Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance)

ESCORT

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Claire Adams

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Chapter
One

The Last Time I Saw Me

Grace

“You’re not listening to me,” John Parker,
my outgoing boss says, leaning back in his oversized office chair. “We just
don’t have the kind of support we’d need for a move like this.”

“We’ll get the support,” I tell him.
“It’ll take a little bit of time, but I’ve been working on this for a while,
John. I know what I’m doing.”

I think he’s just pissed that he’s going
and I’m staying.

I’m not too sure about the specifics, but
I know that whatever the reason is that he’s resigning, it’s the kind of thing
that could seriously damage our stock prices.

“Well, I know you’ve put a lot of time
into this,” he says, “but we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the
personnel. We don’t have the support, Grace. Ainsley’s not going to go for this
unless you’ve got everything locked down tight, and we both know you’re not
there yet.”

The problem is that I think we — that is,
Memento Entertainment — should expand into additional markets. John, though, is
of the old hat. He thinks that by staying small, we stay secure.

On the other hand, I think that staying
small will only prevent us from growing to our potential.

“John, with a little investment and some
good faith right now, we’re going to be in a better position to take on the big
guys and maybe we can stop being the station that people flip past on their way
to NBC or CBS,” I tell him.

“You’re delusional if you think we’re
poised for that kind of an uptick,” he answers. “I respect your ambition, I
really do, but at some point, you’re going to have to learn to be realistic.
Otherwise, you’re going to end up driving the company under or, best case
scenario, someone realizes that’s where this thing is heading and they’ll have
no choice but to fire you before it gets that far.”

John and I have always had friction.

I graduated from high school early: three
years early, to be exact. I was eighteen when I graduated college with honors
and, rather than do what mommy and daddy told me to do and go for a higher
degree in a more respectable field, I decided to use my Bachelor’s in
Communications to get my foot in the door.

I can always get a doctorate in something
boring when I lose interest in media.

Anyway, I’m not sure if our friction stems
from the fact that I’m smarter than John and he knows it or that he was
pressured into hiring me by Ainsley, a family friend and CEO of Memento
Entertainment.

It very well may be a combination of the
two.

“I’m just saying,” I start again, “if we
purchase a few stations in markets where we don’t yet have a foothold, we can
lay the groundwork for a lot more down the line. I’m not saying it’s going to
happen overnight, but if it doesn’t happen sometime soon, we’re not going to be
around long enough to-”

“What?” he asks. “We’ve been around for
nearly fifty years, Grace. If we were going to go under, it would have happened
by now. You’ve got to realize that our business model works because we don’t
take unjustifiable risks. That’s why we’re still here and why so many of our
competitors have lost out to the bigger guys over the years.”

“I get that we’ve got longevity,” I tell
him. “What I’m saying is that we could have longevity
and
profitability.”

“Oh, come on, Grace,” he says. “What kind
of car do you drive?”

“That’s not the point, John,” I start, but
he picks up before I can continue.

“The point is that you’re pushing for us
to do something that we’ve never done and it’s going to kill the company if any
single part of your plan doesn’t pan out.”

“Oh, we’ve moved into new markets before,”
I argue.

“After a great deal of careful
consideration and planning,” he says. “We never dove in somewhere without
knowing just how warm the water was going to be.”

It’s a stupid metaphor. He’s only trying
to cover the fact that his work at the company has been marked by advising our
CEO, Ainsley Winters, and the rest of the members on the board not to run
before we can walk.

We’ve been walking twice as long as I’ve
been alive.

Still, I’m not sure if it’s what he’s
saying or the way he’s saying it, but my palms are sweaty and I’m struck by a
sharp feeling of terror and panic.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I breathe, but my throat has
gone dry. “We need to do something, John. If we stick with the same old approach,
we’re going to get the same old payoff right until the moment when one of those
companies whose jingles people actually recognize swallows us up and you can
say goodbye to Memento Entertainment.”

I reach down and pick up my purse.

“Where are you going?” he asks. “We’re not
done here.”

“I’m not leaving,” I tell him and grab a
piece of gum. Out of nowhere, my mouth tastes like I just finished eating
pennies and blueberry pie. It’s not a good mix.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asks.
“You don’t look so well.”

We’ve done this before. We’ve had this
exact conversation before, only I can’t actually place when it would have
happened. The feeling, though, is overwhelming.

My mind races as I think back, trying to
pin it down, but I can’t think of anything that would fit.

“What the hell was that?” I shout.

John’s brow furrows. “What the hell was
what
?”

“It sounded like someone was trying to
break…the door…with a…”

I’m dizzy and my head hurts, but my legs
are numb and my vision’s gone double, so I don’t feel confident excusing
myself.

“Grace?”

“I’m…fine…” I mutter and that’s the last
thing I remember.

After that, my consciousness is an
infrequent series of pictures and words in a language that I’ve never heard.

I’m not in the office anymore, and for a
while, I don’t know where I am at all.

There’s a man standing over me now,
shining a light into my eyes, and I’m asking him, with great difficulty, what
he’s done to me and why I can’t move.

He answers me, saying, “You’re in a
hospital. You had a seizure.”

I try to respond, but it’s difficult for
me to find my tongue to speak again.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

I look up at him, the world slowly coming
back into focus. “I don’t…” I start. “What’s happening to me?”

“It takes a little time to regain yourself
after a seizure,” he explains. “Do you remember anything?”

It takes some time to get the words out,
but I tell him about the pictures, the unrecognizable sounds.

“Well,” he says, “my name is Dr. Jones.
We’re going to get you in for some tests to see why this happened, but if
you’re feeling up to it, I have some questions.”

“Okay,” I agree, trying to keep my eyes
open. I’ve never felt this exhausted in my life.

“Do you have a history of seizures?”

“No,” I answer.

“Does anyone in your family have
epilepsy?”

“No.”

“Do you have any numbness, tingling in
your body right now?”

“My left side,” I tell him, “and both my
legs.”

“All right,” he says. “I don’t think you
had a stroke, your pupils are round and reactive, but we should know more once
we’ve gotten you in for an MRI. For now, you should just get some rest, all
right? The remote next to your bed has a red button on it; just press that if
you need a nurse to come in and give you a hand with anything. Otherwise, just
lie back and close your eyes. It looks like you’ve had a pretty rough day.”

“John…” I start.

“Your friend?” the doctor asks.

I nod.

“He had to go back to the office,” the
doctor answers, “but he said he’d be back later to check on you. Why don’t you
just get some rest?”

I’m scared and embarrassed, but I’m also
exhausted. Even the suggestion of getting rest is enough to convince me to
close my eyes.

When I wake up again, the doctor is
standing next to the bed, saying they’re ready to get me in for an MRI.

They do their tests and get me back to my
room where John is waiting for me, hunched forward in his seat, his hands
clasped supporting his chin.

“Grace,” he says as I’m wheeled back into
place, “are you all right?”

“I have no idea,” I tell him. “What
happened? I mean, I know I had a seizure, but…”

“I don’t know,” he says. “One minute you
were sitting there talking to me and the next, you were on the floor
convulsing.”

I’m not entirely sure why those words make
me cry.

“You’re going to be all right,” John
soothes. “You can have as much time as you need. Just focus on getting better,
all right?”

I would argue with him, but I’m still too
tired to make much of a showing.

“If we don’t take risks,” I tell him,
“we’re not going to survive.”

He just smiles at me. “Why don’t you just
get some rest? We’re not going to make a move on anything for a while anyway,
so you just focus on getting better so you can be back in my office,
monopolizing my lunch hour soon, okay?”

My eyes start to close on their own, but
I’m still muttering, “…got to get out there… people should know who we are…”

The last sound I hear before falling
asleep again is John’s laugh.

*
       
*
       
*

I don’t know what time it is, but it’s got
to be the next morning when I wake up, again with Dr. Jones standing next to my
bed. This time, though, he brought a colleague: a tall, tan, almost statuesque
man with a lab coat, covering what I’m imagining to be a toned upper body.

“Hey, I’m sorry to wake you,” Dr. Jones
says. “This is Dr. Churchill.”

“No relation,” the other doctor says. I’m
assuming it’s a reference to the British Prime Minister. “Grace, I’ve looked at
your slides, and we’ve found an
oligodendroglioma
,
stage two.”

I’m expecting him to say more, but it
looks like he’s waiting for my reaction.