Одри Карлан - January (Calendar Girl #1)

January: Calendar Girl

Book 1

By Audrey Carlan

Text copyright © 2015 Audrey Carlan

ISBN Electronic

ISBN-10: 0-9909143-5-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-9909143-5-8

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic format without expressed permission by the author.

Dedication

Ginelle Blanch

You have been with me since the very beginning…

Your beta reads have saved me a hundred times over.

Thank you for believing in me, my stories,

and loving them as I love you and all your pieces.

Namaste my friend.

Chapter 1

True love doesn’t exist. For years I thought it did. As a matter of fact, I thought I’d found it. Four times to be exact. Let’s see, there was:

Taylor. My high-school sweetheart. We were together all through high school. He was an all-star baseball player. Best the school had ever seen. Big, more muscles than brains, and a winky the size of a circus peanut. Probably because of all the steroids he was taking behind my back. He dumped me graduation night. Ran off with my virginity and the head cheerleader. I heard he was a college dropout working as a mechanic in some no-name town with two kids and a wife that no longer cheers for him.

Then there was the teacher’s assistant from my first psychology class in the Las Vegas Community College. Maxwell was his name. I thought that young boy walked on water. Turns out, he walked all over my heart by screwing a girl from every class he TA’d for. In his case, the TA stood for Tits and Ass, and he made sure he had plenty of it. That’s okay. He ended up getting two of the girls pregnant at the same time, then was kicked out of the college for misconduct. At nineteen, he already had two different baby mamas hounding him for child support. There was something ultimately poetic about that. Thank God I always required he wrap it before he stuck it in me.

In my twentieth year, I took a break. Spent all year waiting tables at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas Strip. That’s where I met lucky number three, Benny. Only I wasn’t lucky and neither was he. He was a card counter. At the time, he said he was in sales, worked the casinos, and loved to play poker. We had a whirlwind romance, which wasn’t all that romantic. I think I spent most of the time drunk and underneath him, but alas, I believed he loved me. He told me all the time. For two months we drank; we swam in the hotel pool, and fucked all night in one of the rooms I was able to score from my buddy in housekeeping. I served him and his friends free drinks at the bar, and he’d give me a room key most nights. It worked. Until it didn’t. Benny got caught counting cards and disappeared. For the first year of his disappearance, I was frantic. Then I found out he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life. He spent time in the hospital and skipped out of town, ditching me completely without even a word.

The last mistake was the one you could say was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The same reason I was certain true love is something crafted by greeting card companies and people who write romance novels and romantic comedies. Blaine was his name, but it should have been Lucifer. He was a smooth-talking business man. I use the term businessman loosely. In actuality, he was a loan shark. The same loan shark that loaned my dad more money than he could possibly ever pay back. First he turned on me, then he turned on him. Back then I thought our love was the stuff of fairytales. Blaine promised me the world and delivered me hell on earth.

“That’s why I think you should just take this job from your auntie and call it a day.” My best friend, Ginelle, smacked her gum loudly into the receiver. I pulled the phone away from my ear. “It’s really the only way, Mia. How else are you going to get your dad out of this bind with Blaine and his goons?”

I sucked down the crisp water as the California sun split the drops into shards of speckled light across the rippled bottle. “I don’t know what to do, Gin. I don’t have that kind of money lying around. I don’t have any money lying around.” I sighed, and it sounded loud and overly dramatic even to my own ears.

“Look, you’ve always been in love with love—“

“Not anymore!” I reminded my lifelong best friend.

Through the phone, I could hear the noise of Vegas. People thought the desert was a quiet place. Not on the Strip. Slot machines tinkled and bells rang in a monotonous drone no matter where you were. You really couldn’t escape it. “I know, I know.” She shuffled the phone making it crackle in my ear. “But you like sex, right?”

“I’m not like Barbie, Gin. Math isn’t hard. Please don’t ask me stupid questions. I’m dying here.” Or rather, if I didn’t find a way to come up with one million dollars, my father would be the one dying.

Ginelle groaned and smacked her gum. “I mean, if you take the job as an escort, all you have to do is look pretty and fuck a lot, right? You haven’t been laid in months. Might as well enjoy the ride, eh?”

Leave it to Ginelle to find a way to make being a highly paid call girl sound like a dream job. “This is not Pretty Woman , and I am no Julia Roberts.”

I made my way over to my bike, a Suzuki GSXR 600, which I simply referred to as Suzi. She was the only thing of value I owned. Slinging a leg over the seat, I situated my phone and put it on speaker. I pulled the heavy weight of my long black tresses into three chunks and deftly braided them into one thick rope. “Look, I know you mean well, and I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m not a whore. At least, I don’t want to be a whore.” The mere thought sent rivers of dread barreling through my chest. “But I’ve got to figure something out. Make some serious cash and fast.”

“Yeah, I hear ya. Let me know how the meeting with Exquisite Escorts goes. Call me tonight if you can. Shit, I’m going to be late for rehearsal, and I still have to get dressed.” Her voice turned labored, and I could picture her running through the casino to beat-feet it to work, cell phone plastered to her ear, not giving a shit who watched her or thought she was a lunatic. That’s what made her so special. She told it like it was…always. Just like me.

Ginelle worked for Dainty Dolls Burlesque Show in Vegas. Like the name, my best friend was short and sweet and knew exactly how to best shake her ass. Men from around the world came to watch the risqué show on the Strip. Still, she didn’t make enough to bail me or my old man out, not that I’d ever ask.

“Okay, love ya, bitch,” I said sweetly as I shoved my braid into the neck of my leather jacket so it fell down between my shoulder blades.

“Love ya more, skank.”

I turned the key on my bike, revved it up, and pushed on my helmet. Slipping the phone into my inside coat pocket, I hit the gas and sped off towards a future I didn’t want, but one I had no way to avoid.

***

“Mia! My sweet baby girl,” said my aunt as she wrapped her bone-thin arms around me, crushing me to her chest. She was strong for such a slight woman. Her black hair was pinned up into an elegant French twist. She had on a white blouse that was soft as silk, probably because it was silk. It was tucked into a fierce black leather pencil skirt, paired with sky-high stilettos that sported that red sole I’d heard so much about when randomly flipping through the latest Vogue. She looked beautiful. More than that, she looked expensive .

“Aunt Millie, it’s so good to see you,” I started to say when two fingers with long nails capped in blood red nail polish shushed me.