The Harlequin

Her face glowed with happiness. "I know. I check the website. But it doesn't mention your friend." She nodded at me. "Greg wants to know when you'll be back, don't you, Greg?" She was looking at me when she said it.

What I thought in my head was, When hell freezes over, I don't know what I would have said out loud, because Nathaniel saved us. "You know how you had to persuade Greg to come to the club?"

She nodded.

"I had to persuade her to get on stage."

"Really?" she said.

"Really," Nathaniel said.

Greg finally spoke. "Was it your first time on stage?"

"Yes," I said, wondering how to get out of this conversation without being rude. I'd have been rude, but Nathaniel wouldn't be. Bad for business, and rude just wasn't one of the things that he did much.

"It didn't seem like your first time," and he looked at me then. The look was the kind you never want a strange man to give you. Too much heat, too much sex.

I looked at Nathaniel. The look said clearly, End this conversation, or I will.

Nathaniel understood the look; he'd seen it enough. "I'm glad you enjoyed the show, and I hope to see you both again tomorrow. Have a wonderful night." He started to move away, and I followed.

Greg moved closer to us. "Will you be there tomorrow night?"

Nathaniel smiled, and said, "Of course."

He shook his head. "Not you, her. What's her name?"

I didn't want to give him my name. Don't ask me why, but I didn't. Nathaniel came to the rescue again. "Nicky."

I gave him a look, but my back was to them, so they couldn't see it. Greg said, "Nicky?"

Nathaniel took my arm and kept us moving, balancing the box in his other hand. "When she's on stage," he said.

"When will Nicky be at the club?"

"Never," I said, and walked faster. Nathaniel kept up with me. When we were clear of his, our, fans, his face showed dread. Dreading the fight that was coming.

Chapter Five

I WASN'T SO angry that I forgot to check out the crowd as we moved, but I had to force the anger down to be able to see straight. I was actually more embarrassed than angry, which meant the fight could be all the worse for it. I hated being embarrassed, and usually masked it with anger. Even knowing that's what I did didn't change the fact that I did it. It just let me know why I was angry.

I actually waited until we were in the parking lot to say, "Nicky? What the fuck kind of name is that?"

"One I'd remember," he said.

I jerked away from him hard enough that he almost dropped the box. "I'm never going to be on stage again; I don't need a stage name."

"You don't want them to figure out your real name, do you?"

I frowned at him. "I'm in the news enough. They'll figure it out eventually."

"Maybe, but if you give them a stage name to remember, they'll think of you as a stripper, not as a federal marshal. You're embarrassed enough that Detective Arnet saw us on stage that night."

"Yes, and I'm still waiting for her to tell the rest of the police that she and I work with."

"But she hasn't," he said.

I shook my head.

"She can't admit she saw you without admitting she was there, and why," he said.

"Cops go to strip clubs all the time," I said.

"But she didn't go to see strippers, she went to see me."

That stopped me. Made me turn and stare at him. "What do you mean?"

"She came to the club on a night you weren't there. Since you've avoided the club as much as possible, that's a lot of the time. Can we have this conversation in the car?"

He had a point. I unlocked the car, and we climbed in. "Where's the other car?"

"I had Micah drop me off, so he'll have the car if he needs it. I knew you'd drive me home."

It made sense. I turned on the car so the heater would start working. I finally realized it was a little chilly. My anger had kept me warm even with my coat flapping open. "What do you mean, Arnet came to the club?"

"She paid to have a private dance."

I stared at him. "She did what?"

Detective Jessica Arnet worked on the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, RPIT for short. It was the branch of local police that I worked with the most. I'd known she had a crush on Nathaniel, but I'd been so busy trying not to admit that I was living with a stripper that I'd kept him too much a secret. Until I brought him as a date to a wedding that Arnet was at. Then the secret was out, and she was mad at me for not telling her we were an item sooner. She seemed to feel like I'd let her make a fool of herself. She hadn't made a fool of herself, but she had come to Guilty Pleasures for the first time that one night that Nathaniel got me on stage. She was now convinced that I was abusing Nathaniel. Chain someone up on stage and hit them with a flogger a few times, and people think you're abusing them. Of course, the flogger had been Nathaniel and Jean-Claude's idea. A part of Nathaniel's regular show, apparently. What I'd done next had been all me, and Nathaniel. I had marked him, bitten him hard enough to bleed him, on stage. It had been the first time I'd voluntarily marked him like that, not just because the ardeur got out of control, but because he liked it, and I liked it, and I'd promised.

Arnet was convinced that I was Madame de Sade and Nathaniel was my victim. I'd tried explaining that Nathaniel was only a victim when he wanted to be, but she hadn't bought it. I'd been convinced she would tell the other cops and out me, badly. Living with a twenty-year-old stripper with juvenile arrests for prostitution was bad enough, but getting on stage myself, well, that would have been… oh, hell, bad.

"How private a dance did she get?"

He gri

I thought about it for a second, then had to say, "Yeah, I guess so."

"That's so sweet," he said.

"Just tell me about Arnet."

"She didn't want the dance. She wanted to talk." He seemed to think about it for a second, then added, "Okay, she wanted the dance, a lot, but she was too uncomfortable with me to ask for what she wanted. We just talked."

"About?" I said.

"She tried to get me to admit that you were abusing me. She wanted me to leave you and save myself."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You were already worried about Arnet telling Zerbrowski and the other cops what she'd seen. You were in the middle of some messy murder investigation. I didn't figure you needed the hassle, and I handled it."

"Has she been back?"

He shook his head.

"Tell me next time, okay?"

"If you want."

"I want."

"She can't tell on you, because she'd be afraid you'd tell them that she has a thing for your stripper boyfriend. She doesn't want to admit that what bothered her the most about the show you and I did is that she liked it."

"I didn't think Arnet swung that way," I said.

"Neither did she."

I looked at him, studied that face. There was a look on it now. "Just say it, the look in your eyes, just say it."

"You hate most in others what you don't like in yourself."

"Huh."

"What?"

"I thought something almost identical to that earlier tonight."

"What about?"

I shook my head. "Do you really think giving Greg and his girlfriend a stage name for me will keep them from making the co

"Yeah, I do. They'll think of you as a stripper named Nicky and that's it. You won't be anything or any more to them than that."

"Strangely disturbing, but why Nicky, why that name?"

"Because I knew I'd remember it."

"Remember it, why?"

"Because it was my name when I did porn."

I blinked at him. "What?"

"Nicky Brandon is the name I used when I did movies."