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“Jenny, stop.”
I paused and then said, “What look is that, exactly?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I think he might be in love with you. I’m just sayin’.” She shrugged. “He doesn’t look like he’s pretending anymore.”
“That only happens in the movies.”
“Then I’ll come over and film you,” she snapped. “Jesus, Dre. You gotta loosen up a little. Sometimes good things happen to good people.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Huh is right. Let’s go. We don’t want your Mr. Suit to cry because he misses you… and Coley’s hand hasn’t been on my as**s in more than five minutes. My butt’s gettin’ cold.”
* * *
“What’s going on with Cole and Jenny?” I asked James when we were driving home.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Last night I thought it was just physical. Tonight I don’t know. What does Jenny say?”
“That they have sex non-stop.”
“That’s what Cole said, too.”
“So that’s good,” I said. “They’re enjoying each other.” I wonder what’s going to happen afterward, I thought. If it’ll become a regular thing. I didn’t say it out loud; I didn’t want the conversation to circle back to us. It was something I wasn’t prepared to face.
“They’re coming to the Bahamas,” James said. All of a sudden he was shaking with silent laughter. “I think Todd’s rewarding me for my good behavior all week. My mother’s gonna have a fit.”
“I’m surprised Evie’s allowing it after Jenny tried to fight her last night.”
“Her cousins think Cole’s hot,” James said and shrugged. “They voted for eye candy on the trip.”
“Speaking of eye candy, I’ll make sure to tell Jenny to pack thong bikinis,” I said, grinning and feeling pleased. Being around my friend always made me feel better. I was glad she would be there next week just for that selfish reason, but the added benefit of her parading around in front of the Prestons in a minuscule bikini warmed my heart.
The downside, of course, was that Jenny wasn’t the most inconspicuous person, and I still had to pretend to be a legitimate, aboveboard graphic design student from New Hampshire. I also had to get her to stop calling me “Dre” somehow.
He linked his hand through mine. “This just keeps on getting better and better.”
“After the past twenty-four hours, there was really nowhere to go but up.”
“True,” he said. “Your mother didn’t come back tonight, though. That’s an improvement.”
“I know.” Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t done with us. My mother was relentless. That’s how she’d lived this long on nothing of her own. “I’m worried about it, though.”
He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him. “We just have to get through the next twenty-four hours. Then we’re getting on a plane and getting out of the country. It’s going to be okay.”
“Okay,” I said, wanting to believe it.
There were a lot of things I wanted to believe right now.
* * *
I woke up before James the next morning. His broad chest was rising and falling in his sleep. I just lied there and watched him. I had so many emotions going on inside of me right now, it was hard to keep up. But one thing was certain.
I loved him, and I had to do what was right for him.
I got up and went out to the kitchen to make coffee. I needed to think straight. Today was the wedding; I had to play my part of loving girlfriend. That would be easy—too easy.
The problem was just about everything else.
My mother wanted to blackmail him and his family to keep quiet about the fact that I was an escort. A tabloid scandal like that might not do too much to injure James individually; he was a single billionaire, and he could do as he liked. Public opinion probably didn’t mean that much to him, anyway. But his family—his mother—was a completely different story. Having her proper family as**sociated with prostitution would ruin the Prestons’ spotless reputation.
She would never forgive me for that. Worse, she would never forgive James.
So my mother was a threat and a problem. Celia Preston was both of these as well. She wanted me to disappear from James’s life after next week. She offered to pay me to go away. She’d made it crystal clear that I was not Preston material—and that was based on the moderately respectable and completely false profile I was using for this job.
If she found out I was a whore, she might do something far worse than make me cry really hard and then send me on my way.
