A Date to Remember

A Date to Remember

By

LeTeisha Newton

A Date to Remember

Copyright © October 2013, LeTeisha Newton

Cover art by Mina Carter © October 2013

Formatting by Bob Houston eBook Formatting

Amira Press

Charlotte, NC 28227

www.amirapress.com

ISBN: 978-1-627620-20-8

No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and e-mail, without prior written permission from Amira Press.

Dedication

To my family, who forever stands behind me in my goals. To my friends, who allow me to scream in frustration over the phone when I can’t get a scene right. To Brook, who continuously puts me on the right track, no matter what I say. And to my husband, who regularly, and quite convincingly, gives me so much research for my…hot scenes. Oh, love, keep the research coming!

Chapter One

“Just do me this favor. I swear I won’t ask you ever again.”

“Natalie, we both know that’s a lie.”

“Well at least you could have acted like you believed me for a few seconds.”

Samantha, usually called Sam by her friends and family, sighed as she watched her best friend of over a decade try to pout. It came across more like a child’s version of a fake cry—easily read through and yet somehow still effective. It was so unfair that Natalie could do that and still somehow look attractive. Sam would have looked like a cross-eyed fish out of water that was on its last gurgle. She sighed roughly, not that it would even work on Natalie anyway. She was the queen of getting her way, not being persuaded by others.

When Natalie had called her over for a dire emergency, Sam should’ve known better than to come running immediately without asking questions first. To Natalie, a broken nail could be rationalized as an emergency given the time, place, and surrounding circumstances. Sam could remember being called over for that exact reason just two weeks before. Somehow that broken nail was the end of the world, a governmental conspiracy to stop Natalie from leaving her house that day, and a premonition that natural nails were going to be extinct in the near future. Natalie hadn’t seemed very concerned with the fact that the disaster had taken Samantha away from a very important meeting with a client that she luckily had been able to schedule for the next day. Sam hadn’t talked to Natalie for a week after that one. This, however, was low, even for Natalie.

“You want me to be your replacement tonight with some old, smelly millionaire because your new boyfriend is starting to ask too many questions about your ‘night job’? Did I get that right?”

“In a nutshell. Please, Sam. You know I’m in love with my boyfriend, and I don’t want anything to mess this up.”

“Baby girl, you fall in love every three weeks with every boyfriend you have. You just like falling in love. That’s not a good answer for me anymore. It stopped being one after the first five times you used it.”

Okay, so that wasn’t very nice, but it was true. Natalie had an uncanny ability to fall in and out of love as quickly as it took her to change her clothing. It was the way she always had been. Sam wasn’t sure if the girl was shy about commitment, loved the idea of falling in love, or just wasn’t sure what the real emotion was. Either way the use of that four-letter word was a sore spot for Sam. She never seemed to do well with love herself. She rarely even got a chance to have a shot at it. She’d become accustomed to the lack of it in her life, even if a part of her envied the ease with which her friend could gain, maintain—and then toss when she was done—male attention.

“I can’t help that I just love men. It’s not my fault that they get me going in a way that you so obviously can’t understand. But this one is different. It really is. I am in love with the man, truly, madly, deeply, this time,” Natalie continued, bringing Sam out of her thoughts.

“The answer is still no.”

Natalie must have been losing her mind. There were a lot of things that she could have asked for and Sam would have done them without question, but she couldn’t do this. Natalie had become one of the highest-paid escorts for Madame Butterfly’s Beauties in the last four years she’d worked there. Every boyfriend had started and ended with that job lately, and each time Sam had been there to wipe her friend’s tears, as temporary as they may be. Sam wasn’t about to get sucked into a plan that spelled disaster. She and Natalie may look pretty similar, but that was where the likeness ended.

Yes, they both boasted thick coal-black hair that fell just under their shoulder blades, creamy cocoa skin, warm chocolate eyes, and a wide bow mouth, but where Natalie was a voluptuous vixen, Sam chose instead to bury herself in books and culture consulting. It was an odd job, but she was good at it. She spent her days teaching people about other cultures before their travels, or government classes on decorum and customs before their employees traversed the map. What she did not do was spend her evenings, and nights, entertaining men who would drool over her, lavish her with expensive gifts—like the Mercedes Natalie had gotten last year—and God knew what else could be going on. She didn’t ask, and Natalie didn’t tell. She believed her friend when she said all she did was tease these men or provide adequate arm jewelry when they needed it.

Either way, Sam didn’t fit the bill.

“Look, Sam, it’s just for one night. There is something different about Maddox. He makes me smile, really smile. My heart just stops every time he looks at me, and I think I may just have to let all of this go. I want to talk to him about it tonight, but I have this commitment. I don’t want to leave it on a bad note.”

“Can’t you reschedule?”

“Not with Joel Anderson. No one reschedules him, and the pay is ten thousand.”

“Did you just say ten thousand? As in dollars, not cents?”

“Ten thousand dollars. You take the job, you take the cash. Look, Sam,” she continued when Sam opened her mouth to argue, “I really need you on this. I want this with Maddox. I really do.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“As a heart attack. Scout’s honor.”

Sam had never seen quite that look on Natalie’s face before and felt her defenses starting to cave. She knew when Natalie was just trying to get her way and when something was really going on. Sam saw the seriousness now in her beloved friend’s face and wasn’t sure she could turn her down. At the same time, though, she wasn’t sure she could pull it off even if she wanted to. She wasn’t Natalie. Men didn’t gravitate to her. She never had that natural charisma that made people want to take notice of her. Sure, she was attractive, she knew that. She also knew there was more to beauty than a pretty face. If you had a lackluster way about you, people pretty much tended to ignore your looks after a while.

Sam knew that like the back of her hand.

“I can’t be you, Natalie. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Oh, don’t start that crap again. You are an amazing, beautiful woman whose smile lights up a room and whose walk makes everyone look. You just choose to downplay it. All your little hang-ups are in your head. I keep telling you to let them go and everything will be much different for you.”

“I like myself just the way I am. I make a good living, have my own home, my own car, no credit issues, and I am progressing successfully to thirty with no meltdowns. I think I’ve done well.”

“Baby, your life is boring as hell. It
would
be hell if I wasn’t in it, so don’t give me that, and don’t try to change the subject, Samantha Marie.”

“Uh-oh,” Sam grumbled hearing Natalie use what she had deemed her mommy voice. Whenever she said Sam’s name like that, it was trouble.

“I need your help, and I thought that your innate love for me, and the friendship that we have shared, would be enough for you to help me out on this one, but I see that I was obviously wrong on that, so let me see if I can go a different route on this one. If you don’t help me, that amazing, wonderful, delectable picture I have of you from Roni’s bachelorette party is going to see every social media Web site that I am on, a copy will be sent to your mom,
and
I will get a poster-size version just to plaster on your door. Do we have a deal?”

Samantha heard the scream of rage in her head, but she bit the inside of her cheek to stop it from escaping. Said picture had been a gag to keep her friend laughing long after the flame of being newly wed had worn off and they were old biddies talking about the good old days. It was
not
supposed to be used to blackmail her into something she couldn’t, and didn’t want, to do. No woman, no matter the circumstances, wanted a picture of her holding a huge neon-pink dildo in one hand to her buttocks, and an equally large red dildo to her lips for a sexy little kiss, sent to her mother or plastered on her door! She might be able to live down the social media, as she wasn’t on it much and wouldn’t really come across any close friends who would see it, but sending it to her mother and pinning it to her door wouldn’t be something she could avoid. She swallowed her “Screw you and the horse you road in on” comment and smiled, hopefully evilly, at her
so loved
friend.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me,” Natalie returned mutinously, waking up her phone and flicking over screens rapidly. After a few moments, she turned it around so that Samantha could see the accursed picture ready for Natalie to click “post.”

“Photo Center is my next stop.”

“You have to make it to the door first.”

“Hey, I took those Krav Maga classes with you, remember? Last time I checked, I could whip you. Are you in, or are you out?”

“This is not fair, Nat, and you know it.”

“All’s fair in love and war.”

Chapter Two

Sam still wasn’t sure why God hated her, but she was determined she would spend the rest of her life trying to make up for whatever it was. Her face still was warm from the sting of tweezers, eyelash curlers, some wax for good measure, dozens of makeup products, and a good-luck pat on the cheek just to give her a glow. If that was what Natalie had to go through on a daily basis just to get dolled up, then Sam was more than happy to say that she was not a makeup girl. Her feet were starting to ache in the four-inch heels Natalie had gotten her into, and she had to force herself not to pull at the hem of the short red dress she’d been stuffed into.

Of course, in her own mind, she could admit that she looked good. Natalie had done an excellent job, and somehow Sam had been transformed into a passable version of her friend. The candlelight in the exclusive restaurant, and her hair curled to flare around her, helped. Nothing, though, helped the nerves. She could feel her foot twitching under the table as she waited, a single white rose laid across her plate to let her date know who she was when he arrived.

According to Natalie, the date had given strict instructions for her to arrive fifteen minutes before him, to sit at the seat reserved for them, and then wait for him to arrive. Pompous ass. Sam never liked men like Mr. Anderson—men who knew they had money, loved to spend it, and didn’t quite care how they did it. It was enough that anyone would want to be near them, be them, and would bow to their every whim. Thomas Lauderman had been just like that. Sam trembled delicately as a cold chill rolled over her. She’d been so young, so naive, so in love, or so she thought.

Thomas, four years her senior, had swept her off her feet her freshman year in college. Studying East Asian studies at the time, the world had been new, full of possibilities, and, when she’d met Thomas, love. He’d been charming, someone who was struggling, like her, to make it through school and achieve his dream. They’d shared meals together on a college student’s diet of noodles and mac ’n’ cheese while helping each other study. He’d been pursuing mechanical engineering and had a whipcord-sharp mind that Sam had been fascinated with. She’d thought she had met her soul mate.