Escorting the Billionaire #1 (The Escort Collection) (3 page)

I
was going
to go out on a limb and assume that the brunette in the tasteful blue dress was my date and not the blonde with the semi-exposed breasts and the big, honking laugh.
That
girl had a round, pouty face and luscious, full lips surrounding a mouth that begged to be…put to use. She was beautiful and voluptuous, but she was not my type.

The brunette next to her, however, was exactly what I liked.

And what I usually avoided.

“Ladies,” I said, smiling at them tightly from where I was. “One of you is coming with me.”

The blonde looked as though she was going to hurl herself at me for a second. She must have had some loyalty, though, because she held back. She took her friend’s elbow and brought her forward a little bit.

“Mr. Preston, this is Dre,” the blonde said.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Dre,” the blonde repeated. Dre herself came forward then and shook my hand firmly. She was shorter than most of the women I dated, and curvier, with breasts, hips and…I wanted to ask her to turn in a circle for me so I could check out her backside. But I figured that would have made her feel too much like livestock being eyed for the slaughter. Her dark brown hair was thick, falling in waves down past her shoulders, and her eyes were a sweet, liquid
Bambi
brown.

Sweet, liquid Bambi brown?
I seethed at myself.
Where the fuck did that come from?

“Pleasure to meet you,” I said, relieved that no one could hear my ridiculous thoughts. “I’ll have your bags brought down now.”

“Okay,” she said and smiled at me. Her smile was lovely and revealed two dimples. She put her hand on me, and I felt as if I’d been electrically shocked. My cock actually twitched, as though it was trying to get closer to her.

This Dre was trouble. I inwardly cursed Elena for picking her, my mother for having me, and my stupid brother for getting married. Then I cursed Dre for being drop-dead gorgeous, having hips, a lovely smile, and eyes like fucking
Bambi.

Fuccccck
, I thought, and I knew that word was going to get me in trouble over the next two weeks, one way or another. It would certainly get me in
something.
Or maybe someone. I hoped that it would and wouldn’t all at the same time.

My cock twitched again.
Traitor.

“Are you ready, Mr. Preston? Or do you want me to call you James?” Dre grabbed my elbow, and I stiffened—several parts of me stiffened, actually, and I cursed myself some more—as I tried to smile at her as if I was a normal person.

“James is fine,” I said, leading her through the door.

“Bye, Jenny,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Bye!” Jenny called, clapping her hands together. “Have fun!”

Elena was waiting for us at the front desk; she beamed at me over her glasses. “I see you found her, Mr. Preston,” she said. “Everything to your liking?”

I might have imagined it, but I thought Dre winced a little.

“Everything’s perfect,” I said smoothly. I decided I did not care for Elena. “We’ll see you in two weeks.”

She smiled at me and nodded at Dre. “Have fun,” she said to her, sounding like a mom trying to convince her shy daughter to dance at the prom.

We got into the elevator, and Dre released my arm.

“What sort of name is Dre?” I asked. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“My name’s Audrey,” she said, looking up at me from under all that luscious hair with those big brown eyes. I felt myself stir again, and I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, just to bring myself back down to earth.

“But I go by Dre for work,” she continued, and shrugged. “It’s more street. Audrey’s too prim.”

“Why would you want to sound street?” I asked her.

“Because I’m a streetwalker,” she said and laughed. “So I figured, if the shoe fits…”

“You’re not a streetwalker,” I said. “You’re an
escort
.”

“Aw, James…are you complimenting me?” She gave me that smile again, and I realized that it was practiced, that she was using her dimples against me like she had used them against hundreds, maybe thousands, of other men.

“No,” I said. “But I’d prefer to introduce you as Audrey to my family. Prim is fine with them.”
As long as prim has a trust fund and a penchant for vodka at midday,
I thought.

Technically, under that narrow definition,
I
was prim.

“Whatever you prefer, James,” she said smoothly, the pleasant smile still on her face like a mask.

“Which do you prefer?” I asked.

“Audrey,” she said. She gave no further explanation.

We reached the ground floor, and this time, I took her arm. From now on, I was going to initiate all contact, stay out in front and in control of every interaction we had. I’d hired her, and I needed her to fill a specific function.

If I changed my mind about the things I needed her to fill, or what
I
needed to fill, that was fine. But it was going to be a choice, not some stupid reaction to her doe-like eyes and my mystifying, painful erection.

Kai was waiting for us at the curb, a wide smile on his face.

“Mr. Preston,” he said, nodding politely at me, and smiled at Dre. Audrey. She went into the car ahead of me, and I finally saw her glorious ass. It was one that you could grab on to with both hands.

“Don’t smile at her,” I said to Kai as soon as she was out of earshot.

He nodded and dropped the smile immediately. I slid inside the car.

“Why don’t you want your driver to smile at me? We’re the hired help, after all. We should stick together,” Dre said as soon as Kai closed the door. She’d heard me after all. She crossed her toned legs and smiled at me playfully.

“I’m a divide-and-conquer kind of guy,” I said. “I don’t want to get ganged up on.”

“I won’t do that. I promise,” she said.

The car pulled out, and Audrey suddenly laced her fingers through mine. Heat shot through me at her touch, and I winced. I looked at our hands and then at her, my eyebrows raised in a question.

“We’re supposed to be in love, right?” she asked me. “We should probably be able to hold hands. We need to look legitimate. That’s what I’m getting paid for.”

She waited a beat. “Is that okay?”

With no small amount of indignation, I felt my palm begin to sweat.

“Maybe later,” I said. I pulled my hand away and wiped it on my pants. Audrey had the grace to not watch me while I did it.

“Elena tells me you’re a student,” I said, desperately trying to start over.

She looked shocked. “Really? I’m totally not. I’m hooking full time.”

We just looked at each other for a beat.

“Oops. I mean, Elena probably meant my cover—so yes. I’m a full-time graduate student. New England School of Graphic Design.”

“Why’d Elena pick graphic design?” I asked.

My hand was still hot where she’d touched me, but I wasn’t going to think about that.

“She said it was perfect because it’s too boring to talk about. We were going to do law school, but she said your family had a bunch of lawyers in it.”

“She’s right. My brother, Todd—the one whose wedding we’re going to—is a corporate lawyer. His fiancée, Evie, is a lawyer too, but not for long.”

“How come?” Dre asked.

I snorted. “She was just waiting to marry into a pile of money. You know the type, right? Just goes to law school to meet a rich guy?”

A look of distaste crossed her face, but she stifled it immediately. Almost immediately.

“Trust me. She deserves every bad thing I say about her. She’s a twat,” I said and desperately wished that I’d just hired this woman to fuck me senseless. For the first time in years, I felt self-conscious. Every word I said made me sound like a bigger and bigger jerk.

Usually, that was the idea. In my business ventures, it worked to my advantage for people to think I was unpleasant and difficult to deal with. But right now? I had to stop talking

“Okay then. The sister-in-law-to-be is
bad
,” Audrey said, her voice soothing and agreeable. She probably thought I was upset because I’d called Evie a twat. But she would learn, as we went on, that I
always
called Evie that. Because she was one.

I grabbed a decanter filled with bourbon from the side of the car. “Would you like some?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, accepting the small tumbler I poured for her.

I poured myself a drink that was significantly larger and took a sip. Something about Audrey unnerved me. She seemed like a whole person, not someone broken that wanted to get fucked up and then fucked hard, just to shut the world out. Which is to say, she was not what I was expecting. She seemed like somebody’s sister. Like a graduate student.

Like somebody’s girlfriend.

“So…tell me about this wedding. The more details you give me, the better prepared I’ll be,” she continued, all soothing efficiency.

“I’m dreading the wedding—I don’t have a great relationship with my family,” I said. I could hear the tension in my own voice. I always sounded like that when I spoke about them, which was one of the reasons I never did.

“James.” She put her hand on mine again. “None of the guys who come to us have good relationships with their families. None of the girls at work do, either. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Trust me,” she said.

The fact that she understood put me at ease. Until I thought about it some more, and then the fact that it put me at ease made me uneasy.

“So,” she said, “back to the wedding.”

“I’m the best man,” I said. “I think Todd did that to make sure I’d show up. My mother informed me that I had to come to every non-stop event. Evie really wants this week to be a big lead-in to the wedding. There’s a dinner tonight and an endless series of brunches, cocktail hours, and photo shoots that we have to attend. Then Friday night is the rehearsal dinner at Il Pastorne
.
And Saturday the wedding is being held at Trinity Church. Then we’re off to Eleuthera for a week with the happy couple, my parents, some cousins, and some friends.”

“It all sounds very proper,” Audrey said. She sounded impressed.

“It’s going to be a complete cluster fuck,” I said.

She nodded at me. “I have a family. Mine’s probably messed up in a different way than yours, but I get it, James.”

I swallowed the rest of my bourbon, hard. “I hired you because I didn’t want to deal with questions from them about why I’m still single,” I said. “I broke up with someone a few months ago. I’ve decided to take a break from dating and just concentrate on work. My family’s beside themselves that I’m almost forty and not married. They’re worried about not having any heirs.” I smiled at her grimly. “So I hired you to bear the brunt of the misery with me.”

“I’m on it,” she said, upbeat and optimistic. “I’ll do whatever you ask. You tell me how you want me to be. This is all about you. Your comfort. Your experience. I’m a buffer.”

She was a pretty hot buffer, but the fact that I thought so was something that I was going to keep completely and solely to myself.

There was a reason I stayed away from women I liked. And I’d learned it the hard way.

J
ames was
quiet for a minute after he told me about his family. We were stuck in midday traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. I watched the brownstones crawl by as I sat, lost in my thoughts.

I couldn’t figure out whether it was good luck or bad that James Preston was gorgeous. And that he had feelings and people he was worried about dealing with. It made him seem too human.

Family made him vulnerable, and we had to deal with his family. I didn’t know what he was normally like, but right now, he seemed nervous and quite possibly afraid of the next two weeks.

I couldn’t have that, for a couple of important reasons.

First, we had to win this. We were going to be the perfect couple. His family was going to be completely fooled, and I was going to be paid lots of money for exactly that. I believed, like Elena, that James Preston was my golden ticket. I was going to make him happy these two weeks, and I was going to play my part perfectly. Then he’d recommend me to all of his jet-setter friends, and I’d be sucking rich cock for the rest of my life. And then I could make everything okay, at least for my brother. For me? I could survive just about anything. The fact that I was here, right now in this hired car, was living proof of that.

Second, I didn’t want to care about James Preston. He was a John. The Johns were a nameless, faceless group of men that I preferred to block out. I’d cultivated only a fuzzy memory of the men who’d rented me, and I liked it that way. That was the only way I could sleep at night and meet my own eyes in the mirror each morning.

“So, is graphic design something you did?” James asked me, breaking my reverie. “You know, before?”

“Before hooking?” I asked. “Nah. I never went to school.”

“Too excited to jump into your chosen profession?” he asked.

I gave him a quick look: he didn’t appear to be kidding. I supposed he thought he was being kind by being blunt, but really, he was just being an ass. Nobody hooked because it was exciting.

You hooked because you had daddy issues.
Duh.

“Something like that,” I said. I decided that every time I found him insulting, I would just look at his head and see a big dollar sign there instead. I hoped he kept saying unattractive things. It would certainly help combat the unwieldy urge I had to check out what he had going on under that suit.

“So, where are we going first?” I asked.

“To my apartment. It’s in the Back Bay. I’m not here much, but I like to have my own place when I am. We’ll get you settled, change, and go meet my family for an early dinner. And drinks. There’s always drinks when you’re with my family.” He paused. “So it’ll be my brother Todd, Evie, and my parents. Celia and Robert. And probably a few cousins, aunts, friends, business associates…”

“Are your parents lawyers, too?” I asked.

“My father is a partner at a major law firm. Has been for years. He moves corporate money around. My mother does charitable work and goes to lots of lunches where she doesn’t eat. She’s really…”

I raised my eyebrows at him and waited.

“Thin,” he said. He turned to look out the window. He was quiet for a beat. “My parents are very proper. They’re into Boston society. They also have family money.” He almost sounded as if he was apologizing.

“Family money?” I asked. “On top of major-law-firm money?”

“Yes, and lots of it,” James said, still looking out the window. “It’s very much a part of who they are.”

I swallowed hard. I had probably never met people as rich as this before. Most of my Johns were wealthy, but all they wanted to do was have sex. Not parade me around for their families. I looked down at my blue dress; it was getting wrinkled in the car. It wasn’t going to do.

“Well, we’ll tell them we met when I was out in California for my internship. You couldn’t resist my…charms,” I said, trying to be brave.

I looked down at my chest in a push-up bra. I was charming, all right.

I continued, “We’ve been dating for a few months, doing the long-distance thing. My family’s from New England—I’ll tell them they’re dead. They can infer that I’m living off my inheritance. And no, I don’t have any other family. So, no one for them to look up, no one for them to ask to meet.”

James snorted. “I doubt they’d bother with all that.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because they aren’t going to be that interested in you once they figure out that you’re not society. You will just be a blip on their highfalutin radar. And they don’t think I’m ever getting married, anyway.”

“So I’m doomed. They’re going to hate me,” I said in a wave of real nerves. “They won’t even know I’m a whore—but I’m still not good enough for you.”

James shrugged. “They would hate you a lot more if they knew you were a whore—an
escort
. But yes, they’ll hate you anyway, or at least dismiss you, because you’re not from their world.”

“Your world,” I said.

He shook his head at me. “That’s not my world. My world is self-made. I didn’t use their money for what I’ve built. I did it myself. And I’m not interested in what country club anyone belongs to, or what boarding school they went to. My parents are more invested in society than they are in anything.”

“Maybe we should say my family was really wealthy,” I said, shrugging.

“Wealthy isn’t good enough. It’s about the
right
people, Audrey, not how much money the people have. It’s who your parents knew and where they went to school and what boards they sat on. If just money was good enough, then
I’d
be good enough.”

I was quiet for a second, wanting to remember every word he said. He was a puzzle I had to piece together. One part was clear: his family sucked. I was sure about it, and I hadn’t even met them yet.

He must have seen the look on my face because his own face relaxed into a smile. “It won’t be that bad, Audrey. They’re civilized. They won’t say anything bad to your face—they have manners. They’ll stab you in the back instead. It shows how well-bred they are. They adhere to that rule no matter how many vodkas they’ve had.”

“Awesome,” I said, dreading it all now almost as much as he was.

“Don’t say ‘awesome’ in front of Celia,” he said. “We want you to stay off her radar. The further off, the better.”

“Okay,” I mumbled quickly. I hadn’t even met her, but I already knew that Celia Preston was not someone I wanted to mess with.

James went back to looking out the window, and I regarded his handsome profile. I was starting to sweat, and it had nothing to do with how hot he was.

“So how do we win this?” I blurted out.

James laughed and turned back to me. Instead of seeing a large dollar sign where his head was supposed to be, I saw his gorgeous face, the lines next to his mouth deepening. “How do we
win
?”

I nodded at him, mentally kicking myself for my mouth that never seemed to stay shut when it should. “What is it you want from these two weeks? What’s your best outcome?” I asked.

James shrugged as he considered me. “Let’s see how it goes this afternoon. I’ll tell you after that.”

“Fair enough, James.”

“Fair enough, Audrey.”

The car went down another street into Back Bay and smoothly pulled up to a curb in front of The Stratum Hotel. The hotel was new to Boston and very chic, way outside my pay range. I’d had a couple dates over here, though. Two hedge-fund managers and a music producer. No one I wanted to remember.

I hoped no one on staff would remember
me
.

“I thought you said we were going to your apartment,” I said, confused.

“I have a condominium here. It makes it easier. The hotel handles everything, and I don’t have to worry. Plus, it has housekeeping and room service.”

A hotel doorman appeared and opened the door for James. He got out and held his hand out for me; I forcibly ignored the shock waves that his touch sent through me. If he changed his mind about the sex, that would be more than fine with me.

In fact, it would probably be for the best. Every man I’d ever slept with had now become a John. They all blurred together. Maybe it would be better if James wasn’t quite so…special.

Kai rolled down the window, and I nodded at him. “See ya later,” I called, and turned to find James frowning at us.

“Have the bags sent up,” James snapped at Kai.

“Easy, buddy,” I said. “We won’t gang up on you. I promise.” I reached for his hand again and twined my fingers through his; he immediately tried to pull back as we went through the doors to the opulent lobby of the hotel.

“Uh-uh,” I said, gripping his hand more tightly. “We need to practice. Gotta look natural.” I turned and looked at the grand room: it was just like I remembered it. Marble floors, marble columns, teak woodwork accents in unexpected places. It was beautiful and pristine.

I needed an apartment with a lobby like this.

I would have to suck a
lot
of cock to be able to afford it.

That thought made me burst out laughing.

“What?” James asked, wrinkling his brow at me.

“You don’t even want to know.” I laughed some more as the desk clerks nodded to us. “Mr. Preston,” one of the female clerks said. I might have imagined it, but she seemed to be sticking her chest out at him.

James pressed the button for the elevator.

“What floor are you?” I asked, sticking my chest out at him.

“The top.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Of course you are.”

“Of course I am, is right.” He squeezed my hand. “Don’t be fresh, Audrey. I thought we were in love.”

“Part of being in love is calling people out when they act pretentious,” I said as the elevator rose silently.

“I’m not in love with you, so I won’t tell you you’re stepping outside your pay grade,” he said in a warning tone. “Stop being so honest. You’re about to hurt my feelings, and I don’t have any.”

“You’re the boss,” I said, laughing a little. Being alone with him in the elevator wasn’t helping my attraction to him, or my curiosity. I hoped he couldn’t hear my stupid, wildly pounding heart.

This was the thing. The thing that I was working through in my head, as I held hands with my newest, sexiest, richest John in the history of all my Johns—and there were a lot, mind you. James was gorgeous. Any breathing heterosexual woman would instantly agree to that. He had huge shoulders, a square chin, and steel-blue eyes. On top of all this, he was tall, and from what I could guess was going on under his thousand-dollar-plus suit, he appeared to be devoted to working out, damn him.

None of this would have me all that excited. Although I did like his hair, too…it was steel-colored, neither brown nor black, some in-between color of thick, wavy, glossy godliness, gelled back just enough to keep it off his face.

But wait!
I was getting off track here, again. Nothing about his looks, not even that glossy hair, was that thrilling to me. I’d been with lots of good-looking men, and while it sometimes made the job a little easier, I’d found that the good-looking ones were just as likely to be assholes as the plain-looking ones. In my experience, they were actually a little nastier. Maybe because they’d had everything handed to them their whole lives, and it still wasn’t working out for them.

His looks weren’t what was troubling me.

The fact that when he touched me my body responded with heat didn’t bother me, either. That was one good thing about hooking, aside from the money: I usually enjoyed the sex, as long as the John was decent and relatively kind.

I also liked good-looking men with big shoulders and big…hands, which James had. Not that I’d been studying them in the car or anything, wondering if he was going to break down eventually and let me see what else he had that might be big…

I was getting off track again.
What I wanted to say, in one complete and uninterrupted thought, was what worried me about James, and what was going to happen over the next two weeks, was that he seemed almost normal. Like someone I could talk to. Like someone I might need to help.

I needed a lot of things. Needing to help someone else was not one of them. In fact, that was probably the last thing I needed, on a long list of last things. I was going to have to watch my back with him. Not let him get under my skin. I had enough people to take care of.

We were both watching the numbers on the dial go up, not saying a word. I wondered what he was thinking, and whether or not he felt the same heat between us that I felt.

I wanted to un-feel it. It would just be so much easier, all things considered.

We reached the top floor, and James punched the code in for his unit.

“Holy shit,” I said, knocked out of my inner monologue by the stark beauty of James’s apartment. “This is gorgeous.”

The space was massive, with enormous floor-to-ceiling windows letting in a flood of warm sunlight. Dark hardwood floors gleamed beneath a huge couch packed with colorful throw pillows, and colored clay vases dotted the various tables in the room. It was a stunning but comfortable space, a place where you wanted to pick up a huge book and curl up on the couch.

Given James’s intense attitude, comfortable was not what I was expecting.

“I’m glad you like it.” He released my hand and motioned for me to follow him in. “Thank you. I don’t like being back up here, so I wanted the space to feel like my house in California. Lots of light. Comfortable.”

“It’s definitely not classic Boston,” I said, “but I love it.”

“Where do you live?” he asked, and I could tell he almost didn’t want to.

“New England School of Design campus housing,” I lied, easily.

He smiled at me again. “Where do you really live, Audrey?”

“Southie,” I said, and he nodded, not surprised. “It’s getting really yuppie, though.”

“I bet.” He paused for a beat, and we stood there, awkwardly. The escort and the billionaire, all chatted out. He looked at his watch. “I’ll show you your room,” he said, heading down a hallway. I followed close behind, marveling at how enormous the apartment was, wanting to stop and ogle at the view of the city and the Commons below.

James threw open a door, and I stepped into a beautiful bedroom with a king-sized bed. I went and sat on the bed and looked up at James.