Anita Blake 22.5 - Dancing Read Online Free PDF

up,” Katie said, voice too bright.
    “I’ll leave you to it then,” Elise said and glided out of the kitchen, tall and graceful. The other women trailed behind her.
    “What was all that about?” I asked.
    “It was terrible, they were so rude,” Katie said, and she went to hug Zerbrowski.
    “Rude how?” I asked.
    “Some of the wives just came in for a quick peek at Nathaniel, and that was all right, but others . . . If it had been men looking at me like that I’d have felt dirty.” She shivered.
    Zerbrowski stroked her hair, as he held her. “You should have called me in sooner.”
    “We should have had Anita come in and kiss him sooner,” she said.
    “You have this effect on women often?” Zerbrowski asked.
    Katie raised her head from his chest and said, “Nathaniel was a perfect gentleman. He didn’t do anything to start this.”
    “Actually, I did, Katie, just not today,” Nathaniel said.
    They looked at him. I just raised my head and looked up at him while still in his arms. “What do you mean?”
    “They’ve seen me strip. Most people have trouble treating dancers like real people once they’ve seen them take their clothes off.”
    “Seeing you on stage shouldn’t have made them be so rude at our party,” Katie said.
    Nathaniel shifted in my arms and I knew there was more. “What is it, Nathaniel?”
    “I worked a bachelorette party for one of the wives.” He very carefully didn’t say which wife. He would keep his customers secrets even if they didn’t keep his.
    “Why does that matter? It’s still your job and this was my home. It’s disrespectful to us, as well as you.”
    Nathaniel looked down and met my eyes. It was a mute appeal. “I take it that it was a very lucrative party for you?” I said.
    “It was,” he said.
    “They got their money’s worth, I take it?”
    He nodded.
    “I don’t understand,” Katie said.
    I glanced at Zerbrowski. “You ever go to any private bachelor parties that had strippers?”
    “Maybe,” he said.
    Katie frowned at him. “You always tell me, don’t tease Anita right now.”
    He smiled. “Yes.”
    “If you’d gotten a lap dance from a stripper and then she showed up as the girlfriend of one of the cops you knew, how would you react?”
    “Honestly?”
    “That’d be nice,” I said.
    “I’d wonder if the cop knew that his girlfriend used to strip.”
    “Some cops date strippers,” I said.
    “Yeah, but they don’t usually bring them to family-friendly parties.”
    “You can date strippers, but you don’t bring them home to meet the family,” Nathaniel said. He sounded sad.
    I hugged him tight. “You are my family.”
    He rewarded me with that brilliant smile of his, the real one, not the practiced one that the customers thought was the real deal. If he could have looked at them like that on cue he’d have gotten more hundred-dollar tips than he already did.
    “I didn’t mean it that way, Nathaniel. I know you’re Anita’s family,” Zerbrowski said.
    Nathaniel wasted some of the smile in his direction. “Thanks.”
    Then Katie got a strange look on her face, and she paled.
    “What’s wrong?” Zerbrowski asked.
    “Ages ago, they tried to tell me about a bachelorette party that a bunch of the wives went to when Rosetti was about to marry. They told me some details and . . . I told them to stop, I didn’t want to hear it.” She looked at Nathaniel.
    He was very still against me. I looked up at him. His face was guarded, as if he were waiting for something bad to happen.
    “That was you they were talking about?” Katie asked.
    “Probably,” he said, softly.
    She blinked at him, brown eyes very wide. “But they said . . . you . . .” She blushed from neck to the roots of her hair. She finally hid her face against Zerbrowski.
    “Whatever they said, I did not have sex with anyone at the party.”
    She raised her head from Zerbrowski’s chest and blinked at him. The look was enough to say that was exactly what