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“Shocked me, no, but I’ll save the mental image for later.”
“Perv,” he teased, green eyes mirthful. “Seriously, though, you never tried another woman? Not even in college?”
She shook her head ruefully. “No, I can’t imagine taking the initiative. I wouldn’t even know what to do with a woman.” Jeez, compared to Will, she was so inexperienced, in the boring, sad way. Why did he even give her the time of day?
“Well, part of the fun of sex is finding out what the other person likes. I’m sure you’d figure it out.”
“Unless the other person is a little pushy, nothing will happen. Trust me. I’m not an initiator when it comes to sex.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. Maybe you just haven’t found someone you’re comfortable with.”
“True.” She’d never dated anyone long enough, or known them well enough to get comfortable.
How had they strayed back to talking about sex? Oh, it had been her fault this time.
“So you really were disowned?” she asked, deflecting the conversation back to territory that was less uncomfortable. She felt like an idiot admitting that she was completely unadventurous. “They gave you a living allowance or something until you got back on your feet, though, right?”
“Grant came to my defense and outed himself, and we got thrown out. Not a penny to our names. I was nineteen and Grant was seventeen, and we were immature and had been spoiled. We were on the street for two nights before we finally realized there were shelters available. We had no fucking idea.” He laughed, as if having been raised naive and clueless was an embarrassing thing to admit.
“That’s awful!”
“It was hard for the first while. We were soft, so we were . . . targets. The workers at the shelter helped us apply for welfare. After that, we got a bachelor apartment and jobs working for minimum wage. It was hand to mouth for a long while.”
“Sounds scary,” she said, feeling bad for the kid he’d been. Her family hadn’t had a lot of money, but at least they’d been accepted as they were and helped along the road to adulthood.
“So how on earth did you go from living in a bachelor’s apartment and working minimum-wage jobs to owning a club and a monstrous house?”
He set his jaw and didn’t look at her. “I was recruited.”
“The army?” she asked.
He snorted. “I was a scrawny kid. No one was going to be looking at me to protect the country.”
“So what do you mean you were recruited?”
“I . . .” He broke off for a moment. “I was working at a mom-and-pop diner bussing tables, and a woman approached me and asked if I wanted to make more money. Of course I said yes.” He paused, his mouth flattening into a line. “And that’s how I became an escort for a few years. She hired Grant, too, when he was old enough. So we were kept by bored, rich housewives. Did what they wanted. Made them feel pretty.”
Wow.
He pulled the car over into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. She looked out the window and looked back at him, not sure what he was planning to do here. Maybe he’d forgotten something?
He looked at her earnestly. “Don’t worry, I was careful, and I’ve been tested extensively since then.”
There was a lull in the conversation, and she wasn’t sure what he expected her to say. She’d known the start-up money would have had to come from somewhere. It wasn’t from drug dealing or running girls. He wasn’t an arms dealer. Really, his being a former sex-trade worker wasn’t an issue for her.
“My roommate in college did the same thing,” she finally said. “She wouldn’t have been able to afford tuition otherwise. It’s not as uncommon as people think. Thanks for trusting me enough to tell me.”
He blinked at her as though she’d just announced she was an alien.
“Sorry.” She offered him a shrug. “Were you hoping to shock me?”
He shook his head, laughing. “There are very few people who know that about me, and I’ve never had anyone blow it off like it was no big deal.”
She shrugged and turned in her seat to look at him more squarely. “I’m glad your start-up money didn’t come from the mob or something.”
He barked a laugh. “I can’t believe that when I met you I thought you were a rich snob.”
“Rich!” She laughed. “Our parents have decent jobs, but there are nine of us kids. We were expensive to feed and clothe. Because I’m the oldest, I was one of the lucky ones. Ethan, who’s three years younger than I am, still complains about having had to wear my hand-me-down socks—as if it caused him some sort of long-term psychological damage.”
