“To finance my education,” Izzy cuts in. “And I don’t wear a g-string.”

Ginger looks past me at Izzy and throws her hands up, exasperated. “You should be interning at Lawrence Livermore and discovering the cure for cancer, or developing sustainable food sources for third world countries.”

“I looked into it,” Izzy tells her. “Couldn’t make the rent on what they pay interns, so the cure for cancer will just have to wait until they revamp their salary structure.”

“No offense here, Ginger,” I say, turning to watch Jonathan and the guys as they sound-check up on stage. “You know I love Jonathan like a brother, but I’m pretty sure you knew he was one of the biggest man-whores in the Bay Area before you started sleeping with him. I can’t speak for what goes on between you two, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a whole lot of ‘respect as a person’ for most of those girls,” I say, making air quotes. “He was just fucking them.”

“No offense taken,” she says, and I can tell from her expression she means it. “The difference is, sex is a basic instinct. It’s organic and necessary, and, when it’s consensual, both partners benefit. How do you benefit by dancing on stage?”

“Other than the money?”

“What’s the price of your self-respect, Red?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.

“Four hundred a night,” I say a little defensively, then add with a shrug, “and it makes me feel desirable and sexy.”

“You are sexy and desirable,” Ginger counters. She waves a hand across the crowded bar. “Any guy here would give his left nut to get into your pants.”

I give her the skeptic’s squint. “So, you’re saying sleeping with those guys would be less degrading than dancing for them?”

She points at me as her eyes brighten, thrilled that I’m finally getting it. “Exactly!”

I don’t even have a response.

Jonathan saves me from needing one when he leans into the mic and says, “This first song goes out to my all my favorite girls.” He grins and flicks a salute in our direction, and two girls at a table in front of us squeal and wave their arms in the air, bouncing in their seats. I’d bet tomorrow night’s tips that Jonathan’s slept with both of them.

As Jonathan and the guys launch into their first set, Ginger stands and drags Izzy and me off our bar stools. “C’mon, you guys,” she yells as she tows us to the dance floor. “Time to use your siren powers for good instead of evil.”

On stage, Topher whips his long blond hair in and out of his face, and his lead guitar is like an extension of his long lean body as he cranks out a riff that has everyone is the place moving. Three-quarters of everyone in the bar sings along as Jonathan wails about how girls are like pizza toppings, each one different but none of them bad. It’s one of the first songs he and Topher wrote together when they started the band two years ago, and it’s become their anthem. Any Astray regular knows it.

Ginger, Izzy, and I dance up front, near the stage, and while Jonathan seduces every woman in the room with his voice, I can’t help but notice where his eyes linger. Ginger moves her body to his urging, like a snake to her charmer, and his gaze stays locked on her.

Maybe there’s hope for that boy yet.

Chapter Nine

WHEN JONATHAN DROPS   me at the club on the way to his gig the next night, Izzy and Brittany are already in the dressing room. Brittany smirks at me as I grab my stuff from the closet. She’s back on center after my demotion.

Izzy mouths, Ask her, then flips her eyes at Brittany.

I give her back a subtle shake of my head and a wide-eyed look that screams, Shut up!

She rolls her eyes at me and heads to the closet for her costume.

God, I should ask her. My only other alternative is to watch Jonathan walk around naked from my nine hundred dollar a month sofa for the foreseeable future.

I shove Izzy aside and grab my stuff, weighing the pros and cons as I change.

“So . . .” I finally say as I’m lacing up my last boot and Brittany finishes her makeup, “I heard you might be looking for a roommate?”

She shoots a glare over her shoulder from the vanity. “Maybe.”

“Um . . .” I say, fighting to keep the grimace off my face, and focus on tying my boot. “I’m sort of looking for a place, so . . .”

Her eyes narrow. “So, what?”

“So . . .” I continue. “I was wondering what you pay for rent . . . or what you’d want me to pay, I guess.”

She spins her stool and stands. “You want to move in with me. Seriously?”

“Maybe.”

“Seven hundred,” she says, turning her attention to straightening her nylons.

“Where is it? And how big and all?”

“It’s a two bedroom in the Haight.”

“San Francisco?” Izzy screeches from across the small room. “You have a place in the city for fourteen hundred a month?”

Brittany looks up at her. “It’s rent controlled.”

Izzy turns to me. “Hell! I’ll sell my soul for that. You can have my place.”

We all just look at each other for a second, then Brittany surprises me by plucking at her devil costume and cracking up. When she stops laughing, she flips a hand at me. “My roommate’s moving out at the end of the month. You want to come by and check it out later this week?”

“Um, yeah . . . okay.”

She nods and pushes through the door into the hall.

I give Izzy another wide-eyed look, then follow her out.

We hit the stages and Pete does our intros, and I can’t stop myself from searching the crowd for Harrison as I dance. I know he’s gone. I know I’ll never see him again. But the stupid truth is, even though I know he’s not going to be there, I can’t stop wishing for it.

So, just like every other night for the last week, I suck, my crowd is sparse, and my tips blow.

When I finish my stage shift and Nora tells me I have a private, I’m more shocked than she is. No one’s hired me for the last week. She pushes open the door to the VIP room and I brace myself for Sweaty Man or Horny Guy. But when I step into the room, my heart stalls. All I can do is stare.

Because Izzy was wrong. I’m not safe.

Harrison is standing there, his hands crammed deep in the pockets of his jeans, gazing at me from under long blond lashes.

“I owe you an apology,” are the words that come out of his perfect mouth when I can’t find any. He sinks into the sofa and rubs a hand down his face. “I was totally out of line. I shouldn’t have assumed it was okay to . . .” He shakes his head, and when his eyes rise to mine again, they’re dark with desire. “You are incredibly attractive, Sam, and I imagine myself . . . doing things with you. But what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

I slide onto the other end of the sofa. “It was my fault. I just . . .” I wave a hand at him. “You have to know how hot you are, right? I mean . . .” I feel myself cringe. “But I never should have . . . there are rules and . . .” Damn. I’m such a moron.

“Can we start over?” he says when I can’t figure out how to finish that sentence in any coherent way.

“Start over?”

He gives me a questioning tip of his head. “If you can pretend I’m not a total bonehead, I’ll try not to act like one.”

“But . . . why are you even here? Didn’t you go back to L.A.?”

“We’re going with the San Francisco location, so we’re here setting up.”

My heart pounds out of my chest. “For how long?”

“Until Friday.”

“Friday,” I repeat. Three days. “Will you be back after that?”

His glacial gaze melts. “If I have a reason to be.”

God, I want to be his reason. I think about what Izzy said: that what I do on my own time isn’t Ben and Nora’s business. Could I ask him out? My heart pounds as I open my mouth to ask if he wants to meet up after work, but what comes out is, “Did you see your fiancée when you were home?”

He shakes his head. “She was gone by the time I got back. Only thing she left was the engraved cake knife, presumably so I could stab myself with it.”

I crack up, even though it’s totally inappropriate, and after a second his mouth tugs into a reluctant smile. “So, you were living together?” I ask when my nervous giggles slow.

“For the last three years.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Guess I shouldn’t have waited so long to marry her.”

“Then you’d be getting divorced now and she’d get half of all your stuff, so . . .”

“Most of our stuff was hers anyway.” He blows out a long, slow breath. “Her family has money.”

“So you were marrying up?”

He huffs out a humorless laugh. “In more ways than one.”

I have this irrational compulsion to want to know more about this woman, as if she’s somehow my competition. It’s ridiculous. I bite my tongue and we just sit here staring at each other for a long time.

“You were great out there tonight,” he finally says, but I can tell from the way he says it that he doesn’t really mean it.

“I sucked.”

He settles deeper into the cushions, resting an arm over the back of the sofa, but to my disappointment, he doesn’t touch my hair. “Any particular reason?”

You. Or the lack thereof. “Just wasn’t feeling it.”

“Why do you do this?”

I tip my head at him, confused. “Do what?”

“This,” he says, waving a hand at the room. “Not to disparage your chosen career path, but despite your academic issues, I can tell you’re intelligent, and you’re sweet, and caring, and beautiful . . . why would you choose to take off your clothes for money?”

I’m torn between wanting to kiss him and slap him. “I don’t take off my clothes for money.”