I’ve noticed her.
It would be impossible not to, with the way she commands a room and always appears so confident in her sky-high heels and expensive, tailored suits. The woman is an absolute powerhouse, and from what I hear, she pretty much wipes the board in every case she handles. This is a woman who is always in control and always comes out on top.
But right now, she’s anything but confident and in control. If anything, she looks like she’s going to puke. Her alabaster skin is even whiter than normal—something I would never have imagined possible. It only makes the pink flush of embarrassment spreading across her chest and cheeks even more apparent.
Shit. She’s beautiful when she’s flustered.
I wait for her to say something, but the uncomfortable silence just continues to linger between us while we assess the situation analytically, like we are both trained to do. This has to be even worse for her than it is for me.
Traffic whizzes by on the busy street behind me, and I shift my weight from one foot to the other.
Fucking awkward.
Someone has to say something. It might as well be me, I guess.
“Uh, hi Josette. I didn’t realize…”
How could I have known? She told Jason her name was “Jo.” That could be short for anything. And there’s no way she could have known it would be me. I try to maintain some anonymity by using my middle name, Lewis, when I go on dates.
Still, what are the fucking odds…
One lawyer working as an escort; one lawyer hiring one. This could not be more fucked up.
She finally pulls her jaw up from off the floor and narrows her blue eyes on me.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I concur, counselor.
What else can I do but shrug? Until she tells me to get lost, I’m committed to be her date for the evening, for whatever she wants. She sure as hell paid for it. “I wish I was, Josette.”
Christ, I really, really wish I was.
This could be so horrifically, fucking bad for me. One report to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee about what I’m doing, and my law license is fucking toast. Even if I argue that there were no sexual activities happening, which would be perjury, just being associated with an escort service is enough to end my career.
Her head shakes from side-to-side, sending her blonde bob swinging just under her chin.
“But…but how? Why?”
She squeezes her eyes closed and pinches the bridge of her nose momentarily. When she returns her gaze to me, the questions still linger in those blue orbs. Keeping her eyes on me seems almost like a physical struggle at this point; they bounce behind me to the street, across to the neighbors, and then down to her feet while she waits for my response.
We would need several hours and a couple bottles of good bourbon before I could fully answer those questions. And it would probably be less painful if she submitted them in interrogatory format so I can just type them out instead of having to verbally answer and relive the last two years of my life.
I look down at my watch—anything to avoid maintaining eye contact with her when she so obviously doesn’t want to look at me.
It’s only been five minutes? I feel like I’ve been standing here for an hour already.
“Do we need to be anywhere? Your instructions said to be here promptly at 7:30.”
“Shit!” Her head jerks up, and she looks over her shoulder at a clock hanging in the entryway of her condo. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Yeah, we gotta go. We can discuss how fucking awkward this is later.”
Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe it, even though that’s the word that’s been rattling around in my head since the moment she opened the door. This is epically, totally, and royally fucked-up.
3
JOSETTE
BY DISCUSS THIS LATER, I meant never. Because really, if this is embarrassing for me, it must be ten times worse for Wade. He’s a goddamn lawyer moonlighting as an escort. How the hell does that even happen? He has to know he could be disbarred for this. There’s no way the bar would let this fly. Even if all he’s doing is dates, which I highly doubt given what was told to me about Made to Order, that’s more than enough to raise questions of ethics.