Tiny Dancer [Divine Creek Ranch 13] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Quinten stood silently beside him, gaping at the fresh-faced angel who entered his kitchen dressed in sweats and a T-shirt that were much too big for her. Her cheeks were rosy from the hot shower. Camilla was beautiful all the time, but this side of Camilla was one he’d never seen before.

  Ben imagined that Camilla took a lot of time with her appearance, judging by how put-together she always looked, and seeing her like this humbled him. With her makeup gone, the slight upward tilt at the outer corners of her eyes and the unusual color of them almost hypnotized him. Judging by the uncertainty in her gaze, Camilla felt at a disadvantage. She bit her soft, rose-colored lower lip, and the vulnerability in her expression brought out all kinds of protective instincts in Ben.

  Please, this has to work. I’m a goner.

  Camilla stepped into the kitchen barefoot. “Hiya, boys.” Her gray-green eyes flitted from one to the other of them.

  Make her comfortable so she won’t ask to leave.

  “Hi, sugar. Why don’t you take a seat at the bar. We’re making a little snack. Thirsty?”

  Camilla nodded as she climbed up into one of the barstools, and he regretted not coming around to lift her into it. The thought of doing that for this petite, independent beauty made him happy. Quinten poured her a glass of orange juice.

  “Would it be possible to go get my overnight bag from my trunk? I wasn’t thinking when I left the car and forgot it.”

  Hating to disappoint her but grateful for the opportunity they’d been given by the weather, he pointed at the radio, tuned to the local station, on the kitchen counter. “Sorry, sugar. They’ve closed the river bridge and a bunch of the low water crossings. I doubt we’ll be able to get back into Divine until tomorrow.”

  Camilla nodded. “Grace told me that might happen. You could take me down to her house if you wanted to. There’s no low water crossings between us, at least not that I recall.”

  “Is that what you want? Really?” Quinten asked, his tone reserved. He and Quinten had hoped for the possibility of a night like this, and neither one of them wanted to fuck it up.

  Camilla’s gaze skirted left and right as she clasped her fingers together on the counter in front of her. “You did say that you wanted to talk privately with me?” Her words were toned as a question rather than a statement. Was she asking to stay?

  Ben replied, “Yes, we did. Why don’t you stay then? You’re safe here—safe with us. We can deal with your car in the morning.”

  She picked up her glass of juice, slipped from the barstool, and went to the window by the kitchen table, which looked out over the backyard. Ben joined her just as lightning flashed, and he could see the water standing on the saturated ground, as much as a foot deep in some areas.

  “I’ll stay.” Her beautiful face was reflected in the window glass as she looked out over the yard. He watched her expression, trying to gauge her emotions and whether that was what she really wanted, and their gazes met in the reflection. The image was dimly lit, but he thought he saw vulnerability in her eyes that she didn’t often show.

  The scent of her freshly washed hair wafted in his nostrils as he gently brushed it from her shoulder. Speaking to the issue worrying him the most, Ben murmured, “I’m sorry. Please don’t leave Divine, sugar.”

  “You know the last thing I ever wanted to do was get crossways with either of you.” Her tone was apologetic.

  Ben stroked her shoulder then let his fingertips trace down her upper arm, raising gooseflesh there. “Come sit. Let’s eat first.”

  She nodded and returned to her seat and thanked Ben when he put a turkey sandwich on a plate for her. She seemed to collect her thoughts for a moment, then murmured, “Before you say what you need to say, can I ask some questions?”

  “Sure.” If it would help her settle, he’d tell her whatever she wanted to know.

  “Did you fuss so much about the girls dancing together before I came to work for you?”

  Figuring that answering in as few words as possible was good, and honesty was the best policy, Ben said, “No.” He shared a quick glance with Quinten, who seemed content to let him speak for the both of them.

  “Do you fuss at Corinna and the rest of the girls about their work clothes as much as you do me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you fuss at me so much because you think I’m unprofessional?”

  “No. I don’t have any problems at all with the way you conduct yourself, and never have.”

  “Then why are you both being such assholes to me about dancing with my friends and the way I dress?” The need for an honest answer was in her eyes as she transferred her gaze from him to Quinten. “You answer this one, Quinten. And ‘no’ is not an option.”

  “We’re jealous of other men looking at you. We understand you want to make as much in tips as you can. We understand you want to enjoy breaks with your friends. We can’t take the way men look at you like they want to eat you alive. Like they want to strip you naked, lay you on the bar, and eat you up, like we—”

  Ben put a hand up. “I think she gets it.” Camilla’s cheeks had gone bright pink, and she opened her mouth to say something, but Ben politely cut her off as well. “He’s right. We’re jealous. Can I ask you a few questions?”

  Looking like she’d realized she’d set herself up for this, she nodded.

  “Is there something between you and those three bouncers?”

  Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “No. We’re friends. I worked with them so they were off-limits. Work is work and—”

  “—pleasure is pleasure. We know.” Ben modulated his tone. “Why?”

  “Why? You know the reason why. I got involved with the assistant manager at the Dollhouse when I first started dancing. Tyler had a jealous streak a mile wide, which made it hard for me to do my job. Not only that, he was also an embezzler, he was dealing drugs, prostituting a couple of the dancers—”

  Ben hadn’t known all the details. “Did he ever try to—”

  “No. Too jealous, and he’d also helped to cover up a murder that happened when a drug deal went bad. How he found time to do all that crap without me knowing is beyond me. It was traumatic opening my door and finding police officers standing there, wanting to question me. The whole experience left me feeling dirty.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “State correctional facility in Huntsville, where I hope he’s rotting as some gigantic inmate’s girlfriend. Prick.”

  Ben swallowed a chuckle at the look of disgust on her face.

  “I swore off dating men I worked with. I turned the bears down—”

  “The bears?”

  Camilla grinned. “Yeah, that’s what I call them. My little nickname because they’re all so big…and bearish.”

  Ben didn’t need the reminder. “Gotcha.”

  She must’ve picked up on his tone because she shrugged and smiled apologetically. “Anyway, Brandon came along and we never worked together, so…” She seemed reluctant to talk about her last boyfriend, Brandon, so Ben let it go. He wondered if there was a deeper reason why she’d kept her walls so high. “I need peace in my work relationships, and that’s unlikely if my heart is involved. When I started working for you and Ethan, your employer-employee relations policy was nearly as strict as mine, so I stuck to my guns.”

  Quinten took a sip of his juice after finishing the last bite of his sandwich. “Is that the reason why practically the first words out of your mouth when you met me were, ‘I don’t date coworkers, ever. Work is work, and pleasure is pleasure. The two don’t mix, not for me’? You could tell I was interested in you?”

  Camilla hesitated but then said, “I’m not being egotistical in what I’m about to say. Remember where I’m coming from as a former dancer. I know that look. I could see what might happen, and I wanted to nip it in the bud. I wanted us to be able to enjoy working together.”

  Quinten sighed and lightly stroked the top of her hand where it lay on the counter. Ben watched a
s she looked down at Quinten’s hand on hers and a tremor ran through her fingers. “I’ve enjoyed working with you. How I felt never changed.” He drew slightly closer and tilted his head, looking at her, warmth in his eyes. “I respected your boundaries, but it didn’t change the way you make me feel.”

  Ben hid a smile when Camilla mirrored his movement and leaned toward him unconsciously, compassion written on her face. “I thought I was doing the best thing for all of us.”

  Ben was done wasting time. “About that little rule of yours, sugar.”

  She broke the long gaze she shared with Quinten and turned her attention to him. “Yes?”

  “I respect your self-discipline about work. But I’m curious about the ‘pleasure’ part of that little rule.” His tone felt a little more forceful than he intended, but he wanted an answer.

  She sat upright, and her eyes never left his face, and Ben had the oddest sensation of being drawn to her, like a magnet. Hunger shone in her eyes, not for food, but for something more. The intuitive force inside him somehow knew that. She was waiting. “If you keep pleasure separate from work, then when was the last time you went out on a date or had sex?”

  Her cheeks colored at his word choice, and he watched as her breathing sped up. “That’s none of your…” He gritted his teeth because he knew the answer, and a flash of near panic flickered in her eyes. “Not since I came home from Europe, alone.”

  Ben nodded at his correct assumption. He’d known something was up back when she’d first come to work for them. There had been a hollowness in her eyes that he’d seen in unguarded moments. He’d never said anything because she was entitled to privacy. She’d never spoken of it, throwing herself wholeheartedly into her new job. “So work is work. You work, and work, and work. When you told us about Brandon, you said you were happy for him.”

  “I was. I am.” Her voice broke on the last word.

  The pain on Camilla’s face forced him into action, and he skirted the marble countertop to stand in front of her.

  “Have you heard from him since?”

  Her response was a shake of her head. She made a valiant attempt at shoring up her defenses as she said, “It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter if he’d tried to contact me. It doesn’t change anything.” Her vulnerability brought out his protective instincts as he stroked her shoulders.

  “Tell us what happened. Did he cheat?”

  “No. I don’t—no. He didn’t cheat.” She tried to draw back from him but he moved a little further into her space. She looked torn between wanting to run out the door or collapse against him. Her chin quivered and she put a shaky hand to her mouth.

  “Tell me.”

  The flash of pain in her eyes was heartbreaking. “I thought I was safe with him. We were there for each other—at least I thought we were. It was unintentional, but he left me, just like—”

  Quinten stroked her thigh. “Like who?”

  “Nothing. Brandon didn’t mean to hurt me.”

  It sent a wave of helpless fury through Ben to think of her alone and so far away from home. He felt like a first-class jerk for pushing her, but his instincts were telling him to push as she tried to evade. “Like who?”

  “Like everyone else! Okay?” She pushed his hand off her thigh and pulled away from Ben’s grasp, suddenly angry. She glared at the two of them. “He left me, just like anyone else I’ve ever cared about. My rule keeps me from getting hurt anymore.”

  Ben cupped her hot cheek in his palm and caressed her there. “You look like you’re hurting pretty good right now, sugar.”

  Spirit flared in her eyes. “Because you’re picking at me. Life is less scary when you don’t have to worry about being left. I don’t get let down.”

  “You don’t let anybody in. That way you don’t get hurt. Did Brandon hurt you?”

  Tears overflowed Camilla’s eyes. “No! He’d never hurt me. He didn’t say or do anything to hurt me! He just looked at her, and that was it. I knew. I’d traveled all those miles with him, relied on him, trusted him, needed him, was there for him, and it…evaporated.” It was obvious Camilla was in another place as she spoke. “We went to a private club, in London, mostly just to socialize, not so much to scene. The woman who became his Mistress was with some friends of ours. She had this…aura about her, and I noticed that Brandon couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She smiled at him, and I saw it in her eyes too.”

  Camilla put her hand to her throat, and Ben could see that she’d broken out in a red rash from there down to her chest above the neckline of the T-shirt. He knew from working with her that she broke out in hives when she got overheated, excited, or upset.

  “I knew he needed a Mistress. Knew he wasn’t complete, but I still loved him. As submissives, we were both still happy with each other, but what she had to offer took him to a whole new level.”

  “Did he break up with you?”

  Camilla wiped at her wet cheeks with the heels of her hands and sniffled. “No. He’d sooner cut off his right arm than hurt me. I had to break up with him.” Surprise came into her eyes. “It’s been more than two years since that happened, and this is the first time I’ve cried about it since then. I told him I loved him and that I wanted him to be happy. I packed my things, and I came home on the next flight. I walked through the front door of The Dancing Pony the next day.”

  Ben recalled the way she’d thrown herself into learning the club and taking on her duties with a singular devotion that he’d appreciated and admired. It had been a broken heart that had fueled her drive back then.

  “So what had been your rule to keep your work relationships professional became an obsession to keep you from being hurt anymore.” His intuition prodded him to push her just a little further. “Who else left you?”

  She looked up at him, sniffled, and wiped at her eyes. “What?”

  “You heard me. Who else left you?” In the corner of his eye, Ben saw Quinten frown at him. Ben knew it would be hard for Quinten to purposely take her someplace that would be emotionally painful for her. Demonstrating his trust in Ben, Quinten said nothing and waited for Camilla’s response.

  She licked her lips and looked down at her hands. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Too scared?” Whatever this issue was, it was the real reason she’d built those high walls. Brandon had just been the icing on the cake.

  Camilla shrugged. “I was in love with Tyler. I talk about him like he was a rat, but he was handsome and charismatic.” She nodded as she wrapped her arms around herself and looked down, evading his eyes. Her cheeks flooded with more color as she blinked back tears. “Yeah, he had me, heart and soul. I was pretty naïve. Stupid.” She breathed slowly through her mouth, and he heard the tremble.

  She could reassure him all she wanted, but her body language told a different story. “You never talk about your parents.” She froze, confirming his suspicion. “You never talk about going home for the holidays or spending your time off with them.”

  “They’re gone.”

  Ben stroked her cheek until she made eye contact with him. “Please tell us, sugar.”

  “Mom is dead. My dad is gone too. He might as well be dead, as far as I’m concerned.” She looked him full in the face, stark pain in the turbulent green depths of her eyes, and he knew he’d reached the heart of the matter.

  He hated opening this wound. He knew from past experience it was necessary. Of the three of them, Quinten was the only one who had parents who were still around. “What happened?”

  “I was never close to my father. He worked a lot and never really showed much interest in me…or my mom. He cheated on my mother and eventually left her—and me—for the other woman. He walked out one day with a packed suitcase and we never saw him again. I was a preteen at the time. Mom tried to hold it together, but she fell apart. Committed suicide when I was sixteen. My mom had no family left to take care of me, and when the state contacted my father…”

  “Go on.” His heart was
breaking for her, but he did his best to hide the emotion in his voice so she wouldn’t be distracted.

  “He came and got me. I barely recognized him. His clothing was different. Expensive.” Foreboding passed through him, and he braced himself for what she said next. “He told me that he’d never loved my mother, had married her because she’d gotten pregnant with me. He acknowledged that I was his daughter but then told me that he didn’t have any interest in pursuing a relationship with me, disrupting the life he already had elsewhere. He—” Camilla’s breath escaped her in a huge rush, and her shoulders slumped. She looked almost panicked when she gazed into his eyes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about that day.”

  “Let it out, sugar.” Ben brushed back her mane of strawberry-blonde curls, ready to gather her into his arms, but he wanted her to finish first. Get it out of her system.

  “He picked me up from the temporary home I’d been placed in and took me to an apartment. It was in an okay neighborhood. Not bad but not fancy either, and it was close by my high school. The apartment looked like it wasn’t lived in. There was a little furniture but otherwise pretty barren. I thought he’d changed his mind and wanted me with him.” Her hand shook as she wiped another tear. “Once we were in the apartment, he finally explained.

  “He said I was sixteen and nearly grown. He hadn’t been in my life for years and didn’t see where it would help either of us to cause upheaval by introducing his nearly grown daughter into his new family. I guess that means I have half brothers or half sisters out there somewhere.

  “He said he’d already set up a checking account for me, which he’d make regular deposits into, and he’d signed a lease and would pay rent through the day I would turn eighteen. He said he would provide for me as long as I stayed in school, stayed out of jail, and didn’t get pregnant until I turned eighteen as long as I agreed to his one rule.”

  Shit. “What rule?” What the fuck was it about that word—rules—that he now hated?

  “No contact with him, except through a lawyer and in emergencies only. If I came to his house or contacted him at home, he’d cut me off. By the look in his eyes I knew he meant it. He said he felt an obligation but he had responsibilities too.”