Stacked Up: Worth the Fight Series Read Free Page A

they actually made her feel better. When the sobs became hiccups and sighs, he said at last, “You feelin’ better?”
    She nodded. “Thank you.”
    “Ain’t even a thing, darlin’,” he said, wiping her cheeks with his thumbs. “Don’t know what it’ll take for you to let me in, but I want in, Penny.”
    “I’m sorry, Travis.” She took a final breath. “I wish things were different, but you and I will never ever happen.”
    “Say whatever you want. But you and I aren’t over, Penny. Not even fucking close.” Then he walked out of the Pier to tend to Dakota, who was still outside with a small camera crew.

Chapter 2
    A few days later, Penny’s hand hovered over the ornate metal door handle at Ruby’s, the local strip club in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Actually, it was the
only
strip club in the small town. When she decided to run away from her privileged life in Oklahoma to raise her daughter far away from the judgment of her family, she never imagined most of the raising would be done by her friend JL, who watched Sarabelle while Penny ran back and forth between two exhausting jobs just trying to make ends meet.
    Earlier in the day, while she was waitressing at EE’s Diner, Jeffrey, the owners’ smarmy son, had gotten a little handsy, and when Penny had made it clear that she didn’t appreciate his hand “accidentally” touching her butt, he’d gotten defensive and threatened to fire her. The fact that the threat of losing that crappy job scared her more than the creepy man touching her had made her realize it was time for a change.
    A major one.
    So she’d thrown her apron at him and walked out. But now she was freaking out because she needed that job.
Really
needed it. She still had her job at the Pier, but that wasn’t enough to support her and Sarabelle.
    Penny felt herself sinking, and the more furiously she treaded water, the more tired her legs became and the closer she felt to drowning. She needed a lifesaver immediately or she would not survive, and that thought made her even more despondent. Fortunately, during her midday break at EE’s, she had seen a flyer about an opening for a bartender at Ruby’s that paid double what she made at EE’s.
    The problem was that Ruby’s was a strip club, and even though she wouldn’t be stripping, the thought of working there, after her
highly
sheltered,
highly
religious, and
highly
judgmental upbringing, made her feel immoral.
    Working at a strip club had never been the plan. In fact, it had been ingrained into her that things such as strip clubs, which created “lustful” thoughts, were sinful and that strippers were the devil, luring men to make poor choices. In the last two years she’d realized how much of her upbringing had been based on hypocrisy and how clueless she’d really been, having been raised in a little bubble of ignorance.
    But even with all her eye-opening experiences, she still knew that she had been naive to think she could survive all on her own when she’d never lifted a single finger before her daughter was born. Heck, she’d never even washed clothes before Belle came along. She was in way over her head, and the fact that she was even entertaining the thought of working at Ruby’s was a clear indication of that.
    Penny braced herself to see naked women gyrating in a seedy club as men groped them. She expected to see drugs being snorted on tabletops, shots of liquor being drunk off naked bodies, and sex to be had everywhere. The only man she’d ever seen naked was Lawrence, and that had been one time, and it had been fast and painful and had resulted in Belle. Regardless, Penny took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
    Bam!
    “Oh, shit!” a woman shrieked as red liquid poured down the front of Penny’s white oxford shirt. “You okay?”
    Penny looked down at her wet and stained shirt, then looked up and saw a topless woman holding a tray with a knocked-over glass on it. The woman reached out and patted Penny’s