The Chaperone

THE CHAPERONE COMPANIONS FOR HIRE NOELLE ADAMS CONTENTS About The Chaperone About Companions for Hire Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Epilogue Excerpt from An Accidental Fling About Noelle Adams This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. ABOUT THE CHAPERONE In need of extra money after a divorce, I take a job with Companions for Hire. I’m not any good at it. I’m too quiet. Too shy. Too uncomfortable with social situations. So when I’m assigned as a kind of chaperone for the teenage daughter of a single father on a month-long trip to Europe, I jump at the chance. It sounds simple and pays really well. I assume the girl will be spoiled and her father will be a workaholic, but neither of them are what I expect. Candice is bookish and withdrawn, and it’s a challenge to draw her out of her shell. But that’s nothing compared to what Hugh does to me. He’s smart and funny and dangerously attractive, and he keeps trying to get to know me. I shouldn’t want to get close to him. After my failed marriage, I’m not inclined to trust easily. Plus, getting close to him would be breaking the rules of my job. I work for Companions for Hire, which means sex is against the rules and falling in love is out of the question. The Chaperone is the second book in the Companions for Hire series about a company that provides a variety of social partners for a price. ABOUT COMPANIONS FOR HIRE Companions for Hire is an Atlanta-based company that provides a variety of social partners for a price. If you can pay their fee and any incidental expenses, they will provide a companion. Need a last-minute date for a wedding? A partner for a ballroom dancing class? A history buff to escort you through New England battlefields? A fluent French speaker for your trip to Paris? A fake boyfriend for a high school reunion? Companions for Hire can deliver—without any complications and without the underlying expectations of an escort agency. The one kind of companionship they don’t provide is sex. * * * The Companions for Hire series DATE FOR HIRE (prequel story, Aurora and Mike) THE GIRLFRIEND (Giselle and Steve) THE CHAPERONE (Danielle and Hugh) 1 The interview that could change my life is scheduled for three in the afternoon at a small, local coffee shop. I arrive at 2:44 and have to kill time by making four laps around the block so that I don’t walk in ridiculously early. It’s a wise decision because when I step inside at five minutes before three, I spot the man I’m supposed to meet, and he’s finishing his interview with someone else. Backing out the door before he notices me, I lurk outside the entrance, pretending to be checking something on my phone. Long ago, I developed strategies for handling my chronic earliness. In the five seconds I had to scan Hugh Barrett and the woman he’s currently interviewing, I’m able to make a few assessments. He looks like he’s in his forties. A businessman in a rumpled but expensive suit. The kind who schedules his day down to the minute and wastes as little time as possible. Surprisingly good-looking but otherwise what I expected. The woman is younger than me—probably in her early twenties—and she’s gorgeous with shiny dark hair, a dazzling smile, and a sharp sense of fashion and style. Unlike me, she’s typical for Companions for Hire and is probably very popular as a date or escort. I’ve worked for Companions for Hire for a few months and have only completed three jobs. Clients get to select their companion, and most rich people who are using an agency for a social partner won’t choose a divorced, quiet, and only moderately attractive twenty-seven-year-old. Twice I’ve escorted a sweet old lady to the opera because she doesn’t like to go alone, and once I had dinner with an Italian in his eighties who I’m convinced simply wanted to be seen on the town with a youngish woman and liked my strawberry blond hair. Not a particularly impressive work record with the company, an Atlanta-based business that’s done very well offering escorts for a fee to meet any need of their clients. Any need that isn’t sex. The one thing Companions for Hire doesn’t offer is sex. It’s the only reason I even considered applying to work for them when a friend from the university recommended it to help me with some extra income. I was shy and bookish as a girl. I was never one of the popular kids in school, and that aspect of my character has never altered. Even after I started college, got married two years later, and tried to build a life for myself as the wife of a successful optometrist, I always faded into the background. No one ever disliked me—except my ex after I told him I wanted a divorce—but no one ever sought me out. I’m not even in my thirties yet, but I’ve always felt older than that. When clients can choose between me and any number of gorgeous, stylish, charming young women, I’m never going to get a lot of offers. This job is different, however. Hugh Barrett is looking for a sensible woman to be a kind of companion/chaperone for his teenage daughter on an extended business trip to Italy. My relative attractiveness will be low down on the list of the qualities he’s seeking. That’s what I assumed anyway. But seeing that other woman he’s interviewing suddenly causes all my