by Helen Hoang
“So, Michael, tell me about yourself,” Stella’s dad said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair on a calculating gaze. Yep, this was prom night all over again.
Michael knew exactly how this was going to go.
“What would you like to hear?” Michael asked.
“For starters, what do you do?”
Philip watched him with sullen interest.
Michael’s dad had wanted him to be an astrophysicist or an engineer. Near the end, his dad had settled on architect. That was still respectable. “I’m a designer.”
“Oh, how interesting. What do you design? Or does your security clearance not allow you to say?”
When he unraveled that, he almost laughed. “No, I’m not a defense contractor. I design clothes.”
“He designed Stella’s dress, honey,” Stella’s mom said with a gentle smile. “He’s remarkably talented.”
Edward’s face wrinkled in distaste, but he rallied, giving Michael the benefit of the doubt. “That must be a difficult business to get successful in. Are you working under one of those New York designers?”
“Not currently.”
“You must be creating your own line. That’s exciting,” Ann said.
“I’ve taken some time off, to be honest.”
Stella began to speak, but he grabbed her hand and shook his head slightly. He really didn’t need these people to know he did dry cleaning and alterations all day. It was bad enough it was the truth.
No, it wasn’t bad. He wasn’t ashamed of it. It was good, honest work—fuck it. What sense was there in lying to himself? Sitting next to all these people with their fancy educations and exorbitant wealth, yes, he was ashamed. He wasn’t the kind of man anyone would pair with someone like Stella.
“So . . . you do nothing?” Philip asked with a look of disbelief.
Michael schooled his features into nonchalance and shrugged. “More or less.” His mom’s illness was none of their fucking business, and he didn’t want the whole table looking at him with pity.
Matching grimaces crossed Edward’s and Philip’s faces, and Michael clenched his jaw. They probably thought he wanted to marry Stella for her money. Didn’t they know Stella was too smart for that kind of shit? When she fell in love, it would be with someone who was her match.
“I’d go crazy with boredom.” Philip’s expression turned thoughtful as he looked at Stella. “You can’t stand inactivity, can you, Stella? You’re driven, and you like knowing your work has an impact on the world. It’s why we get along so well.”
“It’s true I like working,” Stella allowed, but she cast a worried look at Michael.
“Ed, you should have seen what she did with the last project we worked on together,” Philip said. “She came at the problem in a way I’d never seen before and is single-handedly revolutionizing the way online vendors market to their customers.”
“I’m sure she couldn’t have done it without your help, Phil.” Stella’s dad grasped Philip’s shoulder fondly. So these two already knew one another? Were they golf partners or some shit? Fifteen different ways to chuck a man flitted through Michael’s mind. And what was this about her needing Philip? Stella didn’t need anyone. Not even Michael, not anymore. He wasn’t sure if she ever had.
A genuine smile curved over Stella’s lips. “That’s actually true. We work well together.”
Really. He hated the idea of her working with Philip and liking any part of it. The bastard should have irritated her as much as he did Michael. He was hit by the juvenile desire to kiss her publicly and stake his claim on her, and he removed his hand from hers before he could act. She didn’t notice. She was still smiling at Philip—her real smile, the one he usually got to himself. Fuck if that didn’t hurt like getting one of his balls torn off.
“She’s one of the few who can tolerate me. I know I’m an asshole. I have standards, and I can’t stand laziness and ineptitude.” Philip sent a telling glance Michael’s way.
Michael took a deep breath and released it slowly. He searched the walls of the room for a clock. How much more of this did he have to withstand?
The conversation at the table veered down the path of economic theory and advanced statistics, and he watched with a sinking sensation as Stella opened up and began talking. She had said to stop her if she started talking about work, but she was loving it. It was so clearly her passion in life. Michael didn’t want to deny her. Philip, for all his supposed assholishness, kept up with her in a way Michael never could.
He was reminded of that kiss. She’d said she hadn’t liked it and that Philip was annoying, but she certainly wasn’t minding interacting with him now.
Michael couldn’t help observing that Stella and Philip made a good-looking couple. With their similar interests and backgrounds, they were nauseatingly perfect for one another. He remembered that it was Philip who had inspired Stella to hire an escort in the first place. She’d wanted to make Philip hers. Maybe—fuck, he hated thinking this—maybe she should.
At the end of the day, what Michael and Stella had was physical. They didn’t connect in this cerebral manner, and he knew how important it was that Stella’s mind was stimulated.
It sucked admitting it, but he wasn’t enough for her. On several different levels. She could never love him. Michael really was nothing but practice. As the economics conversation continued, a heartsick, organ-shredding feeling gripped him. Everything felt wrong. Even his skin felt off-size.
“Oh, I’m so glad Philip’s mother was able to make it,” Ann said.
A red-nailed hand rested on the back of the chair next to Michael, and a familiar combination of scents assailed his nose. Cinnamon and cigarettes. Ice cubes clinked before a lowball glass half-filled with whiskey was set on the table.
“Hello, darlings. Sorry I’m late.” A petite woman with long bleached blond hair and a tight black cocktail dress lowered herself into the empty seat. Her profile was turned to him, but Michael recognized her. He’d kissed that jaw. “I had to make a quick stop before—” She faced him, and her expression went as surprised as the Botox allowed. “Well, well, well, hello, Michael.”
“Hello, Aliza.” What an excellent time to bump into his least-favorite former client.
{ CHAP+ER }
24
“You two are acquainted? How wonderful is that.” Her mother clapped her hands together.
Stella felt like she was going to vomit. Philip’s mom was the woman from the club. She’d given Michael his car. The one he drove every day. The one he wouldn’t let Stella replace.
Michael reclined in his seat with a cool smile, looking casual, perfectly comfortable, and drop-dead handsome in his black suit. “We go a ways back.”
Aliza released a husky laugh and stroked her hand down his arm. “We do.”
When he didn’t so much as flinch at the contact, Stella’s throat knotted. Michael liked older women—he’d said so. With her large breasts, tiny figure, whiskey-smooth voice, and sophisticated seductiveness, she was sex incarnate. Stella reminded herself he’d ended things with Aliza. Today, he hadn’t given Aliza three glorious orgasms with his beautiful mouth before making love to her like he couldn’t get enough.
“Please do tell me, who did you come here with?” Aliza’s eyes swept over the table and considered Stella’s mother before they went back to Michael’s face.
“He’s here with me.” Stella scooted closer to him and covered his hand with hers. She expected him to flip his hand over and interlace their fingers like he usually did. When he remained immobile, her stomach dropped. What did that mean?
Aliza picked up her whiskey and considered Stella over the glass’s rim. “Well, aren’t you wholesome-looking. Your daughter is beautiful, Ann. I can see why Phil likes her so much. It’s a shame she isn’t single.”
Her mother smiled, but Stella could see from
the tension around her eyes that she was worried. “Thank you, Aliza. These two look very happy. It’s no shame at all.”
Stella squeezed Michael’s hand tighter as she stared up at his profile. Before tonight, they had been happy. What was wrong? He remained impassive, his gaze trained on Aliza. Stella was touching him, but he felt miles away.
“So it’s serious?” Aliza looked at Stella’s parents before she smirked and sent Michael an amused glance. “Meeting the parents now, Michael? Would you have met mine for the right price?”
“What are you talking about?” Philip narrowed his eyes as he looked from his mom to Michael and back again.
Aliza took a healthy drink from her lowball glass and smiled suggestively. “We used to . . . go on dates.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Philip stared at Michael in rising disgust. “You’ve slept with my mom?”
“Not exactly,” Michael replied with a tight smile.
Aliza chuckled. “There wasn’t any sleeping involved, if I remember correctly.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. I need a drink.” Her father pushed away from the table.
“Get me another whiskey on the rocks while you’re at it, darling,” Aliza said, shaking her glass.
“You’ve had enough.” He fled toward the cocktail bar in the back corner.
Aliza’s throaty laugh floated over the table before she drained her glass of the amber fluid and set it down. “Never.”
Because Stella was sitting so close to Michael, she saw when Aliza’s red nails brushed over his thigh. He didn’t move. He merely stared at the woman as her hand stroked leisurely upward, coming closer and closer to the fly of his pants. Why wasn’t he stopping her? Did he want her to touch him?
Standing up abruptly, he said, “I’m going to get some air. Excuse me.”
Before Aliza could pursue him, Stella jumped up and followed him through the back doors. The air outside smelled of nighttime, cut grass, and chlorine, and the coolness sent goose bumps over her bare shoulders and arms.
“Michael,” she called out.
He paused next to the blue glowing swimming pool. “You should go back in, Stella.”
She walked to his side. This distance between them was making her panic. How did she bring them back together again? She took his hand and wrapped him around her waist as she pushed her body close. “But I’ll miss you.”
His eyes softened, and he tightened his arms around her. She sighed and rested her cheek on his chest, breathing him in. If he could hold her like this, everything was still okay.
“You were having a good time before my past sat at the table.” He swept his hand up and down her back.
“I would rather have stayed home with you.” She brought herself closer to him and kissed his throat. “Why did you let her touch you like that? It drove me crazy.” He was hers.
“Did it?” He skimmed his lips over her jaw, brushing light kisses upon her sensitive skin.
“Yes.”
“It’s a bad policy to make a scene with former clients. Even if they don’t appreciate it at the time, they come to later on. I’ll do my best to afford you the same courtesy in the future.”
In the future. After they separated. “I don’t want that.”
He was part of her life now, one of the best parts. He couldn’t leave.
“That makes things easier for me,” he said.
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“What do you want, Stella?”
“I want . . .” She licked her lips and took a breath. Could she say she wanted him? Could she say she loved him? She smoothed her hands over his chest and gripped his shoulders, and he watched her with rapt attention. She wished she were better with words. She wished she could let her body speak for her. Her body always knew how to communicate perfectly with his. Even now, she found herself responding to his nearness, leaning in close, fitting against him just right.
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he pulled away. “Come on, then. Let’s get back to your place. Unless you want to try it in the car?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sex, Stella.” The words were hard and clipped in the night air.
Her lungs constricted so tight she could barely breathe. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Then we need to end this farce. Because I don’t have anything else to give you.”
“But you do. You listen to me and talk to me and—”
“I will never be able to talk to you like that asshole in there. I don’t even want to. I’m too stupid to give a shit about math and economics.”
“That’s not true. You are smart.”
“I’ve amounted to nothing. I’ve gone nowhere. I fuck people for money, and when that’s not enough . . .” He met her eyes with a steady, serious gaze. “I think about stealing it. I plan it out in my head, who I’d take it from, the lies I’d say, how I could cover my tracks. Because I’m just like my dad.”
She shook her head. What was he talking about? He would never steal. She had no doubt of it.
“You wanted to know why I hate him. I’ll tell you the whole reason.” He paused for a heavy second before saying, “He’s so good at cheating he’s famous for it. He was in the news a while ago. Haven’t you heard of him? Frederick Larsen.”
“I don’t . . .” But even as she spoke, the familiar sound of the name dredged up memories. She drew in a sudden breath. “The con artist. He seduced women and . . .”
“Stole from them. He told everyone he owned a software company. He was gone so often on ‘business trips.’ My mom knew he cheated, but he always came back. Until three years ago when he disappeared and his other wife showed up on my mom’s doorstep looking for him. It turned out every dollar he earned came from some swindled woman. And he swindled my mom the worst. Before he left the last time, he cleared out her bank accounts and cashed out on enormous loans in her name. She had to mortgage everything to the teeth to pay them off, but even that wasn’t enough. She was going to lose the shop and her house she’d worked so hard for. My sister was going to have to drop out of school because we suddenly couldn’t pay for it.”
He turned away from her and began unknotting his tie with violent jerks of his hands. “The job I’d been so crazy about—the one I’d traveled across the country for, thinking my family was home safe with my dad—paid such a small amount I had to quit. I didn’t have any skills that paid quickly, not like you. So I took this thing my father gave me, my body that’s the same exact height as his, my smile that looks just like his, and I sold it. I fucked half of California with it, day and night for months, and I used that money to help make everything right. But by that time, my mom got sick, and she . . .”
The tie fluttered to the ground, and he loosened his top buttons like his shirt was suffocating him. He covered his eyes with his palm as he breathed raggedly.
Stella stepped toward him hesitantly. She placed her hand on his face, finding it drenched with hot tears. Her throat was too swollen to speak, so she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him with all her strength. He buried his face in her hair and held her back.
“It’s not your fault your dad did that horrible thing, and you’re nothing like him,” she whispered. How could he possibly believe that?
“If I’d been there, I might have noticed what he was doing, and I might have stopped it.”
“Shhhh.” She smoothed her fingers through his hair. “Even if you’d been there, you wouldn’t have found anything until it was too late. He fooled tons of people. That’s what he’s good at.”
He tightened his arms a fraction and pressed a kiss to her cheek. When he spoke, his voice was rough and intimate, bare. “The crazy thing is, even after all he’s done, even with how much I’m ashamed of him and hate him, I still miss him. He’s my dad. My dad is a lying, cheating cr
iminal, and I love him.”
Stella had no words for Michael at that point, so she continued to hold him. What did you say when someone hurt like this? All she could do was rest her beating heart next to his and hurt with him.
After a moment and an eternity, Michael pulled away. Wiping at the tears on her cheeks, he said, “I accepted your proposal because I wanted to help you with your issues, and it’s clear we’ve worked through them. You’re ready for a real relationship now. If some bastard doesn’t want you because you’re autistic, he doesn’t deserve you. Do you hear me? You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
The blood drained from her face, and her heart stopped beating. “You know?”
He smiled slightly. “I figured it out after that first night at my mom’s.”
He’d known all this time? Was that good or bad? She didn’t know. “You want to leave?” she heard herself ask.
“It’s time for me to move on, Stella. We’re not giving each other all the things we need.”
She understood at once he meant her, that she wasn’t enough for him. Because of who and what she was, her impairments and eccentricities, her label.
Black hopelessness dragged her down. It had been naïve of her to hope she could seduce him. Her chin quivered, and she bit the inside of her lip to still the motion. “I see.”
He brushed his fingertips across her cheek, tucked tendrils of hair behind her ear. “You need more than sex, and I can’t give you those things.”
She looked down at her shoes. Maybe it had just been sex for him, but for her, as pathetic as it sounded, it had felt like love.
He smoothed warm hands down her cold arms and squeezed her hands. “Thank you for these past months. They were special to me.”
Not special enough.
“Thank you, Michael. For helping me with my anxiety issues.”
“Promise you won’t be hiring more escorts after this.”
“No more escorts. I promise.” There was only one escort she wanted.