SAVED BY A BIKER
CHAPTER ONE
Vanessa slammed the open palms of her hands into the sides of the steering wheel, screaming out a loud “Damn!” each time the wheel shook with the force of her blows. How had Duane found her? She hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
She hadn’t contacted anybody from back home since she left. She wasn’t using her real name. She wasn’t even using that degree in bookkeeping that had gotten her into all this. And yet, he had found her... again!
The day had started out badly for Vanessa, and had gotten worse with each passing hour. To begin with, it was one of those gray, cold, freezing-rain, late-spring days that you can only get in a place like Minneapolis.
Her landlord had given her until today to pay up or get out of her dingy apartment, so the day began with her putting her meager belongings in the trunk and back seat of her car. She had been hoping to at least come up with enough money to get a room somewhere for the night, but the tips at work had been terrible.
Normally her warm smile and the tight, yellow short-shorts that showed off her curvy body could charm at least a couple of extra bucks out of the customers at the diner, but that night everyone was made of stone. And then, almost at the end of her shift, Duane came bursting into the place yelling at her and calling her a useless, runaway whore. The few customers that were there quickly paid their tabs and left as Duane continued his tirade of abuse.
The manager had the compassion of an alligator. He didn’t confront Duane. He didn’t call the police. He instead told Vanessa that they couldn’t have this sort of problem in a nice place like his. And then he told her to leave—permanently.
Tony, the owner, had suddenly appeared and was even colder... no, not colder, slimier. In his velvet voice, dripping with artificial sympathy, he said there really wasn’t much he could do on the diner side, but if she was willing to dance on the other side, the bouncers could protect her.
Tony ran a combination strip-club and restaurant. Actually, the diner side was just a plausible reason for your car being in the parking lot. It wasn’t a bad place to eat, but what Tony actually ran was a strip club with a built in excuse and lie to tell your wife.
Tony knew that Candy—that was what Vanessa was calling herself—could dance. He could see it in her athletic body, in the way her movements naturally showed off her breasts in her skimpy outfit. And he could see it in the way she treated the off duty dancers when they stopped by before or after their shifts.
“If you were willing to dance on the other side...” Vanessa said aloud in a mocking voice. Pole dancing was what had gotten her into this mess. Or, at least, that was how she had met Duane. It sounded corny, but she truly had been just a naive college girl from Iowa trying to pay off some debts by dancing in a club. It was a pasties and G-string type of club so she really didn’t have to show a lot more than she did on a beach in a small bikini. And nothing more than dancing was expected of her. Duane had seemed so nice... until she finally agreed to go out with him. Then he’d become an obsessed, possessive demon who followed her everywhere and made her life a living hell!
“You could even live in one of the apartments upstairs...” she repeated in the same bitter, mocking tone. A couple of the dancers lived above the club, or rather they danced in the club and worked in their living quarters one flight up. Tony was “offering” to let her live up there.
He was “willing” to let her strip naked on stage, and then take one or more of the customers back to her place... for a price. And Tony got a 60% to 80% cut of the action plus rent for the apartment.
Vanessa screamed out her frustration at the dark, wet highway as it all suddenly clicked into place in her mind.... Tony! She had used her real
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