Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (40 page)

First,
I’ve got to charm her into the realization that I’m not nearly as despicable a
person as she thinks I am.

This
is not going to be easy.

“Hey,”
I say with a smile as she pulls up in front of the store. “Ready to get to
work?”

“We’re
closed today,” she tells me.

“Oh,
right
,” I answer, putting my palm
against my forehead. “I totally forgot about that.”

“Yeah,”
she says.

“Why
didn’t you call?” I ask.

Okay,
that one was just because I am a
bit
of a despicable person.

“I
tried to, but—”

She’s
already flustered, but I interrupt her anyway. “It’s all right,” I tell her.
“You and I can discuss the Eric Dawson approach to making great employees into
great employees who can carry a little bit more of the burden so I, or in this
case, you, don’t have to work quite so hard—trademark pending.”

“That’s
quite a title,” she says, shaking her head.

She’s
still guarded with the smile, but she’s already loosened up dramatically over
where she was only a couple of days ago.

“All
right,” I start again, “how did you tell your employee or employees that you
were giving them a promotion?”

She
hesitates.

“You
did tell someone that they’re getting a promotion, right?” I ask.

“I
just decided on it last night,” she says. “I haven’t really had the time to
talk to anyone about it.”

“All
right,” I say. “I can understand that. Since the store’s not opening today, are
you hungry?”

“I
ate before I came,” she answers.

“Can
we talk in your office?” I ask.

She
pulls the keys from her pocket and opens the door, quickly running over to the
security system’s keypad on the wall. Her sexy ass bounces the entire way and I
can only imagine how fantastic it would be to bend her over and give her the D.

“Who’s
not open on a Saturday?” I ask.

“We’re
not,” she answers as she puts in her code. “I thought you would have noticed
that by now.”

“I
just thought you didn’t want
us
working during your busiest day of the week,” I laugh. “Is that something
you’re going to be looking to change when you’ve got a manager or two to take
some of the heat off of you?”

“I
don’t know,” she says. “I’ll think about it.”

This
is going to be harder than I thought.

I
catch up with her and we go to her office.

“You
can leave the door open,” she says as I instinctually go to close it.

“Right,”
I chuckle. “I’m just so used to you calling me in here to yell at me that I—”

“You’re
usually the one who wants to come in here and yell at
me
!” she protests.

I
hold up my hands and, smiling, I say, “Calm down. It was just a joke.” I rub my
hands together and ask, “So, where would you like to start?”

“Well,
I guess I’d just like to know where I
should
start,” she says. “I’ve trained cashiers and salespeople, but never anyone with
the kind of responsibility I’m looking for.”

“You
know, I’m sorry, but would you like to go get some coffee?” I ask. “I’ve gotten
into the habit of sleeping in on Saturdays, and I’m having a hell of a time
keeping my eyes open.”

“There’s
coffee in the break room,” she says.

“You
have a break room?”

“It’s
for employees only,” she quips, the hint of a smile creeping up one side of her
face.

I
get coffee and the morning goes on. As capable as she is and as willing as she
keeps saying she’s become to start handing off some of her day-to-day duties,
she’s really fighting me on just about everything.

Finally,
it gets to the point that we’re not going to make any progress whatsoever until
she learns that she
can
trust people
that she employs. As I’m technically an employee right now, although we never
really got around to discussing whether there would or wouldn’t be payment, I’m
ready to do my part to help.

“Do
you know what a trust fall is?” I ask.

“Kind
of,” she answers. “I mean, I do,
I’ve
just never done
one. I didn’t get that far in the cheer auditions.”

“You
were a cheerleader?” I ask.

“No,”
she says, “I just told you that I didn’t get that far. You really don’t listen
very well, do you?”

“What?”

She
clenches her jaw.

She
doesn’t think I’m being anywhere near as charming as I so obviously am.

“All
right,” I tell her, “the process is simple. You stand with your back to me and
on the count of three, simply fall backward.”

“You’re
going to catch me, though, right?” she asks.

“Of
course I’m going to catch you,” I tell her. “It’s not a breaking trust fall.”

“Okay,”
she says, obviously trying to gear herself up for the difficult task of
believing that I’m not just trying to get her to fall on her ass. “Where should
we do this?”

“We
can do it here,” I tell her. “It really doesn’t matter so long as we both have
room to stand and you have room to fall.”

“Let’s
not do it in here,” she says. “The floor’s slippery and I can just see you
losing your balance and breaking a hip or something, and I’m really not sure if
my insurance covers trust falls.”

“Whatever,”
I tell her. “Let’s go to a carpeted area then, and we can do it there. It’s
really not that big a deal. I’m not going to let you fall too far before I
catch you. It’s just about going just past that point where you could catch
yourself and trusting that I’m behind you and that I don’t want to see you get
hurt.”

We
walk out onto the sales floor and she spends five minutes trying to find the
perfect spot despite my assurances that it really doesn’t matter where we do
it.

“Okay,”
she says. “We can do it here. You’re going to catch me, right?”

“I
don’t know what kind of friends you have, but yes, I’m really going to catch
you,” I tell her.

“That’s
the problem,” she says, turning her back toward me. “I was never really that
good at making friends.”

“That’s
because you don’t know how to do a trust fall,” I tell her. “Now, cross your
arms and on the count of three—”

“Who’s
counting?” she asks. “Am I counting or are you counting?”

“I’m
counting,” I tell her. “If I let you count, we’d be here all day.”

“You’re
going to catch me, though, right?”

“If
you ask me that again, I might just change my mind and not catch you,” I tell
her. “Now, one… two… three.”

She
just stands there.

“Three,”
I repeat.

She
sways back a little, but quickly rights herself.

“Should
we do it here?” she asks. “It might be better over—”

“We’ve
got space to do it and carpeted floor,” I tell her. “Just go. One, two, three.”

Nothing.

“You’re
not really filling me with confidence here,” I tell her.

“Why
are you helping me?” she asks.

“What
do you mean?” I return. “You asked me to.”

“Yeah,
but what are you getting out of this? I can give you some money for your time,
but it’s probably not going to be anywhere near what you were making with the
remodel and everything.”

“It
came out great, though, didn’t it?” I ask. “Actually, I’ll tell you what.”

“What?”
she asks.

“These
can work a lot better if you’re falling from a higher place than where I’m
standing, so why don’t we do it over in the plus department. You can stand on
the bottom stair and I’ll stand on the low floor. It’ll give you a little more
time to fall, but I’ll still be there to catch you,” I propose.

“Yeah,
I don’t know about that,” she says. “I think we should just start with
something smaller before
we
—”

“Oh,
come on,” I start. “If anything, that extra little bit of backward momentum
will just help you learn to trust even faster.”

I
don’t know it yet, but I’m about to come to regret those words.

“All
right,” she says. “We’ll do it there, but you’ve got to swear that you’re going
to catch me.”

 
“You know, this really shouldn’t be the most
difficult part of the exercise,” I tell her and start walking over to the
sunken floor space.

We
get there and she positions herself, rather obsessively, on the bottom step.

“You’re
going to—”

“Yes!”
I interrupt. “I’m going to catch you. Just go: one, two,
three
.”

The
first problem is that I hadn’t expected her to actually do it this time.

The
second problem is that, as soon as she feels herself losing her balance, her
arms start flailing wildly about her.

Those
two problems add up to the back of her hand smacking me hard across the face as
I’m trying to catch her. My eyes close on their own with the impact, but I
still manage to put my arms out well enough to catch her, although things don’t
go quite as planned after that.

She
hits against my body while I’m still trying to process my brand new injury and
before I can get my eyes open again, we’re both falling backward onto the floor
below.

On
the positive side of things, I do eventually break her fall. On the negative
side of things, due to our respective positioning, I get a pretty solid shot to
the fellas when we land and it’s a beautiful fucking sight.

“You
said you were going to catch me!” she shouts as she springs to her feet.

I
would love to offer a response, but as I’m currently in the fetal position,
rocking back and forth with one hand over my eye and the other covering my
junk, there’s not much I can physically manage to add to the conversation.

“Shit,”
she says. “Are you okay?”

Yep,
still can’t answer.

I
take a breath and try to be a man about it, but the fact that I took a shot to
the jewels kind of makes this the only manly thing I can do in this situation.

“Oh,
I didn’t do that, did I?” she asks.

“No,”
I said. “I figured it would be a great idea to squash an incredibly sensitive
part of my anatomy after strategically placing my face where the back of your
hand could reach it.”

“Well
you don’t have to be a jerk about it,” she says, and I try to laugh, but it
just comes out as a gasp for air.

After
a minute or so, I stop writhing and collect myself. It takes me another minute
or two before I can get off the floor, and even then, it’s with plenty of her
help.

“I
think we’ve got a little bit of work to do,” I tell her.

“Maybe
we should just give up. Maybe I’m just not the kind of person that can trust
someone else is going to be there for me.”

Fixing
her trust issues was supposed to be like constructing something but this was
harder.

“I
don’t believe that,” I tell her.

“It’s
true,” she says. “This is stupid. I should just give up.”

“I’ll
tell you what,” I say, still hunched forward, my hands on my upper thighs, “why
don’t we change spots.”

“You’re
bigger than me,” she says. “I don’t think I could catch you.”

“We’ll
do it on the flat ground,” I tell her. “Stand just a foot or two behind me and
just catch me when I start to tip. If nothing else, that’ll teach you that you
can be a part of a trusting relationship.”

The
look on her face tells me that I wasn’t particularly clear with that
explanation.

“What
I mean by that,” I explain, “is that I’ll trust you to catch me. You, I have no
doubt, are going to prove yourself worthy of that trust. That’s what I meant by
trusting relationship. This might be an easier place to start, as I know you
trust your own ability.”

She
looks at the ground, then at me, then briefly at my crotch, although I have no
illusions that there’s any sexual context to the glance.

“Okay,”
she says. “Are you ready or do you need another minute?”

After
a glass of water and some pacing, I manage to get myself in a somewhat more
upright position and we get in our places.

“You
do the count,” I tell her.

“All
right,” she says. “One, two, three.”

Against
my better judgment in this scenario, I fall backward and she easily stops me
from falling to the ground.

“Oh,
well if I knew it was that easy,” she says as I get my feet back underneath the
rest of my body, “I wouldn’t have freaked out when you tried to catch me.”

“In
my defense,” I tell her, “even after the smack in the face, I
did
still catch you. Do you think you’re
ready for this?”