Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (67 page)

“Oh, Wrigley!” she
screams.

Wrigley? Really?

I guess it works for her,
as I can feel the tense-and-release in her body as she grinds against me hard
and that does it for me.

I come hard with an eager
audience across the street.

I’m a little disappointed
that I don’t see or hear applause, but as my body spasms in pleasure, that
disappointment quickly dissipates.

“Woo!” she interjects.
“That was perfect! I’ve never done
that
before.”

Once my orgasm fades
away, I pull out and remove the condom, cleaning first her and then myself—for
obvious reasons—with the towel from the ledge.

I’m naked and still hard
as I turn to see the security guard standing in the doorway to the roof.

I tap my companion on the
shoulder and she turns her head. She’s still leaning against the ledge, her
arms fully outstretched.

“Wrigley!” the security
guard shouts. “I told you to stop coming up here. You have any idea how many
complaints we get when you pull this shit?”

I should probably feel
more exposed or fearful, but I can’t help but laugh with the realization that
the woman was calling out her own name from the top of a rooftop as she was
having sex, basically in front of her neighbors.

This might just be true
love.

Chapter Seven

Just
another Day at the Office

Leila

Thus far, I’ve managed to
avoid Mr. Kidman, so today’s a good day.

Good might be a bit
liberal a phrase, but it hasn’t been completely soul crushing, so at least it’s
a step in the right direction.

I’m having trouble
concentrating, though. Annabeth is right: I do need someone in my life.

My last boyfriend, Chad—a
jerk’s name if ever there was one—kind of did a number on me. Between his
near-constant cheating and the way he would always find something wrong in
anything I did, it’s been a bit difficult for me to find a measure of
confidence in myself.

That’s why they do it.

That’s why men treat
women like crap—it’s probably why women treat men like crap, too. It’s just a
way to make the other person feel like less so that you can feel like more.

Even knowing this,
knowing that Chad was just a coward, it doesn’t change anything. The damage is
done, and I don’t even know where to start with finding a guy to get to know,
to start dating. I’ve all but given up on finding anything resembling real
love, but at this point, I’d be satisfied with a reasonable knockoff.

“Tyler!” that grating
voice calls behind me.

“Mr. Kidman,” I say,
turning around, “I’m really not in the mood.”

“Well, I think we both
know that
I
am,” he says and licks
his lips.

It’s not an attractive
gesture.

“But listen, I did want
to tell you that you’ve been doing great work around here, and if you’d like to
knock off early one of these days, I’d be happy to approve it.”

“What’s the catch?” I
ask.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re a
pathetic letch and you’d never say something like that unless there was some
disturbing euphemism to accompany it.”

That’s what I want to
say.

What I really say is,
“You’d just approve it? No special favors or anything?”

“Not unless you’d like to
show your gratitude by coming back to my office, and—you know what? I’m not
really in the mood for this today, either,” he says. “My wife’s been on my case
all week, asking me when I’m going to retire, and I don’t have anything to tell
her. Anyway,” he breathes, “just thought I’d let you know that. Oh,” he says,
“and if you see your friend Annabeth around, would you tell her that I know
she’s been skipping out and her ass is about an inch from the chopping block.”

“I’ll let her know,” I
say, smiling.

I’m not thrilled with
what he said about Annabeth, but that was the closest thing to a mutually
respectful conversation I’ve had with the man.

“One more thing…”

My joy may have been
premature.

“I’ve been talking with
the partners, and we think there might be a future for you here. I don’t know
if you’ve received any other offers, but I do hope that you’ll consider staying
on. We’ve really appreciated all the hard work you’ve been putting in.”

This is too good to be
true, I’m sure, but my day just got a whole lot better.

“Thank you, sir,” I tell
him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You know there’s always
a position open under me,” he says. “Huh. Look at that, I guess I am in the
mood. Anyway,” he laughs, “keep up the good work.”

All right, he kind of
marred it at the end there, but all-in-all, I’d say it was a pretty uplifting
exchange.

Rackham Morris, one of
the partners, passes me in the hall and right now, I’m not even bothered by the
fact that he completely ignores my existence. Nothing is going to get me down
today.

“Tyler!”

Why do I always tell
myself that nothing is going to get me down? I know better than to jinx it like
that.

“Yes?” I ask, turning to
face Atkinson.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m
going to need your help with a few projects. Are you busy?”

Come to think of it, I
think I see a way out of this.

“Actually,” I tell him,
“I’m just on my way out for the day, but Annabeth should be around here
somewhere.”

That should keep him busy
for a while, as I happen to know that Annabeth is at Reginald’s for a
ridiculously extended lunch break.

I pop over to Mr.
Kidman’s office to ask him if he needs anything else. He tells me to go and
spread my wild oats. Yeah, he also tells me to take pictures of the
oats-sewing, and I’m pretty sure he’s using the wrong expression given my
gender, but
it’s
close enough to a nice moment that I
walk back out of his office with a spring in my step.

I pull out my phone.

“Hey,” I write, “still at
Reginald’s?”

I get to the elevator and
wait in the lobby for a response before I do anything else.

“No,” Annabeth’s return
message reads, “but if you’re up for skipping out, I’m getting some drinks with
some guys down at the bar.”

With Annabeth, there is
only one bar in New York. “I’ll see you there in twenty minutes.”

A minute or two later,
I’m in a cab, telling the driver to step on it. He sighs and rolls his eyes at
the cliché, but damn it, I’m having a wonderful day.

When the cab pulls up, I
spot Annabeth standing outside the door, sucking down a cigarette.

She drops it when I step
out of the cab.

“Ho-ly shit, girl!” she
says. “I never thought you’d actually blow off work to come get drinks with
me.”

I would tell her that I
was actually offered an early day, but what’s the point?

“I had to see what you
were up to one of these times, didn’t I?” I ask.

“Ooh, ooh,” she says,
“you have
got
to meet these guys I’ve
been talking with in there. I have a feeling your dry spell is about to
experience unseasonable precipitation.”

She holds her hand above her
head for a high five, but I can’t reward her for that comment. “You know I love
you,” I tell her, “but can we not do the double-entendre thing. We’ve talked
about this and decided that neither one of us is any good at it.”

“Oh fine,” she says,
lowering her hand. It goes back up when she announces, “Girl, you
gonna
get laid!”

I laugh and do my best to
give her a high five that doesn’t completely embarrass both of us, but that’s
really not why I’m here.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I
tell her, “from what I remember of it, sex is pretty nice, but I’m really not
looking for something like that right now.”

She nods awkwardly.
“Yeah, I guess you’re—”

“Oh, who am I kidding?
I’m an apple tree that needs to be plucked.”

“I thought we just
agreed—”

“I know, I know. We really
are terrible at that, aren’t we?”

“You said it.”

Annabeth finishes up her
cigarette and we walk into Club Allen, the worst-named bar in New York and the
only place in this world that Annabeth would rather be than Bali. Come to think
of it, I’m not sure that’s she’s ever been to Bali, but I do remember her
talking a lot about it.

Huh.

We’re twenty feet from
the bar when I spot the group that Annabeth was talking about. It has to be
them. They’re the only ones who look like escaped convicts.

Annabeth bounces over to
them and gives them all hugs. I’m pretty sure she said they just met, but
whatever. She’s rather friendly that way.

She points to me,
obviously telling them something, but it’s too loud for me to hear what she’s
saying, so I walk closer to the group.

“…I mean a
long
time,” she says. “Leila, we were
just talking about you! Come have a seat. Rick, here, is going to buy you a
drink. What do you want?”

Drunk in the middle of
the day: is this my life now?

“I guess I don’t have to
go back to work today. I’ll have a tequila sunrise,” I answer, eliciting a
cheer for some reason.

The one that must be
Rick—my clever deduction is due to the fact that he’s the one leaning over the
bar, ordering my drink—has dark, shoulder-length hair and there’s a tribal armband
only partially hidden under his shirtsleeve.

He’s really not my type.
I’m more into the clean-cut gentleman, but now that I think of it, the only
“clean-cut gentleman” I ever dated was Chad.

What the hell? I’ll see
if there’s something to this Rick guy other than the tattoos and the somewhat
unsettling look that he’s giving me as he hands over my drink.

Boy, he is really staring
me down.

All right, maybe Rick’s
not the guy, but I do feel like letting loose and maybe doing something stupid.

“So, what do you guys
do?” I ask, scanning each of the four men in turn, looking for anyone who
doesn’t look like they’d kill me in my sleep.

“Finance,” they all
answer at once.

That explains it.

“We’re in finance, too,”
Annabeth says.

“No we’re not,” I rebut.
The tone catches the guys off guard. “I mean, we’re in brokerage, but that’s
hardly the…” I trail off, realizing just how full of crap I am. If Annabeth and
I aren’t in finance, what
are
we?

Annabeth just smiles and
touches my arm.

“Will you guys excuse us
for a minute?”

Four men with blank faces
nod, startlingly in unison.

We get about ten feet
away from the bar when Annabeth turns on her heel and asks, “What’s your deal?
Those guys are totally into us.”

“I don’t know,” I hedge.
“I guess they’re just not my type.”

“Yeah?” she asks. “What
is
your type, then?”

I shrug.

“I think I know what the
problem is.”

“Yeah?”

If she has any ideas, I’m
more than open to hear them.

“You’re scared,” she
says. “It’s been so long since you’ve gotten yourself some strange that you
don’t know what to do when it’s sitting right in front of you.”

“Strange is a pretty good
way to describe it,” I say, looking over at Annabeth’s brood, not one of them
speaking or showing any kind of emotion whatsoever. They’re just sitting there,
staring off into what I’m nearly certain is nothing.

“You need to loosen up,”
she says. “Now, drink that shit down and I’m going to order us some shots.”

“I didn’t really bring
that much—”

“You’re a pretty girl in
a bar,” Annabeth interrupts. “The last thing in the world you have to do is buy
your own drink. There’s not a man in here that wouldn’t rather see you drunk,
so chug that down and let’s get it started.”

“Get
what
started, though?” I ask, my adventurousness almost completely
dissolved already.

“A nice, pleasant,
one-hour relationship,” she says. “You need to get someone to clear out the
cobwebs.”

“Cobwebs?”

“Right,” she says, “the
rule. But you know what I mean. Just take a breath, will you? I’ll tell you
what. Go over there and I’ll help you build some confidence.”

“They’re really not—”

“I’m not saying you have
to marry any of them,” she says. “Just sit on the stool, drink whatever they
buy you—I know you worry about
roofies
, but I
promise, I’ll watch all your drinks, okay? Besides,” she says as she’s walking
away, “something happens and we’re going over to your place.”

“What?”

She’s already back at the
bar.

In response to something
Annabeth is telling them, one of the men gives up his seat and motions for me
to take it. Timidly, I walk over and sit down.

“All right,” Annabeth
says, “who wants to buy this beautiful woman a vodka?”

My stomach churns.

“Not vodka,” I tell her.

She rolls her eyes. I’ve
been getting that a lot lately.

“Fine, who wants to buy
this beautiful woman a shot of bourbon?”

Rick raises his hand like
he’s in junior high.

Maybe these guys aren’t
so scary after all. Maybe they’re just idiots.

That’s better somehow,
right?

“All right,” Annabeth
continues, “so Rick, what
do you
think of my friend
here?”

He blushes and looks
away.

Yep. Not scary: idiot.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Go on,” Annabeth says.
“Tell her what you like about her.”

“Well,” he says, “she’s
got—”

“Don’t tell me, tell
her,” Annabeth interrupts.

This has to be the most
uncomfortable moment of my life.

“You’re very pretty,” he
says. “You’re tall, but not too tall. I like the way your hair catches the
light.”