Chapter Nine
Andrew learned early in life that humor was one of the best ways to mask an awkward situation. Pulling up the jokes and distracting conversation when Susan hit too close to uncomfortable with questions about his past was instinct, but he recognized what he was doing as soon as the first words were out of his mouth. He was pretty sure little sister wasn’t as innocent as Mercy believed, but those moments when the pink dots formed on Susan’s cheeks short-circuited his off switch.
He slowed his step to watch her walk. It was a fantastic view. Her jeans hugged her ass, and she had a casual grace he’d rarely seen. The holiday lights sparkling like a million multi-colored stars surrounded her in an angelic-like glow.
“Serious question.” Her voice tugged him back to the conversation, and she paused to let him catch up.
“I can’t promise a serious answer with a lead-in like that, but I’ll try.”
“Why porn?” There was a brief hesitation when she said porn. It could have been a stutter or a catch in her throat.
He didn’t think either was the case. “Asking the question a different way than last time doesn’t mean you get a different answer.”
They reached the center of the plaza, where a high wall curved up to meet the second floor and created an amphitheater out of the bricks below. In the summer, it was an open fountain, with jets of water dancing toward the sky at random intervals. Now it was a crystal half-cave, glinting in Christmas lights and reflecting the full moon, and circled with benches. When she whirled to face him, her body flowed. She managed to turn the simplest step into a pirouette.
“I’m not the only one who’s asked,” she said. “You’ve got a stock reply. Easy answer is, I’m a guy; I like naked stuff.”
He frowned. He did have a party-version of the story on hand, specifically for questions like why porn.
“But I’m thinking you’re about twenty-eight, like Mercy,” Susan said.
“Yes. We’re the same age.”
“So you were my age when you kicked the whole thing off.”
“Which makes me sound ancient. It was only seven years ago.” Jesus. He felt like a dirty old man, lusting after someone so young. He’d hoped to hold out until forty or longer before that happened. That had to be it. He projected some sort of misplaced opportunity from his early twenties on her. Another reason to add to his Why Susan is Off Limits list, right under for Mercy.
She stuck out her tongue. “I can do the math. Thanks. My point is I haven’t finished school. I can’t get the job I want. My future is a huge blur. You’d already spent three years exploring the world, and you decided to build a billion-dollar empire because you like masturbation?”
“Yup. That’s how it happened. I woke up one day and said, I like naked people. So does everyone else. I’m going to be a billionaire.” He kept the teasing in his sarcasm.
“Exactly. You didn’t do anything like that. So, once again, why porn?”
“It was a bit like that, but I didn’t expect to make any money from it. Why do you want to know?”
She furrowed her brow and tilted her head to the side, studying him. “Because it’s about you.” She made it sound as if the answer was obvious.
He had no idea what to do with the statement. “It’s not this great and grandiose tale of victory and smart business.” No. This wasn’t how the script went. “When I first got to Argentina, I lied my way into a bed or fifty, saying I was a talent scout from the U.S. It was how I found places to sleep.” No, no, no. His version of how it happened was far flashier.
“Did women actually buy that?” She didn’t look disgusted or bothered. The same open curiosity she had the night of the wedding shone on her face.
“I’m pretty sure they didn’t,” came out instead of Always. I was a smooth mother fucker. Damn it. He didn’t know where he was in the script anymore. The problem was, he’d delivered it so many times, he wasn’t even certain what the truth was.
He could get close, though. “It was sleazy. It was effective as fuck. It didn’t matter they didn’t buy it, they liked the way I pulled the line off without flinching. I had a whole spiel, including a photocopied release form, in case they made my list. One day, someone called me on it. I’d drunk too much tequila, promised her all sorts of fame and fortune, and she wanted to see the site she was on. I wanted back in her bed in the near future, so I tossed a few pages together, convinced Mercy to hide them behind a login, and threw some of my other pictures up there, to make it look authentic.”
“Let me guess. This doesn’t end with you learning your lesson on account of her knowing the site was fake.”
“Not even close. We played out the ruse too well. Mercy did a bang-up job with the search-engine optimization. Landed the right keywords without meaning to. My photos were incredible, and suddenly our shitty payment portal and handful of images were bringing in money. Not much. It kept us in bus tickets, and hotel rooms instead of hostels. But God damn, if I didn’t get more tail than I thought possible, when I actually was the guy who owned that one adult site.”
Susan fiddled with the button on the cuff of her jacket, her gaze focused on the bricks.
An unfamiliar sensation tugged inside Andrew. Was he embarrassing her? Why did he care? “Anyway. From there, we spun it into a venture where I could pay other people. Mercy worked her magic, getting the various sites out there. I designed the layouts and set the fetish guidelines. The rest fell like pretty much any other business plan.”
“But you love what you do.” She looked up, and her gaze bored into him, as if she could read below the surface.
“Naked people and fucking. We covered that.”
“It’s more than that. You enjoy what it represents. Being open. Letting people express themselves.”