Paid Companion
Page 22
“Admitting it. Yeah.” He nodded.
“That must’ve been some talk with Blake last night,” she said, a little cautiously.
“That was part of it,” he acknowledged.
“So …” She turned back to the cabinets, reaching up to open one and taking out two mugs. “What did you guys talk about?”
“Everything.”
“Including me?”
“Yes, including you.”
“Kevin, I can’t not be his friend,” she said, still not facing him. But she was still now, waiting for his verdict. But what moved him was the fact that she was giving him that power. To deliver a verdict that he knew without asking, she would accept.
“I know. And I wouldn’t want that. But I want you to put us, this, first.”
“God, Kevin.” She sounded exasperated, and turned to look at him. “Of course.”
He studied her face and she stared back at him, putting both her hands up and cupping his face.
“Of course,” she said again, unblinking.
The way said it was the way she approached just about everything—with wide-eyed certainty, with positivity, and with an expectation of only good things. How else could she have gotten on that plane, months ago, on a foolhardy and harebrained mission to pretend to be some stranger’s girlfriend? He wasn’t just falling for this woman. He had already fallen. Hard.
“Because I think we’re good,” he continued. “This feels good. And right. And I don’t want anything to …”
She got on her toes and kissed him until he relaxed, and pulled her closer. When he let her go, she nodded. “I hear you. This comes first,” she said. “We come first. Always.”
“So basically I’m not going to work today,” he said.
Kevin reached around her for one of the coffee mugs, changing the subject just to lighten the heavy moment. Later, when she was gone to work and he was alone, he would think about the ginormous admission he’d just made to himself.
“Are you going back into photography, or …”
“Slow down,” he laughed. “I don’t know yet. I’m going to take some time and think about my next move. But at least for today, I’m not going to the office. I’m going to have breakfast with my girl, take Blake his bag that he left over here—because we’re not havin’ any of his shit layin’ around—and then I think I’ll just … spend the day with my brother.”
Lia smiled at him and nodded. “I think that sounds like a really good plan.”
~Epilogue~
9 Months later, Miami International Airport, Sunday, 2:08 p.m.
“That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard in my life, Blake,” Kevin said.
“Why’s it stupid? They’re getting up there in years, they won’t remember!”
Lia opened her eyes to the sound of Kevin and Blake bickering. She had slept through the entire flight, and only the jolt of their landing had awoken her. Which suited her just fine, because she wasn’t sure she would have been able to stand the constant back-and-forth. Without Nicki on the plane to act as a buffer, the two brothers were bound to find a million things to disagree about. Circling her neck, she issued a deep groan and stretched. Thank God, they had flown private, so there was plenty of room to spread out.
Seeing that she was awake, Kevin glanced over at her and smiled, resting a hand on her knee and squeezing it before turning to resume his argument with Blake. Lia had no idea what they were at it about, and didn’t care. At least their fights were good-natured now, with an undercurrent of humor and nothing like the venom-laced combat they used to have. Seven or eight months ago, the sound of their raised voices would have filled her with apprehension as she waited for them to come to actual blows. That had never actually happened, but it took a while for them to work it all out, the layers of layers of resentments, regrets and recrimination.
Blake felt abandoned when his mother left him with his father all those years ago when he was young. He felt betrayed when she returned with another, a “newer and better” son, Kevin told her he’d said. Kevin felt grief at the loss of the father he had never really known, but whose love he remembered. And he felt confusion at having that love replaced by the stoic and stern demands of Edward Morgan.
And both had grown up, swirling in the mass of complicated and difficult emotions, competing for the attention and approval of their parents, with their sweet-natured sister playing referee, and trying desperately to please them, please her parents, and everyone but herself. It had taken Lia a long time to learn how to step back and let them work it out on their own, because she loved each of them, and hated to see them hurt.
It was especially hard to watch them fight about her, Blake constantly wanting to reassert their friendship, but Kevin drawing ever-shifting lines in the sand until he was comfortable that Lia would choose him, just like she said she would: always. But she had learned to step back. She was so expert at it now, that she didn’t care what this latest spat was about, she just wanted to get off the plane, and rush over to Blake’s condo where Nicki and Gabe were staying since they arrived a day earlier.
“Hey, Lia, don’t you think …?”
“Blake, please don’t try to drag me into it,” she said, cutting him off.
“Damn. You sure you’re not pregnant too? What’s with the crabbiness?”
Lia rolled her eyes.
That was the other reason she wanted to see Nicki. She was six months pregnant, though she and Gabe were still not married, and was nervous because—of course—she hadn’t yet broken the baby news to her parents. She had been calling Lia non-stop in the lead-up to the annual family getaway to Kingfisher Key, strategizing about how to belatedly come clean before she showed up at the house in Cocoplum, in an undeniably with-child state. Some old habits die hard.
“I wouldn’t be dragging you into anything,” Blake continued, “because this is actually all about you.”
“What’s about me?” Lia’s head whipped around.
Kevin was smirking. “Go ahead. Tell her your idea, Blake. But I already know how that’s gon’ go over.”
“How what’s going to go over?”
Kevin was grinning wider now. He leaned back in his seat, arms folded behind his head, waiting.
“I was just sayin’ that I don’t think our parents remember you from last time,” Blake said. “And since it would be weird for Kev to show up with the same woman I showed up with last year, maybe we should just, you know, pretend you’re …”
“No,” Lia said.
“You didn’t even hear the whole idea though.”
“Blake, you lost me at the word ‘pretend’.”
Kevin made a sound of triumph and then started laughing. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I …”
“Were you entertaining this?” Lia demanded, turning to look at him.
“No, baby.” Kevin put his hands up in mock-surrender. “Of course not.”
Lia thought for a moment. “So how are we going to explain it?”
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of this before. Her time with Kevin had passed in a whirlwind, and they lived in DC so there hadn’t been any other occasions for her to see the Morgans. Kevin had spent Thanksgiving with his family, and she had with hers. And then they’d both begged off Christmas so they could be together. Apart from him mentioning her by name, there would have been no reason for the Morgans to know that she was now with Kevin. Jessica Morgan in particular was going to be tough to face.
“That’s my point exactly,” Blake said, as the plane came to a halt outside of the hangar where they would disembark. “And we better think fast, because we’re due at the house tomorrow.”
“Here’s a thought,” Kevin said. “Why don’t we just tell them the truth?”
“That Lia was a paid companion?” Blake said, incredulously. “Why don’t we just go ahead and say ‘hooker’. Because it doesn’t matter how we phrase it, that’s what they’re going to hear. That the woman you want to make your wife, is a …”
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Blake stopped talking just as Kevin shot him scathing look, and Lia’s mouth fell open. She turned to look at Kevin who was still glaring at his brother.
“You’re real close-lipped when it’s your secret though, right? But if it’s someone else’s shit …”
“Man, I didn’t mean …”
“Both of you, be quiet!” Lia said.
Blake and Kevin both turned to look at her.
“Kevin,” she said. It was all she seemed to be able to get out.
He shrugged. “I love you,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I love you too,” Lia said, quietly. “But we don’t even … we haven’t even gotten to the stage of living together, and …”
“I didn’t think that was a necessary step before marriage, but … we could do that, too. I mean, first. We could do that first. If … if that’s what you want.”
Lia smiled. There it was, that look again. So vulnerable. Like a little boy, trying to be a man.
And yet, so much like a man. Because he wanted to marry her. None of that little-boy pussyfooting around—he wanted to go all in.
Unbuckling from her seat, Lia went to sit on his lap, feeling Kevin’s arms snake tightly around her waist. She kissed him, long and hard and deep, then lifted her head to look at him properly.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think we should. Do that first. Live together a while and get everyone, especially your parents, used to the idea that I was once a ‘hooker’ and everything.”
Kevin grinned. “So, you really want to tell them the whole truth. About the whole paid companion thing.”
She nodded, her eyes holding his. “Yeah. I think that should be our policy from now on. The whole truth. Okay?”
Kevin nodded as well, before leaning in and kissing her again, tugging her lower lip gently between his.
“Before we do anything rash like tell them the whole ugly truth,” Blake said from somewhere off behind them. “How about we just …?”
“Shut up, Blakey,” Kevin said, cutting him off.
Laughing, Lia leaned in to kiss him once again.
Also by Nia Forrester
Commitment Series
Commitment (Book One)
Unsuitable Men (Book Two)
Maybe Never (Book Three)
Afterwards Series
Afterwards (Book One)
Afterburn (Book Two)
The Come Up (Book Three)
Young, Rich & Black (Book Four)
Mistress Series
Mistress (Book One)
Wife (Book Two)
Mother (Book Three)
Secret Series
Secret (Book One)
The Art of Endings (Book Two)
Lifted (Book Three)
The Acostas
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta (Book One)
The Education of Miri Acosta (Book Two)
The Fall
Ivy's League
In the Nothing
About the Author
Nia Forrester lives and writes in Philadelphia, PA where, by day, she is an attorney working on public policy and by night, she crafts woman-centered fiction that examines the complexities of life, love and the human condition.
Visit with her at NiaForrester.com