17. 17
Ilet him buy me the dress.
It was only fair since I paid for his clothes, but it was tough. It’s been a long time since a man bought me a present and usually it came with expectations.
I love the dress, even though I don’t tell him how much. It’s pale green with leaves and pink flowers, and made of a gauzy fabric that skims my curves and ties at the neck leaving my shoulders bare while dipping down between my breasts.
“That one,” Max says as soon as I stepped out of the cubicle.
I like the way he looks at me when I’m wearing it.
I like the way he looks at me, period.
Which is why I gave him a peek.
It took me years to drop the skin-tight cleavage-showing outfits and stop dressing like I get paid for an hour of pleasure.
Sixteen months. I was an escort for all of sixteen months, and that is still how I define myself.
Max has done a great job of ensuring I know there are no expectations about this weekend. I don’t have to have sex with him in return for him covering for me with the police.
Instead, I’m doing him a favour. A friendly one. We’re going to the wedding as friends.
New friends, but just friends.
Unless, of course, I may be interested in being more than a friend, and Max has done a very good job of making sure I know he’d be very interested.
Basically, he’s making it my choice. He’s giving me a choice, and that means more to me than he can imagine.
After three years of stripping and giving lap dances and hand jobs in the back room, I was making close to a thousand dollars a night.
Paolo, the owner of the Spider’s Den, took forty percent of anything I made at the club, and he encouraged such behaviour. He wanted us to make the customers happy.
I saved everything I could, but it was never enough. My stepfather was out of work and drinking heavily. Noelle and Christian, my half-siblings, were in grade one and needed new clothes, backpacks, shoes, and someone to pick them up and watch them after school. Even running on a few hours of sleep, I managed the morning shift—getting them dressed and fed and dropped off at school. But my shifts started at three and Bruce couldn’t be trusted to pull himself from a bottle to see that his own children got home from school.
I paid for Winnie, a grandmother who lived a few streets away, to pick up the twins from school every day. She watched them on the weekends when Bruce was too drunk to keep them from hurting themselves.
So when one of my regulars asked me how much to meet him for an hour, I refused because I wasn’t giving Paolo money for that.
But then I went back to him and gave him a price, and told him no one at the club could know or the price would double. Selling myself was my decision, but I never felt like I had a real choice.
The money helped with the shame, but there was always that voice in my head reminding me how, if my mother was alive, she would be so disappointed in me.
I shut up the voice by telling it that none of this would be happening if my mother could have stayed alive.
But even though Max is being pretty great, I still refuse his offer for lunch. Instead, he drops me at my house with strict instructions to pack as many bikinis as I can and to be ready in an hour.
I can’t believe I’m going away with him.
The house is locked but security has been disengaged so I know Tana and Travis are there.
Noam insisted that I buy the house. It had been when I was still dancing, and working on the side, but moving things along with the website. I owned three clubs by then, also on Noam’s advice, but had been living in an apartment, in a sketchy building in a not-great area.
“This is not safe,” Noam tells me during one of our dinners. “I want you safe.”
The next day, a real estate agent contacted me, and showed me four houses. I couldn’t afford any of them, but Noam lent me the money and persuaded me to choose this one.
I love the house—four bedrooms, five baths, with a fully finished basement that I made into my office—but I spent a very lonely year hiding from the neighbours so they wouldn’t find out that I worked as an escort when I wasn’t stripping.
And then I met Malcolm, and it got better.
I’d love to run across the yard to talk to him, but he’s away for a few days with his new girlfriend, Nia. I’m happy for him, but it’s a change that I haven’t gotten used to yet.
Now that Nia is in the picture, I no longer have free access to Malcolm’s life. I would let myself into his house after a tough day and make him dinner. Sometimes I’d stay the night.
Malcolm is the only person I really can be myself with. He’s still in my life but Nia is there, too, and Malcolm will pick her every time. It’s not the sleep-overs that I miss, but having someone always on my side.
“Cady?” Tana’s voice drifts up the stairs as I kick off my shoes. Tana is always on my side, but I pay her to be.
“I’m back, but not for long,” I call down.
“What’s going—?” She halts at the top of the staircase, gaping at me. “You went shopping? You never go shopping.”
Tana started working as my assistant the year I quit stripping. I had been twenty-four, focused on making money. She had been a single mother of three kids and needed something that got her home at a decent hour to make sure they did their homework.
Eight years later, I’ve helped send two of the three to university and Tana is indispensable to me.
I also introduced her to her husband, Travis, so she owes me.
I set the bags by the door. “It’s a long story.”
“One that you better get telling me.” She comes toward me. “Hon, you look exhausted.”
“It’s been a day,” I tell her, rubbing my eyes. “And it’s only begun. How are things here?”
Instead of giving her usual succinct report, Tana hugs me—throws her arms around me without warning. And even though I stiffen, it doesn’t take long to sink into her embrace.
“I’m sorry about Noam,” she says into my hair. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, pulling away even though I want nothing more than to stay right where I am. I don’t get hugged very often, but Tana gives good ones. “It’s…” I shake my head to clear the worry and confusion. And the uncertainty. “I don’t know.”
Tonic, one of my two cats, pads down the stairs. I pick him up.
“And Tate’s kids contacted you?” Moment over. Tana is back to all business.
My phone is already in my hand and I scroll through the series of texts to show her.
“There’s not much we can do about this.” She hands it back. “Tell me how things went with Maximus Steele?”
I jerk my head at the shopping bag. “He bought me a dress.”
Tana narrows her eyes. “And why did he feel the need to buy you a dress?”
“Because I’m going to Turks and Caicos with him for the weekend. For a wedding.” I pause for effect. “He’s picking me up in an hour.”
To Tana’s credit, she doesn’t blink an eye. “Well, then let’s get you packed and you can tell me what the hell is going on.”
Twenty-five minutes later, my suitcase is packed and waiting by the door. Tana has dragged me into the kitchen instead of down to the office to make me a quick lunch. I’ve given her the recap of my discussion with the police and Max this morning, as well as a very brief report on my shopping trip.
The smell of melting cheese tempts Travis, as well as both cats, to join us in the kitchen, just as the news on the TV in the kitchen reports on Noam’s death.
“It’s going to be okay,” Tana assures me as she flips the grilled cheese with as much conviction, pressing the spatula on the bread hard enough for the cheese to begin to ooze out. She lays the sandwich on a plate and cuts it into four pieces like she must have done for her children. I know Tana sees herself as a mother figure for me, and some days, I want so much to lean against her shoulder and let her.
But I’ve always known leaning against others makes me weaker, so I stand on my own two feet.
The few bites I’ve managed of the grilled cheese sticks in my throat as I watch the coverage: it starts with the details of his death, shows family, mentions he was staying at one of his hotels after dinner with a business associate.
There’s no mention of me.
It isn’t until they give the highlights of his career and then move on to sports that I start to relax.
“I think we dodged a bullet there.” Tana sighs with relief. “No further word from the family?”
I shake my head and reach for my phone to double-check.
Nothing. Not since nine thirty this morning, which was around the time I had met with the police and Max.
No one seems to doubt I was with Max.
“Let me get this straight—you’re flying to Turks and Caicos with a man you just met,” Travis says, heavy on the skepticism.
“I’m his date for a wedding in return for telling the police I was with him last night instead of in Noam’s room,” I explain for the third time.
Travis scratches his head. He’s the complete opposite of his wife—tall and gangly, with a relaxed easiness about him rather than Tana’s intensity. “I know I don’t have to ask, but… Tate was alive when you left, wasn’t he?”
I try to rub away the tension headache that has been building since Tana first woke me this morning. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me when we were shopping. “I’ve gone over it again and again. I’m ninety-nine percent sure he was breathing when I left.”
“But not one hundred percent sure?”
As much as I want to be positive, I can’t be. And it’s eating me up that there’s a small chance that I left the room while Noam was dead beside me.
Or dying. If I had stayed just a few minutes longer, could I have saved him? Would I have known what was happening to him?
And the worst of all—would I have done anything?
“No.” I shake my head. “I can’t be sure.”
Travis flicks a glance at his wife. “I’m sure he was alive and, while maybe not kicking, breathing normally.”
“I left around two-thirty. They must have a time of death…”
“On it,” Tana says.
“Is there anything I need to focus on this weekend?” I ask her. I packed my laptop and I’m planning on working as much as I can.
“Enjoying yourself,” Tana says firmly. “It’s long past the time when you should have had a holiday, so take this as an opportunity to have some fun.” She looks at me over the rims of her glasses. “You deserve it.”
“I second that. Do I need to check out this guy who whisking you away?” Travis wants to know.
“Maximus Steele,” Tana answers for me and gives me another searching glance. “Could be worse.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Travis demands.
“Have you seen the man? He looks fine.”
“Just because he’s fine—” —Travis is spot-on with his imitation of Tana— “doesn’t mean he’s a decent man.” I get a second searching look from him.
The two of them think like parents when they’re together with me.
“I think he is,” I tell him.
“You think, or you know?” Travis wanted to know. “Because Cady, you have the best gut instinct about people that I know. Except for my lovely bride here.”
I wave off Tana’s outstretched hand, and take my plate to the dishwasher. “I trust him,” I say. “I’m not sure why, but I do. And then Noam… last night he told me to have fun.”
“He said what?”
I stare at the TV mounted on the wall. “After listening to what they said about him, I feel like I didn’t really know him. He was… different… last night. He spent time asking about me.”
“He didn’t usually do that?” Travis wants to know.
“It’s usually all business, but he took the time last night to ask about other things. He wanted to know if there was anyone in my life.”
Tana throws up her hands. “Oh, God, was he trying to fix you up with his son again?”
“No. He told me I needed to have more fun,” I admit. “He’s never said anything like that before.”
Tana spreads her hands. “Then it’s perfect that you have this weekend with Max Steele coming up. That man will be sure to show you a good time.” She wiggles her eyebrows.
“Nothing like that. I’m doing him a favour, and that’s it.”
“He could return the favour,” she suggests.
Travis claps his hands over his ears. “None of that, please.”
For a man who knows what I do, and what I’ve done, he really hates hearing anything about my sex life.
“Cady.” I look up to see Tana studying me with more than her usual intensity. “Mr. Tate enjoyed the belief that he was responsible for your success. That he made you into the woman you’ve become. But that’s not true.”
I open my mouth to respond but don’t get the chance.
“It’s not true, because you’re responsible for your empire. You—Cady Quinn. Sure, he might have given you some advice, and helped out now and again, and for that, we should be forever grateful. But not enough to ruin this chance.”
“What chance?”
“You’re going away for the weekend with a man—no strings attached.”
No strings attached is Tana-speak for no one is paying me. And just her saying that is like pulling the plug on the tension I’ve been feeling since this morning.
No one is paying me. I’m allowed to go—or not go. Enjoy the beach and the sunshine, or I can stay in my room.
I can do whatever I want.
“And I know exactly what to do to guarantee you have a good time.” Tana disappears out of the kitchen, only to return holding my laptop. “Give me your phone.”
“No,” I say, clutching it to my chest.
“When was the last time you took time off?” she demands. “No, don’t answer—it’s never. You’ve never taken time off, and today, you’re about to start.”
“There’s too much going on. I’m waiting to get the monthly financials from Coulter, not to mention the Tingel deal.”
“The one that Sandflower is also interested in? Does he know about that?”
“No. It never came up.” There’s a twinge when I think about both Max and I trying to buy the same property. I’m not even sure if Max is spearheading Sandflower on this, or if his father is.
I hope it’s his father.
“Don’t you think it might be awkward if it comes up?”
“Probably, which is why I’ll make sure it won’t come up.”
“Cady…”
“Tana, I can’t leave everything.”
“You can and you will.” She holds out her hand. “Give. I’ll get Steele’s contact info when he picks you up. Go. Have fun.”
Reluctantly, I hand Tana my phone before she pries it from my fingers, looking longingly at the laptop sitting on the kitchen counter instead of my bag. “Fun…” I murmur.