Escorted (31 page)

Ander slanted
her a sharp look.

“Not like
that,” she gasped. “I didn’t mean...obviously I didn’t mean I’d treat you like
an escort. I just meant, if you’re nice enough to come all the way back, you
shouldn’t have to pay that extra money.”

His nod showed
he understood she hadn’t meant to imply he was at her service, but he hadn’t
changed his mind. “I’m not coming back, Lori. You don’t need me to go to the
wedding with you.”

“Yes, I do!”

“No, you
don’t.” His tone and his eyes were unyielding. “You just want me to go so you
won’t feel insecure, but you have nothing to feel insecure about. You’ve done
remarkable things with yourself since you left high school. You don’t need to
drag a man along with you as a prop to give yourself value in their eyes.”

Lori scowled,
her flash of anger intensified by her suspicions that he was entirely right
about her unconscious motivations. “That’s arrogant and obnoxious,” she
snapped, “There’s nothing unusual about wanting to bring a date to a wedding.
Anyone might feel awkward by themselves.”

“Anyone might,”
Ander allowed, not at all affected by her indignation. “But you want me to come
because you still feel second-best. I won’t support those feelings. Ever. Go by
yourself. And prove that having a man doesn’t equal success.”

One part of Lori
almost melted at the bland words—it was as if he’d seen into her soul and knew
exactly which wounds still needed healing. But another part of her was
frustrated and annoyed.

For so long, Ander
had done anything she wanted. His role in her life had been to please her
because she’d paid him to do so. And moving away from that was sometimes a hard
transition. It was hard to recognize that Ander’s will was just as strong as
hers and that he could be even more stubborn.

When it didn’t
matter to him, he was still accommodating and considerate, but she’d never be
able to push him around.

The fact that
she was just learning this now was one more sign of how unnatural their
interactions had been before.

She curled up
her lip to show him she wasn’t pleased. “I could always take someone besides
you.”

He lifted his
eyebrows. “You’re more than welcome to do so. Any possibilities?”

Lori sniffed.
“Phil Rothe is available again.” To her delight, she managed to say the words
without cracking a smile.

Ander choked on
stifled amusement. Then he couldn’t stifle it. Lori watched with a tender ache
as he laughed openly, his face transformed with warmth and his body shaking
with the tremors of his hilarity.

“You go right
ahead and take Rothe to the wedding,” Ander said at last, laughter still
evident in his voice. “That would prove...something.”

Giving up her
bad mood, Lori leaned back against the sofa cushion and smiled up at Ander’s
face. “I guess I’ll have to go by myself.” For good measure, she muttered, not
quite under her breath, “Jerk.”

Ander’s lips
twitched. “Did you just call me a jerk?” He stood up and picked up the plates
to carry into the kitchen. “Want some more wine?”

“Sure,” she
replied absently. Her eyes had come to rest on Ander’s leather case on the
floor, and she experienced a sudden, very familiar surge of curiosity.

Impulsively,
she leaned over, opened the case, and pulled out the book Ander had been
reading before.

He hadn’t
wanted her to see it for some reason.

She stared at
the cover. It didn’t look particularly clandestine or exciting. Some sort of
history book on early Aegean art and architecture. Glancing at the spine, she
saw a sticker from a university bookstore. She flipped through the pages and
noticed most of them were marked in the margins with Ander’s small, precise
script.

Vaguely baffled
on why he would have wanted to hide such a boring book, she pulled out a few
sheets of paper that were folded and stuck inside.

It was a
syllabus for a graduate-level class on ancient Mediterranean archeology. A
class that, from the time listed under the title, met Wednesday evenings from
six to nine.

She was staring
down at the syllabus blankly when suddenly it was snatched away. His jaw set
and lips pressed tightly together, Ander glared coldly as he pulled the book
out of her grip as well.

“What is this?”
she rasped. “Are you taking an archeology class?”

“I put the book
in my case because I didn’t want you to see it,” he bit out. “Will you ever get
over this childish habit of snooping?”

“No,” she said,
brushing off his cold tone. “That’s what I do. Ander, tell me what’s going on.
Are you taking that class? On Wednesdays?”

Despite her
confusion and a little pang of hurt that he would have kept something like this
from her, another feeling was starting to swell in her heart.

Hope.

Ander stared at
her stonily for another minute, but gradually his face relaxed into tired
resignation. “Yes. I’m taking the class.”

“And it meets
on Wednesdays? That’s where you were last night?”

“Yes. That’s
where I was.”

“What about
your clients? Your engagements?”

Ander rubbed a
hand over his smooth bald head, and he looked rather uncomfortable as he
admitted, “There are no clients.”

“What?” Her
whole body was shaking with shock, bewilderment and expectation.

Meeting her
eyes, Ander said simply, as if he weren’t upending her entire world, “I have no
clients anymore. I’ve retired.”

“But all those
evenings you’re gone—with your case?”

Reluctantly, Ander
pulled up his case and set it between them on the couch. He opened it and
tilted it over so Lori could see inside. No condoms, DVDs, vibrators, or props.
Just books, pens and pencils, a notebook, and a small laptop. “I don’t go to
meet clients.  I have classes, seminars, or go to the library to study.”

Lori sprawled
back on the couch, so overcome she felt limp and weak. “I can’t believe this.
You’re working on a degree?”

Ander nodded
and looked a little sheepish “A PhD in Archeology.”

“And the job
all next month?”

“A field
project on Santorini.”

“Oh, God, Ander,”
Lori said hoarsely. “Why didn’t you tell me? We’re supposed to be friends.
You’ve been lying to me all this time.”

Ander leaned
over and pulled her up again so she was sitting upright. He kept his hands on
her shoulders, their weight warm and strong. “I’m sorry, Lori. But, yes. I was
lying to you.”

“For how long?”

“A long time.”

Suddenly, Lori’s
heart started to hammer, and her blood began to throb through her veins. “When
did you stop seeing clients, Ander?” she whispered.

Ander took a
breath and moistened his lips. Then he admitted in a raspy voice, “You were my
last client.”

Somehow, she
knew there was more. “And when did you stop seeing all the others, Ander? You
told me you were cutting back.”

“I was cutting
back. Cutting back on all of them but you. Sarah Jacoby was the last.”

“Oh God!” Lori
felt like the world was spinning around her. She pulled out of Ander’s hands
and got off the couch. She paced the room restlessly, not even seeing the wide
expanse of sunny windows, the solid, historic furniture, or the books and art
that were scattered around.

When she felt
like she could breathe and speak normally, she returned to Ander on the sofa.
“But why?”

It took a long
time before Ander answered. Then he said without a trace of his normal
eloquence, “I...I didn’t want to do that...to myself. Anymore.”

And it was
enough. Lori understood. There might be more to the explanation—in fact, she
knew there must be more since he hadn’t stopped seeing her as a client—but Lori
didn’t need it. Not until Ander was ready to tell her.

He’d understood
everything she did about how unhealthy that job was for him. Understood it far
earlier than Lori had hoped. Months ago now.

His retirement
was not a dramatic gesture made in hopes of achieving a romantic fantasy. He’d
done it for himself—because the man he’d been for the last ten years wasn’t who
he wanted to be.

There was
another question she needed to ask but she wasn’t yet ready to ask it. Wasn’t
yet ready to hear the answer.

“Why didn’t you
tell me sooner?” she asked instead, reaching out to put a hand on his knee so
he’d know she wasn’t mad.

Ander exhaled
thickly and shook his head. “A lot of reasons. Your being my client made it difficult
for full confession.”

“I haven’t been
your client for the last two months. And yet you’ve kept lying to me.” She
spoke gently, not wanting the words to sting.

Apparently they
did anyway. Ander turned his head away with a jerk. “I know. I am sorry. If it
helps, I’ve felt like an ass about it. But it was a delicate situation. And I
dug myself into a hole by letting the ruse go on for so long. And, also, I
thought perhaps—if you knew I was no longer seeing clients—you might not let
yourself get so close to me.”

He seemed
almost embarrassed at the last admission, but he cut his eyes over to check her
expression.

The words were
presumptuous, perhaps, but they were also entirely true. She would have been
far too scared to get this close to Ander if she’d known he’d retired from his
life as a gigolo.

“Oh.”

“I hope this
hasn’t destroyed our friendship,” Ander said, for the first time sounding
upset. “I hope you can forgive me.”

Maybe she was
still in shock. Maybe she hadn’t yet fully processed everything he’d told her
and everything it implied.

But Lori was
actually starting to feel kind of giddy.

“Oh, Ander,”
she murmured, reaching over to pull him into a hug, “After all the secrets
we’ve kept from each other, did you really think one was going to destroy us?”

Ander returned
her hug immediately, wrapping his arms around her with an urgency she hadn’t
felt from him in two months. She squeezed his firm body in her arms, pressing
her face into his clean-smelling shirt and reveling in the delicious warmth of
his presence.

“You don’t have
any other secrets I don’t know, do you?” Lori asked, muffled by his shoulder.

Ander lifted
his head from where he’d had it buried in her hair. And he said a little
tentatively, “I...I don’t think so.”

Which implied
that everything he still left unsaid were things she should already know.

When they
pulled away, both of them were smiling.

Then they both
leaned back against the couch, as if this revelation had worn them out.

“Thank God
that’s out,” Ander groaned, stretching out his legs and looking over at her
beside him. “I can’t tell you how stressful it was trying to hide the
evidence.”

Lori chuckled.
“I didn’t suspect a thing. I never would have guessed you’d want to go into
archeology. I still think you should be a sex therapist or write that book. You
know so much.”

“Yeah. But I
want...I want to do something entirely different. I have enough baggage. I
don’t want to always bring it with me to work.”

Lori thought
about that. Then she nodded, “I guess that makes sense. But why archeology?”

He gave a
half-shrug. “I’ve always loved history, art, languages, and culture. You know
that. I actually took a couple of classes last year, just out of interest. So
when I was trying to think of what I might like to do, it was what I came up
with.”

“I think it’s a
good idea. Combines all your areas of interest.” She grinned at him. “Are you
going to wear wrinkled khakis now? Or maybe a fedora like Indiana Jones?”

Ander snorted.
“I’ll do my best to avoid it.”

“You didn’t
think about going into business?” Lori asked. “I bet you could be a CEO at some
company in less than a decade.”

Ander’s mouth
turned up in a smile that was just a little bitter. “Maybe. But that’s my
father’s thing. And it’s another kind of baggage I didn’t want to bring with me
to work.”

Feeling a surge
of tenderness, of protectiveness, of affection, Lori leaned over and pressed a
soft kiss on his cheek.

Drawing his
brows together, Ander asked, “What was that for?”

“That was for
being so smart,” she said with another smile. “You definitely made the right
choice about your career. And I’m so glad you’ll be able to do your own thing.”

*
* *

“So the wedding went all right?”

Lori had pulled
out wine glasses from her cupboard and was digging through a drawer for a
corkscrew. “Yeah. It was actually pretty fun. Everyone was all into my books.
And no one thought anything about my not having a date.”

She recognized
the quality of the silence from the other room, so she added quickly, “But
don’t you dare say you told me so.”

She found the
corkscrew and carried it with the glasses into the other room, where Ander was putting
in on the DVD. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured.

Lori was
grinning like a maniac but she couldn’t seem to help it.

The month Ander
had been on his archeological field project on Santorini had seemed endless.
She’d missed him horribly, so much it as almost embarrassing.

But now he was
finally back.

“Do we really
have to watch this movie?” Ander asked with a long-suffering expression. He
wore a white t-shirt and gray trousers with no shoes or socks, and he looked so
scrumptious she wanted to swallow him whole.

“Yes,” she
said, sticking out her chin to show her stubbornness. “It will be fun. You can mock
it to your heart’s content.”

“But
Pretty
Woman
?” Ander’s voice was edged with skepticism and reluctance.

“Just watch
it,” she said, scowling at him.

He chuckled as
he picked up his wine and the remote. “Your good mood didn’t last very long,
did it?”