Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (85 page)

“That’s easily the worst
thing you’ve ever said to me,” I tell her.

“Just lighten up, will you?
We’re here to have fun. Let it be fun.”

I open up a new bag, but
it’s only a formality. After being smacked in the face by the garment whose
owner never showered, I’m done putting my olfactory nerves in the line of fire.

Only, the smell wafting
from the bag is a familiar one, even holding the bag open and nowhere near my
face.

I close it up and walk to
the picture line.

Annabeth’s behind me a
second later.

“You changed your mind in
a hurry,” she says. “What convinced you?”

“A long shot,” I tell
her.

Of course the shirt
smells like Dane.

The line moves fast and,
before I know it, I’m trying to figure out what kind of expression says, “It’s
not weird that I’m holding your dirty shirt because the smell gets me hot and
bothered,” but it’s not that easy an expression to divine.

I don’t know what the
picture looks like because I don’t look at the wall. The odds of Dane actually
being here are so remote that I don’t even want to know whose shirt I’m
holding.

Annabeth walks with me
back to the table, and I set the bag down. Annabeth, though, just picks it
right back up, opens it and puts her whole face in the bag.

“That’s not bad,” she
says. “A little conventional for my taste, but it’s all right.”

“Excuse me,” a man’s
voice comes from behind me.

I turn around.

It’s not Dane.

“I saw your picture up
there, holding my shirt,” he says. “My name’s Will.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I tell
him. “I’m kind of new at this, so I don’t really know—”

“Her name’s Leila,”
Annabeth interrupts. “She’s single.”

I flash a glare, but
quickly turn back to the man.

“I’m Leila,” I tell him.
“It’s nice to meet you.”

“Would you like to get a
drink?” he asks.

“Only if you’re buying,”
Annabeth answers for me.

I scowl at her again, but
walk with the man to the bar.

“It’s all right,” he
says. “It’s my first time at one of these, too. What would you like to drink?”

“Tequila,” I tell him.
“Actually, make that a double with a beer back.”

“Hitting it hard,” he
says, smiling. “I like that.”

He’s got a cute smile,
but he’s not Dane.

I really thought I was
doing the best thing for both of us by not dragging things out. Long distance
relationships never work and neither of us were ready to give up enough to stay
together, so I shouldn’t feel this conflicted.

He orders my drinks and
something for himself and we find a place to sit and talk. I could kill
Annabeth for just leaving me with a stranger like this.

“So, what do you do?” he
asks.

“I’m a stock broker,” I
tell him.

“Sounds exciting,” he
says. “Are you one of those people on the floor of the exchange?”

“No,” I tell him. “I
handle the portfolios of different clients, give them suggestions as to what
stocks within their realm of interest and desired risk level might be good
choices. I basically try to make people money.”

“That’s not a bad gig,”
he says.

I hope he doesn’t think
it’s rude that I take both shots and drink half my beer before responding.

“It’s what I do,” I tell
him boringly. “What do you do?”

“I’m a fireman,” he says.

Oh shit.

“Really.” No, it’s not a
question.

“Yeah,” he says. “It
really takes it out of
ya
, but it’s pretty rewarding
stuff.”

“I bet. How long have you
been doing it?”

“About five years,” he
says.

“That is fascinating.”

Firemen do something
funny to me, and I know I’m not alone here.

“Yeah, so what got you
into stocks?” he asks.

“Oh, you know,” I tell
him. “Being a part of the financial system that runs everything has its
perks—so what made you want to be a fireman?”

He smiles, and I’m
starting to find that smile more than just cute.

“I always wanted to be a
fireman,” he says. “When I was a kid, most of my friends would talk about being
rock stars or movie stars or astronauts or whatever, but ever since I can
remember, I just wanted to be a fireman. I wanted to be one of those guys that
people look to at their most vulnerable times.”

And I think he’s just
explained my infatuation with firemen.

“It’s not all heroics and
daring rescues, though,” he says. “On the one hand, you spend a lot of time
waiting, and when you do get a call, you just hope you get there before
anyone’s hurt. I’ve run across some pretty terrible things. But we don’t have
to talk about that. Where are you from?”

“Canada,” I answer,
batting my eyes. It’s not a conscious act. “So, are you on call?”

“Am I on call?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Like,
what are the chances of you having to rush out of here to go save an
orphanage?”

He laughs, perhaps a bit
uncomfortably.

“Probably not too high,”
he says. “I don’t think there are any orphanages around here. I think the only
way I’d get a call is if we had something catastrophic.”

“Wow.”

Who
am I right now?

Of course, that thought
leads me back to standing in Dane’s doorway, and for a moment, I completely
forget about the sexy fireman sitting across the table from me, trying to
decide whether I’m attractive enough to forgive a little bit of crazy.

“So, what brings you
here?” he asks.

“Oh,” I say,
straightening up and trying to at least pretend that I’m not a complete flake.
“My friend Annabeth,” I tell him. “She dragged me out of the house, put me in a
car and told me we were coming here. She’s the one standing in line to have her
picture taken with four bags right now.”

He looks over my shoulder
and, by the way he’s closing his eyes while his upper body shakes tells me that
he’s spotted her.

“She looks…determined,”
he says.

“Yeah, she’s a bit of a
freak,” I tell him. “So, what brings you here?”

If I can’t think of
anything intelligent to say, I can at least bat back the same questions he’s
asking me, right?

“My brother-in-law,” he
says. “He and my sister come to these things all the time and try to ‘meet’
each other by smell.”

And that’s fantasy number
two. Okay, so it’s not why he’s here, but at least he’s familiar enough with
the concept of the open-eyed-blind-date that it shouldn’t be too weird if I
suggest it sometime in the future.

And now I’m thinking
about Dane again.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“They’re really not weird people, I actually think it’s kind of romantic.”

“It is romantic,” I tell
him. “It’s just—I’m still in the process of getting over someone right now, and
everything is making me think of him.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “If
it helps at all, I know what that’s like. I got divorced a few months back.
This is actually the first time I’ve really gone out since it happened.”

“It sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It
does.”

We sit through an
uncomfortable silence for a little while.

“Would you like another
drink?” he asks. “It looks like you’ve got quite the tolerance.”

“Not so much,” I tell
him, “but I would love another drink.”

If I’m going to get Dane
off of my mind for good, this is probably how I’m going to have to do it: one
good-looking fireman at a time.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tracers

Dane

I don’t know how long
we’ve been swimming, but I’m pretty sure I’m starting to play chicken with the
“don’t get too drunk” rule. I’m not getting mean or even slurring my words that
much, but I have to admit, I’m pretty sloshed.

Wrigley’s off at the
other end of the swimming pool, cackling with one of her old friends.

Me, on the other hand?
I’m making another trip to the drink table and trying to figure out what I can
have that’s going to keep the buzz going, but not put me over the edge.

Before I can decide,
though, Wrigley’s hand is on my shoulder and she’s telling me that we’ve got to
get out of here right now.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Someone’s coming,” she
says. “Someone our guys in the hall can’t detain or turn around. Grab your shit
and come with me.”

I should have known
tonight was going to end this way.

I grab my clothes and
Wrigley grabs my hand. She leads me to the women’s showers and whispers for me
to get dressed.

It’s completely dark in
here right now, I can only assume to throw whoever might go to the pool that
there aren’t a bunch of recently-naked drunk people hiding in the women’s
locker room.

“Did someone grab all the
liquor?” I ask in a whisper.

“It’s taken care of,” a
man’s voice answers from my left.

I guess we’re all in
here.

If it’s a woman coming
for a swim, it does occur to me that we’re probably going to give the poor lady
a heart attack, all of us crammed in here. I can’t vouch for whether everyone’s
clothed or not, the way Wrigley basically threw me into the room.

“If the guards think
everyone works here, I don’t know why we’re worried about someone finding us.
Everyone’s dressed, right?”

Wrigley answers, “The
guards think we work here, but that’s not going to hold up for very long when
someone who actually belongs here blows the whistle.”

“Is there a back way out
of here?” I ask as quietly as possible.

“Yeah,” someone says,
“but it’s in view of the door. If they’re coming down this hallway or they get
in the pool—”

The sound of a nearby
door opening silences the room. I lean toward the only minor source of
light—the crack beneath the door—and listen for high heels.

There are footsteps and
they’re coming closer. I have no idea if it’s a woman or a man and even if I
did, it’s so dark in here that I couldn’t mount any kind of escape anyway.

What’s worse? I really
have to piss right now.

Wrigley’s still holding
my hand, so I use that, coupled with the memory of her height relative to mine
to lean down and whisper right in her ear. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

There’s no response other
than a squeeze of the hand.

The footsteps have
ceased, but that doesn’t mean the coast is clear. No doors have opened since
the sound of the footprints, so whoever’s out there is still out there.

I’m crossing my legs as
best I can and trying to think of anything but water, streams, rivers, lakes,
reservoirs, waterfalls, rivers, sprinklers, hoses, bathtubs, sinks, rain, the
Pacific Northwest, oceans, swimming pools, showers, warmth, green tea, or the
movie Labyrinth, but I wouldn’t have that list if those weren’t the first
things that cross my mind.

Wrigley notices my
squirming and squeezes my hand again.

In return, I squeeze her
hand nine times: three short squeezes, three long squeezes and three more short
squeezes. All I can do is hope she’s got at least some familiarity with Morse
code.

I feel her other hand on
my shoulder, pushing down. I bend my knees and, a moment later, feel her breath
against my skin.

“You’re just going to
have to hang in there,” she says. “We can’t risk someone hearing you.”

Well, she knows what my
ordeal is. That’s got to be in my favor somehow.

But, as I start thinking
about tributaries and rivulets, sandboxes and childhood embarrassment, I’m
about to my breaking point.

I squeeze Wrigley’s hand
again, more frantically this time and she’s immediately pulling me. There is no
way for me to know if I’m going to run into something, so all I can do is trust
Wrigley to know where she’s going and know how to lead me there without having
me end up stubbing my toe on something and, with the resulting profane yell,
betraying our presence.

After a few dizzying
turns, Wrigley stops and puts her hand on my shoulder again, bidding me bend
down a bit.

“Aim for the side of the
bowl,” she says. “Sound really carries in here.”

“Thank you,” I tell her.
“How am I supposed to—
”

She puts something cold
and flat in my hand. Before she lets it go, I feel her move it and the screen
of her cellphone nearly blinds me.

“Make it fast,” she says,
“and don’t use the cellphone to find your way back. Whoever’s out there might
be able to see the glow under the door.”

With that, she points at
a stall and as quickly as I can, as quietly as I can, I make it inside.

My zipper’s down and ah,
sweet relief.

I’m careful to keep a
good hold on the cellphone and everything’s going great. That is, right up to
the moment when, out of pure habit, I lift one foot and flush the toilet.

Fuck.

Twenty-some-odd people
shift nervously in the adjoining room, and I’m just hoping whoever was in the
pool room has already left. That pipe dream is shot to shit when I turn around
to find Wrigley pushing her way into the stall, telling me to get on the seat
and keep my head down.

“She heard you,” Wrigley
whispers as she somehow manages to work her way onto the seat with me.

“How does she know the
toilet was flushed by someone who isn’t supposed to be here?” I ask.

“
Nobody’s
supposed to be here,” she answers. “Nobody comes in this
late, not to the pool, anyway. Why do you think we wait until after midnight to
go swimming?”

She has a point.

“How do you know she
heard me?”

“She asked ‘who’s there’
right after you flushed,” Wrigley answers. “How else did you think I knew it’s
a woman?”

“Maybe she won’t come in
here, though,” I say.

I should really learn how
not to jinx things.

There’s a rush of bare
feet over the hard floor, everyone’s rushing for the entrance to the hall.

“Be quiet,” Wrigley says
and then the door to the showers opens.

Just a fraction of a
second later, another door opens from the other side, and I’m wondering how
inconspicuous a locked stall door is really going to be if someone walks
through here looking for trespassers.

“Who’s there?” the woman’s
voice comes, her voice reverberating against the tiled walls.

Wrigley and I hold our
breath. The light turns on just as the door to the hallway closes. It sounds
like everyone else got out, but Wrigley and I are stuck in here.

Right now, I’m not so worried
about anyone else getting caught; I just want to get the hell out of here with
Wrigley and not in handcuffs.

“Hello?” the woman calls.

I was really hoping she’d
hear the other door close and figure whoever was in here had left, but she’s
not giving up so easily. Her shadow is just on the other side of the stall
door.

“Thank god,” Wrigley
says.

“Who’s in there?”

“I had to use the
bathroom and then the lights went off. I couldn’t see anything.”

“Who do you work for? Why
are you in here so late?”

“I could ask you the same
question,” Wrigley says.

“I’m Paula Owen, I run
the company that owns this floor,” the woman answers. “Who are you and why are
you in this bathroom so late?”

Wrigley turns and puts
her feet on the floor. “I’m sorry, Miss Owen,” she says. “I didn’t know that
was you. I’m Janet, one of the new assistants. This is kind of embarrassing,
but I kind of have a thing about using public restrooms. It’s a privacy thing.
I don’t like going where I think other people are going to, you know, hear anything.”

I really hope that works.

“Janet,” the woman
repeats. “
Whose
assistant are you?”

I whisper, “
Intern
.”

“I’m sorry,” Wrigley
says. “I meant intern.”

There’s a long pause.

“You know you’re not
supposed to be in here after ten,” the woman chastises.

“I know,” Wrigley says,
“I’m very sorry about that. I just get really uncomfortable if I think anyone’s
going to hear me.”

There’s another long
pause.

“Well, all right,” the
woman says. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

“I won’t, Miss Owen,”
Wrigley answers. “I promise.”

With that, the woman
turns and walks away. Neither Wrigley nor I move until we hear the door to the
pool area open and close again.

“You’re going to have to
move like nobody’s business,” she says. “Go and wait at the other door. I’ll see
if I can distract her until you get on the elevator. Just wait for me outside
and have a cab waiting for us, all right?”

“All right,” I answer,
and with that, we move.

I wait at the door to the
hallway until I hear the other door open and Wrigley thanking the woman again
for being so understanding. I’m out the door and not looking back on my way
down the hall.

I turn down the other
hallway and make it to the elevators without incident. When I get to the bottom
floor, though, the guards have a few of the people I hardly recognize with
clothes stopped, questioning them.

I’d love to jump in and
save them, but I have no idea what cover story they’re using and I’m pretty
sure that I’d only make the situation worse for them, so I just try my luck
walking past when I think they’re not looking.

“He was in the meeting,
he’ll tell you,” some fucking idiot tells one of the security guards.

I stop walking. Sure, I
might be able to get out those doors and outrun the guards, but that would put
Wrigley in serious shit when she tried to come out.

“What’s going on?” I ask
the guards.

“Why don’t you tell us?”

“We just finished up a
meeting,” I say. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that Mrs.
Owen came through here just a few minutes ago, saying that she heard there were
some unauthorized people up on thirty-six and what do you know? A few minutes
later, we’ve got a couple dozen people filing out of the elevator. Where’s Miss
Bliley?”

“She had to make a pit
stop,” I answer. “Look, I don’t know what you think is going on here, but we
just finished up with our meeting, it’s late, I’m tired and I’m sure we’d all
just like to go home and get a good night’s sleep.”

“Yeah?” the shorter
security guard asks. “What was the meeting about?”

The people the guards
stopped obviously gave some specific answer to that question, putting me in an
almost impossible position.

“I can’t tell you that,”
I answer.

“What do you mean you
can’t tell us that?” the taller security guard asks, resting his hand on his
belt.

“Have either of you ever
heard of proprietary information?” I ask. “Not only could I lose my job if I
disclosed the nature of the meeting to anyone not authorized, I could also get
sued. I’m really not willing to risk that just because Mrs. Owen is paranoid
that she’s losing her grip on the company.”

Hell, if I’m going to
make shit up, I may as well take it as far as I can.

The guards look at each
other.

“She’s losing the
company?” the shorter guard asks. “These people said the meeting was about
profit margins.”

“I’m sure they did,” I say.
Is a wink too much? Yeah, a wink is too much. “And I never said that she
was
losing her grip on the company.
Anyway, I can’t discuss it. Can we go, or are you going to continue to waste
everyone’s time?”

“Well, if it
was
just a meeting,” the taller security
guard starts, “then why did most of the people who came down run when we asked
them to stop?”

Fucking amateurs.

“Probably because they
didn’t want you reporting who was here at the meeting. Look guys,” I say in my
good-old-boy tone, “we don’t want to make this situation awkward for anyone,
but I can’t have Mrs. Owen coming back on any of our people, either. That
doesn’t seem fair, I mean these are just good, hardworking people trying to do
their job—just like the two of you. So, what do you say we just keep names and
faces out of it?”

The truth is that, unless
everyone except for Wrigley is a complete dolt, names and faces aren’t going to
mean jack shit to anyone in this building, but it’s a good line.