Elle smiled from ear to ear. She couldn’t believe her luck. She was meeting a gigolo and right when Nicholas happened to be in the same coffee shop? Payback was going to be sweet. The gigolo in question wasn’t going to come in and suck face with her, but he would definitely give Nicholas a run for his money. Now, if only he’d show up. She was half tempted to allow Nicholas to sit in order to make it even more awkward, but she thought a hot guy showing up would be enough.
“Well.” Surprise sparkled in Nicholas’s striking, almost turquoise blue eyes.
His expression was enough for her to be curious about the message. Did he get an emergency “come fuck me” message from the woman he’d left the bar with or was it from yet another in his lineup?
“Well?” Elle waited as Nicholas raised an eyebrow at her. She was expecting more follow up to his statement, but he didn’t share. What he did was leave. He deserted back to his original seat, draped his jacket over his arm, and grabbed his to go cup.
Jilted again. “Damn,” Elle muttered. She didn’t even get a chance for her payback moment before Nicholas carted his fine ass away. She wished the gigolo would arrive soon.
The elite escort service’s website had the gigolo faces hidden for privacy, but Cole P was under an image of a man in a tux with six-pack abs. The come hither line at his pelvis had her wishing she had the courage to be sexually free enough to sample his wares. He was the number one requested escort, the most expensive, and his client reviews, that she got access to once she paid a hefty membership fee, were amazing. She was surprised he was available—the only one available, in fact.
The scraping of the wooden legs from the chair opposite her brought her out of her thoughts and she once again smelled bergamot, warm ginger, and spices from Nicholas’s woodsy cologne.
“Why are you back?” She was irritated by her body’s betrayal as her lungs expanded with the small elation from his return.
“It appears I’m the someone you’re waiting for.”
“What are you talking about?” She eyed him through a mesh of lashes.
Nicholas fixed his jacket over the chair and once again faced her. “I’m Cole P.”
Elle’s jaw dropped and she stared at him. “How do you…no…it can’t be…but… Nicholas?”
“Yes. That’s me.” He folded his hands on the table. “I am both. I’ll give you a minute to take it all in.”
She was pissed off by his amusement at her stuttering frenzy. Things were going so well. She was going to get her revenge, and then hire a gigolo to pretend to be her boyfriend for Christmas. Everything was going to go smoothly, but now her foe was her savior.
Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. “I can’t do this.” She reached for her coat. “I thought I was getting someone professional. Not the jerk I met at the bar.”
He stopped her exit. “Whoa. Don’t be so hasty. I realize you have an issue with me because of how we parted at the bar but—”
“Issue? Is that what you call it?”
“My client came first.”
Elle half covered her mouth. “That woman was your client?”
“Yes,” he stated. “Her fantasy was to steal me from another woman. You made it pretty easy with that, “who do I have to fuck for a drink,” line. You were desperate for a drink and I wanted to help. You were simply a casualty, but you did get a free bottle of Malbec for your troubles.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Elle was mortified. “I gotta go.”
“Come on. Stay for our meeting.”
“Why? So you can make me feel even more foolish? This was a bad idea” She slid into her coat.
“No, so I can provide you with the service you need. You reached out to the agency for a reason.” He placed his warm hand on hers and she sunk back into her chair.
Her mother’s message played in her head and the anxiety of being the only adult out of the Rudolph-Berry clan—without a significant other—seized her shoulders.
“Let’s start with something simple. I’m Nicholas Partridge. I go by Cole P. but everyone calls me Cole.”
The timber in his voice calmed her like a rocking chair and cradling arms. He stretched out his hand.
Her voice sang with flippancy. “Partridge? As in A Partridge in a Pear Tree?” She shook his hand and her eyes dried from opening so wide.
“Yes.”
She didn’t take off her coat, but she met his eyes. “Noelle Rudolph, but everyone calls me Elle.”
“Rudolph, huh? I guess you’ve never heard of a reindeer with a red nose, have you?”
“Ha-ha.” She zeroed in on the way his lip curled to one side.
“What do you do, Elle?”
“Umm…I’m a business development accountant by trade but have been building a side business in graphic design for the past few years.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Do you have experience with start-ups?”
Did she ever? Startups were all she handled these days from tech start-ups to specialty online businesses. The landscape had changed dramatically over the past five years, calling for creativity in business development and structure.
“That’s mostly what I do. Everything from helping with business forms to drawing up business plans and prospectuses.”
“Hmm.” He scratched his chin.
“And you? What does a gigolo do besides take on lovers?”
“Wow. You make a lot of assumptions, don’t you?”
“You’re telling me you’re not sleeping with women for money?” she whispered.
Cole pulled his shoulders back against the chair, distancing from her. “You mean prostitution? No, I don’t do that, honey.”
“One, don’t call me honey and two, that’s bullshit. You can’t sit here and tell me that gigolo—” she air-quoted “—isn’t just a front for your prostitution ring.”
“If that’s what you believe, why did you seek out an escort? Do you want to get laid? Because I can refer you to a different service.”
She bit her lip realizing the statement said much more about her than him. “Because that’s what I need—an escort. I don’t need a sex buddy.”
His eyes studied the likely scowl on her face. “No, you just need sex. You’re so pent up it’s scary.”
Elle wanted nothing more than to wipe the mocking smile off his face. “Fuck you.”
He scoffed. “You wish.”
“Oh my God. Why am I still here?” She raised her eyes to the ceiling before closing them.
“Because you need me.”
Her threats to leave were just that. She hated to admit it, but he was right. She needed him, but she wasn’t about to vocalize it and give him the satisfaction.
“I don’t need you. I need a professional to play my boyfriend, not a man oozing—I am an escort—who has sex with women to get his ratings up.” That she needed to add that last dig made her even more pitiful.
“I’m the best professional there is, not to mention all you got because everyone else is booked.”
She crossed her arms.
“Look, I’m sorry about the other night, but I’m sure some other dude eased the blow.” Cole frowned at the words. “And you probably bitched about me to your friends, so we’re even.”
“Hardly.” She wasn’t going to make it easy for him, but she was glad he apologized.
“Maybe I can make it up to you.” His lowered tone soothed like warm milk and honey.
“What does that mean?” Her pits started to sweat.
“Perhaps, I can give you more time or a discount on the rate.”
“Oh.” She prayed he didn’t hear the disappointment in her voice. His behavior the other night and finding out he was a gigolo did nothing to dull her attraction to him. Had he been any other gigolo, this would have been easier. They only met recently and already had history. Bad history.
“Elle?” He brought her back to the present. “Tell me why you need this.”
“I need someone to pretend to be my boyfriend for eight days—a few days before Christmas day to just before New Year’s Eve.” The words were like thick bitter wax coating her mouth.
“To get your parents off your back?”
“More like my entire family.”
“I’ve heard this scenario before.”
“You have experience doing something like this?” She was hopeful that maybe, despite their awkward reunion, he might still be able to help her pull this off.
“No.”
“No? But you said you’ve heard this scenario before.”
“Yes, from my other colleagues. I don’t normally work the holidays. In fact, I’m leaving the agency. You would be my last client.”
“Leaving the agency?” This peaked her interest. “Why? Done sexing the east coast?”
“Funny.” Sarcasm dripped from his statement. “I’m actually starting my own consulting business and I have a very lucrative contract in the works. I just have to set up my business. I need time to get the documents and waivers done and the contracts reviewed. I didn’t have the opportunity to do it with a heavy list of clients.”
“I’m sure it was a heavy list indeed,” she mumbled. “Then we’re done and I’ve just wasted my time.”
He stopped her again. “Hold on.”
“What?” She had never given a dude she was disgruntled with this kind of time yet with Cole, she was drawn back to him and his dead-end suggestions.
“I’ll make an exception, if you help me.” His eyes brightened with idea energy.
“Help you? I thought this meeting was set up for you to help me.”
“Yes, but if you help me get my business stuff together, I’ll be your boyfriend for eight days.”
Though he slouched casually in the chair, he had an air of something she knew all too well. Stress. She had something he needed and vice versa.
“Well, if we are going to barter, then this has to be an even swap. My services for yours.” She knew she was negotiating the impossible, but she would try.
“I can’t do that. That’s almost twenty-five thousand dollars you’re asking me to leave on the table.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t walking away empty handed. I’m going to set up your whole business and give you valuable advice and suggestions that people pay my firm big money to get.”
“Ten thousand. You set up my business and give me a tutorial on everything you did so I can manage all aspects myself.” He squinted his eyes.
Elle did the math in her head. “That’s a steep discount.”
“I owed you for the other night.”
“Thank you.” Even though she would still be paying more money than she could justify, her business capital wasn’t completely depleted, and she might still be able to leave her firm in the New Year.
His next words put her in high alert mode. “I’m not finished.”
“Of course, you’re not.” She swigged the last of her latte like a shot of white rum.
“You have to listen to me so we pull this off without a hitch.”
“What does that mean—listen to you?” Her forehead muscles tightened and WTF hung on the tip of her tongue.
“It means I have the experience with being a hired boyfriend. There are things we can do to make this easy and convince everyone that we’re legit dating. But you have to follow my advice. You may ask questions for clarification, but no objections.”
She half expected him to blindfold her and spank her with a paddle. “Are you going to tie me up now and ask me to submit?” Once she blurted the question, she wanted to gulp them back because the thought of him doing any of those things to her made her shiver in her puffy coat. Her eyeballs scanned his broad shoulders down to his strong hands.
“Elle?” The way his tongue ran over his bottom lip, and the slanted smile curving into his cheek, made it all too clear he’d caught her admiring him.
“Yes, sir,” she swallowed. What the fuck? “I mean. Yes.”
“I asked if you were okay with those arrangements.” He struggled to stifle a chuckle.
“If it’s going to help us appear to be a believable couple without my family suspecting a thing? Then, yes.”
Cole once again offered his hand to her. “We have a deal?”
They shook on it.
“Deal.”