Free Never Trust a Skinny Cupcake Baker (Death by Cupcake Book 1) by D.E. Haggerty Page A

“I’ll need to borrow my roommate’s
car. It’s really far out of town, and we’ll need a car in case we need to make
a quick getaway.”
    Quick getaway? I should have never told her the pink hair
was cute.

Chapter
12
    When
stressed and in doubt, cupcake it out.
    I spend the next day flip-flopping between trying to
persuade Anna going to the strip club is a bad idea to trying to convince
myself that I don’t have a choice and it won’t be so bad. Yeah right. By
the time closing rolls around, I’m a mess of nerves. Either Anna doesn’t notice
or she doesn’t care because she completely ignores my moodiness.
    We lock up and get into Anna’s roommate’s car to head to the
outskirts of town to Club Bristol. We’re ahead of rush hour and it takes us
less than thirty minutes to find the address. Anna pulls into the parking lot
and stops. There are only four other cars in the lot. Half past four on a
Wednesday afternoon doesn’t appear to be a peak time for a strip club.
    The club is everything I imagined a strip club would look
like – a squat one-story industrial-type building without any windows. The
brick work has been whitewashed, but it’s obviously been awhile since the wash
was performed as the current color is a dingy gray. There are advertisements
all over the place for ‘the best dancing girls in the state’.
    Anna jumps out of the car, her body trembling in excitement.
I reluctantly open the door and follow her. The black door is on the right-side
of the building and is currently unmanned. I assume there’s normally a bouncer,
though, as there’s a stool next to the door as well as an overflowing ashtray.
    I take a deep breath and walk into the club. It’s dark and
smoky. No surprise there. The floors are covered in shag carpeting, the walls
are painted a red so deep it looks black, and the chairs are red velour. Is
strip club a euphemism for whore house? To the right is a shiny, black bar.
Straight ahead is a stage in an M-shape with three stripper poles. Of course
there are stripper poles. Dolly worked here after all.
    “You next?” A man shouts, and I nearly jump out of my shoes.
I look to my left to see two men in shiny suits sitting at a table in the
middle of the room. “Come on, doll, are you the next dancer?”
    “Dancer?”
    The man rolls his eyes and talks to the man next to him.
“Not the brightest one of the bunch is she?” He turns back to me. “Come on,
sweetheart.” He looks me up and down, and I feel the sudden need to shower with
bleach. “You’ve got the body for it. Show us what you can do.”
    I’ve got the body for it? Have we landed on planet
opposite? I’m still trying to figure out how to respond when Anna grabs my
hand. “Where are the dressing rooms? She needs to change.”
    The man points to a door on the right side of the stage
behind the bar. “Hurry up. We ain’t got all day!”
    Anna pulls me to the door. I stumble behind her unsure if I
should follow her or get the heck out of Dodge. She pushes through the door and
looks around before spotting a room filled with racks of clothing. She forces
me into a chair before moving to the clothing rack and pawing through the
outfits.
    “Anna, stop!” I say when my brain finally catches up. “I
can’t go up there and dance. Let’s just get out of here and come back another
time.”
    I don’t even get a chance to stand up from the chair before
Anna’s on me. Her tiny body boxes me in the chair. “I don’t want to hear it!
You heard the man. You’ve got the perfect body for this because you’re… let’s
say it together… sexy!” She turns back to the rack of clothes. “Besides, while
you’re up there doing your thing, I can snoop around.” She pulls out an outfit
and hands it to me.
    I don’t have a choice but to take the hanger as she shoves
it in my hand. There’s not enough fabric here. She’s got to be kidding me. “I
can’t wear this,” I protest.
    Anna’s having none of it. “You will