Second, I didn’t want to care about James Preston. He was a John. The Johns were a nameless, faceless group of men that I preferred to block out. I’d cultivated only a fuzzy memory of the men who’d rented me, and I liked it that way. That was the only way I could sleep at night and meet my own eyes in the mirror each morning.
“So, is graphic design something you did?” James asked me, breaking my reverie. “You know, before?”
“Before hooking?” I asked. “Nah. I never went to school.”
“Too excited to jump into your chosen profession?” he asked.
I gave him a quick look: he didn’t appear to be kidding. I supposed he thought he was being kind by being blunt, but really, he was just being an ass. Nobody hooked because it was exciting.
You hooked because you had daddy issues. Duh.
“Something like that,” I said. I decided that every time I found him insulting, I would just look at his head and see a big dollar sign there instead. I hoped he kept saying unattractive things. It would certainly help combat the unwieldy urge I had to check out what he had going on under that suit.
“So, where are we going first?” I asked.
“To my apartment. It’s in the Back Bay. I’m not here much, but I like to have my own place when I am. We’ll get you settled, change, and go meet my family for an early dinner. And drinks. There’s always drinks when you’re with my family.” He paused. “So it’ll be my brother Todd, Evie, and my parents. Celia and Robert. And probably a few cousins, aunts, friends, business associates…”
“Are your parents lawyers, too?” I asked.
“My father is a partner at a major law firm. Has been for years. He moves corporate money around. My mother does charitable work and goes to lots of lunches where she doesn’t eat. She’s really…”
I raised my eyebrows at him and waited.
“Thin,” he said. He turned to look out the window. He was quiet for a beat. “My parents are very proper. They’re into Boston society. They also have family money.” He almost sounded as if he was apologizing.
“Family money?” I asked. “On top of major-law-firm money?”
“Yes, and lots of it,” James said, still looking out the window. “It’s very much a part of who they are.”
I swallowed hard. I had probably never met people as rich as this before. Most of my Johns were wealthy, but all they wanted to do was have sex. Not parade me around for their families. I looked down at my blue dress; it was getting wrinkled in the car. It wasn’t going to do.
“Well, we’ll tell them we met when I was out in California for my internship. You couldn’t resist my…charms,” I said, trying to be brave.
I looked down at my chest in a push-up bra. I was charming, all right.
I continued, “We’ve been dating for a few months, doing the long-distance thing. My family’s from New England—I’ll tell them they’re dead. They can infer that I’m living off my inheritance. And no, I don’t have any other family. So, no one for them to look up, no one for them to ask to meet.”
James snorted. “I doubt they’d bother with all that.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because they aren’t going to be that interested in you once they figure out that you’re not society. You will just be a blip on their highfalutin radar. And they don’t think I’m ever getting married, anyway.”
“So I’m doomed. They’re going to hate me,” I said in a wave of real nerves. “They won’t even know I’m a whore—but I’m still not good enough for you.”
James shrugged. “They would hate you a lot more if they knew you were a whore—an escort. But yes, they’ll hate you anyway, or at least dismiss you, because you’re not from their world.”
“Your world,” I said.
He shook his head at me. “That’s not my world. My world is self-made. I didn’t use their money for what I’ve built. I did it myself. And I’m not interested in what country club anyone belongs to, or what boarding school they went to. My parents are more invested in society than they are in anything.”
“Maybe we should say my family was really wealthy,” I said, shrugging.
“Wealthy isn’t good enough. It’s about the right people, Audrey, not how much money the people have. It’s who your parents knew and where they went to school and what boards they sat on. If just money was good enough, then I’d be good enough.”