by Hazel Jacobs
The plane hits another bump and Harper swallows her anxiety.
“There’s Dash on lead guitar. Single. Logan’s baby brother who’s really into gaming and geek stuff.”
Slate nods with a slight grin. “To be fair, he and I share the gaming interest.”
“And how did we meet?” Harper asks. “I mean, what are we going to tell your parents?”
Slate straightens up in his seat. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” he says. “You and I met at the gym, right? You’re a personal trainer in training, and I am a rockstar who needs to build his stamina…” Harper has a fleeting thought that his stamina is probably excellent, but she doesn’t get the chance to say it before he’s already moving on. “I, of course, saw you and thought you were gorgeous, so I asked you to give me some pointers. You proceeded to wipe the floor with my out-of-shape ass, and I asked you to dinner.”
Harper is blushing from the ‘gorgeous’ comment and doesn’t realize until a beat too late that she’s supposed to respond. “How long have we been together?”
“A month,” Slate says. “Enough time for me to want to bring you to a wedding, but not long enough for the press to find out.”
“Who’s getting married?” Harper asks.
Slate rolls his shoulders again. “My cousin, Grayson. His fiancée is a bit high-strung, but she’s harmless. She’ll want to be your best friend for the weekend and then she’ll forget your name.”
“I usually get along with people,” Harper replies.
And she does. It’s an important skill for a personal trainer to be able to connect with people quickly and make them trust you. At least, that’s what she’s always believed. She’s never had a problem making friends. When she was younger, growing up in a small community, she learned very quickly that being likable was the fastest way to a calm and easy life. So she trained herself to judge what people want of her, and then she gave it to them. It never extended to romantic connections—no matter what she did, she could never figure out how to flirt—but she could be friendly easily enough.
“That’s good,” Slate says.
It’s probably why he hired a prostitute. To get along with people. Personal trainers and prostitutes have more in common than she’d thought. Thinking of that draws her mind toward something else.
“There’s not going to be press at the wedding, is there?” Harper asks.
While she doesn’t think that she would have a problem with press—she’s American, tabloids are a fact of life—she does have concerns that the press could dig deeply into her life. Maybe even find out what she does for a living. She doesn’t think she would survive having her parents find out, never mind the potential backlash from employers when she finally gets her degree. There’s a niggling voice in the back of her head which tells her that she’ll be forever brandished as Slate’s whore if the press find out. That no matter what she does or where she goes, the stigma will never leave her.
Not that there should be a stigma. Because this is nothing to be ashamed of.
But Slate, thankfully, shakes his head. “No press,” he says. “Mikayla’s covering for me, and no one even knows my real name, let alone where I come from.”
Harper cocks her head. “Your real name’s not Slate?” she asks.
“I wish.”
“So what is it?”
He gives her an almost pitying look. “I’m afraid that’s classified,” he says.
“Oh, come on!” she replies. “If I’m your girlfriend, I should know your name”
It occurs to her that she might be speaking a bit too loudly, but when she cranes her neck she sees that the rest of the First Class cabin is busy with their heads bent over tablets and iPhones. No one is paying them any attention at all. Even the blonde woman at the front is too far into a champagne bottle to bother with them.
Slate just grins at her. “Sorry, Harper, it’ll take more than a month for me to give up the goods.”
“What about the rest of the goods?” she asks without thinking.
It’s such a cheesy line that she wants to smack herself. At the same time she deliberately doesn’t look away from him or change her expression, committing to the course even if it’s a mistake. It’s something she’s always had a problem with, not knowing when to quit, or being too stubborn to accept quitting as a possibility. She could have gone to her parents and asked them for money, and they would have obliged her without hesitation, but asking them would have felt like quitting. It would have been admitting that she couldn’t handle life on her own. So she answered an ad in the paper, telling herself over and over that there was no shame in sex work.
Slate’s eyes run down Harper’s body and she suppresses her shiver under his scrutiny. “Well, my mom and dad have set aside a room for us. As far as they know, we’re consenting adults in a monogamous relationship… they can connect the dots. But it’s a pretty big bed, and there’s a couch as well if you’re more comfortable with me sleeping there instead.”
“What?” Harper asks, suddenly confused. “What do you mean?”
There’s a moment when she thinks that he might be blushing, but she decides that it must be a trick of the light. There’s no way that a man like this, who looks the way he does, would blush under the scrutiny of an escort. Then he glances around like she’d done a moment before to make sure that no one is watching. He leans forward so she can smell the coffee on his breath and see the tip of his tongue creep out to wet his bottom lip.
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” he tells her.
Harper hadn’t considered the possibility that he would say that. If she had, she wouldn’t have thought that heart-stopping disappointment would be her primary emotion upon hearing the words. But he did, and it was.
“You’re… not?” she asks. She tries so desperately to keep the disappointment out of her voice, and she thinks she manages it. Mostly, to her own ears, she sounds confused. Maybe even a little bit hurt. “You know that’s what you paid for, right?”
“I paid for a date to a wedding,” Slate tells her. His eyes run over her body again, and there’s something close to regret in his eyes which makes Harper feel better. Bolder, even. “Not that I’m not tempted,” he goes on, his eyes lingering over her chest and thighs, covered as they are in her all-American costume. “But there’s a line… I’m not going to pay for sex.”
He’d said he was tempted. He looks like he regrets every word coming out of his mouth. That’s something, at least. “I don’t suppose I could get you to change your mind?” she says. She wants to say that she doesn’t want to have an unsatisfied customer, but after what he just told her she doesn’t think that would be the way to go. She angles her body just a little bit so that he can see her toned stomach when her shirt stretches across it.
Slate gives her a lingering look, but shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ll still give you a good review.”
“I’m not exactly on Yelp,” she replies.
He shrugs. “When I sleep with a woman, it’s because I know she wants to be there.”
Having never been in this situation before, Harper isn’t sure whether she should go for finessed flirting or just come straight out and tell him that she would definitely want to be there if he were offering. Harper has never been much good at finessed flirting, so that makes her decision for her.
“I’m not exactly unwilling,” she says. When he glances at her eyes, she blatantly looks him up and down and is rewarded by an amused quirk to his lips. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“Ah, but the only reason you’re here is you’re being paid,” Slate says. “I can’t sleep with you knowing that.”
“Not even if I want it?” she asks.
He purses his lips. “Not if you’re being paid to want it.” He sounds annoyed with the words even as they slip out of his mouth, but his lips are set in a determined line.
Harper lets out a frustrated growl, then quickly glances over her shoulder at the pair of stewarde
sses chatting at the back of the First Class section. They’re so wrapped up in themselves that they probably wouldn’t notice if the cabin were on fire, but Harper still doesn’t want to risk it.
A part of her is delighted. A beautiful man with a chivalrous side? She thought those only existed in books or movies. But at the same time, she’s not exactly thrilled to hear that her client, a man she would have happily slept with for free, has labeled her off limits. It feels like she’s been expecting carrot cake for weeks, but when she got offered chocolate mud cake she was told that she couldn’t have any.
Just my luck that I get a job as a whore and my first client wants me to keep my pants on.
The plane hits another pocket of air and Harper grabs the armrest, her heart in her mouth.
“You all right?” Slate asks quickly.
“I’m fine,” she replies. “Just… I’m fine.”
The plane smooths out. Or, at least, it smooths out as much as can be expected at that altitude. There’s nothing but a hollow metal cylinder between Harper and a long plummet to the ground, and she desperately wishes that she could forget that.
“You’re not trying to trick me into holding your hand, are you?” Slate asks. His tone is amused, but when Harper glances over she sees an edge of concern around his eyes.
She rolls her eyes at him. “I’ve never been a good flyer,” she says. Then, because her mind appears to be following her body’s instructions without her knowledge, she adds, “Of course if you want to help me take my mind off of this, I’m not going to stop you.”
Harper has never been a flirt, but being around Slate—knowing that he’s interested, at least, even if he refuses to act on it—makes her bolder. She’s rewarded by a deep, hearty laugh.
“You’re adorable,” Slate tells her, and Harper feels her cheeks warm up but she doesn’t balk or look away.
He reaches out and entwines their fingers. Her hand is dwarfed by his. She tightens her hold on his fingers because she likes the way his skin feels against hers. She can only imagine what the rest of his body would feel like, naked and pressing her into a bed.
Their eyes meet. She smiles.
“What else should I know about your family?” she asks.
“Well, if my mom offers you cobbler, take a slice and pretend you like it because it’s an old family recipe and she’s too stuck on tradition to realize that it tastes like farts…”
As Slate explains the finer points of his mother’s cooking, his hand never leaves hers. Harper doesn’t want to draw attention to it in case he decides to pull away. She doesn’t want him to pull away. She desperately wants him to come closer.
The plane hits another bump, and Slate squeezes her hand before she even has time to feel nervous. He doesn’t pause in his story, though. He just keeps talking, pretending that he doesn’t notice the way her body freezes with the sudden jerk from the aircraft, giving her at least that one moment of dignity. When the plane evens out again, she squeezes back.
She looks over and watches him talk, becoming so absorbed in the sight of his lips moving that she almost forgets to listen to the words. Her thumb brushes over the back of his hand. A plan starts to form in her head. Surely even a man as chivalrous as Slate won’t be able to hold out against a woman offering herself on a platter for over two days? She’s going to be pretending to be his girlfriend the whole weekend. She’ll probably be glued to his side most of the time, flirting and carrying on like a woman in love. People will be expecting it.
And she is getting paid to put on a show.
By the time they arrive in Iowa, Harper already has an attack strategy.
She listened to Slate’s stories for the first half of the trip, then listened to some Black Lilith songs that he downloaded using the plane’s awful Wi-Fi. Harper thinks it’s sweet that he didn’t have any of his own songs on his phone. Just hard rock and some sugary-sweet pop in the form of Britney Spears and Taylor Swift, which he seemed to genuinely and unironically enjoy. They’re about to touch down in a tiny airport just outside of Pella. Harper gazes out of the window of the plane as a large banner comes into view dangling from the hanger: Pella, Iowa: A Touch of Holland.
“Pella wouldn’t know Holland if it got bit in the ass by a tulip,” Slate says beside her. She glances over and sees a hint of distaste around his eyes.
Then the plane hits the runway and Harper’s heart leaps into her throat. She clutches Slate’s hand and he gamely keeps hold of her even though his fingers must be aching by the time the plane finally slows down to a regular speed and starts taxiing into the hanger.
“Have you ever been to Holland?” Harper asks.
“Not yet,” Slate replies. “My family’s German, but they still love the Pella-slash-Holland shtick.”
“Yeah?” Harper gives that some thought. “You know, I actually have no idea where my last name comes from?”
“What is it?”
“Styles.”
Slate thinks about it for a minute. “Not short for Stilinski.”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Harper replies.
“Sounds English.”
“You’re into genealogy?” It wouldn’t have struck her as something that would interest a man like Slate.
His lips form a tight line, but when he looks at her again, he grins and shrugs. “When you meet my parents, you’ll understand. They’re pretty into knowing where people come from. Whether they come from ‘good stock’ and all that.”
Harper realizes that she has now broken two of the cardinal rules of being a hooker—never give out your real first name, and never give out your real last name. She’d done both without even thinking.
“So are you going to miss your gym?” Slate asks as the plane comes to a stop. The couple in front of them are already out of their seats and reaching for their bags, even though the fasten seatbelts sign is still on. “You’re a personal trainer, you must have a very specific gym that you go to.”
“I’m a personal trainer in training…” she tells him, “…and I can do my routine anywhere. As long as there’s somewhere to jog.”
Slate lets out a long breath. “You know, I don’t think I’ve been jogging in years.”
“You should come with me,” she says. Then, because she remembers her plan, she adds, “Any excuse to make you all sweaty.”
Slate raises an eyebrow and laughs out loud. Harper appreciates a man with a sense of humor, though it’s a bit of a blow to her ego that her flirting seems to inspire laughter. That’s not exactly her intention.
“You’re not going to give that up, are you?” Slate asks, his eyes still sparkling with mirth.
“I don’t give up as a rule,” says Harper.
He squeezes her hand as the fasten seatbelts sign goes dark and the rest of the cabin starts moving to collect their bags. They stay seated for a moment, and Harper holds Slate’s gaze.
“You’re not helping my willpower here,” Slate tells her. There’s something dark and promising in his gaze that makes Harper want to dive across the armrest and pull him into a kiss.
“And yet somehow, I just can’t bring myself to be sorry,” Harper replies. She wonders if she should toss her hair or lick her lips like she’s seen people do in movies. She’s tried the licking lips thing in the mirror, and she always ended up looking like a lizard.
But Slate is looking at her mouth. So Harper goes for a compromise and gently bites on her lower lip. He seems to focus more intently on that. Then he blinks, shakes his head slightly, and releases her hand so he can get up to take their bags out of the overhead compartment. Harper desperately hopes that her disappointment doesn’t show.
“I have an iron will,” Slate says, rooting around in the overhead and shooting her a smirk. “You cannot break me, seductress.”
Harper leans back in her seat and takes a deep breath so that her breasts press against her shirt. “Challenge accepted.”
His smirk turns into a grin as he shakes his head at her. He’s bein
g a good sport about this. Maybe he thinks this is a game? That he and Harper are going to be one-upping each other all weekend. Harper can get on board with a game like that, but she’s always had a competitive streak. She plays to win.
Slate takes down his beat-up backpack and her purple carry-on. Harper wonders if, as a couple, they should have maybe only packed the one bag, but then she remembers that they’re only supposed to have been dating for a month. Surely that’s too soon to be putting together joint luggage? Maybe she’s over thinking this.
She stands up and stretches her legs, looking down the aisle at the blonde woman she noticed earlier. She realizes that the blonde woman has been observing her. When Harper meets her gaze, the woman looks pointedly at Slate and gives her a wink. Harper’s eyes flicker to the old guy that the blonde is with. Harper arranges her face into a look that, she hopes, conveys commiseration. The blonde woman shrugs.
“Shall we, gorgeous?” Slate questions, offering Harper his hand and helping her into the aisle in front of him. Ahead of them, the front doors of the plane open and people begin to disembark.
“We shall, handsome,” Harper replies.
She does swing her hair over her shoulder then. She tosses it aside like she’s seen shampoo models do, fixing Slate with a look as she eyes him up and down, and she’s rewarded by his eyes going dark again. Just for a moment. Then he smiles brightly, cheerily, like there’s a sun behind his eyes that lights him up from the inside out.
Harper has always had the impression that musicians are dark, brooding souls. That they spend more time focused on their internal demons and angsty childhoods than they do on the real world. But Slate, apart from the brief moments of annoyance when he talks about his family, seems to be almost universally cheerful. He smiles at the stewardesses as they disembark, nods to the other passengers as they head toward the exit, and even compliments a little girl on her My Little Pony stickers. When she offers him one, he proudly displays it on his chest.