Paid Companion

by Nia Forrester

  “Well, well, well,” Nicki sang. “Someone in Miami doesn’t know who you are, Blake. How the hell did that happen?”

  Blake laughed. “I kinda like it, actually. Imagine that. Being able to walk out into the world and not have a hundred pairs of eyes staring at you all the time, just dying for you to fuck up.”

  Another lull fell over the table, but this time it was tense. Kevin exchanged a look with Nicki, whose eyes had grown a little misty. As difficult as it was for her to be a Morgan, there was no doubt about who withstood the worst of it. From the time he turned fifteen, and had begun to sprout up like a weed, Blake had been the subject of scrutiny. He was the olive-skinned, curly-haired heir to the Morgan fortune who ducked his head to avoid cameras, and stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his chinos as he dodged the press that always seemed to be one step behind his glamorous socialite mother, and business scion father.

  For whatever reason, pretty as she was, the curiosity wasn’t as intense for Nicki. People (and the press) seemed to gravitate toward Blake; and even more so when he rebuffed their advances. Over time he developed a shield, an affable, class-clown façade that tricked everyone into thinking he was letting them in, when it was just a cleverly constructed ruse to keep them out.

  Lia cleared her throat softly. “I don’t think that’s what they’re doing,” she said softly. “At least not most of them.”

  Blake looked up and directly at her, reaching for his glass of water. “Yeah?” he said, his voice cold. “What do you know about it?”

  Lia opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted when a server returned. A different one from the server before. In her hands was a cheese and fruit plate, which she set in the middle of the table.

  “Mr. Morgan,” their new waitress said, smiling. “I’ll be your looking after you and your party tonight. Gabby relayed your message to chef, and he’s going to take good care of you as well. In the meantime, I’ll be bringing you a series of wines, the pairings for each course. If you approve of course.”

  Blake shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me,” he said, his mask of pleasantry once again firmly in place.

  “Wonderful.” Their new waitress, obviously a more seasoned member of the crew, clasped her hands together and smiled back. “I’ll go get your first wine now.”

  When they were alone again, Blake sighed. “I hope this doesn’t turn into a six-course marathon. I kinda want to let off some steam on the dance-floor.”

  “Y’know …” Lia spoke up again.

  Don’t, don’t, don’t … Kevin silently pleaded.

  What not too many people knew was that Blake’s ill-humor, when it appeared, could match his studious good-naturedness in its intensity. And if Lia got on his bad side, she was apt to remain there. Like, forever.

  “The thing is, Blake, about you being famous …”

  “Lia,” Nicki interrupted, ‘It’s fine. We’ve moved on. I think all Blake was saying was …”

  “Don’t … translate me, Nicki,” Blake said. “I said what I meant.”

  “You asked what I knew about it,” Lia said nodding. She leaned in toward Blake, making eye-contact across the table while Kevin watched. In the dim light, the yellow dress made her skin appear luminescent, and her eyes more expressive. He couldn’t seem to stop staring at her.

  “Here’s what I do know,” she continued. “I see your picture in the papers in DC like everyone else. And sometimes I see you in magazines and on those entertainment shows that dissect everything you wear and where you eat, and I’m never watching just to see you fuck up. I’m watching because it gives me pleasure to see you succeed.”

  Slowly, Blake’s smile resurfaced. And this time it was genuine. “Well, then you’re an uncommon woman, Lia.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Your success, your family’s … it makes people, especially those who look like us …”

  “Black people,” Kevin interjected, smiling. “You can say it.”

  “Okay, yes,” Lia smiled. “Black people. We like to see a classy, successful, solid Black family. We like to see you do well.” And then as if realizing that all eyes at the table were laser-focused on her, she blushed. “At least … I do. And Blake, that’s what you are for a lot of people. A symbol of all that.”

  For a nanosecond, there was a flicker of something unreadable in Blake’s eyes, and then they softened. He reached over and briefly touched Lia’s hand. “Thank you,” he said, his voice quavering just the tiniest bit.

  Kevin felt the corner of his mouth tug upward a little in a half-smile, and felt in the center of his chest, the first little twinge of infatuation with Lia Hill.

  “Not interested in dancing?”

  Lia had been standing alone at the edge of the almost empty dance-floor on the nightclub side of Cuba Libre. On Sundays, there was a live band, and the age-range of the crowd was more varied, with some couples even in their eighties getting their groove on to traditional Cuban music. Blake had pulled Nicki out to dance with him right away and Lia watched them for a while, smiling and swaying to music before slipping away to the balcony that offered a beautiful view of the bay, and beyond.

  She turned to face Kevin’s voice as he approached her now, and smiled at him.

  “Yeah, I might do a little bit in a minute,” she said, facing the view once again and leaning on the balcony. “I needed to call a friend. I promised her I would check in occasionally.”

  Kevin nodded then leaned against the balcony next to her. “Why’d you take this job?” he asked impulsively.

  Lia looked at him. “Why’d you offer it to me?”

  He shrugged. “Technically speaking, Nicki offered it to you. But I hear you. It’s a little … unconventional, what we’re doing.”

  “Not that unconventional,” Lia responded, her voice light. “Men have been paying for female company ever since … there were females and currency to pay them with.”

  “Yeah but … you realize this isn’t that kind of party, right?” Kevin turned to face her fully, wanting to be sure she understood his sincerity.

  “Of course not. If I thought it was, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Of course. Yeah. I mean …” He cleared his throat. “But I guess it makes sense that your friend would be concerned.”

  It shouldn’t matter if the friend was male or female, but he wanted to know. He wanted to know and would have asked if there was a way to do it without coming across like he was trying to make a move on her. But there was no denying that in another time and place, he would be making a move.

  Kevin didn’t run into women like Lia often. The women he met in DC were buttoned-down and professional, determined to downplay their attractiveness in a quest to be taken seriously. There were lots of tailored suits, pencil-skirts that brushed the knees, lots of silk blouses that were feminine but not frivolous. It had been a serious adjustment after living in ‘let-it-all-hang-out’ Miami for just about all his life.

  In Miami, if a woman was interested she showed a hint of cleavage. In Washington DC, they slipped you a business card and hinted at their superior education and pedigree. Blake used to rail to Kevin about the “DC merger-marriages” and complain that the old man was setting him up to have one of those himself. He talked about what he called the “pretty vanilla-latte girls” whose smiles and charms held the tiniest hint of desperation because, unlike their sorors, they had hit the dreaded Three-Oh without snapping up an eligible bachelor from a “suitable family.” And because they were beginning to wonder whether they’d miscalculated when they decided on business school rather than concentrating on finding the right husband.

  Chicks like Lia though? He never ran into them. And he hadn’t figured DC out well enough to know where they might be. She was a rare treat. That’s what she was.

  “So why did you take this job?” Kevin asked.

  “Why do you think? The money. I’m going to use it to get my life on track again.”

  “What got it off track?�
��

  “What always gets a life off track?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Lots of things. Drugs …”

  “No.”

  “A bad relationship …”

  “Bingo.”

  He looked at her. “Yeah? How off track did it get you?”

  “All the way to California,” Lia said laughing. “Living in a shared house with a bunch of people who were pissed they missed the sixties.”

  It was Kevin’s turn to laugh. “Wow. Okay …”

  “What about you? How’d you get off track?”

  “What makes you think I am?”

  “Because you’re an artist who isn’t practicing his art,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Turning to look at her again, Kevin saw that in the dim light, Lia was looking at him too.

  “I’m not an artist,” he said. “I’m a guy who likes … who liked taking pictures once upon a time.”

  Lia smiled. “Well, your employers seem to think otherwise,” she said. “I get that you guys are friends too, but you should count your lucky stars that you work for someone who understands …”

  “Wait, what? Work for?” Kevin tried to process what she’d said, and then her comment on the plane about him being Blake’s ‘assistant’ came back to him.

  A realization dawned. Ah. He thought Lia knew, since it seemed like she followed the family. But apparently, she did not.

  “Lia, I don’t work for Blake. I don’t work for Nicki. They’re not my employers. They’re my brother and sister.”

  ~5~

  South Beach, FL, Monday 7:36 a.m.

  Lia awoke to quiet in the condo, except for the sound of Nicki breathing from the bed across the room. She even snored a little. The beautiful, wealthy, and impossibly chic Nicolette Morgan snored. That knowledge gave Lia a tiny, guilty ping of satisfaction. But then it felt disloyal, because Nicki was cool enough for Lia to feel she was owed loyalty. Though she was beautiful it was with an undercurrent of awkwardness just beneath the surface.

  Looking at her from a distance, she was poised, was always impeccably dressed, and even looked like she might be a little frosty in demeanor. But once you talked to her for a while, Nicki Morgan was like the new girl in school. Eager to make friends, and relentlessly cheerful because she wanted to be liked. It was endearing.

  Pulling on her jeans and grabbing a somewhat rumpled t-shirt from her bag, Lia brushed her teeth in the en suite bathroom, washed her face and pulled her hair back into its customary messy little stub of a ponytail. Shoving her phone into her back pocket, she made a mental note to call Steph before things got too busy and everyone else was up. As she shut the door behind her and made her way quietly to the living room, she saw that she wasn’t the first to rise.

  Standing shirtless on the balcony, staring out across the bay was Blake. He was almost a cliché in his perfection, even from behind. The muscles on his back were so well-defined, Lia wanted to grab her sketch pad and charcoals and memorialize him on paper. He reached up and raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture that seemed to be one of frustration. At the movement, Lia cleared her throat, signaling to him that he was not alone. His shoulders tensed, ever so slightly before he turned to face her, a rakish grin on his face.

  It looked fake. That was what she thought right away, without knowing why—his grin looked fake. Underneath all the practiced class-clownish behavior, there was something weighing on Blake Morgan, something that he only sometimes managed to keep at bay.

  “G’morning,” he said. “So, you’re an early bird like me.”

  “Sometimes. I’m just feeling a little caffeine-deprived.”

  “Sorry, there’s nothing resembling groceries in the condo,” Blake said, knitting his brows. “But there’s a Starbucks around the corner.”

  “Isn’t there always?” Lia said dryly.

  At that Blake laughed, and this time it was the real deal. The laughter made him handsome—well, he was always handsome—but now approachable once again as well.

  “I’ll come with you,” he offered. “We may as well get coffee and breakfast for everyone. Kev’s a real asshole before he has coffee.”

  Lia smiled. She couldn’t imagine Kevin being an asshole under any circumstances. She was the one who felt like an asshole after last night. Well, not necessarily an asshole, but stupid anyway. But how was she supposed to know that he was Blake and Nicki’s brother? And there she was, assuming he was ‘the help.’

  And once Kevin had cleared that up, she’d been too embarrassed to ask how he was their brother. Was he adopted? She still didn’t know because once he told her he was a sibling, all she managed was to squeak out a single word: ‘Oh.’ And Kevin had given a shake of the head and let it drop.

  “Lemme go put on a shirt and we can head out,” Blake said, brushing past her.

  He smelled like the sea.

  While he was gone, Lia went to look out at the view he had been taking in. It was magnificent. She hadn’t taken much notice yesterday, but this morning, the sun sparkling across the otherworldly blue of the ocean was breathtaking. Lia couldn’t imagine waking up to this much beauty every day. Would she begin to take it for granted? Would there come a time when she simply ceased to appreciate it?

  She doubted it. As a visual artist, she was wired to be hyper-aware of her surroundings almost all the time. Objects, people, and vistas like this one were all potential subjects of a sketch. All of them interpretable in lines and curves. A gallery owner in Oakland had once casually asked her whether she ever considered adding color to her work and she had almost spat in his face.

  ‘Would you ask a ballerina why she doesn’t try becoming a Vegas showgirl instead?’ she snapped.

  And he had laughed in her face and told her she took herself too seriously. Lia supposed she did. It was tough to explain just how personal her sketches were. Once you found the right medium for your art, you didn’t just … change it.

  “Let’s roll.” Blake returned and grabbed his car keys from a nearby table.

  “I thought we’d walk,” Lia suggested. “It’s so pretty out. And not too hot yet.”

  She watched Blake consider, and recalled that walking down the sidewalk in his hometown might not be the pleasant and tranquil experience for him that it was for most other people.

  “Oh,” she said quickly. “If you don’t …”

  “Nah. Fuck it. Let’s walk.”

  “I’ll be your bodyguard,” she offered teasingly as he locked the door behind them and headed for the elevators.

  Blake laughed dryly. “You’d better be stronger than you look, then.”

  “Hey!” she nudged him in the shoulder. “I’m pretty strong, I’ll have you know.”

  “I’m sure you are. You just don’t … look it.” Blake took her in from head to toe, with that assessing gaze that most men had perfected. For the first time since they’d met, Lia felt a tiny glimmer of sexual chemistry between them.

  The morning was already warm, and the streets were surprisingly deserted.

  “Is it that bad?” Lia asked when she saw Blake glance almost worriedly up and down the block before they started walking.

  “Is what really bad?”

  “You know. People approaching you and stuff.”

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  “So why don’t you get one? A bodyguard, I mean.”

  “Because it’s not like I’m fucking Michael Jackson, or one of the Beatles.”

  Lia laughed. “You should have said One Direction. I’m not sure anyone would mob the Beatles any longer these days.”

  “Good point.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, until finally Starbucks came into view. Lia skipped ahead of Blake, excited at the prospect of coffee.

  Inside, the aroma was one of deep and rich, dark roasted beans. A mournful tune sung by a woman with a raspy voice was being piped in through the speakers. Lia knew when Blake finally entered behind her because the young woman at the register looked
up and then did a double-take, causing the handful of other patrons standing in line to also look up, just to see who had inspired that reaction.

  Lia did not turn to look, hoping to discourage the unwanted attention. Blake joined her on line and looked up at the menu, ignoring the stares that were still being trained his way.

  “We should probably get some pastries and a few of those breakfast sandwiches as well,” he suggested, his tone nonchalant. “My sister’s a big morning-eater.”

  When they ordered, they got more than enough food to feed them all, and four coffees. Lia noted that Blake seemed to know precisely what Nicki and Kevin would want, which made her smile. The trio somehow managed to be tight-knit without being cloyingly so. In fact, Lia had a hunch that they had the kind of closeness where if she asked them if they were close, they would shrug as though they had never even considered that it could have been otherwise, and say something like, ‘yeah, I guess so.’

  Lia carried the tray with the coffees and Blake had the sack of food as they exited. Once they were on the curb again, she glanced up at him.

  “I quite enjoyed that, I have to admit,” she said after a few moments.

  “Quite enjoyed what?”

  “Being the object of all that naked envy,” she said, trying not to laugh. “I mean, those chicks in the yoga outfits were just shooting daggers at me, looking me up and down like, ‘bitch, how dare you?’”

  Blake sniffed, but said nothing.

  “But I’m guessing it’s not nearly as amusing to you,” she said when after a few moments he still hadn’t responded.

  “Nope. Not nearly.”

  “Do you ever meet anyone that way?”

  “What? You mean like someone I would kick it with in real life?”

  Interesting choice of words. This was real life. His real life. Blake’s “real life” involved hesitating about taking a simple morning stroll to his neighborhood Starbucks, and pretending not to notice when a dozen or more pairs of eyes were boring holes into him.

  “Yeah. Someone you would kick it with for real.”