3
“Aaron Stone? The guy you met in Paris?”
“Know any other Aarons, Aunt Leigh?”
“Of course I do, Dayton. I know several of every man.” She snorts and sits opposite me. “What you gonna do, girl?”
“Same thing I do every day. My job.”
She snorts again.
“Seriously. I mean it. Running into him was a shock, but it was a one-night job.”
I’m still reeling from that shock. I barely slept last night after leaving the hotel. My mind was full of Paris seven years ago as I remembered the hopes of a na?ve seventeen-year-old girl. As I remembered the feeling of falling in love for the first time.
And the memories were full of his piercing blue eyes, looking at me with amusement, tenderness, and heat. They were full of his fingers trailing across my body, touching deep enough that they seeped into my bones despite barely skimming my skin. They were full of promises and believing… And an inevitable goodbye.
“Dayton!” Aunt Leigh snaps.
I drag my gaze from the window back to her. “What?”
“One-night job my ass. You’ve been staring out of my window for the last five minutes chewing on your lip. My rose garden is pretty, but it isn’t that f*cking pretty!”
I click my tongue. “I’m… I don’t know. I’m shocked, all right? Jesus, I haven’t seen him for seven years. Then he’s my goddamn client? He doesn’t even live on the West Coast, so what the hell is that about?”
“It’s about life throwing you a curveball. You gotta swing with it, sugar, or it’s gonna hit you in the gut.”
“Because my client being the only guy I’ve ever loved isn’t enough of a hit in the gut?”
She shrugs and lights a cigarette. “Dayton, it doesn’t matter if you loved the guy. Shit, honey, it doesn’t matter if you’ve f*cked him six ways to Sunday. What matters is he knows your real name. What matters is he knows where to find you.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Oh, you know that. I just don’t think you have a clue what to do about it.”
Goddamn, I hate it when she’s right. But that’s the problem with having an aunt who used to do this exact job. You can’t get anything past her.
I grab my purse and stand. “You know what? I’m going to see Liv.”
“Do what you want, sweetie, but do me a favor.”
“What?” I pause at the front door.
“Just remember—call girls don’t fall in love.”
I stare into the glass in my hand and twist it by the stem. The remaining wine swirls in circles, rising up the sides of the glass and dropping back down with a tiny splash with each full circle. Sitting here in the wine bar Liv works in, I can almost pretend Aaron Stone didn’t explode back into my life, that I’m waiting for my best friend to finish work like any other twenty-four-year-old.
But I’m not any other twenty-four-year-old. I never have been. I never will be. And I’m okay with that.
Becoming a call girl was my choice, and when the time came, I chose to make it a career. I’ve always known the rules, and hell, I watched Aunt Leigh’s marriage break down because of her unwillingness to give it up. She chose escorting over love, and I understand it. I get why.
Being an escort gives you control. Sure, the client plans it from the location to what happens. They pick how they want you to look—girl-next-door, dominatrix, or just plain sexy—and they choose how everything unfolds, but the second the money leaves their hand, the control switches. It’s up to me to give them everything they want. The look, the feel, the whole experience. It’s like porn without a camera.
I relish the control. There’s nothing in this world like having someone at your every command and sometimes at your mercy. It’s invigorating, a rush like nothing else. It’s compelling and addictive. And it’s a constant. It’ll never change—and that’s why I love it.
As long as men need sex, I have a job.
But with love… With love, you surrender control. Love is promising to give someone everything and not expect anything in return.
This is the very reason call girls don’t love. We don’t love, we don’t lust, and we don’t spend our days thinking, What if? Being a call girl is taking and giving without really giving any of yourself at all.
I don’t give my name, my age, my likes or dislikes. I don’t give anything except what the client pays for, and there’s only one part of me they’re paying for. They don’t pay for the story of my parents’ deaths, of how I took this life because it was a quick and easy fix for me financially, or of how I dropped out of college and a chance at my dream career because this was so much higher paid.
And isn’t everything about money?
You pay me it to f*ck you, and I take it. That money gives me pretty things—a house full of beautiful clothes and shoes—and that money gives you the time of your f*cking life. The same money keeps our tryst hidden from prying eyes and silent from oversensitive ears.
It also guarantees that you’ll be back again and again.
Usually that’s a good thing. Usually clients know nothing about you. They don’t know your bra size or how you gasp when lips brush a certain spot on your neck, and they definitely don’t know what it feels like to be truly inside of you, connected in every way.
Usually clients aren’t Aaron Stone.
“Thanks,” I mumble as Liv fills my glass.
“Looks like you’ve had a shitty day.” She sits opposite me with her own drink, her eyes soft and nonjudgmental. Thank f*cking god I have a best friend who gets me.
“Apart from my aunt pointing out my latest client knows exactly where to find me followed by reminding me we don’t fall in love, it’s hunky-f*cking-dory.”
“Back up. I missed something.”
“I had a late call last night—a function for some guy taking over Daddy’s company. Just a date.”
“And? The big deal is?”
I bury my face in my arms on the table. “The guy was Aaron.”
My best friend says nothing, and I know I’ve truly shocked her. Liv always has ten words where two will do. “As in?”
“Paris Aaron. Summer-fling Aaron. Love-of-my-motherf*cking-life Aaron!”
“Well, shit.”
“Shit? Shit? That’s all you have? Because I have some words that are several letters stronger than damn shit!”
Her shoe comes into contact with my shin.
“Ouch!” I sit up and glare at her.
“Pull it together, Dayton,” she orders. “You don’t lose your shit over a guy. Ever.”
“This… This shocked the ever-loving life out of me, Liv. I had no idea it was him. He was an anon and he thought he’d hired Mia Lopez. The girl he got was little old me.”
“I can’t see how it’s such a bad thing.”
Jesus Christ. Every brunette might need a blond best friend, but next time I’ll have a switched-on one, please.
“Do I need to spell it out for you?”
She nods.
“One”—I hold up a finger—“personal relationships are off-limits with clients. Pretending to be a girlfriend is different, but you never, ever fall in love with them. Two, Mia Lopez is that for a reason. She separates the pretend from the real, the working from the playing. And three, Aaron Stone knows my name. He knows who I am. There are a handful of people in this city who really know who Mia Lopez is, and he’s now one of them.”
“Okay, but it’s not your fault you have a personal relationship with him. If you’d known it was him when Monique called, you wouldn’t have done it, right?”
“Obviously not. You don’t mix business with pleasure in my life.”
“So you don’t even...” She raises her eyebrows.
“Liv.”
“Sorry. Sorry. I’m just sayin’…”
“No. I don’t. Can we get back to the problem now?”
She shrugs one shoulder and leans back, tilting her glass side to side. “I get everything you said, babe, but I just don’t see the problem. He needed a date for one night and you did it. It’s not like you’re going to see each other again, is it?”
“See you again soon, Mr. Michaels.” I shut the door to the extension and lean against it. God. He’s always a tiring one. There are only so many ways you can have sex with a fifty-year-old man before you’re afraid you’ll break his back—a memo he didn’t get, because he thinks taking Viagra before he gets here will make it nice for us both.
Thank God my fake orgasm would show up a porn star’s.
I leave Monique’s twenty percent in the envelope, and tuck my share into my purse, ready to deposit it in the bank tomorrow. The only thing on my mind right now is a hot shower to scrub old man off me and then sinking into a bubble bath until I turn into a prune.
The water practically burns my skin as I stand beneath the spray, but I definitely feel cleaner when I get out. If I lived anywhere other than Seattle, the water bill would kill me, even with my higher-than-average earnings. As it is, it costs me more to heat the water than it does to use it, and my water tank barely holds enough to wash a freaking bunny rabbit.
This job requires shower after shower after shower to scrub old man and sneaky husband off my body—something that would be slightly more bearable if there was the chance of an orgasm once in a while. But no. No orgasm. Not even a tremble of one.
That’s why I have Mr. Jack Rabbit under my bed.
Yep, that’s me. Dayton Black, high-class escort and responsible for my own orgasm since 2006.
I’m about to dip my toe into my corner tub when my cell shrills. F*ck that. Monique won’t call when she knows I’ve just finished with a client, and anyone else can just wait. I let it go to voicemail, and I’m about to sit down when her voice rings through my house.
“Dayton, get your ass to my house now. We need to talk.”
Aw, shit.
What was that about her not calling?
I throw on some sweatpants, a tank, and Ugg boots and shove my still-wet hair into a ponytail. She wants me now? She takes me as I am now.
The drive across Seattle to her suburban dream is surprisingly stress free, and when I pull up, she’s standing with her hands on her hips in her doorway. Her lips are pursed and her brows furrowed in a look I know too well. It’s a look that says only one thing—my agent is pissed. Incredibly so.
“Inside,” she barks.
I look to the sky and follow her in. Monique in a bad mood is never fun. For anyone.
She sits me at the kitchen table and leans against the side. “Why the f*ck didn’t you tell me you knew him?”
Of course.
“He was an anon. I didn’t even know myself until I got there.”
“An ex-boyfriend? F*ck, Dayton. Why didn’t you get the hell out of there?
“Rule one hundred seventy thousand and ten of being a call girl: you don’t run out on a client once you’re introduced. Ever.” I fold my arms across my chest. “I had a job to do, Mon. He paid, I delivered.”
“No personal relationships!”
“After hire!” I argue. “I haven’t seen Aaron Stone for seven years and I never thought I would again.”
Monique’s eyes flit across my face, examining every feature, and she finally relaxes. “Do you still have feelings for him?”
“No.”
“Good. Because he’s your client again.”
I’m sorry. What?
“He called this morning. He’s traveling to his father’s other offices—Vegas, Sydney, Milan, London, and Paris. He needs someone to accompany him for the next six weeks, and you’re the lucky f*cking girl.”
What?
“And you’re telling me this why?”
“Because you’re going.”
“But you just said—”
“Oh, believe me, Dayton. This has been f*cking killing me all day, but Ross said I should just let you do the job. You have a past, but he thinks you’re too smart to go fall in love again, right?”
“Right.”
“And Mr. Stone is paying triple your damn rate to get you on his arm looking pretty. But you listen to me. You go out? He buys you dinner. You need a new dress? He buys that f*cker too. You need your hair done? A bikini wax? Your eyebrows shaped? He pays for every f*cking thing you need. Even if it’s a candy bar.”
“I don’t depend on a guy to buy me stuff, Mon. I’m pretty damn sure I can afford to get my eyebrows shaped.”
She leans forward and slams her hands on the table, her light blue eyes piercing mine. “You need something, he buys it. Capiche?”
My jaw tightens. “Capiche.”
“Good. Now go home and pack. You’re leaving at seven a.m. for Las Vegas.”
“Seven a.m.?!”
“Seven a.m., and your share of the first week’s money will be in your account by the time you land.”
“Fine. What am I doing?”
She smirks. “You’re his girlfriend.”
Fantastic.