Protect and Service(3)
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“Shaken, not stirred. Yeah, right Eloise. You’re stirred in the freaking head.”
Shaken was not the word. Even now, hours later, I was still unsteady on my feet after that near kiss in the PPA offices. Stone had turned out to be Jared Stone, one of the agency’s operatives, and a werewolf. A hot, sexy as hell werewolf with a hard, muscled body just made for…things I shouldn’t really be thinking about since he was…well, since I was paying him to escort me to the hospital’s charity ball tonight. Thinking about sex and money in the same sentence just didn’t sit well with me. There were words for things like that. Not nice ones.
It was bad enough that I’d needed to book an escort in the first place. The admission that I couldn’t find a date, a human date, that was willing to take me. Thanks to Pete, the ass-wipe. It hadn’t taken me long into our relationship to work out that my ex was vindictive, but even I hadn’t guessed he’d stoop so low as to have a curse put on me.
Nothing serious or life threatening. Just…things tended to happen to every guy I dated. James had been wonderful, great company over dinner with a fantastic sense of humour. He’d ended up with a three-week case of acne. Green and pink acne.
Liam had taken me to the skating rink, holding me in his wonderful strong arms as he’d guided me on my unsteady way around. The next morning he could have played Pinocchio without resorting to prosthetics.
Steve had spent three days squawking like a chicken.
Nathan had developed a froglike desire for flies, with the tongue to match.
Net result: No second dates and the word had spread like wildfire. I was, in a word, un-dateable, with the most important social event of the hospital calendar breathing down my neck. The event that my ex, Pete, would be at with his new girlfriend. His skinny, blonde new girlfriend. The one I couldn’t even call a bimbo because she was a doctor as well. A damn surgeon, no less. Pete would be smug, I just knew it.
Bastard.
Blowing a breath out and disturbing my bangs, I studied myself in the full length mirror and grimaced. I’d pulled out all the stops for tonight. I had on The Dress. The strappy black number with the spilt halfway up the thigh and a neckline that ensured the girls had a damn good view of the world. It was the va-va-voom dress that I only wore on those important dates where I wanted to move things on with a guy…or to balls where I wanted to make someone as jealous as fuck. It was designed to be fitted, but with the pounds I’d piled on in self-pity as I watched my chances of a decent date high-tail it out of the door after another buzzing snack, it was now skin-tight. The girls didn’t just have a good view; they were practically falling out to join the party.
Great. Just fucking great.
Wriggling again, I tried to pull the neckline up to something approaching respectable and wondered if I could get away with wearing something else. The wriggle became a dance as I sidled crab-wise to flick the closet door open, one hand still trying to readjust the girls in their satin confinement.
One glance confirmed what I’d suspected; I was shit out of luck. I had everything from girls night in sloppy PJ’s right through to board meeting. Causal but fun date? Check. Long walks on the beach? Also check. ‘Just friends’ night out at the movies? Checkity, checkity, fucking check. Sexy but classy outfit that was sophisticated yet restrained, that held an unspoken aura of sex goddess? Not a fucking chance.
The doorbell rang, the shrill demand filtering through the space between me and the front door with the insistence of a door to door salesman or possibly my witch of an ex-mother in law.
Crap. Stone was here. Butterflies assaulted my stomach again as I bolted upright, slammed the door of the closet so hard it rattled in its frame and yanked the neckline of the dress up. In defiance it slid back down. Perhaps there was some duct tape in the ‘man box’ under the sink.
I braved one last look in the mirror. At least the gods of hair were being gracious. For once my hair had behaved perfectly, the long dark waves swept up into an elegant pleat at the back of my head. My make-up, done by the girl at the salon as an impromptu treat to myself, was a work of art. Smoky dark eyes, with nude lips, it was an understated look that made the best of my features.
I sighed as I turned for the door. At least I looked presentable from the neck up. Perhaps there would be a sack in the man-box that I could use to cover myself from neck down.
The walk to the front door was short but took forever. All too soon I was standing before it, looking at the shadow of my paid-for date through the opaque glass. Fuck, he was huge. His tall frame blotted out the glow from the lamp on the street as he turned, no doubt checking the number on the wall by the door. Yeah, yeah…it was a small house, no doubt not what he was expecting, but I didn’t care. It was mine, bought and paid for.