Escorted (36 page)

“I’m fine,
Becka,” Ander said politely. Then he smiled at the woman.

Lori sucked in
her breath.

She knew that
smile. Hadn’t seen it in almost two years. Urbane. Sensual. Infinitely practiced.
It had been habitual for Ander when he’d been seeing clients.

Which meant
this woman had been one of Ander’s clients.

“You’re looking
good,” Becka said, her eyes crawling over Ander’s body in a way that made Lori
wanted to scratch her eyes out. “You’re a lot tanner than you used to be.”

He was. It had
been two months since he’d returned from his latest field project but he still
hadn’t lost all the tan. This evening, he was dressed in all black, and Lori
thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen in her life.

“I spent part
of the summer on a Greek island.”

To avoid being
separated for two months over the summer while Ander was at yet another dig, Lori
had rented a villa on the island. Although he’d been busy during the days,
they’d been able to spend most nights together. Lori had started a new novel
set on the island, and Ander had blithely ignored all the teasing he received
from his colleagues over his plush living arrangements.

“How decadent,”
Becka said, flicking her eyes over to Lori with obvious curiosity. “I heard you
were retired.”

“I am.” Ander
repositioned his hand to the small of Lori’s back. “This is my girlfriend, Lori.”

“Nice to meet
you,” Becka said absently, her eyes returning to Ander, raking them over his
face and body like she still had a right to leer at him. “It’s too bad you’re
retired. You were the best.”

Lori had been
stiff from the initial greeting, but now she grew so tense she was almost
shaking. She had to fist her hands to keep from clobbering the woman to rid
that face of that presumptuous, objectifying expression. She was bombarded with
images of Ander fucking Becka until she came and came and came again.

Ander murmured
out a few parting words, and then he guided Lori out of the restaurant, using
his hand on her back for both momentum and support.

“She was always
obnoxious,” Ander said as they exited the building and started down the busy
sidewalk.

His words
didn’t help Lori feel any better. She was now imagining how Ander must have
felt, required to sexually satisfy a woman as spoiled and obnoxious as Becka.

“You all
right?” he murmured, his observant eyes scanning her face.

“Yeah.” She
gave him as wide a smile as she could manage. “Dinner was fun.”

“Do you feel
like doing anything else tonight?”

“Sure,” she
said, “If you want to.”

With one final
look of scrutiny, Ander concluded, “Let’s just go home.”

*
* *

Ander was blessedly quiet on the
cab ride home. Lori did her best to rid her mind of the horrifying images. Ander
was her boyfriend now. They were fully committed, in love, and living together.
He was well on his way to being an archeologist. If his words and the evidence
of his behavior was any indication, he was happier now than he’d ever been in
his life.

So was Lori.

But sometimes
she still hated what he used to do. Hated all of his other clients. Hated it
with every glimmer of passion in her soul.

It didn’t
matter that she never would have met Ander if he hadn’t gone into his former
profession. She still hated it because he had used it to hurt himself.

When they
returned to the loft, Lori grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator,
kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa. She was about to turn on the
television when Ander sat down across from her, at the desk in front of the
windows, and looked at her soberly.

“What?” she
demanded, feeling a little clench of nerves.

Sometimes it
was really annoying not to be able to keep secrets from Ander.

“Do you want to
talk about it?” he asked mildly.

“No.”

“Lori.”

“I said I’m
fine,” she gritted out, “I didn’t like meeting that bitch, but it’s not a big
deal.”

Ander lifted
his eyebrows. “I think it
is
a big deal. You’re either about to scream
or about to cry.”

She was
actually about to do both, so she bit her lip and took a few deep breaths
through her nose.

“Lori.”

“Stop trying to
boss me,” she snapped, losing her patience as she lost control of her emotions.
“I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“All right.” Ander
picked up a book and quietly began to read at the desk.

Torn between
relief and irrationally hurt feelings at being ignored, Lori stewed for a few
minutes, staring at the blank television set, and then she reached for her
bottle of water.

Because she was
distracted, she missed her target and ended up knocking the bottle over. It
fell to the floor, spilling a small pool of water on the hardwood floor and
Asian rug before she grabbed it and turned it upright.

“Fuck!” In a
blaze of frustration, she got up to get a towel from the kitchen.

Ander had
started up at the first impact. “I’ll get—”

“Just sit down.”
Her tone was unjustly grumpy and part of her immediately regretted it, but she
was in such a bad-temper now that her regret was quickly squelched.

She returned
with a towel and knelt on the floor to wipe up the water.

She wiped and
wiped and wiped and wiped, the tension in her body increasingly with each push
of the towel.

“Lori,” Ander
began, very gently, as he watched her from the desk.

For some
reason, his gentleness was what made Lori finally snap. She straightened up,
sitting on her knees with a wet towel in her lap, and she burst into tears.

“Oh, Lori,” Ander
murmured thickly, getting to his feet and starting toward her.

“Don’t touch
me!” she sobbed. “I can’t...I can’t ...”

Ander sat down
immediately at her uncontrolled words. “You can’t what?” he asked carefully.

She sobbed some
more, mopping at her face with the towel. When she finally got a hold of
herself, she managed to choke out, “I didn’t want you to hold me or coddle me.”

“Coddle you?”

With a sniff
and another messy wipe of her face, she said, “I’m feeling prickly.”

“I can see
that.”

She shot
suspicious eyes over at him, but there was no trace of humor on his face. He
looked more tired than anything else.

“Do you want to
talk about it now?” he asked.

“There’s
nothing to talk about. We met one of your clients.”

“Former
clients.”

“Former
clients,” she amended with a roll of her eyes. “You know what I mean. It’s no
big deal. I saw you with Sarah Jacoby before. Remember? I was your client
myself.”

“But obviously
seeing Becka tonight bothered you.”

Emotion still
threatened to spill over into more sobs, so Lori tried to back off from the
sorest of subjects. To divert the direction of his questioning, she asked,
“Didn’t it bother you?”

“Yes,” Ander
said. His voice was calm and his expression natural. Only his eyes were urgent
as they tried to dig into Lori’s soul. “Some. But I was more worried about your
reaction. With good reason, it seems.”

“I have no
reason to get upset about it,” she insisted, wishing she could just make the
words be true. “I’ve always known what you did. I participated in it myself. I
knew you had a lot of clients.”

“All of that is
true,” Ander said slowly. “But it might still upset you.” He wasn’t being sweet
and gentle, really. Just bland and matter-of-fact.

Lori snuffled,
trying to force back a sudden surge of violent tears. “Well, it doesn’t.”

“Uh-huh.”

Shooting him a
fierce glare, she rasped, “Well, you don’t have to be snotty about it. How many
other women are in my situation? It’s...it’s
weird
to meet women that
your boyfriend fucked for money.’

She gasped and
put a hand over her mouth when she realized what she’d said. Since they'd
gotten together, she’d been so determined not to berate or reproach Ander for
his past. It was mean and petty and futile.

Ander lifted
his eyebrows slightly. “As you said, you’ve known that all along about me. You
went into this relationship knowing what you were getting into it.”

“I know. But
knowing is different than seeing.”

“And what did
you see?”

“I saw that...that
bitch
!” Even Lori was vaguely shocked by the rough vehemence of her
words. “That bitch—looking at you like you were a piece of meat. Like you were
hers to leer at and touch and...and fuck. It made me sick.”

“I’m not hers,”
he said. “I’m mine. And yours.”

“I know that.”
Her voice cracked at the matter-of-fact way he’d said it—as if he had no doubt
at all. “But she used to...you used to ...”

“But not
anymore.”

Lori felt like
an absolute fool, a blubbery mess, particularly in contrast to Ander’s cool
composure. “But doesn’t it...doesn’t it bother you?”

“Of course, it
bothers me sometimes, but I refuse to dwell on it. I’ve made different
decisions. I’m doing something worthwhile and fulfilling with my life now. And
I’m going to spend the rest of it with you. I’ve got nothing to complain about,
and I’m not going to beat myself up over what I used to do.”

Obviously, Lori’s
emotions were too much in a turmoil to react appropriately. His words made her
so happy, soothed something so raw and aching in her heart, that she burst into
tears again.

“Oh, God, Lori,”
Ander murmured gruffly, for the first time his face twisting in concern. “I
know it’s hard for you to think about how I was with those other women. But you
know you’re the first woman I was ever really
with
. We’re the same in
that. It's the first for both of us.”

“I know,” she
gurgled. “I’m okay. You know it’s not that I blame or judge you—”

“I know. Of
course I know.”

“I don’t know
what’s gotten into me tonight.” She wiped her face one more time, feeling a lot
better and convinced that her hysterical weeping was finally under control.
“Must be that time of the month. Hormones.”

“Could be.” Ander
leaned forward in the chair, gazing intently on where she was still sprawled on
the floor, her pretty dress hitched up around her hips. “But I know sometimes
all of this still bothers you.”

“It does. And
it’s not just jealousy or possessiveness. I just can’t stand that they ...they
used you. That
I
used you.”

Ander stiffened
in the chair. “You never used me or objectified me. It was never like that with
us.”

Lori felt a
rush of tenderness at the bristling defensiveness in his tone and expression.
She knew it was all in defense of her. But she shook her head and objected,
“Obviously feelings developed. But, Ander, I paid you to have sex with me.”

“Yes, but it
was never like it was with other clients,” Ander repeated, sounding annoyed and
strangely stiff. “We weren’t like that.”

“I know what
you mean. But, still, Ander. You took my money. I used your body. And I can’t
help wishing it was...it was ...” She trailed off. She had no way of putting
into words how she felt.

She couldn’t
wish she’d made different choices because her choices had led her to such
happiness with Ander, but she’d always be conflicted about how they’d gotten
here.

Taking a deep
breath, she used the damp towel to rub her eyes and her nose, trying to clear
away the last of her tears.

She jumped when
she felt a swish of air and heard an impact just next to her hip.

Then she
blinked down at an envelope on the floor beside her, filled with what was
obviously cash.

Gasping, she
turned to stare at Ander. “Wha—”

Ander, his face
unreadable, reached down into a drawer in the desk, one he always kept locked.
He pulled out another envelope and sent it sailing over toward Lori.

A few
hundred-dollar bills slipped out of this one as it flew, fluttering down onto Lori’s
legs as the envelope landed near the first.

“Ander?” she
gasped.

He threw
another envelope at her. Then another. Then another. Some landed still full
while others fell open. Envelope after envelope plopped down around her. Until
the floor was littered and she was showered with stray bills.

Lori sat like
an idiot, dazed and bewildered and delighted in the middle of a small fortune
in cash.

Finally, Ander
aimed the final envelope. When it landed, bursting open and spilling out money,
he arched his eyebrows at Lori with obvious significance.

“But,” Lori
croaked, her eyes blurring and her heart exploding with feeling. “But...how
many?”

“All of them.
From the very beginning.”

“But...You didn’t
...” Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t catch her breath.

“I didn’t fall
in love with you that first time, no. But something about the money made me
uncomfortable. So I didn’t spend it. Just stuck it in the drawer. And then I
stuck the others there too. I can’t tell you how much I hated them. Sometimes I
would sit and glare at them. When you decided to date Rothe, I came so close to
burning the envelopes in my fireplace. But you emailed me for a new engagement
just in time. And I started to hope. I never wanted this money, Lori.  The sex
was never about the money. Not with you.”

“Oh.”

Ander had been
speaking with admirable composure, but now his mouth twisted in discomfort. “I
bare my heart and all you say is ‘oh’?”

Lori swallowed
hard. “I’m glad.”

His mouth
twitched.

And, for the
moment, everything was all right.

She stretched
out her arms to him. “Can you please kiss me now?”

With a guttural
exclamation, Ander moved quickly over to the floor beside her. He gathered her
in his arms, and their lips found each other’s with passion, tenderness, and
need.