“No panther online-dating service?”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, lightly slapping his arm.

He turned his head to face me. “You could call it Purrfect Connection.”

“You’re getting less funny.”

Wheeler pinched his eyebrow and smiled.

“I had to make tough choices,” I continued. “Now I’m out of a job, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to dance again. Not in this town.”

“Sometimes when one door shuts, another opens.”

“Hmm,” I said, tickling his armpit with a stroke of my finger. “Are you sure you’re Wheeler and not Ben? That’s so optimistic of you.”

He narrowed his eyes at me in the sexiest manner before looking back up at the ceiling. “You have connections. Take a job as an event coordinator or personal assistant. Lexi should be paying you for helping with the menus and website, not just the people you’re connecting her with.”

“That’s what friends do for each other.”

“True. But you could be doing that for a whole lot of other people who don’t have connections. You seem to know everyone and keep good business relations. I’ve seen men hire professionals who do what you’re doing. Chew on that for a while.”

“And who is going to take an exotic dancer seriously?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

I laughed and snuggled against the pillow. “Are you going to tell me about the chain, or are you going to keep dodging the question? I have an excellent memory, darling.”

His face flushed, but it wasn’t from embarrassment. Something else was culminating within him—a confession. “Ben wanted to go big time, always looking for a pot of gold. Then he discovered cage fights. There was an unscrupulous ring in east Texas, deep in the backwoods. You don’t mess around with that world. Poker is one thing; Shifter fights are something else.”

My heart raced at his admission. I’d never known anyone involved in this life, and it’s something that haunted my dreams because of the stories my mother had told me about my father’s past.

Wheeler flattened his hands on his chest, rubbing at his shirt as if he were feeling physical discomfort. “Ben lost a fight and took off like he always does. I don’t know how he got away with not paying in full up front, but he’s always been a smooth talker. That left me to clean up the mess. We lived together at the time, and they tracked down our house. There was a knock at the door, and Ben looked out the peephole and panicked—actually slid underneath the bed to hide. These guys were going to collect their money or cut his throat. What the hell could I do? I had no choice.”

“You paid them off.”

“Didn’t have that kind of money. I made good money back then, but what Ben owed… Forget it. I bargained for his life, but they wouldn’t agree. No payment plans, nothing. So I did the only thing I could—the only alternative they offered. I paid off his debt by going into the pits.”