Chapter Four
Paul
Twelve years later …
Present Day
Helping my best friend plan his proposal felt as though someone had a death grip on my heart and wouldn’t let go.
For the last ten or so years, I hadn’t been able to think about spending the rest of my life with only one woman. After Vanessa, I didn’t want to be tied down. I wanted as much pussy as I could get. And I was getting it. Now helping Gabe pick out the ring for Autumn and coming up with the proposal brought back memories of her and how you’re supposed to marry your first love. At least that’s what I’d thought.
They say things happen for a reason …
Cochran, Gabe’s first love, had died in his arms while we were in Afghanistan on a MEDEVAC call. Autumn was perfect for him, though—maybe more so than Cochran. But, of course, I’d never tell him that.
The house was silent as I woke and made my way to the kitchen for my morning cup of coffee and breakfast. I looked into Gabe and Autumn’s bare room as I passed. It was weird being without roommates after so long. Gabe and I had started rooming together when we moved to Vegas from Malibu. Autumn moved in not long after, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Her husband, who was our Major from the Army, hadn’t taken it too well when he’d learned that Autumn was leaving him, but Gabe and I hadn’t taken it too well when we’d learned that he was putting his hands on her. Major Dick got what was coming to him when he was poisoned by a business associate.
Even in the Army I’d had someone to harass in the morning. Okay not harass, but I liked making breakfast for more than just me even if it were for grouchy ass Gabe. But now Gabe and Autumn were engaged and had their own house, and I had a house all to myself.
I didn’t like it.
I needed a dog or something.
Turning from the empty room, I walked to the kitchen and made my coffee. I ate breakfast quickly, then dressed and headed for Club 24 where the three of us worked out. We also taught self-defense classes there until we could save enough money to open our own location. Gabe and I naturally wanted to protect people since our time in the Army, and after everything that had happened in Autumn’s past with her husband, it was only fitting to get certified to teach self-defense classes and to teach people how to shoot. Our company taught both types of classes. One was at Club 24 and the other was out on the range.
Before heading out the door, I grabbed a bottle of champagne and a few plastic cups. We had celebrating to do. Two of my favorite people were getting married—as long as Gabe didn’t fuck up the proposal.
Club 24 had everything you needed to meet your fitness goals. Aside from your standard treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes and weightlifting equipment you’d find at any gym, they offered yoga, Zumba, kickboxing, Kenpo, self-defense classes (with yours truly), cycling, aerobics, indoor volleyball, beach volleyball, racquetball … Basically, people spent all day there.
“Should we pop this now or after class?” I held the bottle of champagne up with my left hand and walked through the steel door where our class was being held in a half an hour. Autumn unwrapped her arms from around Gabe’s neck and turned toward me.
“You want to drink before class?”
“It’s only champagne. Like a mimosa without the OJ, Auttie.” I winked. “I see you said yes, by the way.” I motioned with my head at her left hand and greeted Gabe with a head nod.
Gabe shook his head and walked over to the sound system. “No one’s drinking before class.”
“Cap—” He was my captain for so long that it still slipped, especially when he ordered me around. “Fine. After class, but then we’re drinking more than this cheap ass champagne I found at home.” Gabe liked his whiskey. I liked tequila, especially a shot of it after I’d licked salt off the skin of a chick, followed by a slurp of lime juice from her navel.
They both shared an odd look without saying anything. “What?” I asked. They shared another look. “Jesus. What?” I asked again.
Autumn turned to me. “I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but …” She paused and they shared another silent look. “I’m pregnant,” she finally blurted.
I blinked. Then tore my gaze from Autumn to Gabe to check for his reaction. I wasn’t sure if I should be happy for him. I knew he was in love with Autumn, but I also knew this was a new relationship and I knew how much he’d loved Cochran. What I saw when I looked into Gabe’s eyes made me smile.
It wasn’t what I saw when we were in Afghanistan and he’d snuck around with Cochran.
It wasn’t what I saw when we’d first moved to Vegas and he wanted to find out who Autumn was.
It wasn’t what I saw when we were at Autumn’s house and had to fight off her husband to protect her.
It wasn’t what I saw when he thought she left him when she learned what he did for a living and it wasn’t what I saw when he was nervous because he thought she might say no when he was going to propose.
What I saw was a man’s life finally going the way it was meant to go. The look on his face was pure adoration and he was smiling with a twinkle in his eye.
“Holy fucking shit, dude!” I reached for both of them and engulfed them the best I could in a group hug. “All that fucking I heard you guys doing—no wonder you got knocked up.”
Autumn tried to push off of me, but I kept her from budging. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” she mumbled into my side.
Gabe broke free from my grasp. “What did I tell you about letting her know you could hear?”
“You knew?” she asked.
I laughed and set my gym bag and the champagne down in the cabinet while they spoke. Gabe whispered mumbled, but I could still hear him. “Do you really think he couldn’t hear you when you came, angel?”
She whispered back, stepping closer. I pretended to get items to set up for class, but really I was enjoying the show. I was going to miss living with them. “Every time?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Every time, but especially when you’d squirt.”
The throwing dummy I was carrying in my hands slipped from my grasp and they both turned and looked at me. I smiled and Autumn groaned, shoving Gabe a little before turning toward the door to leave. “I … I’ll be back,” she muttered, throwing her hands in the air before she left.
“Really, dude?” Gabe asked.
“You’re mad at me?”
“You’re buying all my drinks.”
“Whatever.” I laughed. “You know you’re not mad. You used to fuck for a living.”
“Yeah, but remember that Autumn’s still sensitive about the situation even if it is my fucking skills.”
“All right, enough about your fucking skills. Let’s go get a drink. I’ll buy since you insist.” I slugged him on the arm and then turned and grabbed the rest of the dummies for class.
Autumn couldn’t look me in the eye the entire class.
It wasn’t as though I had walked in on her butt ass naked. And really, she knew what I did for a living aside from our business. If a chick wasn’t screaming, we weren’t doin’ it right.
“Blue Martini or what?” I asked as we cleaned up the mats.
“I’m gonna go to Brandi’s,” Autumn stated. She kissed Gabe.
“Have fun, angel.”
I watched as she left, still not looking at me. “Bye, Auttie!” I shouted and laughed. “Nice of her to help us put this shit away.”
“Bro code, dude. Bro code.”
“Fuck. I got it. Let’s drop it. This isn’t my fault.”
“Let’s go get that drink then.”
I groaned. “Actually, let’s go back to the house and have some beers. Help me move my shit into your old room. I have a feeling Mark’s gonna find me a new roommate soon and that fucker’s not getting the master.”
“You’re lucky you’re my best friend.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s do this shit. I have work tonight.”
I worked as a male escort for a company called Saddles & Racks, but I didn’t get paid for sex. I got paid for my time and companionship. I get paid to make ladies feel wanted; to feel as though they were the only woman in the room.
My date for the evening was the typical drinks followed by whatever we wanted to do for the two hours she was paying for. I’d been on quite a few dates in the past five years, so it was almost second nature. I didn’t hook up with a chick on every date; some didn’t want that. Some wanted a date for an event. Some wanted to make someone jealous. Some wanted a date for an entire weekend. Hell, some wanted a date for an entire month. I hadn’t found that client yet, but my buddy Nick had. And, of course, there were those dates who wanted a good fucking. I needed to be attracted to them, though. I had to be able to get it up if you know what I mean.
When I arrived at Gold Spike in downtown Vegas, I scanned the dimly lit room. I’d never heard of Gold Spike before and when I entered, I immediately couldn’t wait to return with Gabe. They had pool, cornhole, shuffleboard, and lounge areas to sit and chat. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard about this place before. Granted, I hadn’t been in Vegas for very long, but damn, this was right up my alley. Drinks plus competitive gaming? Sold!
The instructions for my date were that Nancy wanted me to notice her from across the room. She was going to be with a group of her friends for drinks. She told Mark (my boss) that it was because she was the heaviest one of her friends and usually the guys always bought drinks for them and not her. She always felt like the ugly one.
What most guys didn’t realize was that a smile was the most beautiful thing on a woman’s body. If they made a woman smile, her eyes would light up and then everything would start to glow.
I spotted Nancy instantly. I hadn’t seen a picture, but her lack of confidence wasn’t hard to spot. She wasn’t smiling as wide as the others, and she wasn’t laughing as loud either. She sat at the far end of the room, sipping her drink, and her leg bouncing up and down under the table.
As I made my way to the bar, I briefly made eye contact with her. Her eyes grew big as her gaze met mine and then she quickly looked down at the table. I chuckled and continued to the bar. It was normal for these types of dates to be nervous. My regulars, on the other hand, knew what they wanted.
I sat on a stool, ordered a beer, and frequently made eye contact with Nancy through the mirror that ran along a side wall. A few times I caught her gaze and the more it happened, the longer she kept hers on mine. For this to work, I needed her to be comfortable. I knew this was out of the ordinary for her, but when I walked up to her after she accepted my drink from the bartender, I needed her to actually talk to me. After motioning for the bartender, I instructed him to send her whatever she was drinking. He nodded and turned.
Then, I waited.
This was the moment Nancy was waiting for and one of the reasons I loved my job. I was dying to see the look on her friend’s faces when she was the one who got the drink. All eyes would be on me in … three … two … one …
Women were conspicuous even when they thought they weren’t. I heard a few “Oh my God.” “Who?” “Where?” “Him?” “Holy shit!” “Fuck me!” “He’s hot” and then “Shhh, you’re being too loud!”
I laughed around a pull of my beer as I looked into the reflection of the mirror at Nancy. She wasn’t looking back, but she did look like maybe she was trying to explain to her friends how someone like me could want someone like her. She needs better friends.
I finished my beer in two gulps, set it down and stood. Time was ticking on the two hours she’d paid for and her friends needed to be out of the picture. As I walked the good fifteen feet to where they were sitting at a long, counter-high table, I heard hushed whispers and then silence as I stopped by Nancy’s side.
She was sitting on the far end and looked up at me through the curtain of her light brown bangs, her hand playing with the straw of her drink nervously. I could feel all five sets of eyes on me, waiting for me to speak. If I were any Joe Schmo, I’d probably be nervous walking into the lion’s den, but instead I smiled and nodded hello.
“Ladies,” I greeted.
“Hi,” they said in unison.
I turned my attention to Nancy. “I’ve had a pretty shitty day, but I saw you from across the bar and the way you were smiling and laughing caught my eye. I was wondering if you’d like to finish your drink with me?”
Nancy’s eyes became huge again. I wasn’t sure why. She knew this was coming. Her face was a little flush too. Maybe she’d thought that Saddles & Racks was too good to be true. You’d get what you paid for; especially when it came to me.
“Don’t leave the man hanging, Nance,” one of the friends remarked.
“I’d … I’d love to,” she finally agreed and began to stand, but I reached out my hand and helped her up. She reached down and took her glass while she smiled at her friends. It was the first real smile I’d seen from her since I’d been at Gold Spike. After I’d stopped at the bar to order myself another beer, I led her to a corner table on the opposite side of the bar where I was before so we could have privacy to talk.
“That was perfect,” she breathed, her smile still as wide as it was when we’d left her friends.
“Those are three words I don’t get tired of hearing,” I joked. She let out a loud laugh and I looked toward the table where her friends were sitting. Sure enough, they were all looking at us. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
She stopped laughing. “Not usually.”
I reached up and grabbed the end of her shoulder-length, curly brown hair. “Why do you think your friends get more attention?”
“Just look at them.” She waved a hand in their direction.
“Are you referring to their looks?”
“Well … yeah.”
“Sugar, I’ve known some beautiful women with shitty personalities that make them the ugliest bitches around. It’s not what’s on the outside that matters.”
“But you wouldn’t have bought me this drink if I wasn’t paying you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have been here tonight to buy you the drink, so that’s true. But when I walked in here looking for you, I knew who you were because you lacked what the others had. You need to have that spark. You’re beautiful. Who cares if you’re not a size zero. Really, my dick would break you if you were a size zero.”
Her eyes widened and I chuckled. It had been awhile since I’d had a date who was this shy. Usually, my dates wanted a good, hard fucking—if it got to that stage. It had to be natural as if we really felt the attraction between the two of us.
She swallowed hard, then took a sip of her drink. “So … um, how did you become an escort anyway?”
Well, we had another hour to spare. I could kill it by telling her the story. “I’d just gotten out of the Army and moved back to Malibu. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and the last time I’d been home was when I graduated high school.”
“Wow, you’ve been an escort for a long time then.”
I smiled. “Not that long. When we had leave, I never went home because there was someone I never wanted to see and I always thought I’d run into her.”
“Oh, an ex-girlfriend.”
“Right.” I nodded.
“But the Los Angeles area is huge.”
“L.A. is huge, but Malibu is small and so was the group of people we hung out with.”
“So she stuck around after high school.”
“Exactly. She thought she was going to get discovered by some top modeling agency and make it big, but she never did.”
“Is she still there?”
“Actually, no. She moved to New York to try her luck out there.” I took a pull of my beer. “After my last deployment I moved back home for good. The night I heard she moved to New York was the night I knew we were officially never going to get back together. I was at a bar drowning my sorrows and I met a lady …”
“Hey, handsome.”
I turned at the sound of the female’s voice and watched as she ran her fake red acrylic nails along my forearm. I knew what it looked like. I was in a bar, drowning my sorrows with shots of tequila, but I wasn’t looking to get laid tonight. Even though it had been almost nine years since I’d seen Vanessa, I couldn’t be in this town and not think of her. I only wanted to spend my last few bucks on as much alcohol as I could.
When Cochran died, Gabe had to fight his own demons, but Vanessa was living. She didn’t want me, yet I was the idiot who couldn’t stop wanting her. So in front of Gabe—in front of everyone, I pretended I didn’t want anyone, that I was sowing my oats. Maybe I was, but being back home was a reminder of what I’d once had. The bottle of Patrón would be my friend for the night, not this chick.
“Do you know the best way to drink a shot of tequila?” she continued. I finally looked over at her as she sat next to me. I did know the best way—everyone knew. I cracked a smile because I couldn’t help it.
“Off a woman.”
She shook her head no. “Not off any woman. Off of me.”
I laughed. “Off of you?”
“Yep.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep, but first—”
“Get out of here, Candy.”
Her eyes became huge. Without a word, she huffed and left. I turned and stood. “What the fuck?” I didn’t want Candy, but seriously, what if I’d wanted to fuck her brains out until I couldn’t remember my own name? It wasn’t as if I was coming back to this dump again. I wasn’t even in Malibu. I’d driven down the Pacific Coast until I knew I wouldn’t see anyone familiar before I stopped to get my drink on.
“Listen, kid. If you want the herp, then you can fuck Candy, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s not your thing.” His gaze flicked down to the dog tags on my chest. “And at fifty bucks, she’s a cheap hooker too.”
I blinked.
He laughed. “Do you have fifty bucks?”
I shook my head. I didn’t. I was spending my last few bucks on my drinks. Sure the Army was giving me money, but it wasn’t enough.
“Would you like a job?”
I finally found my voice. “You’re offering me a job?”
“I’m not sure yet. We should talk. My name’s Bobby.” He reached out his hand for me to shake.
The next day I’d met Bobby at his office in Malibu and he talked to me about Saddles & Racks and what they had to offer. He was the LA head person and Mark was the Vegas person.
“Why was he at a shit bar?” Nancy asked.
I laughed. “I asked him the same thing. He said it was where he found all his recruits. Like diamonds in the rough or some shit.”
“But not Candy.”
We both laughed. “No, not Candy. Thank God for Bobby or I might have the herp.” I was half-joking. I might have had enough money for her to blow me that night.
“Things happen for a reason.”
“Yeah, they do.”
We ordered another round of drinks, talked some more, and then I convinced Nancy to leave with me so her friends would think we were hooking up and I walked her to her car.
When I got home to my empty house, my phone buzzed with a text from Mark.
Mark: You okay with a new roommate?
Well, shit, that was fast.
Me: Yeah sure, whatever.
Mark: Cool. Andy will be there next week sometime.