Playboy For Hire

1. Ryder

1

RYDER

T he critical thing to know about me is that I’m a dumbass.

Yes, I’m other things too. A soccer player. A college student. Pretty damn hot, though I know I’m not supposed to say that out loud. But none of that is as important as the main thing: I’m just kind of an idiot.

Case in point, it was six thirty on a Sunday morning, and I was standing on a narrow precipice of a dormitory, three stories above the ground, with a growing crowd of people below me worried that I was going to jump.

“Don’t do it!” shouted a guy in a fluorescent yellow T-shirt and even brighter pink basketball shorts. The shirt had a picture of the earth with the phrase ‘Care for our mother’ in bold Comic Sans underneath.

“You have so much to live for,” called a tweedy-looking girl with a heavy backpack and three textbooks in her arms. Was she already on her way to the library at this hour?

These were exactly the kind of people to stop and ‘help’ a stranger who was actually doing just fine, thank you. Or had been doing fine, until they started yelling and causing a fuss.

“I’m not committing suicide,” I sort of shout-whispered at them. I glanced over my shoulder at the bedroom window I’d just climbed out of. Could Ashley hear me? “I’m just looking for a way out.”

“There are better ways than this, bro,” shouted earth-guy. “There’s still hope.”

“I know there’s hope,” I snapped back at him, forgetting for a moment that I was trying to be quiet. “I’m just trying to disappear without causing a fuss.”

“Disappear?” cried the girl with all the books. “You don’t want to do that, I promise. There are people who love you. If you’ll just go back inside and come down safely, I can take you to the campus counseling center. They have such good services.”

“Not disappear like that,” I said, frustration mounting. “Will you just shush and let me figure out a better way to get down.”

I’d climbed out of the window and onto the ledge in panic, but I was beginning to realize how bad an idea that was.

“It will get better,” called a tiny girl in a coxswain’s outfit. She and the crew team must have been coming back from practice on the Potomac. The whole lot of them had paused underneath me to watch.

“Come on, we can catch him,” shouted one of the rowers. In thirty seconds, they’d all formed up below me, making a zipper with their hands, ready to break my fall.

“Will you all please just go?” I hissed. Or, well, tried to hiss. It turns out hissing isn’t really meant to be a sound that carries across three stories, and when I tried to make it louder-but-not-too-loud, I choked on my own spit and started hacking up a lung.

My body skittered forward, and a gasp flew up from the crowd. Backpack girl dropped her books and shrieked, which only drew more attention from passersby.

Seriously, what were this many college students doing awake at this hour? On a Sunday, no less. What ever happened to being hungover in bed until two?

I grabbed at the window frame, keeping myself from toppling to my death, and looked left and right. I didn’t have time to keep arguing. When I woke up in Ashley’s bed this morning to find her beaming at me, those giant Bambi eyes wide enough to verge on little-green-men-from-Mars territory, I knew I needed to get out of her on-campus apartment as soon as possible.

I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Ashley was a client, and not even a regular. She’d contacted Heartbreakers Anonymous a week ago, looking for a date to her sister’s wedding last night. Wedding dates are kind of my specialty at Heartbreakers, and Mason threw a lot of that business my way. I was more than happy to take her on—until we’d met, that is.

It turned out Ashley didn’t just want a date for Carina’s wedding. She wanted to make a scene. The ceremony had gone fine, mostly, until I’d realized the tears Ashley was crying were because Carina was getting married before her. Nevermind that Carina was twenty-eight and Ashley was still in college.

“ I’m the pretty one!” She’d stamped her foot as we stood in the church pews, watching her sister walk up the aisle. “And I had my first boyfriend at twelve. Carina didn’t even start dating until she was twenty-three. It should be my turn, not hers.”

Ashley was pretty, I had to give her that. She had big, blue teacup eyes, a small nose, and lips that were either gorgeously full on their own or tastefully filled with the most subtle cosmetic surgery I’d ever seen. Her blonde hair was piled into an artfully curled mass on top of her head, but a couple of tendrils had come loose and were tickling her smooth, swan-like neck.

But pretty only gets you so far in life. Trust me, I know this from experience. If you’re not smart or particularly talented, you need to be nice , in addition to nice-to-look-at. Ashley seemed to have missed that memo.

I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get married, period, let alone at age twenty-two. But it wasn’t my job to tell a client she sounded nuts. My job was to help her have as nice an evening as possible. And I tried.

Ashley had brought a flask of vodka in her tiny clutch purse and was smashed before we even got to the reception at a yacht club down on the river. I spent the first hour alternately holding said purse while she posed for family pictures and listening to her complain about how ugly her sister’s dress was.

“I don’t know why she thought she could get away with a strapless gown,” she grumbled, taking another swig from the flask. “Like, yeah, she’s got huge boobs, but have a little class, you know? She’s practically falling out of that thing, and it makes her armpits look like chicken cutlets.”

She handed her flask and purse back to me and rejoined her family for pictures.

Personally, I thought Carina looked great, but I was smart enough not to say that out loud. I also thought I was being pretty smart when I sneakily emptied the contents of the flask onto the grass, but as soon as we went into the cocktail hour, Ashley grabbed two glasses of champagne and downed both of them. Then she grabbed two more, but made no move to pass one to me. That’s when I knew it was going to be a long night.

I spent the rest of the cocktail hour listening to all of Ashley’s grievances about Carina. I spent most of dinner trying to make her drink water and eat some solid food to balance out all the alcohol. Ashley loudly announced to our table how at least now that Carina had married boring, dorky, pathetic, bad-breath, balding Richard, they could all finally stop pretending to care about their relationship.

“I’ve heard male baldness actually correlates with higher testosterone levels,” I said, trying to diffuse some of the tension. The rest of our table was looking at Ashley with varying degrees of confusion, pity, and outright dislike. “So maybe it’s not such a bad trait.”

“Oh, please. If Richard had higher testosterone levels, he wouldn’t have settled for someone as fat as my sister.”

That statement was met with complete silence. Even I didn’t know how to rescue her. But Ashley just rolled her eyes. “Whoops, sorry. I forgot, we’re supposed to just say she’s ‘ curvy .’”

She added air quotes and invested the word with heavy scorn. I sighed. You couldn’t expect to like all your clients, but it had been a while since I’d disliked one quite this much.

“I think your sister looks beautiful,” I told her.

She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Oh, come on, you don’t have to pretend.”

In the background, the maid of honor—Carina’s best friend from high school—was giving a toast.

“...knew from that first night when you told me how ruthless he was at Settlers of Catan that you were already head over heels for him. But it wasn’t until I saw you two in action, playing Ticket to Ride that I—”

“Oh, God, can you imagine actually seeing them in action ?” Ashley groused. “Gross. He’s all spindly, I bet his dick isn’t even big enough to get inside her. Which is probably for the best, because her thighs would crush him to death.”

She stabbed her beef medallions angrily.

“...remember you calling to tell me you were going to a lecture on the Flemish brickwork in early rowhouse construction, and you never dreamed he’d propose—”

“I mean seriously, could she make them sound any more boring?” Ashley’s voice was loud enough that heads were turning at other tables. “I could do a better speech than this, and I don’t even like them. Carina should have made me maid of honor, but I guess you’re not supposed to upstage the bride at her own wedding.”

I was pretty sure I knew exactly why Ashley hadn’t been asked, and why Carina and Richard had opted not to have a wedding party beyond a best man and maid of honor. It was the same reason Ashley hadn’t been placed at one of the tables at the front, why we were sitting with some second cousins and Carina’s work friends. It wasn’t that Carina didn’t want Ashley to upstage her. It was that Carina might strangle her if we were seated any closer.

I peered over at Ashley’s place setting.

“Your water glass is empty,” I said, relieved to have an excuse to stand up and get some distance. “I’ll go get you some more.”

“And another vodka soda,” she called out as I walked away.

I closed my eyes in frustration and resisted the urge to stage a public breakup, just to get out of here. She was a paying customer, and I didn’t want to do anything that would reflect poorly on the company. I just had to make it through a few more hours.

At the bar, I asked for two seltzers, no vodka. I had a vain hope that she was drunk enough that she might not notice the lack of alcohol and actually drink some damn water. Her glass wasn’t empty because she’d drunk any of it. She’d just knocked it over while gesticulating wildly about how Carina and Richard looked like an elephant and a giraffe dancing together.

I turned and started back to our table, scanning for Ashley’s face. I hoped she might be eating some food, instead of just jabbing at it like it was a voodoo doll of Carina’s face. But Ashley wasn’t there.

My stomach dropped. Shit. Where was she?

She might have just gone to the bathroom, but somehow, I didn’t think I’d be getting off that lightly. No, she was probably making the rounds of other tables, sharing her opinions about the happy couple, or worse, making her way to Carina and Richard’s table, ready to—

An awful screech rang through the hall, followed by static, and I looked to the front of the room to see Ashley tromp up the small stage and wrench the mic out of the maid of honor’s grip.

“I’ll take that, thank you,” she said, though she was drunk enough that it came out more like, ‘ L’taggit, sanku .’

Oh no. This was not good. This was very not good.

I hurried over to our table to set down the seltzers, then motioned at Ashley frantically to come back and join me. But she didn’t see me.

“ G’deevnin, ladies and gentlemuh ,” Ashley began. “‘ N welcome to our sl’bratshun’v Carina n’ Rishar. Rishard. Rishdick. Ha. Rishdick s’good. S’why she’s marrenim anway. ‘Cause’es rish .”

You could have heard a pin drop in the hall. I was pretty sure I could hear the sound of my balls climbing back inside my body as my entire being tried to disappear. There was no good way for this to end.

“ C’monnn ,” Ashley complained into the microphone. “ S’funny. Rishdick. Fishdick. Bet’s whatis dick looksh like anway. Lil shrimpy fishdick. Dis big .” She lifted her left hand and flicked her pinky finger up and down at the rest of the room.

No one said anything. I think we were all too shocked. The maid of honor was the closest person to Ashley, and could have made a grab for the mic, but she just stood there, eyes wide and horrified, hands laced together in fright.

“ Tough crow ’,” Ashley said, glaring out at everyone. Then her gaze fell on her sister and Richard. “ S’just jokin. Li’en up. Fishdick’s small, and Carina’s…s’not shrimpy, ‘as for sure. No, not ‘Rina. ‘Rina’s jus’ a big, ‘luptuous, well fed, fat ol ’...” Ashley paused here, grinning, her eyes glinting with pleasure as she scanned the room. “ Fat ol’ brain ,” she finished, then broke into a high-pitched laugh. “ Fat ol’ brain. Betch’ all thought s’gonna say some’n diffruh .”

That was it. I couldn’t let her keep going. I shook off my shock and started walking as I called to her.

“Ashley, honey, why don’t we let someone else have a turn at giving a speech. Come on, hand the mic back to—”

I stopped, trying and failing to come up with the maid of honor’s name. I’d just been introduced to her an hour ago, why couldn’t I remember it?

Ashley’s eyes lit up when she saw me. “ S’my boyfriend! Say’lo to Ryder, evbuddy. My sweet, sexy, ‘spensive boyf —” she stopped and hiccupped “— riend. Innee hot ?”

I heard a chair scrape on the other side of the room and saw Ashley’s father stand up. I had to make it to the microphone before he did. I didn’t trust what Ashley would say if she talked to him right now. Not just more shit about Carina. She might say something she shouldn’t about me.

Heartbreakers Anonymous’s biggest strength is just that—we are anonymous . We’ll be your wedding date, your corporate gala plus one, even the guy—or gal—you hire to flirt with your husband and prove he’s cheating on you. But that only works as long as each of us stays incognito. I don’t even have any social media accounts.

Our site has profiles for each of us, but the pictures are artfully cropped and angled so that you’re never looking at us straight on. We work with some pretty powerful, high-profile clients. If it ever got out that they’d hired someone for a date, there’d be a shitstorm for sure.

We weren’t sex workers. That was the number one rule Dana and Mason hammered into you when you came onboard. No sleeping with clients . It was explicit on the website too, and in the literature we gave to each client who booked with us. What we were doing wasn’t illegal, but sleeping with clients would be.

Ashley had already embarrassed herself more than enough for one night, but now she’d slipped and called me expensive. Wouldn’t take much more for her to mention the company’s name, and then Dana would be pissed. Mason would too, but his sister was more of a hardass than he was.

Heartbreakers Anonymous got almost all our clients via word-of-mouth recommendation. We weren’t optimized for search results, weren’t advertising in the Washington Post. We were discrete, and Dana and Mason were determined that we would stay that way.

“Come on, honey,” I said, reaching the front of the room. “Don’t you wanna get out of here anyway?”

“ Sssweet, n’he ?” Ashley continued as I joined her on stage. “ D’never know I paid good money to— ”

She broke off when I swung my arm around her waist, my free hand going to the microphone. I tried to pull it from her grasp without sending too much feedback careening through the room.

“Babe, come on. Give the mic back and we can go somewhere a little more private, huh? Just you and me.” I smiled my most seductive smile and whispered just to her, “I wanna get you out of that dress.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Hell, it wasn’t true at all. But I was trying to help her save face, and the best thing I could come up with was for me to look like I was still really, really into her.

What I didn’t count on was Ashley’s reaction. She turned and brought the mic back to her lips.

“ See’at, lays’n genmen? S’one fine spesmin man right there, n’he wants me. ‘Otter’n Rishfish. S’way bigger’nm too. Not shrimpy. S’a marlin. A blue fin fuckn—show you .”

With that, she reached for the waist of my tuxedo, searching for the zipper. I jumped back, and she started to topple, her high heels wobbling at the edge of the stage. I reached out to steady her as she reached for my crotch—and punched me in the balls with the microphone.

I folded over, letting out a howl of pain, which the microphone picked up all too well.

“ Ryder? Ry’er !” Ashley wailed. “ You’kay? You ‘urt? Mm-god, wha’penned ?”

What happened? You just attacked my balls with a microphone, that’s what happened. But again, I strove to keep things calm.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” I tried to wave her away. “Just need a minute.”

But Ashley wasn’t interested in giving me one.

“ May’tup you ,” she said. “S’lemme helm. Mayou feel berr .”

With that, she dropped to her knees. I yelped again, this time in horror, as she grabbed my hands and pulled them away from my crotch.

“What the hell are you—” I began, but Ashley cut me off.

“ D’need s’where private. Ssshow you priva’ s’right ‘ere. Show’m how I— ”

“That’s enough ,” another voice cut in.

I looked up from fending off Ashley’s advances to see that her father had joined us on the stage.

“Ashley, get up.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet. He pointed at me, his face thunderous. “You—you’re coming with me.”

With that, he dragged Ashley off the stage, stumbling and objecting the whole way. She didn’t even let go of the microphone until distance and the taut cord ripped it from her hands. All I could do was limp along and follow.

Her father didn’t stop walking until he reached the parking lot. A fine mist hung in the air, not quite thick enough to be called rain. He let go of his daughter roughly, and she staggered back three steps before falling on her ass.

I bent down to give her a hand, but her father pulled me away.

“Leave her,” he growled. “She can stand up on her own, if she’s sober enough to manage it.”

“I don’t think she—”

“Shut up,” he barked. “She got herself into this situation, she can get herself out. But I’ll be damned if she’s coming back inside and ruining more of this evening.”

He glared at me, and I remembered Ashley telling me her dad was a senator. I’d looked him up online. He had a reputation for being tough on crime, hawkish in international relations, and full of conservative social values. In his official picture, in front of an American flag, he’d looked like a man used to being obeyed. I was bearing the full brunt of that gaze right now.

“Why’d you let her get this drunk?” he demanded. “On her sister’s wedding day?”

“I didn’t know she was going to get this bad,” I protested. “I didn’t realize she’d been drinking before the ceremony until—”

“Oh, don’t tell me this is the first time you’ve seen her like this. You know what she’s capable of.”

It was, in fact, the only time I’d seen her like this, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“There are reporters here,” her father snapped. “There’s no way this isn’t going to end up in some gossip blog, if not a bigger media outlet.” He shook his head, disgusted. “Take her back to campus, now.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep an eye on her?” I asked. Ashley had paid for my time through one a.m. but I wouldn’t have complained if our evening ended earlier.

“Do I look like I want to babysit her? No. Just get her out of my sight.”

With that, he turned and stalked back into the building.

“Daddy?” Ashley said from the pavement. Her voice sounded as broken as a little girl who had lost her favorite doll. “Daddy, I’m sorry.”

But he was already gone.

I looked at her with misgiving. Was this another ploy for attention? Or was ‘ sad, lost little girl ’ just another stop on Ashley’s Freight Train Tour of Drunkenness? She looked up at me, confused and hurt. I bent down, snaking an arm around her shoulders and helping her to her feet.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll get us a cab.”

The car ride back to campus was quiet. Ashley had put her head against the window, looking out at the rain-dampened streets, and had fallen asleep within a few minutes. I closed my eyes and tried to figure out how I’d gotten into this mess.

Ashley and I had met up two days ago to go over our plan for the evening and to get our story straight. It helped that we were both students, even if I didn’t live anywhere near campus. It gave us an easy answer as to how we’d met. She’d honestly seemed really sweet at the time.

A little sad, maybe, that her sister was getting married. But I’d chalked that up to a fear of change, and maybe some fears of abandonment too. People got that way when their older siblings got married, right? I didn’t know. I was an only child.

But her big blue eyes had looked so helpless and scared, and she’d said she just didn’t want her family to think she was single at the wedding. I knew what it was like to worry about your parents’ judgement. I’d felt sorry for her.

I glanced over at her in the taxi. Underneath all the alcohol and anger, I thought I could still see a sliver of that scared, sad girl. Besides, she had paid a thousand dollars for the pleasure of my company. The least I could do was make sure she got home safe.

The cab dropped us at the front gates of campus, and I steered her firmly towards the dorm where her apartment was, and away from the bar down the street.

“All you need is water and rest,” I told her. She didn’t even argue that hard. By the time I got her up the steps to her third-floor apartment—no elevator, of course—her eyes were closing on her, and she looked ready to fall asleep on her feet.

“Alright, you,” I said, standing at the front door. “Can you make it to your bed from here?”

She gave me a pouty glance. “You’re leaving me. S’like everyone else.”

“I was never going to stay the night,” I reminded her. “I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

“You’re leaving me,” she repeated, but this time it was a wail.

I looked around her apartment, wondering if any of her roommates were home. I didn’t want to deal with more of her emotional rollercoaster. But no one came out to the living room to see what was going on.

“ S’fine ,” Ashley said, putting one hand on the center of my chest and pushing me backwards. “ S’go . Hav’ta go anyway.”

She opened her clutch and fumbled for a tube of lipstick. She got the cap off and brought it to her lips, then managed to miss her mouth entirely and draw a bright red streak across her chin.

“Hey, hey.” I took the lipstick from her gently, recapping it. “You don’t need to go anywhere but to bed. Come on, let me help you—”

“Go away. S’not like you care. I’ll find sssome’un does.”

She shoved my chest again, then pushed past me, stumbling out onto the walkway that led away from her door. She only made it two steps before the heel of her shoe caught in the grillwork and she fell—forward this time, her arms and hands taking the brunt of it.

Fuck .

I suppressed a sigh and walked over. She was crying now, big wet tears that slid down her face and left tracks in her makeup. This was turning into the night from hell, but there was no way I could just leave her like this. Who knew what she’d do, left to her own devices?

“Come on, Ashley,” I said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

I removed her heels first, so that she had better footing to walk back to the door. I dropped them just inside the door, then asked her to steer me towards her bedroom. It was a double, and her bed was covered in a pink, frilly quilt and fuzzy pillows.

Miraculously, it wasn’t that hard to get her into bed and under the covers. I was grateful she hadn’t wanted to change into her pajamas. I didn’t want her to get any ideas about what might happen if she got undressed. She curled up in bed and looked at me, her eyes still wet with tears.

“Stay with me?” she asked.

After the night I’d had, I had every reason to say no. But I didn’t have the heart to. Besides, maybe someone should check on her every few hours, just to make sure she was okay.

“Okay,” I said. I nodded towards the door. “I’ll be right out there on the couch if you need me.”

“No.” She grabbed my hand and shook her head. “Here.”

She tugged me towards her bed.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said.

“Won’t touch you,” she said. “ Jus’on’t wanna be’lone .”

“How about I sleep in your roommate’s bed?”

She shook her head again. “No, Claire’llb ba’ soon.”

“Then she can keep you company,” I reasoned.

“Please, Ry’er ?”

God help me, I should have said no. But you’ve seen how this chapter begins. You know I didn’t. No, I was an idiot, and I stayed, right where she wanted me.

Well, maybe not right where. I lay down on top of the covers instead of getting underneath them, and I put a line of pillows in between her body and mine. Then I lay there, watching her sleep, waking up every hour or so to make sure she was still alive.

And suddenly, it was six o’clock in the morning and Ashley was staring at me from inches away, her eyes too bright and intense for this early an hour.

“You stayed!” She squealed.

I mean, literally squealed. I’d had half a Bud Light and one flat glass of champagne last night, so I wasn’t hung over, but the sound still made me wince. I didn’t understand how it didn’t make her own head explode. She’d drunk half the Potomac last night. She shouldn’t even have been awake right now.

“Yeah.” I blinked at her as my brain came back online. “I stayed. But I should probably—”

“I knew you would,” she squealed again. Then she leaned in and kissed me.

That woke me up for sure.

It’s not against the rules to kiss clients. In fact, I usually offer it as part of the package. It can help sell the charade. But there was no one to sell to right now, and I was off the clock.

Besides, she was kissing me way too enthusiastically for my liking. Her hand slid down my shoulder to my waist, then began tugging my shirt out of my trousers.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I said, pulling back. “I stayed last night to make sure you were okay, but that’s all it was. Concern. You and I are not actually together.”

“Oh, I know, silly,” she said. “But you were nice to me last night, and I know I didn’t deserve it.” Her hand slid inwards towards my groin. “I thought I’d give you something this morning as a little thank you.”

“You really don’t have to do that,” I said, taking her hand and moving it firmly back to one of the pillows I’d strategically arranged the night before. “In fact, you shouldn’t.”

She pouted. “But I want to.”

“But I don’t,” I said, in a tone I hoped would end the conversation.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Spoilsport. But at least let me buy you breakfast. We’ll go to Call Your Mother . You can get anything you want. My treat.”

With that, she bounced out of bed and into the hall. I glared at her roommate’s empty bed. She’d never come home. I could have stayed there just fine.

A moment later, I heard water running in the bathroom. Shit.

Ashley’s bathroom was between her bedroom and the front door. And if I could hear the water this loudly, that meant the bathroom door was open. Which meant I was trapped. I glanced over at the window. Unless I could find another exit….

Which brings us back to my current position, balanced along a blocky, stone rampart that ran around the building and provided five inches of footing. I had to get out of here.

“I’m calling 911,” yelled the coxswain, pulling out a cell phone.

“No, don’t,” I yelled, but she was already on the phone.

“Ryder?” Ashley’s voice rang out in the apartment behind me.

Fuck. I was out of time. And that was when I noticed the drain pipe running down from the roof, only five feet away. Could I get there without falling? Only one way to find out.

I edged along the ridge as fast as I could, trying to stay pressed flat against the building. My right hand hit the pipe and I gripped like the lifeline it was, then swung myself around so I was grabbing it with both hands, my legs pressed tight around it like a koala. The crowd below me gasped, then heaved a collective sigh of relief as I began shimmying down.

“Ryder?! What are you doing?” Ashley stuck her head out the window and stared at me.

“Just getting in some rock climbing practice,” I shouted back nonsensically. “Have a great rest of your weekend!”

“But I thought we were getting bagels,” she wailed.

I didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, I concentrated all my energy on getting down the drain pipe without cracking my head open. I had two scares, once almost losing my grip with my hands, the other when the pipe threatened to come loose from the building, but finally, I made it down to the ground.

“Are you alright?” asked earth-guy.

“Hey, man, what were you thinking, going out on that ledge?” asked one of the rowers.

“I meant it about the counseling center,” said the girl with all the books.

“I’m fine, really,” I panted.

I looked back up at Ashley’s window, which she was still leaning out of. Now there was someone who might benefit from some counseling. I was just glad she hadn’t walked down the stairs to meet me on the ground. Though now that I thought about it, it seemed like that idea might occur to her too.

“I, uh, have to go,” I said to the group of well-wishers. “Late for something. Thanks for the concern, but you can go back to your regularly scheduled mornings now.”

With that, I took off running. I must have looked ridiculous, running across campus in a rumpled tuxedo, but it was better than waiting around for Ashley to join me. I was in luck, and the G2 bus pulled away from the curb as soon as I got on it.

I exhaled and headed for a seat. I had my pick at this hour. We were halfway to Dupont Circle when I felt a buzzing in my pocket. My cell phone. I pulled it out and looked at the message Mason had just sent me.

MASON: You still free next weekend? Got a new client for you. Girl named Quinn.

I stared down at my phone and sighed. A new client. Just what I needed.