by Sloan Storm
Had I told him? I couldn’t remember.
I tiptoed to the bathroom and grabbed my terrycloth bathrobe, wrapping it around my body. Afterward, I exited the bathroom just as Grey appeared in the doorway holding two cups of coffee in his hand. He lifted them up in my direction and smiled.
“Good morning.”
And in that instant, I knew I hadn’t. Forcing the first, and probably last, smile I’d have all day, I walked out of the bathroom and towards him. This wasn’t going to be an easy conversation to have. All I could hope for was that he’d hear me out. Grey approached and handed me the coffee cup, with his eyebrows wrinkled together.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
I took the cup from him and wrapped my hands around the heated ceramic. Taking a sip of the smoky black liquid, I swallowed and looked up at him.
“Yes.” I said after a hard gulp that bordered on being just a bit too hot. “We need to talk.”
As I spoke, Grey finished a sip of his own and winced.
“First thing, huh? Can’t wait?”
“No,” I replied, as sincerely as possible. “It can’t. But it won’t take long. I promise.”
Nodding, he gestured towards the bed. “Okay, then. The bed sufficient?”
“Yes.”
I’d probably rehearsed this conversation in my head a hundred times. Uh, who am I kidding? It was more like a thousand or one hundred thousand. But, now that the moment had arrived, I set all my expectations aside and barreled through. It hadn’t gone perfectly of course, but Grey was kind enough to sit through the whole thing and within fifteen minutes, I’d finished.
By now, he’d assumed a reclined position on the bed. With one leg tucked inside the sheets and the other hanging casually off the edge of the mattress, he sat in his boxer briefs with his hands interlocked behind his head. Grey nodded the entire time I spoke, never stopping to ask me a single question. When I’d done, I reached towards his exposed leg and rubbed it.
Grey’s eyes trailed my hand as I caressed his skin.
“Is that it?” he asked.
Pausing mid-stoke, I felt my face crinkle into an expression of bewilderment. “Uh, yeah? That’s kind of a big deal, Grey.”
“Not to me it isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
With a quick motion, he pulled his hands out from behind his head and leaned towards me.
“We have a deal, Maddie. Look, I’m not going to keep rehashing this with you. If you want to go back to pursuing acting as a career, please, feel free. But, if you do, you will pay me what you owe and you will pay it all right now. Is that clear? Because if it isn’t, my attorneys will ensure you understand.”
With that, Grey got up from the bed and walked back over to the chaise lounge to get his shirt.
“I’ve got to be going, Maddie,” he said as he picked it up. After sliding his arms into the sleeves with a smooth motion, he snapped the fabric around to the front of his torso and buttoned it.
I grimaced at him and struggled to refrain from engaging in a full-on brawl first thing in the morning. Instead, I offered up a final heartfelt defense of my desire. As I spoke, Grey fastened his belt and then began to walk in my direction.
“Grey, I don’t expect you to understand. Ever since I came out here five years ago, it’s always been my dream to become an actress. I can’t possibly expect someone like you to relate to what that feels like.”
He looked down at me. Smiling at first, his expression turned solemn as he started to speak.
“Maddie the reason you haven’t been successful with acting has nothing to do with your ability or luck or anything of the sort. I am teaching you the most important lesson of all when it comes to achieving success — perseverance. You lack it. Now, I’ve had enough of this conversation. You will do as you’ve agreed to do and that’s final.”
I held my tongue. Nothing good would come of it and I didn’t have the energy for it. I sensed he was more than ready to go another twelve rounds but not me, not right now.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, as he leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll call you.”
I didn’t bother to stand and say goodbye and he didn’t seem to mind I hadn’t. I heard the front door to the apartment click shut and as it did, I fell back into the mattress and groaned.
MADDIE
I’d managed to get into the office over the weekend and pick up the wreckage Grey and I left behind before anyone noticed. Unfortunately, explaining the missing vase and lamp to my assistant, Carmen, proved a bit trickier. I lied and told her I gave them to a friend as a last minute housewarming gift. Tacky I know, but ugh, my creative juices ran low these days and when it came to concocting spectacular fibs, I just didn’t have the energy for it.
As for the smashed phone… I took one just like it from the conference room until I could manage to get another one. She didn’t seem any the wiser. Yet. Which, that reminds me, I still have to do that before she does figure it out.
It’s always something.
Anyway in spite of all my after-hours office espionage, business really picked up for us during the week. I am not even joking. It was crazy.
Of course, that was a good thing. The more business we got, the more money we made and the faster I could pay Grey back and get the hell out. What happened to it afterward no longer mattered to me. I didn’t care what he said about ‘perseverance’. That was a bunch of bull anyway. Grey was born into what he had, a lucky winner of life’s lottery.
The downside to the increased success was that I found myself constantly in need of new employees, especially girls for escorting. In fact, today I had an interview scheduled with one. She was, believe or not, suggested to me by Grey a couple of weeks ago. I’d be lying if I said I had the faintest idea how he knew her.
Even so, I couldn’t possibly see Grey suggesting I hire anyone who wouldn’t be good for business. That’s all he seemed to care about any more, so I was pretty confident the meeting with her would be little more than a formality.
I hoped so, because I had zero interest in talking to him right now. Ever since he left my apartment, I’d been avoiding his calls. For the first couple of days I managed it without too much drama, but by the middle of the week he must have realized I was doing it on purpose because the frequency of his calls increased. As it happened, by the time lunch rolled around today, he’d already tried to get me three times.
And so it was that just after one o’clock I was sitting at my desk when the speaker on my phone crackled to life. Carmen buzzed in as I finished a sip of my diet soda. I swallowed down the lightly carbonated liquid and while the remnants of vanilla and caramel flavoring remained in my mouth, I listened as her voice broke the silence.
“Miss Olsen,” she began. “It’s Mr. Sinclair for you. Again.”
“Carmen. You know what I told you. I’m not available.”
“But, he sounds really pissed, Miss Olsen. I don’t want to get fired by putting him off.”
I shook my head. “Carmen, you aren’t going to get fired. I’m in charge here, not Mr. Sinclair.”
“Okay, ma’am.” Carmen replied. Uncertainty laced her tone. “What should I tell him?”
Not wishing to make this any more difficult on her than it was, I shrugged and said, “Oh, I don’t know. Tell him I’m interviewing that candidate he sent over here.”
As I finished, I scrounged through a stack of papers on my desk, searching for the chick’s name. “What was her name again? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”
“Farrah,” Carmen replied. “Oh, and Miss Olsen?”
“Farrah,” I said as the recollection returned to me. “That’s it, Farrah. Yes, Carmen. What is it?”
“She’s here. In the lobby. Just walked in.”
I glanced at the time. “Fifteen minutes early? Well, shows some initiative, doesn’t it?”
“Yes ma’am. Should I send her back now?”
“Yes, it will give me an excuse
to have you take a message from Mr. Sinclair.”
“All right, Miss Olsen,” Carmen said. “I’ll send her right away.”
A few minutes later, I had the hand-picked escort candidate of billionaire investor Greyson Sinclair seated across from me. Utter disbelief is probably too strong a term, so I’ll go with extreme confusion instead. Because nothing about him and her made any sense to me. After a quick introduction and a bit of chit chat, Farrah and I got down to the business end of the interview.
With a quick twist in the chair, she crossed her left knee over her right. Smacking her gum between her teeth, Farrah flashed a mouthful of white at me as she flipped her long, brunette hair back from her face. The green-eyed beauty’s entire body jingled as she moved. Bangles and baubles clung to every square inch of her, functioning like an advance bimbo warning system.
“Wait, so how old are you?” I said, as I glanced down at her application.
“Um, I just turned twenty-five, like last week,” she began. “My boyfriend Brodie, well he’s not my boyfriend we’re just like hooking up or whatever, threw me a surprise party in Calabasas. His house is dope. For real. It has a huge pool which like, you know, I totally don’t swim or whatever but it did give me a reason to get a super cute tie-side bikini. Oh, I look so good in this thing. You should see it.”
While she spoke, she turned sideways to me and, hiking up her skirt, she continued to describe her swim wear purchase. “So like, it cuts me just above the hip here, you know? It’s light yellow. Well, my best friend Mandy said it was more like vanilla but I’m all, you’re crazy, it’s totally light yellow and then she said…”
“Oh, oh, okay,” I interrupted. “Thank you. I get the idea, Farrah. Well, in any case, happy belated birthday. Let’s get to the interview if you don’t mind.”
She shook her head. “Totally. I’m super stoked to be here. Do I have to give blowjobs?” She wrinkled her nose as she finished the thought. Then, opening her mouth, she inserted the index finger of her right hand into it, mimicked a gag reflex and added, “They totally gross me out.”
“Uh, all right.” I said as I stared at her in disbelief. “No, Farrah, you don’t have to give anyone a blowjob to work here.”
“Omigod, good. I was totally stressing over that.”
I exhaled as I considered the task ahead.
“Hum,” I muttered as I glanced down at the application. “Do you understand what this job entails? I am assuming Mr. Sinclair explained it to you. Didn’t he?”
Without lifting my head, I noticed her reflection in the glass.
Texting.
Of course. What else?
“Hey…” I said as I tapped on the glass with my pen. “Over here. Put the phone away until we’re done.”
Wow, really?
Ugh, this idiot couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation if I duct taped one to her hands.
Was Grey serious?
No, there was more to it. There had to be. If I didn’t know any better, I could have sworn Grey was setting me up here.
Fine. If he wants to play it that way. No problem.
Right on cue, Farrah jingled her way back into my awareness. “So, is this going to take like, a long time or whatever?”
Without wasting a second, I replied, “Nope, not at all.”
Pushing my chair back, I stood and extended my hand across the desk in her direction.
“Welcome aboard,” I said with a smile. “Your first client is Mr. Pickering. He’s a distinguished gentleman from Texas. You’ll be accompanying him tonight after he arrives in town. And Farrah, you do understand that discretion is the most important part of your job, don’t you?”
“What’s that? Discretion?”
Wow.
“Um, it means to keep quiet,” I said. “In other words, you are never to discuss who you see or where you go when it comes to our clients. Do you understand?”
Her oversized earrings rattled in acknowledgment as she nodded her head.
“Good. Well again, congratulations.”
“I know, right? Yay!” she proclaimed as she jumped from her seat. But no sooner had she done it than I watched her expression change as the realization of her first assignment sunk in.
“Distinguished…” she grumbled. The familiar nose wrinkle returned. “Does that mean like old or whatever? Do I have to fuck him? Old guys…”
Cutting her off, I said, “Lemme guess. They gross you out.”
“Totally. Yeah.”
“No, Farrah,” I muttered, as I ran my hand down my face in exasperation. “You don’t. You are simply something pretty to be seen and not heard.”
“Super! Well… bye!” she said with a final smack of her gum. She spun and prepared to go. Her jewelry jingled and jangled as she slipped her purse over her shoulder and disappeared out of my office.
I could only shake my head.
“Jesus.”
MADDIE
Life has a funny way of teaching you lessons sometimes. In hiring Farrah, I’d managed to convince myself it was Grey who would regret it. Now, here it was less than twenty-four hours later and Carmen stood in front of my desk on the verge of a panic.
“Wait,” I began, as I attempted to calm her down a bit. “What did Farrah do again?”
Carmen paced back and forth in front of my desk, covering the equivalent of four feet in both directions as she walked. Yet in spite of my question, she remained oblivious and continued to fret.
“Carmen!” I exclaimed, as I tried to get her attention. “Stop. Okay?”
She snapped her head in my direction. “I’m sorry, Miss Olsen.”
“That’s okay.” I said, reassuring her. “Just tell me what you know.”
“Well, not much yet.” Carmen replied, as she slid into one of the seats across from my desk. “What I do know is that she posted a bunch of pictures of herself and Mr. Pickering on her social media accounts. Well, somehow word got out and the gossip sites published them. It’s everywhere Miss Olsen. What are we going to do?”
Exhaling, I leaned back in my chair and stared up to the ceiling. I bit my lip and cursed Grey as my mind searched for an answer.
This was a major problem.
Not only was Kenneth Pickering a new client, but he was also probably the most powerful oil and natural gas magnate in his home state of Texas, if not the entire country. He’d been embroiled in a nasty divorce from his wife for years now. So not only would this likely have a damaging impact on the outcome of that –– but if we couldn’t fix this from a reputation standpoint, it would make it incredibly difficult to get clients like him in the future. If they couldn’t trust to be discreet then why hire us at all?
I shifted my body to an upright position and wheeled my chair back underneath my desk. Placing my palms flat, I summoned as much cheerfulness as I could.
“Everything will be okay, Carmen,” I said. “Why don’t you go back to your desk and I’ll get to work on this?”
“Um, okay,” she replied. “Are you sure?”
I affirmed my claim with a firm, single nod. “Absolutely.”
She smiled and a few seconds later, my office door clicked closed as she exited.
Once it did, I let out deep groan.
“Oh man. What a nightmare.”
My entire body felt light, as if the blood had drained from the top of my head right out through the tips of my toes. I peeled both my hands, now at clamminess level ten, off an assortment of papers on my desk and flicked them loose in disgust.
Ugh, gross. I have got to get that fixed somehow. So annoying.
Sticky-palmed or not, the next thing I had to do was call Grey and tell him about the firestorm his ‘project’ created for me. As much I as still didn’t want to talk to him, this had to be taken care of and soon. I grabbed my cell and called him. After the second ring, he picked up.
“Well, hello,” he said. “I was just about to come out there and check up on you.”
Caught off guard by his gree
ting, not to mention a little irritated, I replied, “What do you mean ‘come out here’? Why do you think you can show up whenever you want and meddle?”
“That’s not what I meant, Maddie,” he replied. “Let's not argue. You called me. What’s up?”
Balling my free hand into a fist, I had to agree with him. This wasn’t the time to fight. I swallowed my desire to give him a piece of my mind for even pushing me to hire Farrah in the first place. Instead, I exhaled, leaned back in my seat and told him everything I knew.
“That it?” he replied, completely unfazed.
“Uh, Grey! This is a scandal in the making and it’s all because of that bimbo you sent in here.”
Grey scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Maddie. Look, I’ll talk to Ken. Don't worry, this whole thing will blow over.”
His nonchalant attitude was almost more than I could stand. Thinning my lips, I hissed, “Fine. What about Farrah?”
“What about her? Get rid of her.”
“Me? You’re the one who wanted her hired. If anyone should do the firing here it’s you, Grey.”
He exhaled into the phone. “Maddie, troublesome employees are a part of business. I fire people all the time. Just get it handled and don’t bother me with it.”
“Well, uh, what about Mr. Pickering? He’s pissed beyond belief at us and for good reason. He’s in the middle of that divorce and everything. This won’t be good.”
“And I already told you I’d handle Ken. I’ll talk to him. This is a minor issue. Anything else? I’m busy, Maddie.”
I shook my head. Looking down at my desk, I realized I’d unconsciously balled up a half dozen pieces of paper in the course of my conversation.
“No, Grey. There isn’t.”
We said our goodbyes, curt as they were these days, and as soon as I hung up, I pressed the intercom to connect to Carmen.
“Yes, Miss Olsen?” Carmen said as she answered.
“Yes Carmen, I need you to find Farrah and get her in here.”
