He was here. He watched me. “I’m polite,” I said through clenched teeth. How many times had someone told me I was too nice? It was the compliment I got most often, and lately I was beginning to think it might not actually be a compliment.
“I agree, you’re polite, but it’s more than that. Why don’t you think you deserve nice things, Claire French?” His light brown eyes danced over the rim of his cup as he took another sip.
I opened my mouth to answer the question, then slammed it shut again. What was he, some kind of psychotherapist? I did think I deserved nice things! Wasn’t that why I was holding out for someone decent and good and right for me? It wasn’t my fault it was taking so long! “Is this mental and emotional abuse part of the regular hottie package?” I fumed. “Or do I have to pay extra for it?”
He smiled. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Claire. I’m trying to help you. Give you some advice.”
I crossed my arms over my chest again. “Who are you to give me romantic advice? What kind of guy rents himself out on dates with strangers?”
“The kind of guy who moves around a lot, can have fun in any situation, and loves meeting new people.”
“Why do you move around so much? I saw on your profile you’ve had dates in like three or four different cities over the last year.”
“I’m a drifter. I get bored easily.”
That couldn’t be his whole story. I cocked a brow. “Got a wife and kids stashed somewhere?”
“Nope.”
“Where’s your family?”
“No family.”
“Where’s home?”
“The open road. The endless sky. I’m not tied to any person, place, or thing.” He said it with pride.
“That’s sad.”
He laughed. “No, it isn’t. I prefer it this way. Some people want the happy ending, all wrapped up in a nice neat bow, and others are content to let the story go on forever—that’s me. You’re looking for a destination; I like the journey. I don’t want it to end.”
When he put it like that, it was hard to argue with him. Still, I felt like there was more to his story than what he was telling me. “Where did you grow up?”
“Enough with the questions. I’m glad you’re so fascinated by me, but—”
“I’m not fascinated,” I said hotly, “I’m just curious.” But he did sort of intrigue me. Not only because he was so good-looking, but because he was so different from me. So confident, so laid-back. Content just to go where life led him, pretend to be someone new every place he went. But was that fun? Or was it lonely? And he was brave, too. Flying a plane? Taking responsibility for getting thousands of pounds of metal into the air and keeping it there? With people’s lives hanging in the balance? Good grief! I was terrified of flying. Petrified. I was dying to go to Europe and visit the Louvre and the Prado and the Uffizi Gallery, but I’d never done it because I was too scared to get on the plane that would take me there.
“So let’s talk about this wedding.” Theo leaned forward, elbows on the table. For the first time, I noticed how full his lips were. How long his lashes.
Something fluttered in my stomach, and I put a hand over it. “It’s a co-worker’s.”
“And how long have we been dating?”
I bit my lip. “A couple months, I guess?”
He nodded. “Where did we meet?”
“I thought about that. Maybe the art supply store? I teach art at an elementary school during the week,” I explained, “and the wedding is a co-worker’s, so we can’t say we met there.”
“You’re a teacher.” He said it like he was impressed. “Can I call you Miss French?”
“No.”
He sighed. “You’re no fun. So, art supply store. Am I an artist? What’s my occupation?”
“I don’t know. What about your real one? Aren’t you a pilot?”
He cocked his head, narrowing his eyes as if he had to think about whether he was or not. “I wouldn’t really call that an occupation. It’s more of a hobby.”
I stared at him. “I don’t understand. What do you do for a living besides hire yourself out on dates all over the country?”
“How do you know I do anything?” He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, a cocky grin on his face. “Maybe I’m independently wealthy.”
“Maybe you’re a serial killer.”
“I promise I am not a serial killer.”
“Good.”
“Just a lady-killer. Kidding, kidding,” he said when I gave him a dirty look. “For fuck’s sake, you gotta lighten up a little bit, Claire. Don’t take everything so seriously.”
“I’m sorry, but this is a big deal to me, and I’m worried. I’m going to be lying to co-workers and friends all night, and I’m a terrible actress.”
“Don’t worry, I’m probably good enough for both of us.”
“You’re not helping.” I put my face in my hands. “God, this is never going to work.”
“Why do it at all?” he asked. “Why not just go alone?”
I peeked through my fingers at him. “Ever sat at the singles table at a wedding?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
Slouching in my chair, I dropped my hands to my lap. “Trust me when I say that it’s a fate worse than death. But I have no good prospects at the moment, and I’m tired of all the single jokes.”
He shrugged, leaning forward again. “OK, so we’re gonna go together and have a great fucking time and show them all how not-single you are. You’ve got a pilot who’s crazy about you.”
“Fine. And where do you live?”
“How about Royal Oak?”
“OK.” Taking a deep breath, I crossed my fingers. “I hope this works.”
“Trust me, it will work. You just have to relax.” He reached over and touched me lightly on the top of my hand.
Our eyes met, and an unexpected little rush of heat swept up my arm. “I’ll try.”
I felt heat in my cheeks, and dropped my head. Blushing like a twelve-year-old because a cute boy touched your hand. Nice. I reached for my purse on the chair next to me. “Should I…” I swallowed and lowered my voice. “Should I pay you now? I brought cash.”
“Sure. When I get home, I’ll book the date officially and send you the contract to fill out and sign electronically.” He grabbed his jacket and slipped his arms into the sleeves.
“What’s in the contract?”
“My rate, the details about when and where, the Platonic Promise.”
“Platonic Promise?” I handed over five twenty-dollar bills folded in half and he tucked them inside his coat pocket.
“The part of the contract where we both acknowledge that there will be absolutely no sexual contact whatsoever.”
“Oh! Right,” I said, feeling my face warm even more. “Of course.”
“If you think you might have a problem with that, Claire, I can’t book the date. ”
Flustered, I flapped my hands. “No, no! Of course there won’t be a problem with that. I—”
He burst out laughing and grabbed my wrist. “Jesus, I’m kidding.”
“Oh.” I laughed at myself a little, shaking my head. “Sorry. I’m just really tense about this.”
“I can tell.” He squeezed my wrist before dropping it, and I noticed how big and strong his hand was.
“It’s gonna be fun,” he said, standing up. “I promise.”
Wow, he’s really tall. Long legs. Wonder if he has a nice butt. “If I say I believe you, will you think I’m too trusting?”
His eyes went crinkly at the corners when he smiled. “In this case, you can believe me. I will show you a very good time.”
Something about the way he said it made my thighs clench.
I tried not to think about that.
Five
Theo
* * *
Claire said she didn’t need to be walked to her car, that she was meeting friends for dinner at Union Street, so I bid he
r goodbye with a handshake and told her I’d see her soon. It always felt a little uncomfortable taking money from someone just for meeting me, but I’d made my peace with it. Women were much more likely to book the date if they’d already made a deposit, and I needed the income. Jobs had been scarce lately, Josie’s house payment was due on the fifteenth, my fucking brother was still gone, and the girls had been sick lately. Medicine wasn’t cheap.
Had I known I’d be supporting my brother’s wife and kids one day, I might have tried harder to get a college degree and not fucked up my life so much. Every time I thought about the scholarship I’d gotten and pissed away by being young and stupid, I wanted to punch myself. Yes, school was hard, and keeping up my grades enough to stay on the team had been tough, but I should have stuck it out.
But I was a MacLeod. Leaving was our specialty.
My mother had left us before I was even out of diapers. My older brother Aaron had been nine at the time, and he once told me he’d seen a note from her that said Tell the boys I love them.
“Do you think she did?” I’d asked him when I was maybe six.
His answer had surprised me. “Yeah. I do.”
“But…she left.”
“Yeah. She did.”
“Does Dad love us?”
He’d frowned. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Our father was an alcoholic, in and out of jail throughout my childhood, and I’d learned that I much preferred it when he was in, since his releases always meant bumps and bruises I had to explain at school. Still, Aaron had taken the worst of it. He’d never let our dad lay a finger on me if he was around. When the asshole finally left for good, I was eight and Aaron was sixteen. We moved from Kansas City up to Detroit, which is where I finally had some semblance of a normal childhood. We’d lived with our grandmother, who’d actually cared for us. I’d attended a good school, I’d had friends, I’d played sports. I’d even gotten a football scholarship to a college in upstate New York. Aaron had finished high school and gotten a job at a construction company. On the outside, things looked OK.
But we were damaged in ways you couldn’t see.
I wasn’t proud of it. I wished I were different sometimes. But what was the point of that? If something is in your DNA, it’s as much a part of who you are as your skin tone or hair color. It determines whether you’ll be impulsive or sensible, daring or careful, emotional or rational. You can try to be someone else, but that’s a losing fight. Better to accept what life handed you and roll with it. In my case, sometimes I wished rolling with it hadn’t included several DUI’s and twelve months served for grand theft auto, ruining any chance of getting FAA-certified, but hey. To a bunch of drunk twenty-two-year-olds, stealing that truck from the Eager Beaver Saloon parking lot seemed like a good time on a random Saturday night. And who needed a normal life, anyway?
I’d meant what I’d said to Claire—I liked not being tied to anyone or anyplace or anything. Was it lonely sometimes? Sure. But it made life so much easier. And no matter where I went, there were dishonest people who needed my services and were willing to pay a decent price for them as long as I disappeared afterward. (Insurance fraud doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “grand theft auto,” and it’s unlikely anyone will ever create a video game where the hero steals things at the owner’s request, but you can’t have everything.)
The money I made wasn’t amazing, but it was enough to live on and help my sister-in-law and nieces out when my brother took off on her. They were here in Detroit, so this was the only town where I turned down con jobs, because it was a town I had to return to somewhat regularly. You don’t shit where you eat.
It was also the only place I kept an apartment. While I was here, I always tried to book as many escort gigs as I could, because at least it was honest money, even if it was slightly weird sometimes. And it made my life a little less lonely. But I never broke the rules of the contract, because I couldn’t risk being reported to the company. I depended on this income. It was risky enough using a fake profile, but I couldn’t use the real one, of course, because a criminal record was not befitting of a Hottie.
To avoid attracting the attention of the IRS, I also did some occasional jobs for the carpentry business I’d started way back when, but most of the jobs were made up so I could launder the fraud money. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the work, and I’d been good at it, but you couldn’t build up a reputation or clientele when you moved around as much as I did.
I walked up Woodward toward the lot where I’d parked, shoving my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. It wasn’t usually this cold here in December, but it had to be less than twenty degrees right now, and a few solid inches of snow were already on the ground. I passed Union Street on my left, and it looked cozy and inviting inside. For a moment, I let myself think about what it would be like to take Claire on a real date someplace like that. To get to know her because I wanted to, not because I needed to. To feel like she wanted to be with me for me, not for who I was pretending to be. To share something real with her. To keep her warm on a night like this.
But that was ridiculous. Girls like Claire didn’t go for guys like me, and even if she did, I’d only fuck it up.
I knew who I was.
A screwup. An ex-con. A “security risk.”
It was better this way.
Six
Claire
* * *
After Theo left, I texted Jaime and Margot to see if they were at Union Street yet. Margot had come to town for a wedding dress fitting this afternoon and was staying to have dinner with us. I couldn’t wait to see her—it had been weeks.
Jaime replied that they were both there, so I zipped up my coat, tugged on my gloves, and hurried out the door into the blustery cold. I walked quickly, snow drifting down around me and crunching underneath my boots. Up ahead, I thought I saw Theo from behind and moved even faster. Sure enough, I recognized the black jacket, and I sped up to a near run so I could get a better look at his ass, nearly slipping on the snowy sidewalk.
It was worth it.
His jacket was just short enough in back to give me a nice view, and as an artist, I appreciated the fine lines of the human form. As a woman who hadn’t had sex in a couple years and who’d never had the kind of sex she read about in books (the Hallmark Channel was a bit of a letdown when it came to sex), I nearly groaned aloud at the thought of grabbing on to a solid, round ass like Theo’s. His entire body was so thick and muscular—he filled out that Henley like sand fills a punching bag. For a moment I imagined what it would be like to feel his weight on me. My stomach flipped.
As he passed Union Street, he slowed and looked inside, and I had the weirdest compulsion to run up and ask him to join us. But that was silly—it was Girls Night Out, and anyway, he wasn’t my type. Tall, dark, and handsome was fine, but Theo was the kind of guy who thought he knew everything, and furthermore, he was going to enlighten you on it, whether you asked him to or not. I liked his smile, but not his smirk.
Maybe I envied his devil-may-care approach to life a little, but it wasn’t for me. I wanted someone more traditional. Someone more settled, more grounded. Someone who wanted what I did—to fall in love, tie the knot, and put down roots. Lemonade on the porch swing in the summer. Snowman on the lawn during winter. Theo didn’t seem like a lemonade and snowman kind of guy.
But if my future husband had an ass like his, I would not complain.
Not one little bit.
* * *
“So?” As soon as the server brought our drinks, Jaime bounced in her seat. “I’m dying! Tell us how it went with Fred!”
Fred. It almost made me laugh. “It went…fine, I guess.”
“And you found him online?” Margot’s high forehead was creased with worry. “Are we sure this is safe?”
“I think it is.” I shrugged. “I mean, the website appears legit, and he has good reviews.”
“Good reviews, that’s hilarious,” Jaime said, picking up her martini
glass. “You can review men just like a book or a movie.” She took a little sip. “But there’s no sex, right?”
“Right.” I giggled. “There’s a Platonic Promise in the contract that says there will be no sexual contact whatsoever.”
“Is he hot?” Margot asked.
“He is, actually,” I answered, crossing my legs, “although he looks nothing like the profile picture he used. It’s not even him. And his name isn’t Fred.”
They both stared at me.
“Claire, this sounds weird,” Margot said. “Did he tell you his real name?”
“Yes, it’s Theo.”
“Theo what?”
I tilted my head. “You know what? He didn’t give me a last name.”
My friends glanced at each other. “What does he look like?” Jaime asked.
“Tall. Muscular. Brown hair, light brown eyes. Scruff. Big hands.” Nice ass.
She laughed. “You noticed his hands?”
My cheeks warmed. “I’m an artist. I notice people’s hands a lot.”
“But what’s he like?” Margot pressed. “Does he seem decent? Is he a gentleman?”
“He’s nice enough. A little arrogant, like you can tell he thinks he’s God’s gift to women, but also seems like he could be fun on a date. And he’s what I got, so…” I shrugged. “He’ll have to do.”
“Maybe it will be fun.” Margot tried hard to sound hopeful. I could tell she wasn’t sold on the whole idea, but she probably felt too sorry for me to say so.
“And at least you know you won’t have to worry about him pawing you all night, since he’s not allowed to touch you,” Jaime added.
“Right,” I said with relief, although secretly I thought it might be nice to have a guy like Theo want to paw me. “I hate those dates. But he doesn’t seem like that type of guy anyway. He led me to believe he’s usually on the end of the potential pawing.”
Jaime groaned. “Ugh, he’s one of those.”
If You Were Mine Page 3