Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) Read online

  Offensive Behavior

  Sidelined Book 1

  Ainslie Paton

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events that happen are the product of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or people, living or dead is purely co-incidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher. Copyright © 2015.

  Offensive Behavior

  Ainslie Paton

  Everyone is virgin at something

  This is the story of a man who’s never done it, and a woman with the experience to teach him how.

  Reid McGrath is drunk and intends to stay that way. It’s what a man does when the world he built gets ripped out from under him. He’s staked a claim on the back booth at Lucky’s where he can fixate on a dancer who makes him wish things were different.

  Zarley Halveston dances under shimmering lights in a barely there costume, but it’s not the gold medal life she trained for. She expected to stand on an Olympic podium, instead she glitters under disco lights, gyrating on a chrome pole.

  Zarley can’t see the brooding man in the back booth, but she knows he’s there. He’s toxic, but it’s not her job to care, until the night he collapses at her feet and she has to choose to step over him or help him up.

  Reid thought he’d hit bottom when he was fired as CEO of his own company, but knowing he’d needed the kindness of a stranger, and realizing she was the dancer he’d lusted after was a new low.

  Question: What do a fallen golden girl and a sacked tech tycoon have in common except humiliation and failure?

  Answer: The reawakening of a champion competitor and the sexual education of a frustrated geek.

  Chapters

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  About Plus

  Damaged Goods

  About Ainslie Paton

  ONE

  Reid eyed the glass in his hand. He swirled the amber liquid. This was his sixth or seventh. He wouldn’t be the only drunk loser stumbling toward a foggy San Francisco dawn. But he was probably the only one who was on his way to making his first billion before he turned thirty.

  Whatever the count, the scowling hostess knew by now to keep ’em coming.

  Was it a month or longer this had been his routine? Drink till he was a swallow off face-planting the sticky table of the booth he’d made his new home. It felt like years since he’d had an ordinary life; no, not ordinary, there was nothing ordinary about his life, except that it was gone.

  That was shit ordinary.

  He’d never gotten drunk on bourbon until the night his life came to a dead stop, and then getting drunk and staying that way seemed like the only decent hack left in the world, even though it made him a miserable bastard.

  Right now, all he cared about was the contents of this glass hitting his throat and seeing Lux on stage.

  He’d already seen her first spot. She’d been dressed as a sexy schoolgirl in a short pleated tartan skirt, a white sleeveless shirt tied under her breasts and her hair in pigtails. She’d be dressed differently for her second spot. Didn’t matter what she came out as, harem girl or bikini babe, she was mesmerizing, regardless of how much or how little she wore, the height of her heels or the style of her hair.

  She was his own personal electric shock every time she appeared. More dangerous to his continued health and wellbeing than the cheap swill he was drinking.

  None of the other dancers affected him like Lux did. It’s not that they weren’t as athletic, as graceful or as fuck hot as Lux, it was just that they didn’t send him like she did.

  Lux sent him to places he’d never been and never wanted to come back from while he watched her for five eight-minute sets, six nights a week.

  On Sunday, Lux, and Reid’s liver, rested.

  He was worse than miserable, he was a pathetic excuse for a human being, hiding out in the last place anyone from his old life would ever look for him.

  Like he cared.

  He downed the bourbon and watched while Missy finished her set. Missy was a tiny slip of a girl who danced barefoot and always wore a bright colored bikini. She had short curly hair and a come-get-me smile that made men leave their booth seats for a place nearer the stage. This bar didn’t allow contact between the dancers and the drunks, definitely no touching, but he’d seen Missy leave with another regular, so that rule was wide enough to power a space shuttle through.

  Lux never smiled, never played to the audience like the other girls did. It was as if no one in the room existed for her. The only thing that got her attention was the spinning pole and the beat of the music she worked to. For all he knew, she went with men whose eyeballs had dried out, whose tongues flapped from watching her too, but he liked to think she was just using this place for a workout, to play dress-ups, and getting paid for it.

  But then he’d always been a big dreamer and look where that had gotten him.

  Lucky’s Nightclub.

  Nowhere. With nothing to recommend himself. And no idea how to kick-start his life again.

  TWO

  She wore a new costume and there was always a chance that a new get-up could let her down, but Zarley was betting Lux’s ballerina bitch look was good to go.

  Her pointe shoes did feel weird, years since she’d worn them and even then it was only for the fun of it, but she’d spend more time upside down with her feet in the air than she would teetering around on tiptoe. The satin shoes were red and perfectly complemented her black punk tutu with its ass-grazing torn net skirt and fitted satin bodice. The rest of her punk ballerina look consisted of a tight bun, a diamante tiara, eyes done like Natalie Portman in the Black Swan movie poster and bright red lips to match her shoes.

  She rocked—but not if you were into less is more. Tonight Missy’s bikini was flesh colored. She might as well have gone out nude. In another bar they both could’ve stripped for bigger tips, but Lucky’s had a keep your bits covered and a no fraternizing rule, which made it virtually a family place in the unseemly world of gentlemen’s clubs.

  Zarley could earn more in one of the high-end clubs that charged an admission fee and allowed dancers to earn cash for stripping, lap dances and selling alcohol, but none of them would let her be a punk-ass goth ballerina on stage, so for now, Lucky’s was her sweet spot.

  Hidden in the wings at the side of the stage she gave the audience a quick once-over. When she was at the pole she’d forget they were there. She danced for herself first and if the men liked it, well and good. If not, there were plenty of other exotic dancers on shift at Lucky’s, and at dozens of bars more hardcore into the sex industry, for them to get fixated on.

  Peering into the audience, she saw regulars, out-of-towners slumming it, a group of overexcited frat boys and, a sprinkling of single men and yes, he was there, again. Alone at the same booth at the back, an endlessly refilled glass of spirits in his hand, not a hint of any food ordered. A brooding mess of a man who exuded s
uch a toxic air of anger and disgust that, despite being a big tipper and a quiet drunk, none of the hostesses wanted to wait on his table.

  Not that it meant anything to Zarley. If he didn’t have enough sense not to drink himself into a disease that was his problem. Cranky, moody assholes like him were only her problem if they tried to get too close, when she was offstage, and then not permanently blinding them with her pepper spray or unmanning them with her knee was an issue—but not much of one, and once they were cowering they were easy to get away from.

  All she cared about was school and her paycheck, bigger than she’d make waiting tables or pulling beers, and not getting injured. Two, maybe three years and she’d have enough money to pay her student loans. That was a lot of dancing, a lot of days that ended in long nights, a lot of not having much else of a life outside of Lucky’s and college.

  But that’s something she knew how to do. Focus. Exclude everything else that was a distraction. Keep trying till you broke something or it broke you.

  And it would be worth every bruise, every sore muscle and strained ligament, every bleary-eyed dawn and solitary weekend at her books to have a fresh start.

  Back booth dude was nothing except a pang of conscience. He was too young and too pretty, and his clothes were all wrong for courting the kind of trouble hanging out at a place like Lucky’s inspired. A liver disease was probably the least of it if he was taking drugs as well as drinking till he weaved, and on occasion the kitchen served up a fine side of salmonella that could probably end you. Any one of Lucky’s regulars would likely jump him for his watch and phone, and the longer he took to acknowledge Vi for waiting on him, the more Vi was inclined to spike his drink with something that would wedge his very fine backside on a cold porcelain seat for an uncomfortable length of time. He was so out of it when he left here, it was a wonder the cabbies who picked him up didn’t roll him.

  He was a total disaster and she wished she’d never heard the others talking about him and searched him out in the first place. She didn’t need to see a car crash waiting to happen.

  Hearing her music stopped her obsessing. Skylar Grey singing about needing a doctor. Now it was just the sound and the way it moved in her body and made her want to fly.

  Once it’d been gymnastics that was her physical passion. On the parallel bars and the vault, when she tumbled across the mat, she really had been airborne, a powerful force with no respect for gravity and every inclination to manifest wings and never come down to earth.

  But that was before.

  Now the closest she could get to the sun was a nine-foot, competition standard one point seventy-five inch spinning chrome pole. So she took these moments selfishly. She didn’t look at the audience, she didn’t try to see through the glare of the stage lights to flirt with a bunch of losers and will them into tossing their grocery money and car payments at her feet. She went inside her body, into the rhythm and the melody and pitched herself against bone-deep disappointment, the ache of loneliness and appalling regret, and the laws of mechanical physics.

  And she soared.

  THREE

  Every time Reid cleared his various electronic inboxes, Owen filled them up again. The only way to get rid of the guy was to let him bear witness to the depth of Reid’s fall. That’s why Reid ordered surf and turf with his bourbon and kept half an eye on Lucky’s door. He wanted to be good and mean by the time his former best friend showed his incredulous face.

  He waited through Cinnamon and Lavinia, and Missy was on stage wearing an electric yellow bikini when Owen finally slid into Reid’s booth. Owen didn’t speak, but his smothered smirk could’ve provided sustenance to the starving it was so self-righteous. He put his hands on the sticky tabletop, then lifted them again as though he could feel germs invading through his fingertips. He scoped the place out then fixed on Missy, waving his germy hand toward the stage.

  “Okay, I get it. But this place, it’s not even doing stripping right. You’d find better almost anywhere else, so what the hell?”

  Reid kept his eyes on Missy. After Missy came Lux. Never before, always after. For her last set Lux was an old-fashioned bathing beauty complete with those rolls in her hair, gorgeous in navy blue polka dot swimsuit with white ribbons at her hips and neck.

  “Reid?” Owen snapped his fingers in front of Reid’s face.

  He closed his eyes. “What?”

  “Not, what, man. I get the what. I get your devastation. I don’t get the venue.”

  “You get my devastation.” Reid shifted so he could look at Owen straight on. “You get it. Last time I checked you had my job, stock options, a healthy public profile. Is there something I don’t know?”

  Owen shook his head. “You can’t tell me you didn’t know this was coming. In the back of your big stubborn head, you had to know pushing like that wasn’t smart.”

  “It’s my fucking company.” Was. Was my fucking company. And now it was Owen’s. “Just do whatever gloating you need to do to make yourself feel good and get out of my face.”

  “I’m not gloating. I hate this.”

  “You’re the CEO of Plus.” Reid kept his voice even, but let it get sharp around the edges. “Capitalization of billions, one of America’s top ten up-and-coming IT firms.” He turned his face back toward the stage. Missy was upside down hanging from her ankles. “You’re right, you’re not gloating—you’re dancing on my fucking grave.”

  “I didn’t ask for this. It’s not my knife in your back, Reid. We’d have weathered the resignations. You churned up and spat out highly skilled, hard to find people, but we’d have found others and paid more to keep them willing to put up with the crap you dished out. But the bullying charges, the assault charge.” Owen shook his head and looked at his hands, now in his lap.

  Reid took a sip of his bourbon, an overly large sip. “I didn’t touch her and you know it.”

  He’d never even been in a meeting or a common room at Plus or anywhere else with the woman from marketing who’d accused him of sexual assault. He’d once ridden a crowded elevator with her according to security footage and apparently that’s all she’d needed to fabricate a charge against him. It’d shocked him at the time, even though it was quickly dismissed, but the cumulative damage to his reputation was a lasting blow. If he’d made Plus people nervous before with his sharp tongue and his exacting manner, the women in particular became doubly nervous afterward. It didn’t help that he was physically imposing at six three and because when he wasn’t at the office, he was in his home gym.

  “All of us who know you know it.” Owen looked up and sighed. “But Plus is too big now for you to stand on a chair in the staff lounge and do one of your famous mea culpa acts. It’s too big for you to bail a junior programmer up in a hallway and publicly eviscerate them for doing something in a way you think is idiotic. You were still running Plus like it was five years ago and there were fifty of us and you and Dev and I lived on beer and pizza and slept under our desks when we’d been up all night coding. We have over a thousand employees now. It’s not the same. You’re a control freak and you don’t trust anyone, you have no idea how people tick. You’re charming until you’re so viciously offensive you can rupture someone’s internal organ with a look. The bigger Plus got, the more of a jerk you became.”

  Reid closed his eyes again. His body hurt. His eyes felt like they were made of pot scourers. “I was sacked for being an asshole. Is that what you think? Is that what everyone thinks?”

  “You were sacked because you and our chairman had a fundamental disagreement about what style of leader you needed to be to take Plus to the next level.”

  “Obviously I wasn’t the same style of leader you’re going to be, a no talent, brown-nosing suck ass, too worried about being liked to make the hard calls.”

  Owen slapped a hand on the split vinyl seat. “And there you go proving my point. You were sacked for being a fucking asshole, Reid. If Kuch hadn’t exercised his authority as chairman, you’d have eit
her run Plus slowly into the ground or had a heart attack at twenty-eight. You appointed him precisely because you were smart enough at twenty to know we needed help, and Kuch did exactly what you wanted him to do. He told you a thousand times how you needed to modify your behavior. Hell, I told you, Sarina told you, Dev told you. We had a rule for it—no assholes—and you fucked us all over.”

  Owen put his hands to his head and grunted a hard breath. “We were yours, Reid. You were our best friend and our freaking guru until you showed all the signs of turning into a fucking psychopath.”

  Reid had been told he was too intense, that he did eye contact like it was a challenge. He couldn’t meet his oldest friend’s eyes.

  “Do you think any of us are happy about this? We were doing this together and now we’re not. How do you think I feel about trying to pull Ziggurat off without you? I barely know where to start. I don’t have a tenth of your presence. When I stand on a chair to make an announcement Sarina has to shush everyone. Plus isn’t better off without you, but it’s less likely to implode, and I think you know that. I think that’s why you’re here, where no one who cares will find you, punishing yourself. And you know what, you’ve already been punished, it’s time to get straight, sober up and fight back.”

  Reid forced his eyes to Owen’s. “I was canned.” He put his glass down carefully so it didn’t shatter in his hand. “The industry, the whole market knows I’m out. Every journalist we’ve ever spoken to has messaged me for comment about my exploration of new challenges.” He made finger quotes around that phrase from the press release. “Anyone with ears on their head knows I’ve been fired. I’ve taken legal advice and I’m not getting Plus back. Kuch was acting within his rights to sack me for non-performance. It’s over, so it doesn’t matter if I’m ever sober again, this is what I do now.” It was impossible to put the anger he felt into words. “I drink, I watch pole dancers, I sleep, I don’t dream, repeat ad infinitum. Go back to where you belong, Owen. Eventually I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself. Eventually I’ll have a new idea to explore and I’ll get the backing to build it, or I’ll go to Vegas and count cards like I did the first time, and when I do, I’m coming for Plus. I’ll buy up shares until I have a majority and can oust the great mentor, Adnan Kuchnitski, and replace him as chairman. Then we’ll see if I’m too much of an asshole to let you keep your job.”