Texas Homecoming (19 page)

THE CLUB WAS FULL TO
capacity when Jasmine took the stage—but it wasn't the way it had been before. Before, she and Rosebud used to dance, then scoop up the money thrown at them and laugh to themselves that men were so stupid. Now...hell, now she just felt disgusted by those men. Because she'd learned that it wasn't some kind of genetic fault of the male sex that made them act that way. All men weren't like the grunting hogs in the club. There were good men out there. Honest ones, who cared about more than glimpsing a strange woman's body or copping a feel or getting laid. There were men like Luke Brand.

She wouldn't have believed it possible a month ago. Now, though, her tolerance level for these other men had reached an all-time low. They made her physically ill. But she had put the plan into motion now, and she had to play it out. So she danced, and the bass pounded in her temples, and she smelled the booze, sweat and smoke of the place and wondered how she'd borne it for so long.

But then she saw what she wanted to see out there in the crowd. At his table, with Leo. Gianni Petronella. And one of the girls, a seasoned pro named Grace, was giving him a little lap dance, exactly as planned. Petronella was so distracted by the wriggling on his lap and the flesh in his face that he hadn't even noticed Jasmine yet. But when Grace got up, he looked, and his face went cold. Jasmine sent him a smile and saw his face tighten with impotent rage. Because what could he do? Blow her away right there on the stage? No, he would have to wait. And then she would have him.

She finished her number and left the stage, leaving the bills scattered on the floor for the next dancer to pick up. Backstage, she passed Grace. "Did you get it?" she asked.

Grace nodded and slapped the cold metal into Jasmine's hand. Jasmine glanced down at the clip from Petronella's handgun. "Thanks, Grace," she said.

"I loved Rosebud, too, you know," Grace told her. "You get the bastard, hon."

IT WAS AFTER TEN WHEN
the five tired, hungry, cranky Brand men strode through the front doors of the inner-city strip club. Luke needed a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. Though to tell the truth, he didn't much care how he looked to patrons of a place like this one. Not that any of them were looking at him, anyway.

No. Their focus was elsewhere, and he couldn't much blame them.

A small red-tinted spotlight cut through the smoke-veiled room to fall on the woman who was just now slinking her way onto the stage in time with a pounding backbeat. She wore shoes that consisted of little more than a foot-long spike heel and a toe strap. Her long, shapely legs played a game of peek-a-boo from behind their weblike stockings. She wore long black gloves, a body suit made mostly of black mesh, with leg openings that seemed waist high, a strategically placed black feather boa and a sequined face mask. All told, not a hell of a lot. Men hooted and whistled and howled like-wolves, and the music blasted louder, and the woman twined the boa around herself as if it was about to become her next lover. Hands reached and groped, and lewd remarks were shouted.

"Hey, baby, lean down here, I have what you need!"

"Jasmine," Luke whispered, tensing.

A hand came down on his shoulder. "Easy now," Garrett said.

The stage was only a small raised section of the floor, a platform about three feet higher than the rest of the room. The only thing between her curvaceous body gyrating on the stage and the groping, slavering drunks in the front row were a handful of sparsely placed bouncers.

One guy got between them and managed to plaster his palm to her backside before he got pushed back.

"Hold on now, Luke. Just take it easy!"

"I'll give them easy," Luke said, and he shook off Garrett's restraining hand and started shoving his way through bodies toward the stage.

"Ah, hell," Wes muttered. "It's gonna be that dive down in Pueblo Bonito all over again."

^"
Nah. We'll probably end up in an American jail this time," Elliot said, as he and the others began shoving their way through right behind Luke.

Luke paid little attention to whether or not they kept up. He plowed ahead until he reached the stage and, when a bouncer roughly the size and shape of a gorilla stepped up to block his path, he decked the guy. The bouncer went down hard. Luke used his chest as a step up to the stage. Someone yelled, and his masked beauty backed away as Luke strode up to her. Someone grabbed him from behind, and Luke spun around, swinging. His fist struck someone's jaw, and his attacker went down. But Luke wasn't the only one under attack at this point In fact, the fight seemed to have spread from him to his cousins behind him, and even now was spreading further to uninvolved bystanders, who, upset at having their entertainment interrupted, were apparently amusing themselves by hauling off and popping the first guy who looked at them.

A chair flew past his head, and Luke grabbed his woman and pulled her low, out of its reach. Then he scooped her up, tossed her over his shoulder and strode across the stage, off the back of it and through the curtains there.

PETRONELLA FOLLOWED HER INTO THE
back, just as Jasmine had intended. He came up behind her, gripped her arm and propelled her past the dressing room and into Leo's office. Good. That was exactly what she wanted.

"You don't need to manhandle me, Gianni," she told him. "I came back here to make a deal."

He closed the office door, threw the lock. "You got nothing I want," he said.

"How sure are you of that?" She walked to the desk, pulled out Leo's chair and sat down. "Look, if I were going to turn you in, don't you think I'd have done it by now? God knows I was mad enough to, after you murdered my roommate."

He narrowed his eyes. "You're coming with me," he said, pulling out his gun.

"And what if I don't? What are you gonna do? Shoot me right here, in a bar full of people?"

"Hell, sweetie, they won't even hear the shot with all the noise out front."

She frowned. It
was
noisier than hell out there.

"Come on. Let's keep this clean. Come on out to the car. I kill one more person in his office, Leo will have a heart attack."

She nodded slowly. "This isn't fair, you know. It wasn't my fault I walked into this damn bar when I did—just in time to see you put a bullet in that guy's head."

"Tough break," Petronella said. "But that's life."

"I heard he was some kind of cop," she asked.

"Fed. A damned nosy one."

She licked her lips. "So that's it. You have to kill me then?"

"I got no choice, babe. It's nothing personal."

Again she nodded. Then she glanced down at the telephone on Leo's desk. She said, "Did you get all that?"

Petronella frowned hard. "What? What are you—"

"Every word," a voice said from the other end of the phone. "All of it on tape."

Petronella yanked out his gun, brandishing it at her. "What are you trying to pull?"

She shrugged. "Hell, Gianni, I'm just admiring the wonders of speaker phone. Leaves the hands free to run the tape recorder, you know? If you shoot me now, we'll have that murder on tape live, rather than just a confession."

Lunging forward, Petronella grabbed the phone's handset "Who is this?" he demanded. "Where are you?"

But there was click and then a dial tone. Before he could think it through, Jasmine drummed her fingers over the keypad, hitting random numbers before Petronella yanked the phone off the desk and threw it on the floor. Now redial would do him no good, either.

"Whoever it was, they're on their way here with the police right now."

To her amazement, a distant siren punctuated the sentence. Petronella backed away. "You think this is gonna save you? Do you? I'll find you, you smug little bitch. And your kid, too."

She shook her head. "Not if you're in jail, you won't"

He undid the lock, yanked open the door. A blast of sound rushed in, so much noise she thought a riot must have broken out in the bar. Petronella ran down the hall and out the back door. She stepped into the hall after him, but turned sharply at the sound of a familiar voice.

"That's it! I don't give a damn what your justification was, I don't want you dancing for men like that anymore. And maybe that sounds old-fashioned, and maybe you don't want any man telling you what to do." He was striding down the hall with a dancer flung over his shoulder. He stopped, set her down and softened his tone. "Well, fine, then, I won't tell you. I'm begging you. Please, don't get up on that stage again. It twists me all up inside."

The sounds of cracking bones and shattering glass came from the barroom. The sound of Petronella's car squealing away came from out back. Jasmine smiled crookedly, a little lump forming in her throat. The dancer wasn't so touched by Luke's emotional declaration, though. She hauled off and smacked him hard across the face.

Luke recoiled, blinking in shock. "What the hell was that for?"

"Maybe she doesn't like being manhandled by strangers," Jasmine said.

IT WAS JASMINE'S VOICE HE
heard, and it wasn't coming from the half-naked woman he'd just carried off the stage. He turned his head slowly and saw her standing there, looking less like the woman he'd fallen head over heels for and more like the one who'd first shown up on his doorstep. Big hair, coats of makeup, skimpy clothes.

"You've got to be kidding me," Elliot said from behind him. Luke turned to see Elliot, Garrett, Ben and Wes stumbling through the curtains into the backstage area off to the right. Each of them rubbing a different body part, they hurried to the hall. The riot out front seemed content to go on without them.

Luke swallowed hard and looked at the girl in front of him. Reaching out, he tugged off her face mask. She was cute and young and angry as hell. He shrugged. "Sorry."

Jasmine crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. "So just what the hell do you think you're doing, Luke?"

"I...I thought she was you," he said in defense.

"Oh, and if she had been, that would have been all right? Dammit, Luke, I had a plan!"

"What, to dance around up there half-naked so the bad guys would be sure to have a good clear shot at you?"

The young dancer was looking from one of them to the other, wide-eyed, and backing away. "You're both crazy," she muttered.

"Yeah, well, you're too young to be stripping, so get your backside home before the sheriff here tosses you into jail," Luke muttered. He dragged his gaze away from Jasmine just long enough to send the girl a look that had her scurrying into the dressing room, slamming the door behind her, then he focused again on his reason for being here. His reason for being...period. He swore softly before he closed the distance between him and Jasmine in two long strides. Then he pulled her into his arms and hugged her hard to his chest. "Damn, I'm glad to see you alive."

She sighed in what sounded like exasperation. But she didn't pull away, and she even hugged him back. "Come on," she said. "Thanks to you, Petronella got away. But we have the goods on him now."

Luke backed off, glanced at her.

"I'll explain later. I just need to grab something out of Leo's office first."

She ducked back inside. Luke followed her, not knowing what the hell had transpired before he'd arrived. He watched as Jasmine went to a shelf in one corner, shoved some notebooks aside and pulled out a small camcorder. She pushed the stop button, then ejected a small tape. Then she went to the desk, opened the drawer and took out a mini-recorder, taking the microcassette from that, as well. Coming forward, she took his arm as sirens screamed outside.

"We'd better slip out the back," Jasmine said, leading Luke back into the hallway with his cousins. "Technically, I'm still wanted for murder."

"Wait up a sec," Elliot said. He tapped on the dressing room door. "Hey, come on, we'll give you a ride out of this hole."

"I'm not going anywhere with you lunatics," the dancer squeaked.

Elliot looked at Garret, brows raised. Garrett sighed. "Damn, I hate being the heavy. All right." He hauled his badge out of his pocket and walked into the dressing room. When he came out again, he had the girl by the arm. She looked scared half to death, but at least she was decently covered now in a long wrap, Luke saw with relief.

"Everyone, this is Misti," Jasmine said. "She's new here."

Luke pushed open the back door, and they all trooped out to Ben's SUV and piled in: Garrett in the front with Ben, Jasmine in the middle seat beside Luke, and in the back, Misti, Elliot and Wes. Police cars pulled up out front as they drove away. Their flashing red lights bathed the bar's open door and cast a strobe effect over the brawlers who'd spilled out into the street. Broken glass winked in the intermittent glow.

Jasmine shook her head. "What the hell did you guys
do
in there?"

"What, you don't know?" Elliot asked. "We
rescued
you!"

She rolled her eyes. "Leo will have to close down for a week just to fix the place up."

"That's gonna be a real drain on the moral fortitude of Chicago, I'll bet," Luke said.

She narrowed her eyes on him. "Some people depend on that place for their living."

"Yeah, well, some people depend on some pretty sleazy things in the name of money, Jasmine. That doesn't make them right."

"So now you're what, the Moral Majority?"

"Closest thing to it in this part of town."

"How dare you sit there and judge me?"

He blinked and stared at her. Somewhere, somehow, he'd gotten in over his head. "That's not what I was doing?"

"You damned well were!"

"No, I wasn't!"

"Were so," Misti put in with a huff. "And me, too."

"You don't need to be judged, you need to be grounded and sent to bed without supper."

"You wish," she snapped.

"I meant it literally, kid, not figuratively. And as for you," he said, and turned back to Jasmine.