insisting you’re not interested, I’ll find it elsewhere.”
It was a total fucking lie, but she didn’t know me well enough to realize that. The shock of what I’d said was enough to keep her frozen to the spot as I stormed out of her apartment and out of the building. I glanced around the street and sighed, pulling my phone out of my pocket and dialing the car company I usually used when I was in the city as I started walking.
I just hoped the company would actually pick me up in Brooklyn.
9
April
F uck , fuck, fuck!
Not even a full day into my task and I lost the client. Literally.
I let out a loud groan of frustration as I buried my hands in my hair and resisted the urge to pull. What the hell was I supposed to do now? I had been too stunned by him saying that he only came here because he thought it meant two weeks of sex to stop him and I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do to get him back.
Where would he have gone? I tried to think of local strip clubs that he might have wandered into in hopes of a quick lay, but the memory of his obvious distaste of the borough led me to believe that he would have gotten a ride into Manhattan before he looked for something here.
Which meant it was going to be even more impossible to find him.
I rushed to my bedroom and pulled my phone off the charger, my fingers hovering over Lauren’s speed-dial button for a moment. I stopped when I remembered that she had e-mailed me Jared’s cell phone number the day before and I searched through my messages to find it.
After three rings, it was directed to voicemail. I growled and dialed again. This time, it only made it to two rings.
He was dismissing the calls. I wondered if it was because he didn’t recognize the number, or if it was because he did.
The third time, it didn’t even ring. The phone had been turned off.
Fucking perfect.
I wasn’t foolish enough to think that he would bother listening to a voicemail if I left one, so I ended the call and opened the web browser. I rushed around and grabbed my purse while it was loading the local gossip sites, hoping that if someone spotted him and posted the location, I could get there and keep him out of trouble before another scandal arose. I scrolled through the latest news on each site, but saw no sign of Jared.
During the elevator ride down to the lobby of my apartment building, I lost connection to the websites and groaned. Once I stepped outside, I attempted to reopen the pages— but my phone rang before I had a chance. With a wince, I accepted the call.
“Hi, Lauren. How’s Paris?”
Lauren bypassed the pleasantries. “A friend just called to inform me that Jared walked into his bar ten minutes ago and ordered bottle service. Where the hell are you?”
“We had a fight and he bolted. Where is he? I’m hailing a cab now.”
“SoHo. I’ll text you the address. What are you fighting about?”
Thankfully, a cab pulled over for me and I opened the door. I told the driver to head towards SoHo before I said, “He’s mad because I told him I’m not going to screw him and he apparently expected it. So he took off to find some elsewhere.”
The cab driver raised an eyebrow and glanced back at me in his rear view mirror as I slunk down into the seat. I could practically hear her eye roll over the phone and I prayed that she would understand.
“Just get him out of there before he makes a fool of himself. All right?”
“Text me the address—I’m on the way.”
I ended the call before she could berate me and read off the address to the driver. I tapped my foot impatiently on the floor while I waited to arrive, hoping I’d get there before anything bad could possibly happen.
* * *
“ P rincess !”
Oh no.
What should have been a ten minute drive wound up taking forty, courtesy of a fender bender that had traffic backed up because the drivers refused to pull their cars from the road until the police arrived. I had held onto the hope that
Learning to Kill: Stories