Secrets of a Shoe Addict Read Free Page B

laugh. “At the bar downstairs?” She was joking.
    He nodded. He was not joking. “Unless I’m already working.”
    “Oh.” Okay, so he hung out at the bar all the time? And he could say, absolutely, that he’d be there at some nebulous time in the future?
    Something here wasn’t adding up.
    “You can just leave the money on the dresser, sweetheart.” He was buttoning his shirt, and didn’t have so much as a
hint
of a smile when he said it.
    But Loreen laughed. Because . . . it had to be a joke.
    “Shouldn’t that be my line?” She was trying to keep the mood light, but still . . .
ew
. She didn’t like this joke. It wasn’t really funny, no matter who said it.
    Rod looked at her, confused. “I’m sorry?”
    “Oh, nothing, I was just kidding.”
Too
.
    Right?
    He gave a vague smile and gestured with a hand that suddenlyseemed a little limp. Something less masculine than it had seemed just a couple of hours before. “Yeah. So, the dresser right over there.” He gestured and went into the bathroom. “And tag on a hundred and forty for the champagne.”
    Oh, God. He wasn’t kidding. He was . . . She’d just . . . Oh, God, she’d just hired a male prostitute. How the hell had this happened? She thought back over their conversation, trying to figure out just where the breakdown in communications had occurred.
    Are you looking for company tonight, Loreen?
    What had she said? Oh.
Are you offering?
An innocent question. Flirty. Not really a proposition.
    Yes, as a matter of fact, I am
.
    What an
idiot
! How had she not seen this before?
    “Loreen?”
    She snapped back to attention. “Yes?”
    “Is something wrong?”
    “No!” She said it too quick. “I was just . . . I just realized we didn’t discuss . . .”
    He narrowed his eyes at her. Suddenly he didn’t look so sexy. “We didn’t discuss what, Loreen?”
    “Price.” It sounded like a question. From a tiny little person. She could barely eke the word out.
    His brow relaxed fractionally. “Right. When you didn’t ask, I thought you were a regular, and that for some reason I just didn’t remember you.”
    Great. Not only had the whole flattery thing been a game, but he actually thought she seemed like someone who
regularly paid for sex
.
    From
him
.
    The guy actually thought he’d fucked her before—perhaps morethan once—and forgotten. And he thought that didn’t really matter. Like . . . her feelings wouldn’t be hurt?
    She felt sick. “No,” she said coolly. So much for looking at her like she was a swimsuit model. But it was stupid to be upset with a prostitute for not telling little white lies to be polite. This was all so confusing.
    She had to get out of here.
    “It’s one g.” He put Rembrandt Extra Whitening on his toothbrush and started to brush vigorously, presumably to remove all DNA traces of Loreen so he’d be fresh and clean for the next pathetic loser who came along.
    “I’m sorry, I don’t . . . How much is that?”
    He spit a foamy toothpaste mess into the sink, then swished water in his mouth and spit again. Less attractive by the second. “A thousand dollars,” he said, taking the hand towel from the chrome rack and blotting his face. “Plus the champagne, like I said.”
    Her heart leapt into her throat. A
thousand
dollars.
    These three hours were going to be
$333 an hour
. She hadn’t had a therapeutic massage since Mother’s Day six years ago because she couldn’t pay the sixty bucks an hour. There was no way she was going to have to pay $333 an hour, times three, for having
sex
with this guy. Good Lord, she’d even gone down on
him
.
    He
had
to be kidding.
    But this wasn’t a guy who was into kidding around.
    He was a businessman.
    And somehow she had to come up with a thousand bucks
quick
.

Chapter

         2    
     
     
     
     
    A bbey Walsh—wife of the sweetest Methodist pastor in Maryland—never dreamed she’d run into anyone she knew in Las Vegas, much