Page 2 of Destined To Fall

“So, big night, huh?”

I could question her about why she’d let my mother in, knowing all she knows, or I could take the out she’s offering. With the reminder of Marcus, all thoughts of my mother crumble to ash, and my grin returns.

For the next thirty minutes I tell her every glorious detail. Before I even finish the last of the juicy bits, she’s blushing like a schoolgirl and fanning her face.

“How did you manage walking up all those stairs after all that pounding?” She laughs at her own joke, and I shake my head, smirking.

Saving the icing on the sex cake, I take my clutch and dump the contents all over her lap.

“Oh my farking fuck. Did you rob a bank this morning? What the hell?”

“Nope, I’m not that clever.”

“You are, but that’s beside the point. Vi, this is what, thousands?”

“Five,to be exact. Well, minus the fifty I gave the cabby.”

“Holy fuck. Marcuspaidyou? For having sex with him? I knew you were a hot piece of ass, Vi, but fuck me. Five grand! I can’t…wait, I thought you said he knew you weren’t a pro…” She trails off, still dumbfounded.

“I’m going to make all our problems disappear.” I’m grinning so wide I’m about to split my face open.

“Oh yeah, how? By knocking yourself up and marrying the rock god?”

“God, no. I’m going to do what I do best and get paid a fucking fortune for it.”

Laura raises an eyebrow, not following.

“I’m going to be a high-class escort.”

Chapter One

My scream rents the air, ricocheting around the penthouse suite, drowning out the frantic thundering of my pulse and my ragged panting.

I lean back, my hands pressed to my chest as my heart all but jumps out of my body with how fast it’s racing.

“God, we were on form.” I laugh to myself, rolling off.

In my drunken, sex-hazed state, I roll to the wrong side and straight off the bed and onto the floor with an undignified thud, no doubt bruising my derriere in the process. The bemused face that greets me over the edge of the bed says nothing but titters lightly, looking as if he’s about to pass out any second.

Freshed and dressed, I am about to walk out the suite door when Antony stops me.

“I’m staying further. I will require you longer.”

“I’ll check my schedule.”

“I’ve cleared it with Laura already.”

“Of course you have.” I snort, shaking my head, and walk out of the suite.

The ride home is a drunken blur, and I fall into my apartment,cursing and cringing when my front door smashes against the wall. Still muttering to myself, I kick off my pretty torture devices and whimper as they clatter to the floor, the door slamming closed with a loud, reverberating bang.

Argh. My head, you moron!

It’s always the same when Antony comes to town, and I never learn, leaving my liver to take one—or six—for the team on more nights than I care to count. The filthy—in more ways than one—rich, Italian-born businessman and I met over five years ago at an invite-only function in New York. It was a hell of a feat to get one of those prestigious little gold cards, yet I was dreading going. The nerves were going to kill me, but I needed to be there, so Laura, now my manager-slash-personal organizer extraordinaire, insisted. A smorgasbord of potential clients ripe for the taking was not something I could pass up.

It turned out to be the biggest snooze-fest. A pap smear with a ninety-year-old doctor would have been more stimulating than that soiree—that was until the most alluring man in the room singled me out.

Antony cut to the chase—I’ve always loved that in a man—coming up behind me at the bar to whisper in my ear. His thick Italian accent sent shivers down my spine as he said the four magic words.

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