“Let me make sure I understand,” he said, his voice gravelly and thick, “you would like to pay me a large sum of money to have sex with you for the next thirty days.”
“With only me,” she clarified.
“Right. Sex with only you. A lot of sex. All kinds of crazy sex.”
She couldn’t be blushing, she hadn’t blushed since she was a twelve year old whose budding figure had attracted the very verbal notice of the boys in her class. It was merely the heat of the summer day hitting her cheeks. God, please let her not be blushing, not now that she’d come this far.
“Well, not just sex.” But mostly sex. She thought quickly, scrambling for other duties he could fulfill, to make the whole thing worth his while and to convince him that she wasn’t just asking out of the selfish, helpless want that had filled her from the moment they’d met.
She lit upon the perfect thing. “My sister’s wedding! It’s in two weeks, and I desperately need an escort. You can be my date. That’s within your purview, isn’t it?”
He tsked lightly. “Buying another date with me, hmh?”
“Well, you are a paid escort, right? Isn’t that your usual job title? You’d actually be escorting me, rather than, well, you know, just...”
“Screwing you.”
That was very crude. It was also very exciting, almost dangerous. She’d never had a man treat her with anything but gentlemanly restraint, but she sensed that, if she wanted to let him, Jake could be much more aggressive--wildly so.
“But I suppose I could live with being arm candy for a society wedding.”
He’d be a perfect escort, tall and strong and utterly magnificent in a tux, she knew.
She would not think about Tabby laughing her ass off over this, or about Deborah choking on her chateaubriand. There was too much at stake right now. Even more than Maddy had suspected, given the way she could barely breathe and the sweat was probably dripping off her hands to flood the deck. A pirate could probably swab the entire surface already.
"So, what do you say? You’d be doing me an enormous favor,” she insisted, hoping she wasn’t babbling by now. “You already know as well as I do that I have no use for the typical games--romance and love and such. I’m a businesswoman and this is a business proposal I’m making.”
“Strictly business. That’s the only way you want it.”
Gulping, she nodded. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
If she and Jake decided at the end of their thirty days that there was more to this than lust, maybe she’d find her way clear to at least considering dipping her toes in romance waters again. Maybe.
Really, when she thought about it, this was the perfect way to build up to that--with no risks. No embarrassment. No scenes or break-ups. It was like getting to test-drive a sporty little Mercedes for a month without getting her heart set on the pretty pink color. Without expecting it to possibly look as good to her in thirty days as the day she’d first set eyes on it.
And without letting anybody else behind the wheel until she’d figured out if she could afford it.
“So, constant wild sex and a date to a wedding for...how much?”
Constant wild sex...think, damn it. She quickly named a figure off the top of her head, figuring he had to make at least what a top executive at the bank would make. But suddenly remembering that before she had stepped into the fray at the auction the bid had been over five-thousand dollars for one date with the man, and thinking of how incredibly he’d made love to her, she worried she’d offered far too little.
He didn’t respond by so much as the quirk of a muscle.
“If that’s not enough...”
“It’s enough,” he snapped. “Let me ask you something, Maddy. Why do you think...” He cleared his throat, started again. “How is it that you know so much about me? I mean, about who I am and what I do?”
“My sister told me.”
“Gotta love that sister of yours. How’d she know?”
“One of the auction sponsors told her about the infamous male escort, and Tabby found out in advance what number you’d be. And, of course, the bio in the program fit.” Smiling ruefully, she added, “I’m afraid it wouldn’t take much for the rich women of this town to ferret you out.”
“The bio,” he murmured, rubbing his hand against his jaw. “What did it say again?”
“I don’t remember, something about you being a world-traveler, someone who appreciates fine wine and beautiful women. It also said claimed that you were European. But I’ve decided that must just be part of your character--the role you play. Because if you’re anything but a beer-drinking all-American boy then I’m Mary Poppins.”
“Busted, Mary,” he muttered, “I guess you’re too smart for me.” He crossed his arms over his big chest, still leaving her hanging, not responding to her offer. She wondered if he liked to torture bunnies in his spare time, too.
“One more question. If you were set on buying my services, why did you run out on me the night of the auction without even telling me your name? Did you get cold feet?” He sounded almost hopeful, for some reason, as if this answer was more important than anything else. “Did you have a change of heart about doing something so...reckless?”
She shook her head, not sure how much to admit. Especially since he might be meeting her family members--her father and his wife--at Tabitha’s wedding.
That, however, was the real problem. She couldn’t let him walk into such a situation unprepared and unaware. “I wasn’t buying you for myself.”
He closed his eyes slowly, his lips moving as he mumbled under his breath.
"What was that?”
“I was counting to ten.”
“Why?”
“Never mind.” His tone weary, he asked, “Who were you buying me for?”
Maddy twisted her hands, leaning against the back of the captain’s chair and gazed around. Her father used to love this boat--but his new wife didn’t like to sail. And Deborah had made it clear that she also didn’t like her husband going out on the water in a vessel named for another woman, even one who had died years and years ago.
“Let me guess. It was your sister’s idea.”
“How did you know that?”
“Intuition. So how come she didn’t do it herself?”
“She didn’t want to cheat on her fiancé.”
The eyes closed again. The mouth moved. She’d swear she could make out the words “eleven” and “twelve” before he again looked at her once more. “How noble of her.”
She was going about this all wrong, nervousness making her skip around the point instead of getting right to it. So she got right to it. She told him--just enough to make him understand how important this was, important enough to make her take some chances she’d never have chosen to take.
When she’d finished telling him about her father, his new wife, and Bitsy Wellington and her crowd, she concluded, “So there was no intention by either me, or by Tabby, to do anything other than make sure your services were not engaged by our father’s wife.” A bit grudgingly, she added, “Only Tabby didn’t trust herself not to remain entirely selfless about the whole thing. And I did.”
Jake didn’t close his eyes this time. He didn’t mumble, he didn’t count, he also stopped doing that clenching thing with his jaw. The broad shoulders relaxed just a bit, and, if she looked hard, she thought she might see the edges of his mouth twitch up in the tiniest smile.
“I see. And everything that happened afterward...you and me...was because you couldn’t trust yourself after all?”
Ah. Now she knew why he was looking so relaxed. Because he’d figured her out--had gotten right to the heart of it. He’d seen through all the rest and come to the most important point.
“Yes.” She lifted a hand and placed it on his chest, right above his strongly beating heart. “Everything that happened afterward happened because I was attracted to you. I wanted you. And I still do.”
He moved closer, until their bodies brushed lightly, the warm summer air only an inch wide between them. Laughing softly, he reached up and stroked her hair. “Oh, Maddy, you crazy woman, how can you be so smart and yet so totally nuts?”
