Page 44 of Duty and Desire

She bopped forward on her seat with agitation. “Them. The good ones. The Hot Bunch. The only ones left are Roam and Sniff and they’re too young for me. Not to mention, if Shirleenthought I’d even spoke their names in a conversation like this, she’d cut me.”

She was not wrong.

Shirleen was Roam and Sniff’s foster momma, though in her mind, there was no “foster” about it and it wouldn’t matter one bit that Roam and Sniff were both long since of age and men in their own right.

She would cut her.

Mac was also not wrong that the Rock Chicks had snagged all there was of the Hot Bunch.

Maybe Lee was hiring.

“Mac, darlin’, just give it time,” he urged. “And in the meantime, spoil your nephews. Because when you find a man and you start makin’ your own babies, you won’t have the time for them you have now, but you’ll love it that you had the time you have now. You dig?”

She gave it a beat before she puckered her lips and blew out a breath.

Then she said, “I’m still going natural.”

She dug.

Crisis averted (or at least this one, he corralled strippers, bouncers, bartenders and waitresses, they were all young and fit and prone to do stupid shit, so it seemed his entire life was averting disasters).

This one over (for now), Smithie rolled a hand at her, turning his eyes to his desk. “Do whatever you want with your tits. Just give me some notice. I gotta prepare the staff to adjust to half the amount of asses in seats, I don’t got my headliner.”

“Smithie,” she called.

He turned his eyes back to her.

She was now grinning.

And she had a new declaration.

“You’re the shit.”

“I know that seein’ as I put up with your crazy ass. Now get out. I’m not up here twiddling my thumbs. I got shit to do.”

She kept grinning as she rose from the chair and sashayed her tight ass to his door.

“Close that behind you,” he ordered.

She didn’t close it behind her.

She turned at it and looked to him.

“I’m giving it a year.”

Something else Mac was.

Decisive.

“I’ll take it,” he replied. “Now get out.”

She shot him a white smile that miraculously his retinas had built up a tolerance to so they weren’t burned out, then she moseyed out the door.

Thankfully, she shut it behind her.

Smithie stared hard at it while considering hefting his bulk over to lock it.

He wasn’t going to take the time.