No Strings Attached (The Escort #1) (8 page)

Chapter Twelve

Leah

“
I Have A Confession To Make
.” I picked the slice of orange off the side of my sangria glass and bit into it as Jagger raised an eyebrow. Kari always yelled at me when I did that because she thought the garnish fruit was filthy. Like she hadn’t put worse things in her mouth. “You inspired me.”

“Oh yeah? How?” Jagger leaned forward on the table. I’d brought him to my favorite restaurant in town, a small Spanish place called Estrella, overlooking the water. Too bad it happened to be attached to the Bay Hotel or it would’ve been perfect. This was the place I began my sangria love affair. I wanted to bring Jagger to the place it all began and show him what had been good about Scituate before it all slid into the ocean later on at the reunion. His foot ran up the length of my calf. Goosebumps blossomed over my skin. “You’re inspiring me in that little black dress.”

“Thanks.” Step one in my attack had been a killer dress and this, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was it. I’d had this shift dress with a lace overlay long before I’d decided to accessorize it tonight with Jagger. The sleeves were sheer lace and blousy, gathering at the wrists. We were a perfectly matched set. He’d worn a black pin striped suit with a black shirt underneath. An olive tie brought my attention to his eyes. I couldn’t tear mine away, especially in the candlelight of the restaurant. “I proposed a new project to the network. I want to rehab abandoned houses and then give them to people who need a place to live.”

“That sounds incredible,” he said, wide-eyed as the waitress brought the first round of tapas, quinoa croquettes. “I always daydream about what I’d do to fix those places up while I shoot them. How are you going to do it?”

My cheeks flushed with his enthusiasm. It meant everything that he was so into this. “I want to get the viewers involved. I’m hoping for people to write in and suggest places for us, ones that would impact each community in a positive way. I want to make it interactive and get people to care about the properties again.”

“But what about the actual work?” Jagger clarified his question, eyes alight with excitement. “Are you going to be historically accurate when you do the rehab, or are you going to make it more functional for the current needs of the community?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” I furrowed my brow as Jagger took a bite of his croquette, closing his eyes and moaning. I momentarily lost my train of thought. “I’ll have to bring that up to the producers. It’s still in the development stage. What we actually get to do depends on the budget and the team we hire. If I had my way, I’d keep it historically accurate. But you’re right, it has to make sense for the community. There was a reason that the building didn’t work the first time. We shouldn’t make the same mistakes twice.”

“That’s a good point, too.” Jagger nodded. “They’re abandoned because they didn’t adapt. If they’d been perfect, no one would’ve ever walked away from them. But if you’re not able to do the places justice, please don’t do it, Leah.”

I choked on my croquette. “You don’t think this is a good idea?” That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.

Jagger shook his head. “No. I think it’s a great idea. You’re amazing for wanting to do it. But I also know what happens to best intentions.” He took a sip of his sangria. It was good that we were talking about this. Only another artist would pick up on that kind of attention to detail. My head was going to be swimming with the big picture. And the production team had their own worries, which usually came down to budget and time. “But if anyone would be able to do a project like this justice, it’s you.”

“You have an awful lot of faith in me.” I mimicked the motion of his foot but this time against his leg. He raised his eyebrow and shot me a look so smoldering I almost spilled my drink all over the table. “Do you research the places you photograph? Or just take the pictures?”

“Oh yeah. It wouldn’t be fair of me to take without knowing how they got to that place. I can’t always find info on the smaller places or the houses. I could probably pull the deeds, but it would just tell me who had owned it. I want to know why they left. What went wrong. The heartbreak of abandoning the dream. That’s what draws me to these places. A couple weeks ago, I went to an Aerojet silo. Some of the photos you really liked on my site were from there. It was the place that NASA was testing rockets for space exploration, but the government decided to use a different fuel. Just like that, the factory was obsolete. So there’s this rocket sitting on a launch pad that’s been waiting for its trip to the moon for fifty years.”

“Something about that is actually pretty romantic.” I reached out for his hand, picking up and considering each of his fingers. “Maybe you could be brought on the show as a consultant if you’d be into that? If, of course, the network approves my proposal.”

Jagger shook his head, backing away from me. “I’m no expert. There are people far more qualified than I am.”

“Do any of us really know what we’re doing?”

“No.” He laughed. “But I could always help you out on the side, and then you can take all the credit.”

“That’s not fair,” I protested. Too little food and too much wine had already gone to my head. “What are you going to do when you’re not an escort anymore?”

The question caught us both off guard. “I haven’t really thought about it.” His words were clipped. “I wasn’t looking for a new job.”

My chest constricted
.
That wasn’t the answer I wanted.
Make a joke out of it, Leah, and make a clean getaway from this conversation. And everything else while you’re at it
. “Right. Men become distinguished as they age and women just get old.”

“See, I don’t agree.” Jagger leaned forward, but he wasn’t mad anymore. The light from the candle danced in his eyes. “There’s something that’s much sexier to me about a woman who’s gone a couple rounds with life and comes out on top. You know what you want. You know what you like. And you know how to get it.”

“I didn’t think of it that way,” I gulped. The
you
wasn’t general, it was pretty clear he meant me. We were still holding hands. And if he came in closer, I was going to wipe this table clean with my free hand and beg him to take me on it. “I was thinking tight stomachs and perky boobs.”

“There’s nothing wrong with those.” Jagger grinned. “But when was the last time you tried to talk to one of those girls?”

I thought about my interns. The blank canvas faces. Not because they were there ready to soak up all the expertise they could, but because they were usually buried in their phone screens and had raised being socially awkward to an art form. “It’s a challenge.”

“The most important sexual organ is the mind.” Jagger didn’t break his gaze as the waitress brought our paella. “And if you can’t turn me on with that, it’s just fucking.” He didn’t even wait for her to walk away.

I nodded and looked down to my plate, my cheeks and everything else on fire. I was going to have to change everything from the waist down before we went to the reunion. I wasn’t really hungry anymore but I dug into my dinner because this conversation was going to run me right off the rails.

“This is really good,” Jagger said after a few minutes. “I had my doubts about this place, but I was wrong.”

“Oh yeah, you must have amazing Spanish food in Miami.” He nodded. “I didn’t think of that. I could’ve brought you somewhere else.”

“No worries.”

“What do you like?” I hadn’t even asked him. I’d been so excited to come here that I didn’t even consider he’d want something else. I was picking up the tab for the entire weekend, but asking would have been nice.

“Cuban food,” Jagger said with a moan. “Have you ever had it?” I shook my head. “It’s a fusion of everything Miami. Spanish, Caribbean, and African. Lots of rice, beans, and seafood. Along the same lines as this.”

“Sounds delicious.” I was about to say I’d love to try it sometime, but I didn’t. It sounded too much like expectations. “I bet I’d like it.”

“I think you would.” Jagger’s expression changed before he looked out the window. Sadder. He wiped his mouth with his napkin, but it didn’t hide his sigh.

“Excuse me.” The air between us was too electric, and I needed to find a way to ground myself. Every conversation we’d had today had led us to this awkward place. Maybe it was just me, not being able to separate what this arrangement actually was from what I wanted it to be. I wanted the fantasy, and I got it. But I needed to separate it from reality. My reality. Before I got burned. My legs wobbled when I stood up and I had to think about where the bathroom was, even though I’d been here more times than I could count. Suddenly nothing felt very familiar anymore.

“When were you going to say hi to me, Leah?” I held back my scream when Rich reached out from his bar stool and grabbed my wrist. There it was, my reality. “When you needed someone to bail you out of jail after being arrested for lewd behavior on the dance floor last night?”

I yanked my arm away from him as the group erupted in laughter. “I didn’t even see you,” I spat as I rubbed my wrist.

“Of course you didn’t. You were too busy acting like a whore.” He smirked. His thinning hair was slicked back and he’d probably come straight from the dealership. He’d loosened one of his ugly ties, but everything else about him was a plastic as ever. Shelley, Beth, and three other sets of eyes had settled on me from around his high table, daring me to make this worse.

“You don’t get to say what I do anymore.” I could barely hear the words come out of my mouth.

“I think I do, at least for the next six months that I send you twenty-five hundred dollars a month to support our daughter.” Of course he made sure everyone heard the money part, loud and clear. I wanted to tell him he could shove his money up his ass, but no way. That was for Raven. Rich could say a lot of things, but I knew he loved nothing more than he loved his money. Probably not even his daughter. I’d called him out on it more than once. If money was the only thing I could take from him, I was going to milk him for every last cent. Truth was, I didn’t need a penny of his. I’d been investing it for Raven’s college tuition but he didn’t need to know that.

Okay, so the truth really was that I’d dipped into the fund to pay for Jagger. I understood that this put me out of the running for Mother of the Year, but for once I wanted Rich’s money to bring me pleasure. I’d replace it. With interest. “You do remember you have a daughter, don’t you? Is this how you act around her?”

All the old feelings came rushing back. The fear. The anxiety. The need to apologize for every little thing. No. I didn’t have to do that anymore. Shelley had so willingly volunteered for that job. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

The worst part of it was I never realized it when I was actually with Rich. It wasn’t until he started pulling this shit after we split up, like he thought it was necessary to put me back in my place. I didn’t belong there anymore. He grabbed my arm again and pulled me in close to him. His breath reeked of beer. No surprise there. “Everything you do is a pathetic attempt to get people to pay attention to you. That dress, that ridiculous hairdo…are you trying to upstage your daughter, Leah?
She’s
seventeen. Not you. The time for this shit has passed. You need to start acting like an adult. And that job. Chasing after celebrities, getting them to ooh and ahh over you. Those people don’t give a shit about you. And neither do your
fans
,” he mocked the word, “when you’re not on the screen. No one gives a fuck about you. That’s why you act like this.”

I twisted away from him, hard. The volume around the table had fallen to make sure they caught every word of this. Or maybe my hearing had started to go. I was close to passing out. “You gave a fuck about me right outside this goddamn hotel.”

“No, I didn’t. The only person I ever gave a fuck about was Raven. That’s why I’m saying this to you now, for our daughter’s sake.” He smiled, and venom dripped from his lips. “I never loved you, Leah. Now that I know what love is, I could never love a shallow bitch like you. I just didn’t know any better.”

Chapter Thirteen

Leah

I Had No Idea How Much Money I Threw On The Table
. “We need to go.” I yanked a very startled Jagger out of his chair. “Now!”

“What the hell happened in there?” He stumbled as he came to his feet, and like at the bar, every fucking body in the restaurant was watching us. His mouth fell when he looked at me. I felt like a wild animal that had just escaped from a cage and I must’ve looked like it, too.

“Nothing.” I couldn’t breathe. I would not break down in here. Even if I had to crawl out of the restaurant. God, please don’t let that happen. That would be dangerously close to a breakdown.

“Is everything okay?” the waitress asked.

“Charge it to the room!” I barked at her. Jagger held me steady by my shoulders. The waitress jumped back, wide-eyed. Poor thing didn’t deserve that. “Charge it to the room, please.” This time it was more of a whisper.

If Jagger hadn’t held on to me, I would’ve collapsed. He swung me around to face him when we got out to the lobby. He was blurry through the wave of tears that was waiting to wreak havoc on the rest of the evening. “Tell me what happened, or I’m going to go in there and find out for myself.”

“Don’t.” I could barely speak. The last thing I needed was for my hired gun to confront my asshole ex in a room full of people I hated. Jagger glared back at the restaurant, his jaw tense. He was in no way convinced. I was aware of people trying to say hi to me as they passed to go into the function room, but the two of us were in a vacuum. “Please.”

We made it back to my room before I lost my shit. Big, heaving, ugly sobs. I crumbled against Jagger’s chest, his strong hands stroking my back, the only anchor I had.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” He wiped his thumb under my eyes when I’d regained enough strength to pick my head up.

“I saw Rich.” My voice was still scratchy and congested. “And he told me, in front of his new wife, all of their friends, and anyone else in earshot, that he never loved me.” I fell back into Jagger’s chest but there were no more tears. I had nothing else left to give for my ex-husband. I was finally numb, and there was euphoria that came with it. Rich had done what I wasn’t able to do for myself—he finally broke me free of his grip.

“Jesus.” Jagger’s voice was little more than a breath. “You should’ve let me go back in there and hit him.”

And Jagger got me to do something that I thought would never happen that night. I laughed. Maybe I wasn’t so numb after all. “I should have.” I peeked up at him. I wanted to make the mental image of Rich splayed out on the floor courtesy of Jagger’s fist the screen saver on my phone. “And that was after he told me I was a selfish slut and a horrible mother.”

Jagger eased himself away from me and began to stand. “I’ll be right back.”

“No!” I pulled on hand so he came crashing back down on the bed, on top of me. “As much I’d love watching you kick the shit out of him,” that euphoria was back, “he’ll find a way to make us suffer in the end. Please. I don’t want this weekend to be a bad memory.”

Lips crashed against mine in a bruising kiss, like a reward for finally seeing what was worth it. I pulled Jagger closer by his hair, wrapping my leg around him to cage him in. Euphoria. He’d taken my breath away, and all the pain was gone. It was replaced with something else just as scary.

I pulled away from him.

“You probably think I’m an idiot.” I shrugged away from him. I needed to look at anything but Jagger.

“No.” He’d rolled up and his hands slid just above the curve of my hips. “But I do think you’ve wasted too much energy on the wrong people.”

“I thought that’s what love was. Sacrifice. Compromise. And it is, as long as both people are actively participating in that. Now I know better.” I turned back to Jagger. He was looking down at me and his hair hung in his face. My lipstick was smeared all over his chin. The damp spot from where I’d cried on his shoulder had almost disappeared. He was beautiful. “I don’t think I can go back down there.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Jagger asked. He wiped something away from my face, probably my ruined makeup. “What made you want to go through everything you knew you’d have to deal with worth it to you?”

Oh God, Kari. I was the worst best friend ever. She’d been calling me all day and I ignored her. I didn’t even know who she was here with. By now, Beth, Shelley, and all their awful friends had surely got their hooks in her and found a way to torment her, probably still insisting she was a slut. Even though now it was true and she was proud of it, but she didn’t need to deal with their brand of bullshit.

“I came for Kari.” I closed my eyes. “I am selfish. I’ve barely seen her all weekend.”

Jagger sat beside me and pulled me up off the bed. “Prove them wrong, Leah.”