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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 associated 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.
Also, what she’d said was still ringing in my ears. James’s children are going to be some of the wealthiest people in the country. They have to be able to handle the duties that come with that sort of privilege—and their parents have to be able to help them do that.
I’d barely graduated high school. I had an alcoholic, grifter mother and an absent father. I lived in an apartment in the bad part of the city, and I was lucky to be there.
Also, there was the fact that I was a whore.
I swallowed my coffee. It tasted bitter, but I made myself drink it, anyway. I was not in a position to raise wealthy trust-fund children and help guide them through the duties that came with that sort of privilege. I got excited about James’s super-fluffy towels; his fancy coffeemaker was like a ride at Disney World to me. I didn’t have the experience or capacity to live in his world, or attempt to raise a family in it.
But it was this train of thought that brought me to my biggest problem. James was my John. Just because Celia Preston, my mother, and Jenny thought he cared about me did not make it true. Just because I hoped against hope that he cared about me did not make it true. He was paying for me to pretend I was his girlfriend. He was paying to fuck me.
The fact that he’d let me play with his hair yesterday afternoon and that he’d told me about his dead girlfriend did not a relationship make.
I was in love with him. That fact was as clear to me as the sun coming up outside. But I couldn’t let my feelings cloud my judgment. I had to protect myself a little, too. Otherwise this was going to hurt too badly. I wished I could put a shield around my heart, so it wouldn’t break all ugly and uneven when this was over…
Because that was the thing. James had told me he cared about me. But that was it. He’d held my hand. Our lovemaking had been totally intense—but how did I know he felt what I felt? Just being close to him made my heart feel as if it was going to burst. When he was inside me, I felt like I was going to weep because I finally felt complete.
I’d had a lot of sex. Too much. But none of it had ever made me feel anything close to the rush of emotion that I felt when I was with James. He’d been so tender with me, so loving, that it felt as if it was more than just sex for him, too.
But he hadn’t said a word about the future. He’d said he cared about me right now. And that was something, and I would cling to it when he was gone, but it was only what it was.
If he felt more than he was saying, it made it even worse.
“Hey.” He’d padded out to the living room in his sweats and nothing else. Of course, my traitor heart stopped when I saw him.
