Jet: A Marked Men Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

wear ridiculous outfits that showed more skin than they covered. We were right down by Coors Field, so even with football season over, we were still packed with hockey and basketball fans. I made enough money to easily make rent and whatever my scholarships didn’t cover for school. I didn’t mind shaking my ass a little, as long as it got the bills paid.
    I had to be on alert, though, because there was no shortage of drunken, grabby hands and overly affectionate regulars who wanted to touch things that were not allowed. I also had to keep my head in the game when it came to dealing with my catty coworkers. Those girls lived for gossip and any kind of dirt they could find. Shaw and I had a long-standing feud with Loren Decker, the reigning queen bee, and if I showed up for my shift like I was now, she would find an opening and make the night hell for me.
    It wasn’t until I was in the changing room at the back of the bar, getting into my silly cheerleader outfit, that I remembered my phone ringing earlier, and I blinked in surprise when I saw I now had five missed calls from a 502 area code. I didn’t know why anyone in Kentucky would be trying to get ahold of me, let alone how they had gotten my number. There were no voice mails or text messages, so I just tucked the phone into my bra, where it lived for my shift, and made a note to try to call the number tomorrow.
    I was slicking my black hair down and shoving a sparkly bobby pin in the front, when Loren’s sickly sweet voice came from somewhere over my shoulder. I so wasn’t in a mood to deal with her, so I just gritted my teeth and turned to look at her.
    She was the perfect fit for a bar like the Goal Line. She was every guy’s cheerleader fantasy all grown up, complete with fake double Ds. She had about as much sense as a bobblehead doll, and I couldn’t figure out why she tried to go toe-to-toe with me, because she never won. Besides, she was, like, three inches shorter than me, even more than that when I wore the spiked heels I used to up my tips, and I always ended up looking down on her. Both figuratively and literally.
    “How’s it going, Ayden?”
    “I’m having a crap day, Loren, what do you want?”
    She played with the ends of her hair in a way that made me want to strip them out of her head, one perfect blond strand at a time.
    “I was wondering if you could do me a teeny-tiny favor?”
    I rolled my eyes and slammed the locker shut behind me. “I already work all weekend, so I can’t cover you.”
    She blinked her big cornflower blue eyes at me, and I swear in that second it solidified my hatred of her until the end of time. I had to take a deep breath, because I knew I was being irrational and irritable for no reason.
    “No, I was wondering if you could talk to Jet and see if he could get me and a couple of my girls in to see Bryan Walker at the Ogden. He has a bunch of connections, doesn’t he?”
    Bryan Walker was a pop singer, along the lines of Justin Bieber, but way less famous. There was no way on this green earth I was ever going to ask Jet if he could get this nimrod into that show. I moved past her with a frown.
    “Why don’t you ask him? He said he was probably going to come in tonight for a beer.”
    She looked at me like I had just landed from another planet. “I can’t talk to him.”
    That brought me up short and I turned to look at her in confusion.
    “Why the hell not? He’s in here all the time. I know you’ve waited on him before.”
    She shook her head like I was an idiot and shared a smile with one of her girlfriends. “Oh, Ayden, you are just so sweet. I just think it’s so cute how you hang out with all those superhot, superyummy boys and yet you don’t know the first thing about wrapping one around your finger. If I ask Jet for a favor it means he knows that I know who he is and what a big deal he is in this town. If I want him to notice me, I have to ignore him and treat him like he’s no one special.