and could only get his jollies vicariously. Maybe he’d had his heart broken, and was too deeply wounded to let another women close. That sounded like the plot of a bad romance novel, though; not like real life.

Maybe he just liked feeling powerful.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

He smiled. “Good. Tomorrow night, then.”

I went back out into the main room, feeling a little like I’d been bulldozed. Mr. Sutton had such a forceful personality that even being in the same room with him was exhausting. I’d never experienced that kind of personal charisma before. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with wealth or power, because none of the other clients made me feel like that. Only Carter.

Not Carter. Mr. Sutton. I had to maintain some sort of distance.

Otherwise I was going to lose myself completely.

I waited tables in a daze, but managed not to completely screw up anyone’s order. Beth was still limiting me to two, and keeping a close eye on my every move, but at the end of the night, she said, “You’re getting there. I’ll move you up to three tables, next time. Don’t turn away so quick after you take their orders. You want to linger a bit, like it’s hard for you to tear yourself away.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. Beth was a nit-picking micro-manager, and I was more grateful for her advice than I knew how to convey. I listened carefully to everything she told me and took detailed mental notes. By now I was sure that she was the best waitress in the club, and I was determined to learn everything from her that I could.

I made close to a thousand dollars in tips that night. Every night at the club was like Christmas, and I was like a kid with so many presents I didn’t know what to play with first. I stuffed the money under my mattress, where it would stay safe until I had a chance to deposit it, and slept soundly and without dreaming for ten hours.

When I arrived at the club the next afternoon, Mr. Sutton was waiting for me in room 4, just as he’d done the first time I served for him. He was wearing gray wool slacks and—a change from his usual shirt and suit jacket—a navy blue shawl-collar cardigan. I wanted to touch it to see if it felt as soft as it looked. Groping Mr. Sutton’s chest would be a side benefit.

He looked up from his phone when I came in, and said, “Bring five bottles of the usual whiskey. I doubt we’ll need that much, but I don’t want you leaving this room once my guests have arrived.”

He certainly knew how to cut to the chase, and that answered a question I’d been afraid to ask. If he’d expected me to go out to the bar half-naked, I would have done it, but I wouldn’t have been happy about it. “What time do you expect your guests?” I asked.

He glanced at his phone. “I told them 5:00, which means that Johansson will be half an hour early, and the rest of them will be half an hour late. You have time.”