CHAPTER ONE
DAMIAN
WALKING INTO WORK, I DID what I did every morning and thanked fucking God that I had the life that I had now. It seemed like yesterday that my parents were sitting me down in the study in their freaking ugly mansion, laying out that I was going to marry Kayla fucking Samson, a mess from hell or they’d stop paying my little sister, Penny’s, tuition. If I had the money that I was meant to have from the inheritance from my uncle, then I’d have paid it, but no, they’d used that to try and dig themselves out of the debt that a lifetime of bullshit and debauchery had brought them. After arguing for hours, I realized that I was never going to win, so I gave in and married the bitch.
Eighteen months I’d spent putting up with her shit. The drugs, the parties, the orgies, the DUI’s...all in my home, the home that I’d actually gotten in my inheritance because it was too small for them and my uncle had the sense to put in my name before he died. He knew what immoral pieces of shit my parents were and I’d always loved that house and considered it my home. Kayla had ruined that for me. Eighteen months of hell later and I was woken up at three am by the police telling me that she was dead. Her flavor of the night had been driving her, no my, car while she sucked him off and had wrapped them around the tree-dead on impact. I packed up that night and left the house empty and didn’t look back.
I headed to Chicago and was settling in when I bumped into Jax who told me he was looking for someone to work at his butcher shop, the Meat Market. Two months in and he asked me to join the actual Meat Market and the life I led now would have every man alive eating his heart out. We got hired for whatever the woman wanted, all she had to do was ask for our cut of meat off the menu.
Whistling, I walked into work, nodding at Jax and the guys who were already there, I went through to the back to get my work shit on.
“Yo, Damian, you’re up,” Jax said handing over the familiar piece of paper with my ‘date’ on it. Looking at the details I saw what the client had written and then the added details that Jax always added for me on the back.
Tabitha Dixon, age twenty-three, weekend away for a family wedding. Needs a date to act as her boyfriend for the family. It’s important that it’s believable and totally over-the-top.
The only problem was that it was on a weekend during some vacay time that I’d already booked. I wasn’t going away, but I needed some down time because I was exhausted. The Meat Market was doing well, with both types of meat, and it was taking its toll.
I was considering requesting that the date be given to one of the other guys, when I turned it over and in Jax’s familiar scrawl on the back, I read the details about her that he’d scribbled out. Around five-foot five, long hair which was a weakness for me, brunette, hazel eyes, stacked.
Shit, she was just my type.
TABITHA
I’d stared at that damn invitation like it was a poisonous snake since it had arrived a couple of days ago. I loved my brother, Grant, but my parents’ inability to actually give a shit about the hell my ex put me through, meant that cutting them out of my life meant only speaking to him once every three months, if not more. He understood my reasons for doing what I’d done, but he was so heavily involved in working with my dad that he just bent over and took the bullshit that he dished out. I couldn’t do it.
I’d been with Brett since we were sixteen and when we’d gone to college thirty minutes away from each other, we’d been planning our wedding after our graduation. Two years into college, I decided to surprise him for our fourth anniversary and had gone all out with the cliché lingerie under a long jacket. Walking into his apartment, I was the one who was surprised when I saw him already celebrating…with two sluts. Walking straight back out again, I drove home, ignoring his calls the whole time. I packed up what I could take, got changed and headed home. Thankfully, I’d decided to call my parents before I’d arrived at theirs and their reaction hadn’t been what I’d expected, so it saved me a face-to-face version of the bullshit that they’d spewed down the phone to me. According to them, Brett was just blowing off steam after his exams, of which he’d had none, and that it was good for him to do that now instead of after we got married.
I’d changed direction and had gone to stay with an old friend to decide what I wanted to do. During that time, my parents, Grant and Brett had called me constantly trying to convince me to come home and drop the drama. The final straw was Brett saying that I’d pushed him to it by not going to the same college as him and that he was a young guy with needs. The fact that I’d been with him just days before obviously meant jack.
After that call, I’d arranged for my shit to be packed up from my apartment and put in storage and had then booked a trip to London.
The good news about me and Brett had spread around our home town and within hours of me booking my flight, I was being inundated with the tales of all of Brett’s sexual activities. Teachers, mothers, my supposed friends…it was all there. At the same time my family, his family and Brett were still planning the wedding, assuming that I would just go along with what they wanted.
At that moment, an advertisement had popped up on my Facebook screen for an around the world tour. I’d been left a large sum of money by my grandparents that I’d been saving for when Brett and I had kids, so I’d dipped into that as I toured around the world for three years enjoying the shit out of life.
Six months ago, I’d returned back to the USA and had decided that Chicago was far enough away from all of the bullshit called my life and had gone back to college to finish getting my qualifications to become a veterinary nurse.
Now, though, I had to go to this fucking wedding. Knowing that Brett and his family would be there and that they’d use it as an excuse to continue trying to weigh me down so that I would take the cheating, lying, sack of shit back, I’d spoken to my friend, Lucy, about what to do over a bottle of wine. She’d told me about an escort service at the Meat Market butcher and I’d gone in and booked the first thing that had caught my eye—The Tenderloin. I’d been specific about what I wanted and the guy taking my order had promised me that Mr. Tenderloin would be able to deliver. Problem solved.