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“Are you going to stop laughing at me, or should I fire you?”
“Definitely fire me. But please give me a good severance package, so I can spend a month in Bali, doing nothing but working on my tan with a hot Balinese woman.”
Short of Kayla betraying my company secrets and selling my soul to the devil, there was very little she could do that would get me to fire her, and she knew it.
“So, are we a go for the dating firm?” she asked, her expression serious as she put her pen in her mouth and bit down.
“That’s the only thing you thought of this whole time?”
“Hey,” she started to argue, but I interrupted.
“We just need to slow down a second,” I said, my insides twisting.
“What’s the hang-up?”
“It’s kind of creepy, is it not?” I asked because it felt like it was.
She shifted in her seat before tossing her dark hair from her shoulders and onto her back. “It’s not though. Listen. It’s a business arrangement. You don’t want to fall in love. These women aren’t there for love. It’s a win-win.”
She pulled out her phone and started typing frantically on it. “Okay, these are the five high-profile firms for the rich and famous in the city.” She winced as she said the words out loud, gauging my reaction before continuing her spiel. “Basically, they sound like high-class escort services, I guess?” She shrugged, clearly in as unfamiliar territory as I was.
“So, I’d pay some girl to be my fake girlfriend for Social Month, and my mom will be happy and go check off the things on her travel bucket list?”
Kayla’s face pulled together. “List? I guess that sounds about right.”
“And this woman wouldn’t expect anything from me because I’d be paying her, right?”
“That’s the gist of it, I think.”
My brain spun a mile a minute. I had no idea what the right thing to do was, but I knew I couldn’t really try to find a woman like my mom had suggested. I wasn’t in the place for it. God, how had this become my life? An hour ago, the only woman even remotely on my radar had been the one I planned on fucking later. The one who would leave the second we were done and walk out of my apartment like nothing had happened.
“I’d be mortified if this got out to the press. Could you imagine the headline? ‘The Anti-Playboy Turns into the Pays-for-It Punk’?”
She quickly stopped whatever she was doing on her phone. “No way would I let them meet with you before I vetted them first. I think the whole point of those firms is so that it doesn’t get out. Obviously, the woman would sign a nondisclosure agreement, where she would be forbidden from discussing the details of your relationship or anything about you.”
“There has to be another option,” I said, shaking my head and leaning back so far in my chair that I thought I might break it.
“There is. You could actually try to find a real woman on your own, or you could let your mom set you up, like I know she’s dying to do. But then that poor girl would probably fall head over heels in love with you and want twenty of your little staffing babies.”
The thought didn’t excite me. It didn’t cause my heart to race or my pulse to speed up. It gave me the exact opposite feeling actually—dread. It coursed through my veins, and I knew I wasn’t ready for any of that.
Running my fingers through my hair in frustration, I responded, “I need a no-strings-attached type of deal.”
“Then, we’re going to have to call one of these places. It’s our only hope. I wouldn’t have even suggested it if I thought we had another option. I’ll research them all first, meet with the owners, find out everything I need to before I let you work with them. Okay?” She tried to reassure me, but I was still hesitant.
“I trust you with all that,” I said, and I meant it. I knew Kayla would never let me get into a situation that wasn’t good for me. “I just don’t like it. Why can’t I just be free to focus all my time on work and worry about love and babies and shit later?”
“God, you remind me so much of Sutton that it’s annoying,” she said before her jaw slacked open. She quickly snapped it closed again, her lips pressing together tightly.
“Your psychotic roommate?” I asked, horrified.
After three years of working together, I knew way too much about Kayla’s personal life, including her best friend and roommate, Sutton. She was the only person Kayla ever spoke about with consistency. To be honest, I only half-listened whenever Kayla went on a rant, talking about their excursions. I knew it was shitty of me, but as a guy, we only cared so much about people we didn’t know or didn’t plan on fucking. And Sutton’s name was at the top of my DO NOT TOUCH list.
“She’s not psychotic!” Kayla snapped back.
“I have memories that beg to differ.” I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest.
I’d met Sutton once before, and it hadn’t gone well. If my drunken haze remembered correctly, which was fuzzy at best, I’d called the woman a hot mess—or something like that. But in my defense, she had been holding a lighter toward my balls, threatening to light them on fire!
