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Usually, that was the idea. In my business ventures, it worked to my advantage for people to think I was unpleasant and difficult to deal with. But right now? I had to stop talking
“Okay then. The sister-in-law-to-be is bad,” Audrey said, her voice soothing and agreeable. She probably thought I was upset because I’d called Evie a twat. But she would learn, as we went on, that I always called Evie that. Because she was one.
I grabbed a decanter filled with bourbon from the side of the car. “Would you like some?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, accepting the small tumbler I poured for her.
I poured myself a drink that was significantly larger and took a sip. Something about Audrey unnerved me. She seemed like a whole person, not someone broken that wanted to get fucked up and then fucked hard, just to shut the world out. Which is to say, she was not what I was expecting. She seemed like somebody’s sister. Like a graduate student.
Like somebody’s girlfriend.
“So…tell me about this wedding. The more details you give me, the better prepared I’ll be,” she continued, all soothing efficiency.
“I’m dreading the wedding—I don’t have a great relationship with my family,” I said. I could hear the tension in my own voice. I always sounded like that when I spoke about them, which was one of the reasons I never did.
“James.” She put her hand on mine again. “None of the guys who come to us have good relationships with their families. None of the girls at work do, either. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Trust me,” she said.
The fact that she understood put me at ease. Until I thought about it some more, and then the fact that it put me at ease made me uneasy.
“So,” she said, “back to the wedding.”
“I’m the best man,” I said. “I think Todd did that to make sure I’d show up. My mother informed me that I had to come to every non-stop event. Evie really wants this week to be a big lead-in to the wedding. There’s a dinner tonight and an endless series of brunches, cocktail hours, and photo shoots that we have to attend. Then Friday night is the rehearsal dinner at Il Pastorne. And Saturday the wedding is being held at Trinity Church. Then we’re off to Eleuthera for a week with the happy couple, my parents, some cousins, and
some friends.”
“It all sounds very proper,” Audrey said. She sounded impressed.
“It’s going to be a complete cluster fuck,” I said.
She nodded at me. “I have a family. Mine’s probably messed up in a different way than yours, but I get it, James.”
I swallowed the rest of my bourbon, hard. “I hired you because I didn’t want to deal with questions from them about why I’m still single,” I said. “I broke up with someone a few months ago. I’ve decided to take a break from dating and just concentrate on work. My family’s beside themselves that I’m almost forty and not married. They’re worried about not having any heirs.” I smiled at her grimly. “So I hired you to bear the brunt of the misery with me.”
“I’m on it,” she said, upbeat and optimistic. “I’ll do whatever you ask. You tell me how you want me to be. This is all about you. Your comfort. Your experience. I’m a buffer.”
She was a pretty hot buffer, but the fact that I thought so was something that I was going to keep completely and solely to myself.
There was a reason I stayed away from women I liked. And I’d learned it the hard way.
Audrey
James was quiet for a minute after he told me about his family. We were stuck in midday traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. I watched the brownstones crawl by as I sat, lost in my thoughts.
I couldn’t figure out whether it was good luck or bad that James Preston was gorgeous. And that he had feelings and people he was worried about dealing with. It made him seem too human.
Family made him vulnerable, and we had to deal with his family. I didn’t know what he was normally like, but right now, he seemed nervous and quite possibly afraid of the next two weeks.
I couldn’t have that, for a couple of important reasons.
First, we had to win this. We were going to be the perfect couple. His family was going to be completely fooled, and I was going to be paid lots of money for exactly that. I believed, like Elena, that James Preston was my golden ticket. I was going to make him happy these two weeks, and I was going to play my part perfectly. Then he’d recommend me to all of his jet-setter friends, and I’d be sucking rich cock for the rest of my life. And then I could make everything okay, at least for my brother. For me? I could survive just about anything. The fact that I was here, right now in this hired car, was living proof of that.
Second, I didn’t want to care about James Preston. He was a John. The Johns were a nameless, faceless group of men that I preferred to block out. I’d cultivated only a fuzzy memory of the men who’d rented me, and I liked it that way. That was the only way I could sleep at night and meet my own eyes in the mirror each morning.
“So, is graphic design something you did?” James asked me, breaking my reverie. “You know, before?”
“Before hooking?” I asked. “Nah. I never went to school.”
“Too excited to jump into your chosen profession?” he asked.
