“Are you a different person when you’re with me?”

“You mean, if I bumped into you when you’re not my client anymore, would I be a dick around you?” If she was no longer his client, she’d probably be with another man. He twisted his lips as a bad taste filled his mouth. “No.”

“Are you lying just to make me feel better?”

“Stella, I’ve never lied to you. You’re going to have to decide if you believe me.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the drive. He drove up the driveway to her smart, renovated cottage, complete with rosemary hedges and solar panels on the roof, and parked in the surgically sterile two-car garage. Once he turned off the car, her eyelids fluttered open.

“You’re home.”

She ran a hand over her sleep-matted hair. “I’m almost too tired to get out of the car.”

“I can carry you.”

She aimed a sleepy smile at him, clearly thinking he was joking.

“I’m serious.” The idea of carrying her to bed was highly appealing at the moment. He liked holding her, and as messed up as it was, he wanted to check boxes. He hadn’t gone this long without fucking in three years, and seeing Stella in that dress was giving him full-body blue balls.

“Don’t be silly.” She pawed her door open and stood up with movements that were clumsy even for her. When he locked the car and met her at the door to her house, however, her eyes were steady. “I don’t have energy for lessons tonight.”

“It doesn’t have to be lessons.” He trailed his fingertips down her arm, and her skin dotted with goose bumps. Her eyelids went heavy, her eyes sensual. Beautiful Stella. “I can just make you feel good.” He stroked over her palm, and her fingers unfurled, inviting him to touch. “You already paid for tonight, Stella.”

Her hand fisted shut, and she turned to face the door. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Please come in.”

• • •

After returning her shoes to their place in her coat closet, Stella padded past her beloved Steinway to her dining room, enjoying the feel of the cool hardwood on her aching feet. Michael followed behind her quietly, and she suspected he was noting how barren the space was.

No centerpiece adorned her dining room table. No artfully arranged place settings, either. There was nothing but . . . she didn’t know what kind of wood the table was made of, but it was soft. She ran her fingers over the satiny surface as she walked to the far end of the table where she usually sat. The chairs surrounding the dining table were the only ones in her entire house.

“Did you just move in?” he asked.

She pulled a chair out for him and rubbed her elbow awkwardly. “Not really.”

Instead of sitting down, he strode into the adjoining kitchen with his hands in his pockets, inspecting the gas range, the stainless-steel refrigerating units, and whatever else she had in the echoing space. Cold, gray, and cavernous, the kitchen was her least favorite room in her house. At least, it usually was.

It became a different place with Michael in it. The ambience turned intimate and inviting, and the low-hanging lights twinkled more like stars than energy-efficient LEDs. It no longer felt lonely.

“What does ‘not really’ mean? A month ago? Two?” He aimed a teasing grin at her as he asked, “A year?”

“Five years.”

His face went slack, and he stared at her house with new eyes. “So you like it empty like this?”

She shrugged. “I’m at the office most of the time, so it doesn’t bother me. Here, I have a bed, a nice TV, and really fast Internet.”

He shook his head and chuckled. “The essentials.”

“Is that too strange?” Like being a late talker or getting overstimulated at clubs?

“No, I think I like it,” he said with a smile. “You could use some art, though, and a couch or two. Maybe a coffee table. You don’t need much more than that.”

A knot formed in her throat. At that precise moment in time, when she had him standing in her kitchen, in her house, she felt like she didn’t need anything else in the whole world. And their time together was ending soon.

She wasn’t ready for that to happen.

“Would you mind sitting so we can talk?” she asked.

With a serious nod, he rounded the oversized center island and sat in the chair she’d pulled out. His proximity drew her like a magnet, and she seated herself before she could do something distracting like touch him. She needed to stay focused. Maybe if she spoke very eloquently, he’d agree to her new plan.

She rested jittery hands on the tabletop, and within seconds, her fingers started tapping.

A warm hand slid over hers and squeezed. “You never need to be nervous with me. You know that, right?”

When he didn’t remove his hand, she analyzed the way he made her feel. This was a casual, uninvited touch, the kind that normally made her want to crawl into herself. But all she registered right now was Michael’s warmth and the roughness of his skin, his weight. She didn’t understand it, but her body accepted him. Only him.

The realization made her mind sharpen with determination, and she gathered her courage and plowed ahead. “I’m issuing you a new proposal.”

He tilted his head in a measured way. “You mean you want to extend our lessons beyond next Friday?”

“I mean I don’t want lessons anymore. Our time together tonight—both the good parts and the . . . not-so-good parts—made me realize a few things. While I’m bad at sex, I’m even worse at relationships. I think I’m better off spending my time working on that. Before today, I never shared ice cream with someone or held hands while I walked down a sidewalk. I never had a dinner conversation that wasn’t filled with long stretches of painful silence or those embarrassing moments when I accidentally offend people and drive them away.”

He ran his thumb over her knuckles before he considered her with an unwavering gaze. “I didn’t see any relationship problems—except for when you tried to abandon me, but if I’d actually been kissing her, I would have deserved it. You did fine tonight.”

“That’s because I was with you.”

He thought that over for a pensive moment. “Maybe it’s because you feel like you’re in control when you’re with me. Because you’re paying me, there’s less pressure, and you can relax.”

“That’s not it at all. I relax with you because of the way you treat me, because you’re you,” she said with certainty.

His eyebrows drew together, and he went still for several breaths. “Stella, you shouldn’t tell me things like that.”

“Why? It’s true.”

Emotions crossed his face faster than she could read them. He shook his head, swallowed. A smile hinted at the edge of his lips before he withdrew his hand from hers to rub his jaw. He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out rough when he said, “Tell me about this new proposal.”

She stared down at the back of her hand, missing the warmth of his touch. “I want you to teach me how to be in a relationship. Not the sex part, but the together part. Like tonight. The talking and the sharing and the holding hands. New things are scary for me, but with you, I can handle them and even enjoy them. I want to hire you to be my full-time practice boyfriend.”

His lips parted, but he didn’t speak for the longest time. “What do you mean, ‘not the sex part’?”

“I want to take the sex out. I don’t want to be like that woman at the club and force you to be intimate with me. My hope is that if I get good enough at the together part of a relationship, a man won’t mind working on the sex part with me.”

“Who said anything about forcing?” he asked with narrowed eyes. “Everything I’ve done with you up to now has been voluntary.”

She suppressed a grimace and laced her fingers together so she couldn’t tap them. “The next time a man kisses me, I need him to do it because he wants to.” Without a monetary incentive. After seeing Michael with his ex-client, everything they’d done thus far left an unsavory taste in her mouth. Her reasoning when hiring an escort to teach her sex had been oversimplified. “I know you weren’t initially interested in doing repeat sessions, and my new proposal would require even more face time. Because of that, I’m willing to pay you fifty thousand dollars up front for the first month. Maybe we could try this for three to six months—at the same rate? Is that a good time frame for a practice relationship? Everything is negotiable, of course. I don’t know what the industry standard is for this type of arrangement.”