Chapter 4 The Escort
The Escort
TERRANCE
The afternoon air was cooking, so I’d foregone the suit. Instead, I wore a white tee and a blue baseball cap. I’d been shadowing Lothair to breakfast with the executives and to the filming location. Now there was nothing for me to do but stand aside and watch.
Lothair chugged some iced water and handed the empty bottle to his set assistant with a polite thank you. He could behave like an arrogant ass, but I begrudgingly respected how invariably nice he was toward staff.
Today, he was filming an action scene in an industrial area near the desert. After a short fight sequence on top of a truck, he was supposed to get on a motorcycle, ride up a ramp onto the roof of a warehouse, and zoom it over a ten-foot gap onto another rooftop.
For some reason, the director wanted everything in one shot. It was all a pointless spectacle of egos high on testosterone, but Lothair seemed jittery with excitement.
He really was an adrenaline junkie.
Dressed in a dusty black tank top and holey jeans, he bounced on a sprayed-on mark next to the main camera. His muscles glistened with oil and sweat.
“Go!” the director yelled, and Lothair darted toward the truck and flung himself over the hood to the other side.
He stepped on one side mirror and easily jumped on top.
The stuntman representing the villain was already on the truck bed.
He made an elaborate move, kicking his leg in a circle to cut Lothair’s feet from under him.
“Stop! Fucking stop!” the director screeched. “We’ve been over this ten times already.”
The stuntman looked sheepish while the director and choreographer yapped at him like rabid dogs. He mouthed an apology to Lothair, but Lothair patted his shoulder and hopped down with a smile. He moved back to the starting point and shook out his arms.
“We’re going again. Everybody, ready?”
Again, Lothair climbed onto the truck bed. This time, they performed the fake fight until the villain flew backward over the tailgate onto a prepared stack of mattresses. Lothair leaped from the hood over a fence and landed in a somersault before flinging himself onto the prepared bike.
Engine revving, he drove up the ramp, but one of the metal sections rattled and part of the ramp broke off, clattering to the ground.
Lothair leaned to the side and kicked as if riding a lightweight scooter, helping the bike up the collapsing ramp and onto the warehouse rooftop.
It happened so fast that I was sure the crew couldn’t see Lothair’s move, but it would be on camera.
Had he been human, he’d have been lying on the ground with six hundred pounds of metal on top of his broken body.
The director yelled and swore, but the cameras kept rolling.
Lothair jumped, drove over the second roof, and landed on the other side, where timed explosions accompanied his ride off into the sunset.
When he returned to the trailer half an hour later, he was grinning like a kid at a fair. His set assistant skipped behind him, carrying a headset and a tablet.
“What do you think?” Lothair asked me.
“With the budget they have, I think they could make the workplace safe. The ramp was a death trap.”
Lothair unscrewed another water bottle and took a few deep gulps. “Yeah, I’ll be talking to Kelly about that. But the jump was cool, right? It’s going to be a killer scene.”
“Have you read the script?”
Lothair’s jaw tightened, and he flashed me a glare. “Yes. What?”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“What, Terrance? Did you have a reason for that question?”
“Not really, no.”
“It’s not Shakespeare. I know, okay?” He threw his arms in the air, shooting daggers at me.
His assistant tiptoed out of the trailer noiselessly.
“It’s a pile of crap. But I’m actually doing some acting in that pile of crap, and if it does well at the box office, I’ll be getting more acting jobs and not just stunts and himbo posturing.
You know nothing about the business, so keep your judgy remarks to yourself! ”
“I haven’t said anything.”
He huffed, slamming the bathroom door behind him. It would have been effective if the trailer bathroom didn’t have a thin metal door with a wonky lock. It creaked open again, and Lothair had to close it twice before it held.
“Fucking crap!” he yelled.
I swallowed a laugh.
Even though we were sitting outside on a noisy piazza, the screaming was getting us some unwanted attention from the other patrons.
Leo cradled the baby, expertly unfastening his shirt with the other hand. Timothy latched on to Leo’s nipple, and people around us at the café sighed with relief.
“That’s better,” Leo said, using his free hand to take a gulp of his decaf iced coffee.
“How can you drink that?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. Can’t feed the baby caffeine, can I?”
“He’s a shifter. Sure you can.”
Leo looked at me as if I were clueless. “Not in public. You should experience the judgment.”
“How are you? It must be a lot.”
“It is, but Davidson spends more time with Rufus now, and it’s good for them both.”
“And how’s the new guy?”
Wrinkling his nose, Leo waved his hand in the air. “Okay, I guess. Boring.”
It had been a mutual agreement to release me from my service at the Sullivans’, since Leo wasn’t in danger anymore and Davidson had calmed down over the years. Leo now had a personal driver but not twenty-four-seven security.
“I miss you,” he said, smiling at me sadly.
“I miss you, too.” I meant it. Leo had been an easy-going client. The gossip said he was a snobby brat, but I didn’t see it. It might have been a shield he’d used to keep people away. Parenthood and a loving bond had softened him up, and now he was the nicest ever. At least toward me.
“How’s your new guy?” he asked.
“You haven’t heard? I’m babysitting Lothair Courtemanche.”
Leo’s eyes grew big. “You’re kidding. Really?”
“Yes. That’s why I only have Sundays free. I’m staying at his place six days a week.”
Leo pointed his manicured finger at me, glaring imperiously. “I need to hear everything.”
“Well, I’m bound by the contract, so I can’t tell you much.”
“How about yes or no questions?”
“Maybe. Unless they require disclosing specific private information.”
“Let’s see. Is Lothair truly as bigheaded as he seems?”
I chuckled. “Yes.”
“Fucking around like crazy?”
I shrugged one shoulder.
“I’m going to take that as a yes. Imperious toward staff?”
“Not really. He’s an asshole to anyone at any time, except for lower staff and hospitality workers.
And young fans. He’ll tell producers and execs to go fuck themselves if they want an extra minute of his time, then he’ll turn around and spend half an hour talking to a kid who’d asked for an autograph. ”
“That’s nice.”
“Maybe. In any case, he’s a generous tipper.” I couldn’t believe I was defending Lothair, but it was true. He could be nice when he chose to be.
“How does he treat you?”
I grimaced. “Like a shiny new toy.”
My friend snorted. “What?”
“He needs to be doing three things at a time all the time, or he gets bored. I think it might be some sort of hyperactivity. I’m usually the only person around when he’s bored the most. On my first day, he kicked me in the shin just to find out if I would swear.”
Leo burst out laughing, and the baby whimpered. “Sorry, Timmy. Your uncle Terry is super funny, you know. Shh. There.” He switched sides, offering the baby his other nipple, and little Timmy quieted.
“And what did you do when he kicked you?” Leo asked.
“Swore at him, of course.”
Grinning, Leo lifted his coffee to his lips then put it back down as if something else had just occurred to him.
“I read he’s into alphas. Is that true?”
I made a zipper gesture over my lips. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t want to think about it too much. Sometimes the way Lothair looked at me made me uncomfortable, like he was sizing me up.
And it reminded me of my one or two inappropriate dreams I’d had since I started working for him. Nope, I’m not going there.
“You’re no fun at all.”
“Sorry.”
Timmy fell asleep, and Leo held him to his chest to burp him. Then he carefully laid the baby into the buggy.
“Um. So I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I’m shadowing Lothair six days a week, and it’s already taking a toll on my…composure. Maybe I could call Hamish.”
Leonard scowled at me. “We’ve been over this. Hamish told you in no uncertain terms that while the arrangement suited him for a while, he wants to move on.”
“We could see each other on Sundays, and he could date whoever he wanted. When he finds someone, we call it quits.”
“If you expect me to give you my blessing, you won’t get it. Hamish made himself clear. He likes you, that’s obvious, but he’s also forty-five and done with messing around. You’d only slow him down.”
I liked that Hamish was older than me and a shifter. He was level-headed, straightforward, ah-mazing in bed… When we met, he didn’t want kids and wasn’t looking for anything long-term. I thought I had the perfect omega to kill time with before we both found our mates. But then he changed his mind.
“I know. He said being with me made him too comfortable. I think he even used the word lazy.”
“Exactly. You had fun, but you were both too sexed-up to go out and meet people.”
I sighed. “Hamish was great.”
“You’re horny and frustrated. I get it. How about an escort service?”
“What? No.”
“Davidson used escort services for years before he met me. I can give you the name of the company. They’re expensive but have high ethical standards and treat their employees fairly.”
“I’m not paying for escorts.”
“Why not? Do you fancy yourself morally superior to my husband?” Leonard winked, so I knew he was joking.
“No. Um. It would feel awkward.”
“I’ll message you a link. Don’t mock it until you’ve tried it. It’s Sunday, and I can’t imagine they’re too busy today. If you fill in everything quickly, you might even get lucky.”
That’s how I found myself on my sofa after lunch, staring at the website on my laptop.