The Boyfriend Rental service

Chapter 6: What the Night Left Behind

She couldn't sleep.

She'd tried — changed, washed her face, lay in the dark for twenty minutes. None of it worked. The evening kept replaying in pieces. Claire's hand on Caleb's arm. Her own hand on his afterward, which she hadn't planned. The way the room shifted around them like they were something worth paying attention to. Richard's face across the room, which had been satisfying in exactly the way she wanted and somehow less satisfying than she expected.

And then outside before the car came.

She'd looked at his mouth. Brief and involuntary and almost certainly unnoticed.

She reached for her phone.

Vanessa answered on the second ring.

"Tell me everything," she said.

So she did. The event, Richard and her father trying to corner him, the way Caleb had handled it without raising his voice. Vanessa laughed in the right places.

"And after?" Vanessa said.

"After what."

"The rest of the night."

"It was good. People responded well to him."

"People or you."

"Both," Sophia said. "It doesn't matter."

"You called me at midnight to talk about him. It matters."

Sophia said nothing.

"Just be careful," Vanessa said, her voice warm but precise. "Men like that know exactly what they're doing."

"He's been completely professional."

"That's what makes them dangerous." A pause. "Get some sleep."

She hung up.

Sophia lay back and stared at the ceiling.

Outside before the car came.

She told herself to stop thinking about it.

It took a while.

Danny was still up when I got home.

"Well?" he said.

"Went fine."

He looked at Marcus at the kitchen table. "He said fine."

"I heard," Marcus said without looking up.

"Richard and her father tried to corner me," I said, getting water. "Handled it. She was good. Room responded well."

Danny studied me. "You're quiet."

"I'm always quiet."

"Quieter than your quiet." He tilted his head. "What happened."

"Nothing happened."

Marcus finally looked up. "Leave it Danny."

Danny let it go, which meant he was saving it for tomorrow.

I went to bed.

Lay there for a while thinking about her hand in mine and neither of us making a decision about it. The look on her face outside before the car came. The way she'd stepped in with Claire — not because the job required it.

I thought about calling my mother. Checked the time and didn't.

She'd ask how work was and I'd say fine and she'd tell me something small about her day and I'd feel better for ten minutes. She'd done that my whole life. Just the two of them. The man who should have been there somewhere in the background of everything neither of them said out loud.

I turned over and eventually slept.

Richard sent everyone home and sat alone in his study.

His assistant arrived at half past midnight and opened the laptop between them.

"Caleb Hayes," he said. "Twenty four. Queens born and raised. Runs a small arrangement service with two friends, been going about two years." He scrolled. "Before that nothing remarkable. Took care of his mother mostly."

"His mother," Richard said.

"Single parent. Raised him alone." He turned the screen slightly. "Her name is Diana Hayes. Previously Diana Mercer. Mid forties. Originally from the Bronx."

Richard looked at the name.

The room didn't change. The city outside kept doing what it did at midnight.

But something shifted in him that he hadn't felt in a long time.

Diana Mercer.

He hadn't thought about that name in over twenty years. He'd left the Bronx at twenty five with a plan and never looked back because looking back was for people who hadn't decided yet. He'd decided. He'd built something. He'd walked out of a small apartment and told a woman he wasn't coming back and he hadn't.

He set his glass down.

His assistant said nothing. Knew better.

Richard looked at the name. Then at the photo of Caleb beside it.

The jaw. The build. The thing that had been sitting wrong in him all evening suddenly sitting very still and very clear.

"Close it," he said.

His assistant closed the laptop.

"Tell no one."

"Of course."

He left.

Richard sat alone in the quiet.

Diana Mercer had a son.

Twenty four years old.

Richard Ashford was very good at mathematics.