Escorting the Billionaire #1 (The Escort Collection) (2 page)

B
eing
a billionaire had lots of perks. Two of them were that you never had to pack for yourself and you never had to shop for yourself. Nita, my personal assistant, had bought me a new tux and a bunch of new suits for the trip. My housekeeper had ironed all my clothes and packed them all perfectly.

These things did not suck.

What did suck, however, was that I had over one hundred emails that I had to answer on my flight to Boston. It also sucked that I wouldn’t be able to bark into my phone at the various directors who worked for me. I was flying commercial for the first time in years. I thought it would be good practice—to be around people that I didn’t particularly care for, and to try and maintain my manners.

Because that was the real suck of the moment. I was going home, and that meant I had to deal with all the people who drove me crazy. I was going to have to behave, because it was my family, because my stupid brother was getting married, and because that was the decent thing to do.

I hated decent.

At least the escort would be there, and that would be my private little joke. My
fuck you
to my oh-so-proper family. I really hoped that she was nice, and that she had a sense of humor.

She was going to need it.

I finished making sure that my things were assembled and went to get some cash from my safe. As I grabbed the bills, I brushed the worn edge of something familiar, something I’d touched a thousand times. It was an old photograph.

I pulled it out, wishing that I could stop myself. It was of me and Danielle, from our senior year of high school. She was wearing a black dress, her dark-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she was laughing. In the picture, I was looking at her and laughing, too.

It was the only picture I had of her. Of us. And for all the times I’d wanted to cut myself out of it, I couldn’t bear to.

I put the picture back into the bottom of the safe. And then I cursed the day that I’d entered this world, along with the day that she’d left it.

M
y driver
expertly maneuvered my BMW in and out of traffic on the way to LAX.
Goddamn traffic,
I thought, but I really didn’t mind. Los Angeles had been good to me, and I was used to the traffic just like everyone else. It was a part of the landscape, just like the smog, the rolling hills, and the built-out horizon.

I hated to leave. I hated Boston—except for my sports teams. No matter how long I’d been in California, I would always be a Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins fan. I’d loved those teams since I was a kid. I didn’t miss the New England winters or my family, but I missed my teams.

I’d left Boston for grad school, and I went back as rarely as I could. But this time there was no way out. Todd was probably getting married just to spite me. In a classic dick move, he’d also asked me to be his best man. He had me then. My mother insisted that the best man had to attend every event, including the trip to Eleuthera, to fulfill his duties.

“Who takes their family on their honeymoon?” I spat out at her when she’d told me there was no getting out of it.

“Someone who loves their family,” she’d said icily. “But I guess you wouldn’t know too much about that.”

I
t was
the flight from hell. I’d grabbed a window seat, ordered some coffee, and was reading the
Wall Street Journal
on my tablet. The other passengers were filing in, taking their seats. I took no notice of them until a frizzy-haired forty-something parked her kid next to me. “Be good,” she told the boy. “I’m in the row right behind you with the twins.”

She looked at me and pointed to the boy. I noticed that her mascara was smeared a little under one eye and that she had a little something that looked like jelly smeared on her cream-colored blouse. “This is Liam,” she said.

I looked at her blankly. She sighed and turned back to her son. “Don’t ask the fancy handsome businessman for anything. He’s useless. Just like Daddy. But I’m right behind you. Just call me if you need me.” She kissed him on the nose and then gave me a fiercely dirty look.

“Can I pway with that?” Liam asked, pointing his grimy little hands at my tablet.

“No way, kid,” I said and put my earbuds in.

T
he twins screamed
the whole flight. The earbuds did nothing to block out their wails.

“It’s their ears,” I heard their mother telling the flight attendant.

Their fucking ears had been hurting for six straight hours. If I were her, I would have given them both sleeping pills to knock them out.

I wasn’t her, and I was thinking about trying it.

“Poor things,” the flight attendant said while everyone in first class glared.

Liam was looking up at my tablet again, longingly.

“Oh, just take it,” I said. I opened up the Flappy Birds app and practically threw it at him.

“Miss?” I called. “I’d like a double bourbon.”

I also sent the frizzy-haired mother a glass of Chardonnay. She clearly needed it, and despite what people say about me, I am not a complete prick.

Not always.

A
driver
in a suit was waiting for me at Logan with a
Preston
sign. I raised my hand in greeting, and he gave me a pleasant smile and took my bag.

“Mr. Preston, I’m Kai. A pleasure to meet you.”

“Get me the hell out of here. The flight was full of screaming kids.”

“Of course, sir. You can wait in the car while I get your luggage.”

A Mercedes SUV was parked at the curb, hazards flashing. Once inside the cool, dark interior, I leaned back and tried to relax. The memory of the screaming twins didn’t help. The fact that I had to go see my mother and then pick up my prostitute/wedding date didn’t either.

Kai came out shortly with my luggage, and we sped away from the airport. “Where can I take you, Mr. Preston?”

“I need to go to my parents’ house in Beacon Hill.” I gave him the address. “Then to the South End to pick up my…girlfriend.” The word felt foreign on my tongue. But I might as well start the facade now. “I have a dinner tonight, a brunch tomorrow…you’ll be driving me to all sorts of annoying shit all week.”

I grabbed my phone and called my office assistant, Molly. She answered before the phone even rang. “Yes, Mr. Preston?”

“Where is the Mueller report?” I asked. “It was supposed to be sent to me during the flight.”

“There are a few problems with it,” she said. She was using the tone I mentally referred to as the
Don’t Make Mr. Preston Scream
at Me
tone. “The inspections didn’t come back the way we hoped. The EPA’s going to have to be involved.”

“Are you kidding me?” I yelled into the phone, because (a) this was bad news and (b) I was trying to toughen Molly up. She’d been working for me for ten months, and she’d already cried twice. But this was real estate. If she kept crying, I was going to have to replace her. I didn’t have time to emotionally babysit anybody—especially not the hired help.

She took a deep breath. “No, Mr. Preston, I’m not kidding you. They found traces of contaminants in the soil. Not exactly ideal for a retirement community.”

“I disagree,” I snapped. “It’s not like it’s a school. These retirement people are on their way out, anyway.”

Molly paused for a beat. “Mr. Preston, what would you like me to do?”

“Deal with it and buy me some time. Hire some independent analysts and get them out there. Today.”

I hung up as we pulled up to my parents’ townhouse. I found myself in serious need of another drink. I needed to be home, managing this land deal that was derailing. Business deals gone wrong were easy for me.

Families gone wrong were an entirely different matter.

“Wait for me here,” I told Kai. My father would be at work, so it would just be me and Mom. Even though I hadn’t seen her in over six months, I hoped I could make a hasty exit.

I braced myself and hit the buzzer.

“James,” my mother said to me, warmly, as I went into their stuffy townhouse. There was floral wallpaper covering the entire entryway, a white background with dark-green jungle-like vines. Looking at it made me feel short of breath, as if the vines were wrapping around my neck.

But then, I always felt like that when I saw my mom.

“Mom, the eighties called—they want their wallpaper back,” I said, hugging her stiffly.

“Wallpaper happens to be very stylish right now,” she said with a sniff, and pulled back to take a look at me. At least I knew I looked good. I had on an expertly tailored Armani suit, Hermes tie, and my plain-old ruggedly handsome James Preston face.

“You look good,” she said. She sounded slightly surprised. She probably thought I’d be drunk already, like at Thanksgiving.

“I always look good, Mother. Just like you.”

My mother did always look good. She’d been a knockout when we were younger—naturally blond, thin, smiling a large, fake smile. She currently maintained a regimen of just the right amount of plastic surgery, Botox, and tennis to keep her looking refreshed.

“Honestly, Mom. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Yes, you do,” she said tightly. “It’s all the boards I chair. Keeps me on my feet and dressing up.”

I snorted. “You know that’s not it,” I said.

“It is if I say so,” she said. That was a classic Celia Preston statement if I’d ever heard one.

I decided to pace myself and not give my mother and all her charitable activities a hard time right away. She’d run around for decades for her boards, pretending to be a saint, while one Guatemalan nanny after another had raised us.

Oh, the irony of my mother’s charities. The Boston Public Library Children’s Room. All that crap she’d done for the importance of healthy meals and fresh vegetables for kids. The woman had never even cooked me a processed chicken nugget. The nanny was the one who taught me the words to
Goodnight Moon
.

“So,” said my mother, clapping her hands together and breaking my brief reverie. “I’d ask you how your flight was, but I couldn’t care less. Tell me about your new girlfriend!” She slipped her arm through mine and led me to the formal sitting room. In typical Preston fashion, she poured a before-lunch bourbon for me and a larger one for herself.

I gripped it as if it was one of the few life preservers left on the
Titanic
.

“Tell you what?” I asked.

“To start with, I’d like to at least know her name,” my mother said. “So that we can let Todd and Evie know.”

I winced at the mention of Evie—she was Todd’s fiancée. She was just like my mother. Thin as a rail, all collarbones and wrists, with a perfect outfit for every occasion. I was not looking forward to seeing her.

I took a sip of my bourbon.
Oh fuck,
I realized,
I don’t even have the escort’s name.
“You get to meet my girlfriend tonight. All secrets will be revealed then,” I said.

“James, don’t be ridiculous. Tell me about her. We’re all going to be spending the next two weeks together. I’d at least like to be prepared. And since you neither call your family nor return your family’s phone calls,” she sniffed, “this is the one opportunity I’ve got. So stay right there. Don’t look like you’re going to feign an important phone call and run out of here.”

Shit,
I thought, and took my hand off the phone in my pocket.

“She’s young, and very pretty,” I said, making an educated guess that both of these things were true. “She’s…in school, still,” I said, trying to remember the story that Elena had come up with. “Grad school.”

My mother raised her artfully waxed brows at me. Grad school was a pretty amorphous category.

“How long have you been seeing her?” she asked.

“A few months,” I said.
I’m picking her up on the way home from here,
I thought,
and making a one hundred thousand-dollar deposit with her madam. And signing a waiver that says I won’t sue the service if I happen to contract chlamydia, genital warts, etcetera, even though they’ve signed a contract that states my escort’s vagina is pristine and sparkling.

Not that I was going to sleep with her.

“So, her name?” my mother asked, expectantly.

Just then, my phone buzzed. I smiled at my mother in triumph. “I have to get this,” I said and picked up. “Molly. Wait one minute.” I knocked back the rest of my bourbon and leaned down to give my mother’s papery cheek a quick kiss.

“See you tonight. I gotta take this.”

Then, happier than I’d ever been to get bad news from Molly, I hustled out of the house without a backward glance.

M
y luxury wardrobe
was packed and ready to go. I was sitting in the office, crossing and uncrossing my legs, waiting for Mr. Preston to pick me up.

Elena clicked around the corner in her heels and frowned at me. “You look nervous—don’t be. It’s going to be fun,” she said.

“I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity, Elena,” I said. I sprayed my mouth with breath freshener for what was probably the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes.

“Well, you’re perfect for this job. Beautiful, smart. You’re able to hold your own in a conversation. And I have a guarantee that you’ll behave this time.” She gave me a look that I understood instantly.

“That guy was a creep, Elena,” I said defensively. “If I hadn’t run, I would probably still be his sex slave, shackled up in his scary basement.”

“We’re lucky he didn’t press charges against us,” Elena said. “And I don’t blame you for wanting to get out of there. But if there’s ever a problem, you call
me
. You don’t pepper-spray a client, handcuff him to a wall in his underwear, and then run away.”

“What if he was going to kill me, huh?” I asked.

“He wasn’t going to kill you,” she responded, rolling her eyes at me as if I were being dramatic.

“Elena, he told me I was going to be his lifelong prisoner. And he’d already done some scary stuff to me at that point,” I said. “All I kept thinking was, who was gonna help my brother? Who was going to take care of him if I never came back?” I was traumatized more by the memory of that worry than by the creepy John himself. I could handle
him
. But Tommy being left all alone?

That I could never handle.

“There, there,” she said, coming over and rubbing my shoulders. “Don’t get all blotchy.”

I knew she was being nice and cooing over me because I was her prized show pony of the moment. But I smiled at her anyway. She’d given me this assignment, and I was going to be able to set things up for Tommy now. So that if a John ever did decide to keep me as a permanent-resident sex slave, my poor brother would at least have a roof over his head.

She cupped my face in her hands and clucked her tongue in approval. “You’re perfect looking even when you’re upset,” she said. “And all your body parts are real. James Preston is going to love you. And then he’s going to love me, too.”

After staring off into space for a second, probably counting all the money she was going to make, Elena came back to earth. She looked at me. “Back to the pepper-spray incident. I do not want my girls getting hurt. Not ever. You call me if there’s a problem. If it’s bad, I’ll have you call 911 immediately.
After
I screen the issue. But that guy telling you that he wanted to lock you up and hate-fuck you every day for the rest of your life? Honey, you haven’t been around that long. That’s nothing. Really, that’s not so bad.”

I looked at her, indignant. “He had a basement filled with handcuffs and shackles, permanently affixed to the walls,” I said. “It seemed pretty bad at the time.”

She squeezed my face as if I was an insolent child. “I forgive you for running,” she said, even though I wasn’t asking for her forgiveness. “But I want you to make this James Preston thing your triumph. Your return to good graces. You remember that you owe me for giving you another chance. If you make him happy, I’ll be sure that you only get the best clients from now on. The normal ones, who just want to pretend that you’re the perfect girlfriend. And maybe jerk off in your face.”

“I’d take that over being chained up and hate-fucked by that fat, hairy dude any day,” I mumbled.

“Duh,” said Elena. “Who wouldn’t?”

E
lena went back
to her office, and I started pacing, intermittently misting my mouth, waiting for Mr. Preston.

“Dre.
Dre!
” my friend Jenny called. She burst into the room, breathing hard.

“Omigod,
Dre.
James Preston is out front! And he’s frickin’ gorgeous! Can I switch with you? Please? You can have Fat Vinnie, and Loopsy, and all my other regulars, but I’m not kidding you, you’re gonna die when you see him—”

“Jenny, I’m gonna die if you don’t stop talking so fast.” I said, laughing. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it, trying to calm her down. Even though we were about the same age, Jenny was like my little sister. I was always trying to soothe her and keep her out of trouble.

I smiled at her and shook my head encouragingly. “Okay? You okay?”

She exhaled a shaky breath and nodded. “But I am not kidding you, Dre, you’re gonna frickin’
die
. He’s that hot. I cross my heart and swear to God. My underwear are soakin’ wet just from looking at him.”

I laughed and held up my hand to stop her. “Okay, Jenny. I get it. He’s good looking.”

She looked at me expectantly. “Aren’t you excited?” she asked. She sounded disappointed.

I looked at Jenny, her sweet, open face. Jenny was my friend, but she was not the brightest of bulbs. The fact that my new client was
frickin’ hot
, as she put it, was not enough to get me excited.

“Of course I’m excited,” I lied, and pulled her in for a quick hug. “I’m just nervous.” This, at least, was the truth. “I’m worried about being around his whole family for two weeks, for starters. And going to all those brunches and cocktail hours. Then a vacation. That’s a lot of family time…and I’m pretending to be someone else. Someone normal. Educated.”

“Dre, you
are
normal. And smart. You’re the smartest girl I know!” She hugged me again, her dirty-blond curls bouncing against me. “He’s gonna love you. He’s gonna love you in that blue dress you got on. You look good, girl. He might even try to
buy
you.”

I laughed out loud. “
Buy
me? Like a sweater?”

“Yeah, like his own personal sweater. Don’t be silly—you know what I mean. He might really like you. Enough to not want to just rent you.” She slapped me on the ass. “Although he’s gonna enjoy renting you!”

I laughed and swatted her away. “I don’t think it’s going to get that serious. Elena told me he said no sex,” I said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Jenny said. She sounded crushed.

I shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing,” I mumbled.

“Oh, Dre, when you see him? You’ll know that would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to you. I’m telling you, he is—”

“Frickin’, panty-liquefying hot,” I finished her sentence for her. “Thank you. I’m glad you approve.”

I grabbed her hands again. “Listen, I’m not gonna be able to talk to you for the next two weeks. I’m gonna miss you. You have to take care of yourself—don’t let Loopsy push you around. I mean it.”

Jenny had a bunch of regular clients who saw her weekly, but I still always worried about her. She was blonde, round faced, and twenty-one, with pillowy, Angelina Jolie-like lips. Men always told her she had a mouth that was built for shoving a cock into. That’s what she told me the day I met her. And she’d laughed about it. She didn’t let things like that bother her, which was good, because they happened to her a lot.

There was a knock on the door, and Elena poked her head in. “Dre, Mr. Preston is here. Jenny, Loopsy’s called for you. Twice.”

“Tell him I don’t want to see him and his nasty, saggy balls,” Jenny said, smiling wickedly and inspecting her nails.

She looked up and saw the madam frowning at her. “Just kidding, Elena! Tell the squirrelly little bastard I miss him—and his nasty, saggy balls.”

She turned to me and gave me one last hug. “If Loopsy ends up buying me, and James Preston ends up buying you…I’ll be frickin’ hurt. I mean it.”

I shook my head at her in mock disgust, but suddenly I realized I was close to tears. “I’m gonna miss you, Jenny…be safe.”

“I’m gonna miss you, too…but don’t be such a baby,” she said, tossing her curls over her shoulder and winking at me. “And if he lets you get in there…suck it hard, girl! Let him know what it feels like to have a
real
woman.”

“Okay,” I said, laughing. “I will suck it. Hard.”

“That’s a relief,” said a man’s voice, from near the door.

Jenny and I just looked at each other, eyes wide. Then she let out a whoop of laughter, and we both looked toward the door. And there stood a man, the most gorgeous one I’d ever seen. He had steel-blue eyes, dark hair, and massive shoulders underneath his suit.

He was exactly my type, and I didn’t have a type.

He was my worst nightmare, and I had to pretend that he was the best thing that had ever happened to me. For two weeks.

“Mr. Preston,” I said and forced myself to smile at him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”