Page 3 of Playboy For Hire

“Tough crow’,” Ashley said, glaring out at everyone. Then her gaze fell on her sister and Richard. “S’just jokin. Li’en up. Fishdick’s small, and Carina’s…s’not shrimpy, ‘as for sure. No, not ‘Rina. ‘Rina’s jus’ a big, ‘luptuous, well fed, fat ol’...” Ashleypaused here, grinning, her eyes glinting with pleasure as she scanned the room. “Fat ol’ brain,” she finished, then broke into a high-pitched laugh. “Fat ol’ brain. Betch’ all thought s’gonna say some’n diffruh.”

That was it. I couldn’t let her keep going. I shook off my shock and started walking as I called to her.

“Ashley, honey, why don’t we let someone else have a turn at giving a speech. Come on, hand the mic back to—”

I stopped, trying and failing to come up with the maid of honor’s name. I’d just been introduced to her an hour ago, why couldn’t I remember it?

Ashley’s eyes lit up when she saw me. “S’my boyfriend! Say’lo to Ryder, evbuddy. My sweet, sexy, ‘spensive boyf—” she stopped and hiccupped “—riend. Innee hot?”

I heard a chair scrape on the other side of the room and saw Ashley’s father stand up. I had to make it to the microphone before he did. I didn’t trust what Ashley would say if she talked to him right now. Not just more shit about Carina. She might say something she shouldn’t about me.

Heartbreakers Anonymous’s biggest strength is just that—we areanonymous. We’ll be your wedding date, your corporate gala plus one, even the guy—or gal—you hire to flirt with your husband and prove he’s cheating on you. But that only works as long as each of us stays incognito. I don’t even have any social media accounts.

Our site has profiles for each of us, but the pictures are artfully cropped and angled so that you’re never looking at us straight on. We work with some pretty powerful, high-profile clients. Ifit ever got out that they’dhiredsomeone for a date, there’d be a shitstorm for sure.

We weren’t sex workers. That was the number one rule Dana and Mason hammered into you when you came onboard.No sleeping with clients. It was explicit on the website too, and in the literature we gave to each client who booked with us. What we were doing wasn’t illegal, but sleeping with clients would be.

Ashley had already embarrassed herself more than enough for one night, but now she’d slipped and called me expensive. Wouldn’t take much more for her to mention the company’s name, and then Dana would be pissed. Mason would too, but his sister was more of a hardass than he was.

Heartbreakers Anonymous got almost all our clients via word-of-mouth recommendation. We weren’t optimized for search results, weren’t advertising in the Washington Post. We were discrete, and Dana and Mason were determined that we would stay that way.

“Come on, honey,” I said, reaching the front of the room. “Don’t you wanna get out of here anyway?”

“Sssweet, n’he?” Ashley continued as I joined her on stage. “D’never know I paid good money to—”

She broke off when I swung my arm around her waist, my free hand going to the microphone. I tried to pull it from her grasp without sending too much feedback careening through the room.

“Babe, come on. Give the mic back and we can go somewhere a little more private, huh? Just you and me.” I smiled my most seductive smile and whispered just to her, “I wanna get you out of that dress.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Hell, it wasn’t true at all. But I was trying to help her save face, and the best thing I could come up with was for me to look like I was still really, really into her.

What I didn’t count on was Ashley’s reaction. She turned and brought the mic back to her lips.

“See’at, lays’n genmen? S’one fine spesmin man right there, n’he wants me. ‘Otter’n Rishfish. S’way bigger’nm too. Not shrimpy. S’a marlin. A blue fin fuckn—show you.”

With that, she reached for the waist of my tuxedo, searching for the zipper. I jumped back, and she started to topple, her high heels wobbling at the edge of the stage. I reached out to steady her as she reached for my crotch—and punched me in the balls with the microphone.

I folded over, letting out a howl of pain, which the microphone picked up all too well.

“Ryder? Ry’er!” Ashley wailed. “You’kay? You ‘urt? Mm-god, wha’penned?”

What happened? You just attacked my balls with a microphone, that’s what happened.But again, I strove to keep things calm.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” I tried to wave her away. “Just need a minute.”

But Ashley wasn’t interested in giving me one.

“May’tup you,” she said.“S’lemme helm. Mayou feel berr.”

With that, she dropped to her knees. I yelped again, this time in horror, as she grabbed my hands and pulled them away from my crotch.

“What the hell are you—” I began, but Ashley cut me off.

“D’need s’where private. Ssshow you priva’ s’right ‘ere. Show’m how I—”

“That’senough,” another voice cut in.

I looked up from fending off Ashley’s advances to see that her father had joined us on the stage.

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