“No. Great ideas.”
“Thank you. And, since your primary audience is women between the ages of twenty-one and forty, you could bring in a mixologist to create a custom cocktail. Keep the ingredients secret, offer it in shots, drinks, and fishbowls.”
“I like that. Have you done something like that before?”
“For a client?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Once or twice, but they decided not to keep the ingredients secret, and they had two or three cocktails instead of one.”
“So you know someone who could create one.”
Not a question. A statement. Man, he was enthusiastic.
“I live two hours outside of L.A. I don’t just know someone—I know the best someone.” I clicked my pen and scribbled a small note to call Lili. She was the best damn mixologist I’d ever met—and if she couldn’t get there, she’d know someone closer who could.
“Great. These all make my ideas look like child’s play.”
“That’s why you hire a professional.”
“It is, indeed.” His lips moved back to the smirk, and despite the tug it forced between my legs, I couldn’t not ask my next question.
“Mr. Rykman—”
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. His white shirt was rolled up to his elbows, and the tightening of the fabric stretched against his muscular arms. “I think you know me well enough to call me West.”
“Mr. Rykman,” I repeated, looking him right in the eye. “Excuse me for asking, but why have you hired a professional? From what I saw, you don’t need any marketing help. Your club is booming. We’re usually called into failing businesses who use their last profits to hire us or independent traders or new companies who need to get their name out there.”
“We haven’t done anything with the club for two years.” He doesn’t move, and he keeps his bright eyes trained on mine. “We did an initial marketing campaign, got the best male dancers we could, and now, the club runs itself, but it’s getting stale. A full club most nights doesn’t mean business is growing, Ms. O’Halloran. It’s steady, but now, I want more. Strip clubs aren’t exactly rare in this city. We have to stand out before someone else does. For all I know, someone’s already planning to.”
Michelle had been right. He wanted to be unique, get ahead of the game. Beat someone else to the success.
“Do you know what the other clubs around you are doing?” I sipped my coffee then tilted my head to the side.
“I don’t make it a habit to go and watch men strip naked,” he drawled. “Unless they’re being paid by me.”
I sighed and sat back. That was his first problem. He had no idea what anyone else was doing. He’d done no market research. This was going to take a long time.
“I need you to go to other clubs and see what they’re doing.”
Both of his eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“You can look shocked all you like, Mr. Rykman. This is basic research. For all I know, there’s another club rebranding in two weeks, so yours needs to happen before that. Maybe someone else has a custom cocktail. I need to see what’s in it to make sure this one doesn’t come close. Maybe they have theme nights. What themes? How often? What days? Are they popular?”
“All right. I see your point. And I have to do this?”
“Of course. I don’t know what you do on a regular basis here, do I? What’s your current marketing plan? How much do you spend on advertising? This is all information Michelle didn’t share with me, because you probably discussed it verbally and she didn’t write it down.” The woman had an eidetic memory, I was sure. “Unless you can provide me with it all in the next six hours, your Monday night will be spent in someon else’s strip club.”
He looked at me for a long moment before something flashed in his eyes. “Are you coming with me?”
“I didn’t plan on it.”
“So, you’re happy to make me do it, but you’re not planning on it yourself?”
“That...sounds one hundred percent accurate.”
“What if I go alone and get derailed by a female club?” His lips twitched in amusement. “That’d be far more entertaining for me.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Your business, Mr. Rykman. Not mine.”
He craned his neck to look behind the booth at the bar and then slid across the seat to me. Thank god my purse was between us, but he was still too close for comfort. And not because I was creeped out, but because, well, my heart was pounding a little too loudly. I couldn’t move because I was sitting on the edge of the seat, but he didn’t touch me.
He might as well have been.
My skin burned like he was.
“Ms. O’Halloran...I’ve hired you. It most definitely is your business.”
I turned my face to look at him. Mistake. Big mistake. His eyes were hypnotic, almost, and once I’d looked at him, I couldn’t look away.
“Fine. I’ll come with you. Three hours, three clubs. But it’s completely professional.”