Personal Escort

by Ainsley Booth

  He swipes the back of his hand across his forehead. “Thanks.”

  “What time is your presentation tomorrow?”

  “Noon here, so mid-afternoon for you.”

  “I’m going to watch. No pressure.”

  He grins at me. “That’s the good kind of pressure. I’ll make sure it’s extra exciting for you.”

  “What are you unveiling?”

  “A new Bluetooth solid state memory device. I wasn’t sure we’d have it working in time, but it’s pretty slick.”

  “Fun!”

  “I’ll overnight you a prototype if you want to give it a whirl.”

  “I do.” I shift my position, curling my legs up against my chest. I wrap my arms around them and rest my chin on my knees. “But you don’t have to do that, of course.”

  “You gotta get some benefit out of being friends with the CEO.”

  Right. Friends.

  Which means I really should end this call before he finishes his run and pulls that soaking wet t-shirt off his body. “Then I can’t wait to use it.”

  I get another wink in response.

  “Okay, you’ve made me feel like a total slacker. I’m going to let you go, and get in a run myself.” A total lie. I’m going to end the call and flop out on my bed and replay that wink a dozen times.

  He gives me a quick wave. “Talk to you later, then.”

  “Definitely. Break a leg tomorrow.”

  “It’s not theater.”

  “It is in a way. And you’re a star. You’ll slay, I know it.” Then I press the red button that makes him disappear, and toss my iPad aside.

  Oh, Toby.

  I close my eyes and stretch out. Damp t-shirt, flashing smile, dirty wink.

  He hadn’t meant it to be dirty, of course. But too late, my imagination was already running wild and free, looping those images backwards now. A wink, a smile, and then that t-shirt, now peeling up and off his body.

  Into the shower with you, Mr. Hunt.

  I’ll wash your back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TOBY

  SHAREHOLDER MEETING DAY begins before dawn with a breakfast meeting with the entire executive team. I announce quarterly bonuses that exceed their expectations, but make it clear that the supply chain problems I’m quietly seeing examples of here and there—like the Mike Rodriguez drama, which thankfully got solved quickly, but at great expense.

  “We can’t ever get too big to care about our first customers,” I remind them.

  And to prove that point, the next meeting I have is coffee with Mr. Rodriguez himself. I invited him out to California on our dime, and before we head to the hotel where the shareholder meeting will be held, I take him to our production facility.

  “I know this doesn’t make up for the disruption to your own work,” I say as we stroll down the production line. “But we want to be transparent in our QA efforts.”

  “Hey, I’ve been in business long enough to know that bad luck sometimes strikes way more often than it should.”

  “Chaos theory is my nemesis,” I growl.

  He laughs. “Don’t I know it. Listen, I know I’m just a small peanut compared to what you’ve achieved, but I’m seriously impressed with how you’ve handled this. Before you get dragged off to that hotel and all the press stuff today, I just wanted to say, thank you—again.”

  “You know, I didn’t say this before, because I don’t believe in sentimentality, but I remember your first order. It took me a while to connect the dots. But you took a chance on my processing chip when early reports were calling it glitchy. I’ll never forget that.”

  “I’ve been married for thirty-five years, son. I’ve learned to value sentimentality. At the end of the day, the year, the decade…when you look back, it’s the relationships I see. I took a chance on your company because of your heart, not your product. And as I told you, I wouldn’t hesitate to go somewhere else if quality was a concern. But I knew you’d make it right, and you did. A decade from now, we’ll remember this moment, too.”

  I have no doubt.

  Cara: Excellent presentation. Gold star.

  Toby: You watched?

  Cara: I told you I would. I liked the bit about Mike Rodriguez. You’ve had a busy few weeks!

  And the best part of it has been talking to her, which is a dangerous kind of pleasure. I need to get a handle on that feeling, because it can’t rage out of control.

  Toby: That’s the job. Wouldn’t have it any other way. But it’s nice to have a weekend off.

  Cara: LOL weekend off? Are you not going into the office tomorrow?

  Tomorrow being Saturday.

  Toby: Only for a few hours.

  Cara: My face right now…

  I can only imagine.

  Cara: Take some time off.

  Toby: Sure. Maybe we can do cyber-brunch on Sunday.

  Cara: That’s not helping my impression that you work too hard, but sure, I’ll take it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CARA

  IT TAKES two weeks for Ben and Elana to hear I’m dating someone.

  I knew they’d find out eventually. Obviously, when I fake-elope, they’d hear then at the latest.

  But for some reason, I didn’t really connect the dots that telling Nana to back off with her matchmaking plans would lead to my siblings being worried about this guy named Alex, and his intentions toward their baby sister.

  Good thing I have my log.

  I tell Ben that Alex is sweet, and a total gentleman. I’m not sure he buys it, but it’s the truth, in a way.

  Elana’s a tougher one to divert.

  “Tell me everything,” she says when I answer the phone Saturday afternoon.

  “Not much to tell,” I hedge.

  “Liar!” She sighs. “Come on, I promise I won’t tell Nana and Ben. Who is this guy who’s finally opened your eyes to romance?”

  I hesitate. “He’s…I mean…it’s… Honestly, he’s the last guy I ever would have thought I’d like, you know? But I knew from the second he kissed me that it was something special.”

  Again, not a lie. My face is flaming hot.

  “When do we get to meet him?”

  Whoa. “Ummm…. Not sure.” I need Toby to hire him first. “He’s got a lot on his plate with work right now. And you know, the whole we-live-in-a-different-country thing.”

  “Bring him to the Hamptons this summer.”

  “I might.” Not. That would be way too much to ask an escort to do. Also, I’m awkward as fuck. There’s no way I can pretend to be in love with some random guy for an entire weekend. We’re going to do one Sunday tea with Nana before he turns out to be a workaholic who never wants to leave Toronto again.

  I hear flipping on the other end of the phone. “It looks like Ben’s heading to the beach house with Toby and Jake for the Fourth of July. And then again the first week of August…do either of those work? Or would you rather avoid them? What’s Alex like? Would he get along with Ben’s friends?”

  My head swims as I imagine pretending to be in love with an escort in front of Toby. “I don’t know. I said I might be able to make it, but let’s not put anything down in writing…”

  “There are plenty of rooms. It’s really just about letting the housekeeper know how many people to shop for.”

  “For God’s sake, Elana, I can buy my own groceries.” I regret snapping at her as soon as it’s out of my mouth. But seriously, how un-fun is it to schedule trips to the shore? I remember when I was a kid, and Ben would drive us down on a whim. Those weekends were the best.

  “You do it your way,” she says softly, and I feel even worse.

  “Your way is organized. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. If you decide to visit spontaneously, it won’t be that disruptive.”

  Story of my life. Speaking of disruptions, she still hasn’t told me about the baby. I wonder if everything is okay, but if she wanted me to know, she’d tell me. “I’ll come down the Fourth of July wee
kend. No promises about Alex. He’s…” Fictional. “Private.”

  “Sounds good. I love you, Cara.”

  “Love you, too.”

  My brain is still spinning with that conversation on Sunday morning when Toby texts me a reminder of our cyber-brunch.

  I haven’t forgotten. I did a special grocery run yesterday and wrote how much I was looking forward to this in the log.

  Toby: What are we having for brunch, anyway?

  Cara: I’ve got orange juice and everything to make Eggs Benedict.

  Toby: Sounds amazing. Give me forty-five minutes?

  Cara: Perfect.

  When he calls, it’s a video call. I’m still in the kitchen, adding some garnish to my plate. I answer and pick up my plate in one hand, and my iPad in the other.

  “Hey there. Just heading to my table.”

  “I’m still waiting for my food,” he says as the picture flashes to life.

  He’s sitting at a table, too, but it doesn’t look like his house. It looks like an empty restaurant.

  I give him a confused look. “Where are you?”

  “A private dining room at a country club I belong to.”

  “You went out for our cyber-brunch?”

  “I don’t know how to make Eggs Benedict myself.” He says this like it makes perfect sense.

  “But you could have made whatever. Toast or…”

  “You’re having something fancy, I wanted something similar.” He grins and any thoughts I may have had about this being odd vanish.

  Whatever. He wants someone else to cook for our brunch together, that’s no skin off my nose.

  “Besides, we’re celebrating,” he adds.

  “Right! Your shareholder meeting went well?”

  “Sure.” He leans in toward the camera. “But I also got a message yesterday from Ben. Your family seems pretty stoked about Alex. Your plan is working.”

  I pull a face at him. “Oh. That.”

  “You aren’t thrilled?”

  “I don’t know. Now that they all know, it’s kind of weird.” I take a deep breath. “It’s getting complicated.”

  He laughs gently. “Yes. You knew it would.”

  “Right. But…it’s different in reality.”

  “Ah.” He leans back as a waiter sets a plate in front of him.

  “Oh, that looks good!” I say.

  “I got the smoked salmon instead of Canadian bacon.”

  “Hey, fun fact.” I hold up my plate. “They don’t even have Canadian bacon in Canada. True story. They use this delicious other kind of ham that we don’t have at home, and call it back bacon. It’s tasty. I’ll miss it when I leave.”

  “We’ll have to get find you an international supplier if you like it that much.”

  I laugh out loud before realizing he’s serious. I shake my head. “I don’t need special delivery of food.”

  “Maybe for a special occasion.” He smiles, undeterred.

  “Oh, Toby.” I play with my food a bit as I try to find a polite way to say I don’t like to be spoiled. Which is, in and of itself, an incredibly lucky thing to be able to say. “I really appreciate the thought. But the thing is, within reason, I don’t like to take advantage of…”

  “My wealth?” Where Elana might bristle, Toby just shrugs. “I get that. I don’t like to waste money, either—not owning a private jet being just one example of that. But if you ever got homesick for something you’d had in one of your many temporary homes, I’d move mountains to get it for you.”

  His words are earnest, but there’s a roughness to them, too, one that slices under my skin. I should push back against it, tell him I don’t need that kind of dedication—I don’t want it—but that wouldn’t be true.

  So instead I change the subject, because while I can’t lie, I can evade like a champ. “Speaking of extravagance, Elana says you’re coming to the Hamptons a couple of times this summer.”

  “That’s the plan. I love the Russo beach house.”

  “She wants me to bring Alex.”

  He chokes on the bite of food he’d just put in his mouth. “Excuse me?”

  “Right? These are the kind of details I didn’t think through before leaping into my crazy plan.”

  He covers his mouth as he swallows, then waves his hand as if that’s a minor detail. “So the guy works a lot and can’t get to the shore.”

  “That’s what I told her.”

  He winks. “Great minds.”

  “This is your chance to tell me this is just too crazy.”

  He gives me a long, studied look, then shakes his head. “I like your brand of crazy.”

  “You’re the only one.”

  “Ben and Elana love you.”

  “I know. And Nana does, too. But there’s a difference between love and like. And none of them get me, so how can they like me?”

  “Well, I get you. And I think you’re doing what you’ve gotta do. Don’t overthink it. You’ll have a quickie fake wedding, a quickie fake annulment, and buy yourself a few more months of… okay this plan is crazy.” He set his elbows on the table and leans in toward the camera. “Jesus, Cara, just tell your grandmother the truth.”

  “No.”

  “The risk analysis is terrible.”

  “Don’t bring your business acumen to this conversation, Toby Hunt. That’s not what I like about you.” I’m lying. I like everything about him. “Come on. We’ve been over this. There’s zero chance I’m actually going to get married any time soon. That would require dating, which isn’t on my agenda in any way, shape, or form.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a long, agonizing set of beats. It feels like a minute, at least, and a minute of silence is a long freaking time. “So if this isn’t a business plan, then what is it?” he finally asks.

  “I just want… to be normal, in my Nana’s eyes. For a while. And yeah, the fake marriage isn’t going to work out, but that will be my fake husband’s fault. I’ll have given it a go.”

  “A fake go.”

  “Yeah.” God, it sounds pathetic, and a weird ache swells inside me. I blink hard, desperate not to ruin our cyber-brunch with tears.

  I have never wanted my sister’s insane life. A husband with a crazy job, four boys under the age of ten. A career of her own. A constantly revolving set of household staff to support their crazy home life.

  My parents had a weird marriage, too. And now they’re divorced and re-married, my father three times over. Nana had hated that so much, she’d cut him out of the company.

  I sigh heavily. Well, my fake divorce is likely to cure her of wanting me on the board.

  “Cara?”

  I snap my attention back to the iPad on the table. “I drifted there.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Totally fine. Now that you’re done with the shareholder meeting, what’s next for Starfish Instrumentation?”

  The question is forced, and far too bright, but Toby accepts yet another change of subject from me. “Bah. You don’t want to hear about that.”

  I pick up my fork and stab at my breakfast. “No, I really do.” I take a deep breath and give him a smile as I lift my gaze back up. “There’s nothing I’d rather talk about right now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TOBY

  I’M in our production lab the following weekend when Cara texts me. She’s gone to New York to have tea with her grandmother, their monthly ritual.

  Cara: Nana asked me if I could see Alex being the one.

  Toby: What did you say?

  Cara: I asked her if she meant the first of many, and she laughed.

  Toby: That’s not an answer.

  Cara: I know.

  He’s not real. It doesn’t matter what she tells her grandmother. He’s a figment of her imagination, a prop to keep her independence.

  But she still hasn’t asked me to hire an escort to play him for a staged wedding.

  I start to message her back that maybe she can buy some time with casual
dating, when she sends the text I’ve been dreading for weeks now.

  Cara: Now she’s talking about the matchmaking service again. Time to get serious. What do you need from me for the escort?

  I take a deep breath and remind myself this doesn’t matter, it’s not the end of the world.

  Toby: Time, date, place. An email address you don’t mind him using to coordinate further with you.

  Cara: Okay. I’ll let you know once I’m home again.

  Cara: Thank you. You’re the best.

  Hardly.

  I slam my fist down on the steel work bench before I remember I’m holding my phone. The sharp crunch of glass is a fitting coda to a conversation I knew I was going to have at some point.

  What did you think your free little bird was going to do, fly back to Palo Alto again?

  She wants to live her life. Move to Australia. Have nothing to do with men or business or family…

  She wants nothing to do with me beyond our growing friendship.

  I need some fucking perspective.

  I need to help her out, exactly as she’s asked me to, and get over my ridiculous, possessive affection for her.

  I stalk out of the lab and across the bright atrium-style walkway to the executive offices. My assistant is at his desk, his new puppy at his feet.

  “I need a new phone,” I tell him. “And then you should go home because life is short.”

  He raises one eyebrow at me. “What exactly happened in the lab? Did you discover the secret to work-life balance?”

  Something like that. Instead of an answer, I hand him my phone, the cracked screen mocking me silently from where he sets it on his desk. Everything syncs to our cloud storage. I’ve lost or damaged enough phones to know it really can only be a SIM-card transportation device.

  By the time I’m settled behind my desk, he’s in front of me, holding out a brand-new phone. No cracks, no sign I lost my temper.

  “Thank you.”

  “That was the last one I had in my desk. Don’t break this one until Monday.”

  I give him a tight, acknowledging smile. “I’ll do my best. Now go home.”