Escorted (33 page)

She felt like
melting, even in the middle of the ice rink. But it wouldn’t do to collapse
into a pile of sap, so she lifted skeptical eyebrows. “You’re stretching
credibility at the moment. My hair is a mess, my cheeks are beet red, and I’m a
little suspicious of my nose.”

His lips
twitched. “Your nose is red too.”

Lori released
an outraged huff at this horrifying information and tried to pull away.

Ander wouldn’t
let her go. He laughed and pressed a kiss on the side of her mouth. “I’ve never
seen anything more gorgeous in my life.”

Lori couldn’t
help but laugh too. She gave him a little hug, privately swooning with giddy
affection and tender reassurance. The wounded part of her psyche that had
always been insecure couldn’t help but bloom at his words.

But she wasn’t
feeling entirely stable on her ice skates, despite the improvements she’d made
since the first time they went almost five months ago.

Plus, she had a
plan for the day, and she couldn’t let Ander’s irresistible sweetness distract
her from that plan.

So she drew
back and started to skate again. Ander easily overtook her. He circled the rink
a few times as she went around more slowly. She didn’t mind. She was sure it
must be frustrating for as good a skater as he was to keep pace with her. And
anyway she suspected he might be showing off a little.

He deserved it.
She couldn’t help but admire the surety, speed, and strength with which he
crossed the ice. Ander might be as intelligent and experienced a man as she’d
ever met, but he was still a man.

And men liked
to show off.

She was having
a private giggle over this when Ander fell in beside her. He eyed her warily.
“Why are you laughing?”

“I wasn’t
laughing.” The lie would have been more convincing had her lips not wobbled.

Ander narrowed
his eyes. “Lori?”

“You’re a
marvelous skater,” Lori said, wide-eyed and just a tiny bit exaggerated. “It’s
breathtaking to watch you. If only I could skate half as well as you.”

He wasn’t
fooled for a minute. “Fine. I get it. If you want to mock the urge to show off,
we can discuss your insistence that we play a certain board game the other
night, just so you could beat me and gloat about it for hours afterward.”

“That was
different,” Lori said, absently reaching over to take his hand despite her
indignant tone, “It’s one of the few things I can do better than you. You can’t
begrudge me a little gloating, when you do everything better than poor inferior
me.”

“Stop it.” Ander
gave her an impatient, sideways look.

“Don’t snap at
me,” she said, forgetting her plan in her annoyance. “And don’t tell me to stop
like you’re the boss of me.”

Ander made a
sudden move, so quickly she couldn’t follow it. One minute they were skating
along hand-in-hand, and the next Ander had her pressed up against the wall of
the rink, his body holding hers in place and his eyes intense, almost fierce.
“I
will
tell you to stop. I’ll tell you to stop every time I hear you
say something that implies you’re not valuing yourself. You might as well get
used to it. Because it’s the only way we’ll be together.”

Lori’s mouth
dropped open. She gaped up at Ander, breathless and startled and (absurdly) a
little bit thrilled.

After a stretch
of silence, Ander’s fierce expression softened a little. “Lori?” he prompted.

She swallowed
hard and managed to speak. “All right. I get that. But I’ll only accept it if
it goes both ways.”

Ander’s lips
tightened slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that
you always get standoffish when I try to encourage you not to get angsty or
brooding about...about your past. If you get to make sure I value myself, it’s
only fair that I get to do the same with you.”

Ander’s
expression was very still for a moment. But then he relaxed into a wry smile.
“I’m not sure why I ever thought dating you was such a good idea. You’re sure
to drive me crazy before a year is out.”

Lori laughed,
in relief, in reaction to the aftermath of tension, and in genuine amusement.
“I assure you that goes both ways.”

They started
skating again, and Lori tried to overcome her rush of tenderness and affection
so she could finally carry out her plan.

It wasn’t a
large-scale or dramatic plan. She just wanted to find out why Ander didn’t want
to have sex with her yet. And since he’d never been a forthcoming man, she was
afraid a direct confrontation would backfire. So she’d suggested they go ice
skating to give her the opportunity to ask him smaller questions and give him
the chance to share in small doses.

And then maybe
she could piece together what was going on.

They skated in
companionable silence for a while until Lori asked with impressive casualness.
“Did you think it was weird when I asked you to go ice skating the first time?”

Ander shot her
a quick, sharp look, but he answered easily enough. “I was a little surprised,
but by that time you’d already asked to do other things with me, so I wasn’t
flabbergasted.”

She snickered
at his choice of words but was quick to follow-up. “Were you flabbergasted when
I asked you the first time to go out somewhere, rather than just going to the
hotel?”

With a
half-shrug, Ander admitted, “Yes. You’d said all along you didn’t want to
pretend with me and you didn’t want to do anything that would feel like a date.
I assumed you wouldn’t change in that. Why did you?”

Since it wasn’t
fair to expect him to share without sharing herself, she answered honestly, “I
was a mess over finding out your real identity. You’d become more and more real
to me as our sessions went on, and that was the last straw. It just felt so
cheap and dirty getting together just for sex.”

Because she was
looking up at him, she caught a flicker of something like pain on his face. “It
felt cheap and dirty to you?”

“No!” she
gasped, realizing he’d misunderstood. “Being with you didn’t feel that way. It
was that I was paying you for sex. It felt like I was using you the way everyone
else had always used you, and I hated myself for that. But not enough to stop.
I didn’t want to give you up. So the dates were the only compromise I could
live with.”

Ander let out a
small breath. “I see.”

When he didn’t
continue, Lori prodded him. “So did you want to go on those dates with me or
were you happier for it just to be sex?”

He pulled to a
sudden stop, bringing her to a halt too. He put his arms out to keep her
balanced and held her eyes with an unwavering gaze. “I was thrilled when you
changed the routine. You know by now that, at that point, I was...I was crazy
about you. You were my only client, and I longed to get rid of the professional
side of the relationship. I didn’t know how. And I had to hope the dates were a
sign that you were trying to change our relationship too.

Lori made sure
not to show any dramatic reaction to his words, even though her pulse pounded
and her heart soared. He didn’t open up easily, and she couldn’t make him
uncomfortable now that he had. She just gave him a little smile. “They were. I
wanted to change it too. I was just too scared to admit it to myself because I
thought it was impossible.”

He returned her
smile and suggested they wrap up the skating. Lori agreed, since her legs were
getting tired and she had more stages of her plan to carry out.

So far, things
were going wonderfully well, and she hoped that by the end of the night she
would be in bed with Ander again.

And, even
better, finally hear him put all of his feelings into words.

*
* *

They were walking from the ice
rink to Ander’s favorite Italian restaurant when Lori asked into the peaceful
silence that had lingered between them, “What did you think when I asked you to
go with me to Quebec?”

“What?” Ander
had his hand on the small of her back as they walked, and he glanced down with
a quizzical look.

“You heard me,”
she insisted. “I was just thinking of what you told me about when I asked you
to ice skate, and I was wondering what you thought when I asked you to go with
me to Quebec.”

Ander narrowed
his eyes warily. “But that was before all the dates.”

“I know,” Lori
said, frowning. “Is there some rule about my having to ask questions in chronological
order?”

With a chuckle,
Ander relented, “I was...I was glad that you asked me. But you already know
that.”

Her frown
deepened. “I have some thoughts, based on what I know now. I had no idea at the
time, but now I think back and I can see that maybe you were ...” She cleared
her throat and concluded a little shyly, “Maybe you were fishing for the
invitation.”

“I was,” he
admitted, his voice dry rather than sentimental. “As soon as I got even the
smallest hint that you were trying to work up to an invitation, I did
everything I could to make myself available.”

She giggled.
“Even acted like you didn’t remember which weekend I was planning to go?”

Ander had the
grace to look a bit sheepish. “Well,” he drawled, “I couldn’t look
too
eager.” At her delighted snicker, he added, “It would have scared you.”

“It would have.
I was liking you more and more, but I was still obsessed with it being
professional.”

“And you
wouldn’t stop bringing up the money. Every time you did, it was like a slap in
the face.”

Lori couldn’t
help but feel bad—now that she knew how Ander had been feeling. But she wasn’t
about to take all the blame. “Well, I was still paying you. What was I supposed
to do? Throw the money out the window and assume we’d fall into each other’s
arms?”

“Of course
not,” Ander admitted, staring ahead of him with wry, knowing eyes. “You were
just doing what you were supposed to. I was the wreck who kept letting his
feelings get trampled on because he was too attached to pull back like he
should.”

“You weren’t a
wreck,” she insisted, defensive of Ander even against himself and even without
much evidence on her side. “What else was there for you to do?”

“Nothing.” Ander
sighed and moved his hand from the small of her back so he could wrap it around
her and pull her against him. “I was hopelessly trapped. I’d never felt that
way before. I couldn’t lose you. But I couldn’t move forward because of the
nature of our arrangement. No wonder I was a wreck.”

Lori poked him
with a scowl. “You weren’t a wreck.”

Ander’s lips
twitched. “You say that because you never got to see any of the brooding.”

She stopped
walking and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. Peering at him
closely, she asked, “You’re not brooding anymore, are you?”

His eyes took
on the most delicious warmth. “No. I’m not brooding anymore.”

*
* *

The host of the restaurant,
whose name Lori knew now as Don, greeted them ecstatically and was able to seat
them immediately.

Lori and Ander
had been to the restaurant many times in the last month, and she always enjoyed
herself there.

They talked
about Ander’s plans for next summer—another field project on a Greek island—and
about Lori’s next book. And they’d gotten their orders and started to eat when Lori
took advantage of a lull in conversation to launch into her next question. “Why
did Don look so surprised, the first time you took me here?”

Ander’s
shoulders stiffened a little and he looked uncomfortable. She felt a pang of
disappointment at his reaction, since he’d be far more open than usual this
evening.

“It’s no big
deal,” she said quickly, not wanting to put him on the spot. Before, she would
have pried mercilessly, but she cared for him too much to rip open his heart
like that now. If he couldn't yet share, he didn't have to.

The corner of Ander’s
mouth flickered with a familiar, ironic expression. “Very generous of you to
give me the out.”

She couldn’t
help but laugh. “Seriously, Ander, I know I’m being nosy.”

Ander cleared
his throat. Took a long sip of wine. Then said, “He was surprised because I’d
never taken a woman here before.”

“Your clients?”

“I never took
them here. I’ve always liked this place. It’s...it’s special to me. I didn’t
want to mar that by bringing my work with me.”

Lori’s breath
hitched. “But you brought me?”

“Yes,” Ander
said softly, holding her gaze with obvious significance. “I brought you.”

Her cheeks
flushed with pleasure and she had to hide her face behind her wine glass for a
moment to mask her reaction. There had been so many tiny hints and clues to Ander’s
feelings—all along, for so long—and so many of them she had missed.

It took her
breath way sometimes. The knowledge that she’d meant so much to him when she
was supposed to just be his client.

When she’d
recovered her equilibrium, she asked, not as part of her plan but because she’d
always wanted to know, “Do you know what your dad was doing here that night?”

Ander looked
stiff again. But he bit out, “I don’t know. I can only assume he knew I spent a
lot of time here.”

“So he came
here on purpose?” she gasped, her eyes widening in outrage. She hated Peter Milton
more than she’d ever hated anyone, and nothing she learned about him made her
hate him any less.

With an awkward
shrug, Ander said, “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Maybe ...” Her
voice cracked with a sudden pang of fear and she couldn’t bring herself to
voice the idea.

“Maybe what?”

She took a deep
breath to work up her courage. “Maybe he didn't come here just to be mean.
Maybe he actually wanted...wanted to see you.”

Ander jerked
his head to the side, breaking off their shared gaze. And a variety of emotions
twisted on his face before he was able to reply. “I doubt it. But it doesn’t
matter. There’s no reconciliation in store for us. I hope you’re not thinking
there is.”