after her.
By the time they graduated, he had solidified his role as one of the smoothest brothers to ever walk the halls of Finley High. Monica’s accomplishment of being the one girl who didn’t give it up to him was mostly forgotten.
Their food was delivered after a rather long wait. Jovan thanked their waitress and dove into the meal, as if he hadn’t eaten anything all day.
“Damn,” Monica commented. “Are you starving, or is it that good?”
He swallowed before saying, “Both. I didn’t make it to the mixer in time for dinner, remember?”
“Yes. You were fashionably late – which worked out perfectly, because all eyes were on you when you got there.”
He looked up from his plate and smiled. “Were they?”
“You made quite an entrance,” Monica acknowledged. “The ladies at my table, you were all they cared about from the moment they saw you.”
He chuckled at that.
Monica raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re modest.”
He shook his head. “No. It comes with the business. Getting women’s attention is half the battle.”
Monica cut into her crepes. “You mean the modeling business or your other business?”
“I don’t really model anymore,” he stated. “I mean my other business.”
“Were you working tonight?” she wondered.
“I’m always working. Even if it’s only to make contact with a potential client, it’s working, flirting, whatever.”
She shook her head, smirking, as she devoured a bit of her food. It was good, definitely worth the wait. She said, “I was wondering how you go about that. If you meet a woman who likes you, how do you break the news to her that you charge for…” She looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping before she murmured the word, “ sex ?”
Jovan found her unease amusing. “It’s not the easiest thing to do,” he confessed. “It’s a feeling process. If I get a sense they wouldn’t be down for it, I won’t tell them at all.”
“And you won’t go out with them?”
“Sometimes I will,” he said. “I’m telling you, there’s no set of rules that works for every woman. Maybe I can’t tell her I’m an escort, but I can tell her I’m between jobs, and I need things; groceries, bill money, rent… But I’m hoping to streamline the process, to take the guess work out of it. I don’t like to scout potential clients. I need them to come to me, with no pretense in mind. That’s what I’ve been working on. That’s what I need you for.”
Monica was no longer shocked by what she was hearing, but every layer of Jovan’s story was fascinating. She’d never met a full-time gigolo – or at least not one who was willing to admit it.
“Tell me how this started.”
“It was a gradual process,” Jovan said as he continued his dinner. “It took twenty years of loafing and debauchery to get to this point.”
Monica laughed nervously. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. “You didn’t get a body like that from loafing…”
He shook his head, looking into her eyes. “No. I started working out real heavy when I got to Texas Lutheran. My mom paid for me to live in the dorms my freshman year. They paired me up with another freshman who was on the football team. He was from Louisiana. They gave him a full ride. He was always complaining about how much the team sucked. He thought I could make it as a redshirt, if I had any athletic skills at all.”
Jovan chuckled at the memory. “I never made the team, but I hung around them long enough to get acquainted with the weight room. The guys in there, the regulars, they knew all kinds of tricks for bulking up fast. A dude named Shannon took me under his wing. He was a hardcore lifter; shooting ’roids and everything. I never got into that, but I did the vitamins, protein shakes and weight gainers.
“I put on twenty-five pounds by the end of my freshman year. All