Page 28 of The Blame Game

“What was I supposed to do?” Shea asked irritably, shifting to flip on his side to get a better look at her and nearly falling onto the floor. Damn. They needed a bigger couch. “Leave his shit in the apartment and let him get caught? Isn’t that risking everything too?”

“Well, I meant your life,” she said, draining the last of the wine from her glass. “But yes, it would be risky too.”

This afternoon, once the car service had returned Shea to the apartment in the Leslieville neighborhood he shared with Audra, he’d been trying to deal with the chaos this fire had caused in his own life.

God, how could he have been stupid enough to leave a burner on?

Dom had been as good as his word though, and a shiny new phone had arrived quickly on Shea’s doorstep. He’d used it to contact his manager at the physical therapy clinic. A few well-timed coughs had sold the story and he now had a few days off to deal with the rest of the shit he was trying to juggle.

Shea had also spoken to his manager at Select Image Consulting and she’d been sympathetic but concerned about the potential ramifications for the company. She’d said she’d need to speak to the owner but, for now, there was little else he could do.

Truthfully, he wasn’t even sure if the woman who was the figurehead of the company was the actual, legal owner.

It wasn’t like services like theirs held annual company picnics or anything.

And the blurring of lines between the legitimate services and the less than legitimate ones made it a hell of a lot more complicated.

Audra leaned forward, placing her glass on the coffee table, her forehead creasing with worry. “Is this whole moping thing because you think you won’t see him anymore?”

Shea gave her a half-hearted shrug. “We talked earlier about which PR plan we’re going with, so I know I’ll see him a few times.”

“And that is?” She poured more wine into her glass then held the bottle questioningly over his empty one.

He waved away the offer. “Dom’s agent will release a statement explaining that I’m his stylist, he crashed on the couch, he was helping out a friend, blah, blah.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “And what does that mean for your future ‘appointments’ with him?”

“I have no idea. We are going to plan a couple of outings together. As the team’s PR person called them, ‘bro dates’.”

Audra snickered. “Something very masculine and heteronormative.”

“Precisely. And one of us needs to be seen with a woman. Presumably Dom.”

“And you’re jealous?”

“What? No.” Shea gave his roommate a weird look. “Why would I be jealous? No matter who she is, he’s not going to be interested in her. That man isn’t even a little bit sexually flexible. Trust me, if he was, he’d have run with it long before now.”

“Ahh. Because I was going to say I could do it. Be his beard at the event, I mean.”

Shea nodded. “I considered asking you if you would.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” she said with a smile. “That he’s gay and you’re …”

Shea rubbed his face. “Ugh. I don’t know what I am.”

The truth was, until Shea and Audra became friends and she recruited him to become an escort, he’d been one hundred percent sure he was straight.

Though recruited might be too strong of a word.

They’d had a few classes together during their undergrad at University of Toronto, worked on a group project together, then started hanging out outside of class.

After months of him whining and moping about bills and how he wasn’t going to be able to afford grad school, she’d subtly tested the waters of what he thought about being paid for sex.

The subtlety had gone straight over his head and, at first, he’d been dumb enough to think she was hitting on him.

He’d been totally into the idea and it still embarrassed him to think about her laughter when she turned him down. “Oh, sweetheart, you are so not my type,” she’d cackled.

But she had offered him a lifeline.

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