by L. Steele
Jace nods.
"Your methods are unorthodox, to say the least. I love you like a brother, have always stood by your choices, but this time you've gone too far." Eric's voice has an edge to it.
It's Jace's turn to frown. His eyebrows slash down over his nose.
"It didn't cross your mind that what you are doing is bizarre?" Eric asks. "Manipulating someone into accompanying you, and then agreeing to give her a million dollars? That wipes out the remaining funds in the business. Not to mention that the ethics of it are highly questionable."
Jace's muscles tense. A part of him agrees with Eric's rationale. In fact, put like that, it sounds a bit crazy, even to him.
"I didn't manipulate Sienna." Jace insists. "I made a business proposition, and she accepted. Besides, the million will pay for itself manifold. Just the first installment of my inheritance runs to five billion."
Eric whistles. "Serious money. I can see why you're trying to pull of this crazy stunt. Of course it all depends on your gamble paying off. If it does."
"When it pays off," Jace insists with more confidence than he actually feels.
He'd gone with his gut, made the offer to Sienna. Jace had staked their last million on this play. He'd know soon whether it'd work or not. The last thing he wants to do is discuss the ethics of his actions.
"Let me do this my way. Give me a chance to bail us out of this mess," he says, voice uncompromising.
"That's what you said the last time." Eric's voice is wry; his face wears a half-smile.
"And I pulled through then," Jace reminds his business partner.
Eric steeples his fingers over the whiskey glass. "Careful, Jace." His voice is serious. "You're treading a thin line. You never know when your next play may be your last."
And that's the biggest difference between the two of them.
No matter what the challenge, Jace has an innate confidence that he'll overcome it. Perhaps it was blind faith born of always having a safety net, a back-up in his Dad's money, as Eric often remarked. But Jace knows it's more than that. He has an inherent belief in himself and in the idea that things meant to come to him would ultimately find their way.
And those things that didn't come to him? Well, they simply weren't meant to be.
Unlike Eric, who had a knack of underestimating himself. He preferred to believe in the worst possible outcome.
Eric called it being 'realistic.' A mindset that often stopped him from taking risks.
One Jace doesn't subscribe to.
Damian and Arpad arrive with their drinks, interrupting Jace's train of thought and sliding into their cramped booth.
The four clink glasses.
"What are we toasting?" Damian asks.
"To London." Eric is the first to go, voice sardonic.
"Who's going to London?" Arpad demands.
"Jace is, for a business transaction. Which means as his business partner, I am, too, to ensure he stays out of trouble," Eric replies, humor in his voice.
Jace inclines his head, accepts the criticism.
"And you, Arpad, what are you toasting to?" Jace asks.
"To sassy women who get under my skin," Arpad says, voice wry.
"Do they also happen to head up their own security companies?" Damian grins.
Arpad makes a gun with his fingers, mimes shooting him.
"And you, Damian?" Eric asks.
"To sex, women and rock shows. May the ride continue."
Jace is the last to raise a toast. He hesitates, choosing his words with care.
"To rolling the dice, one last time."
Eric chuckles. "Good luck, amigo."
As they clink glasses, Jace wonders why, despite his best intentions, he can't get rid of this sinking feeling that he's going to lose this time.
5
Sienna
Two days later
When my alarm goes off, I sit up with a start. My first thought is that I am going to see him today.
Silver-green eyes. Sardonic voice. The strength in those shoulders. Merely thinking of him sends a curl of heat rising in my belly.
And I plan to spend an entire week with him?
I swear aloud. I'll never be able to resist him.
Is it too late to call it all off?
As if in answer, an email pings in my inbox. Reading the subject, I wince. It's from the landlord, reminding me I owe him last month's rent on the office.
And then there's Bella.
It'd been stupid of me to think I could manage it all. If only I could turn the clock back. Back to before I'd left home. Before my adoptive father died in an accident and I'd sworn to take care of my sister.
My throat tightens. I'm well and truly trapped.
Conceding defeat is not an option. Not unless I have exhausted every single possibility of being funded. And strange as this offer is, it still means securing the money.
It's this or becoming homeless. Perhaps I should have considered that waitressing job at the corner coffee shop? Even as I think of it, I abandon that idea. Not practical.
But spending a week with a strange Angel Investor is?
Besides, I've committed already. I must go through with it. And hope I can resist him. Resist that powerful pull to him that has me in thrall.
Bracing myself, I place my feet on the floor. A gentle hammering starts in my head and I groan aloud, cursing the cheap wine from last night. That’s all I need now, a hangover.
By the time I finish a quick shower and am on my second cup of coffee, I feel almost human. The intercom buzzes.
I'm not ready to face my future, yet here it is.
Wheeling my suitcase out of the building, I barely register the chauffeur who springs to attention and takes it from me. I slide into the back seat, but Jace doesn't even look up or acknowledge me. He continues staring at his tablet.
Annoyed at being ignored, I look out of the window as the limo pulls away. Still, my eyes find their way back to him. Faded jeans, tan loafers. A leather jacket hangs on the peg next to him.
He's wearing a T-shirt, short sleeves reveal the beginnings of a tattoo on his right bicep.
Tattoo?
It only adds to his reputation of being eccentric, hints at a misspent youth. Curious, I follow the design, which sweeps up, disappearing inside the sleeve only to reappear, peeking above the neckline.
A strange intricate design, letters in a language that I vaguely recognize.
It's Hindi.
A language I'd heard growing up in Bombay. Faint images of those years often come back.
A woman's laughter.
Tinkling of anklets.
Echoes of voices. Words I don't understand, but often I feel their underlying emotions.
I blink and shake my head to clear it, and when I take a breath to calm myself, the smell of sea air, fresh, tangy flows over me. Desire unfurls in the pit of my stomach.
Before I can question why he has a tattoo in the language of my birth country, he says, "Good morning."
His voice slides over my skin, sinking in. It accelerates the slow burn inside, and all other thoughts go out of my head.
Ridiculous, this reaction to him.
I grunt, not trusting myself to speak. Instead, close my eyes behind my sunglasses and lean back against the seat.
"Hungover, are we?" His tone is mild, humor lurking beneath the words.
The patronizing 'we' in his sentence grates on my nerves. I'm about to retort, but he's already turned back to his tablet, frowning at it.
Spying the stock market reports up on his screen, I say, "Busy, are we?" I try to mirror the same degree of boredom I heard in his voice.
Fail.
I just come across as interested in what he's doing.
He replies without looking up from the screen, "We have an IPO coming out—" He stops mid-sentence, as if losing track of his thoughts. Opening up a fresh window on his tablet, he composes an email. I don't want to snoop but can't take my eyes of his fingers flying ove
r the keyboard.
Long, tapered fingers.
Sensitive fingers.
How would they feel on my skin?
A little shiver runs down my back.
Firing off the email, he sets aside the tablet. His eyes sweep over me. I'd pulled on my oldest T-shirt in defiance. Refusing to dress up for him. A last stance at rebelling.
Stupid.
The T-shirt is comfortable. Also threadbare. When his eyes alight on my breast, my nipples harden. I'm sure they are outlined against the thin material.
I'd made sure I'd shopped using his credit card. A lot. Yet, by the end of my little expedition, I was nowhere near maxing out the credit card. So, I'd called the bank to ask for the limit. The amount had made my mouth go dry. I could have shopped all year and still not hit that number. Even thinking about the kind of money this man is made of makes my head spin. It also makes me wary. Men with such money are used to buying, owning. Possessing. Like he owns me now for the next few days.
The sunlight pours through the window, draping his shoulders, picking out hints of silver in those silver-green eyes. I take in the breadth of his shoulders, the shirt stretching across his chest and down over his stomach―which would be flat. Hard.
Desire pools in my chest, making it difficult to breathe.
"Like what you see?" he drawls.
"Do you?" I snap back.
His eyes light up with a strange gleam, and he looks over me again. This time deliberately lingering on my lips, the swell of my breasts, and then pointedly at the apex of my thighs.
His gaze sweeps down my jean clad legs before coming back up to rest on my face.
A dense pulse of heat from him reaches out to me.
He's aroused. And by the time he's done checking me out, I am too. That slow burn in my belly throbs.
He hadn't been gentle when he looked this time.
He won't be a gentle lover. The thought comes unbidden to my mind. I bite my lips, stay silent.
He pauses, wringing out the silence, stretching my nerves before replying, "Very much."
His voice is serious, no trace of humor in it.
He wants me.
Wants to take me right now, right here.
The blood rushes to my cheeks. The space between us seems to shrink, and I have this sudden urge to reach out and touch him.
"Stop it."
"What?" His voice is innocent.
"This." I point to the space between us. "Stop turning on that charm, trying to seduce me with your eyes."
He laughs, sounding startled. "Does it make you uncomfortable?"
There's a hint of curiosity and something almost animalistic in his voice. As if he's found a weakness and will not hesitate to use it against me.
I shrink back a little from him and try to pull my thoughts together. He reads me too easily. I must learn to hide my emotions better.
"What do you think?" I ask, my voice neutral.
"I think you have a vivid imagination." The edge of his lips lift in a half-smile. He takes my hand, holding it for a second longer than necessary.
The warmth from his fingers seeps into my skin, flowing through my blood. My cheeks go warm. Pulse racing, I tug away from his hand and he lets go.
Looking at the screen of his tablet, he touches it, then hands it to me. "There, the money's in your account," he says.
Sure enough, the transfer has gone through. Half a million dollars. The most money I have seen in my life.
My gut churns. I hand the tablet over to him, swallowing down the bile that threatens to rise.
Bella is going to be fine. And I should have enough to see off the worst of the creditors. Jace has bought me a month at least.
I'm about to mutter a thank you when he says, "I have one condition."
His voice is deceptively quiet. Too quiet.
"What?" I growl.
"Regardless of what you see and hear over the next few days, you'll fulfill your end of the bargain. You'll stay with me, see this one through to the end."
I bite my lips.
That's what he asked for already, isn't it? Except this time there is an urgency to his voice, as if this is important to him. So important perhaps his future depends on it, too.
Even as the thought strikes me, I almost reel from the intensity in those silver-green eyes. They burn with a fierceness I haven't seen before.
I nod, wordless.
For the first time, I realize the seriousness, the sheer stupidity, of the situation.
I can't back out now.
No doubt Jace will stick to his word, and not force me to sleep with him. The question is, can I resist the temptation to seduce him?
6
Sienna
“Sienna?”
The soft smell of the pine and cloves wafts over me. I lean into it.
The voice calls again. This time there's a touch of humor in it, which cuts through the layers of sluggish sleep.
I come awake in an instant, to find him watching me.
The green in his eyes swirl, drawing me in. He leans in to touch my cheek and a shudder runs through me, breaking the spell.
"Jace?" My voice comes out rough.
I clear my throat to dispel the remnants of sleep.
He doesn’t reply. His breath ruffles my hair, shuddering over my skin.
I want to touch his hair, his lips. Run my hands over the skin of his neck.
His eyes dilate into pinpricks of green. Then he's moving back and out of the car.
I blink, look out the window. We're parked on a runway. I've slept through the short ride.
Heaving my bag over my shoulder, I follow Jace to the small plane, gleaming silver in the sunlight. Up a small flight of steps into the door. When I walk in, my feet sink into the carpet, muffling the sound from my sneakers.
"Hello."
I look up in surprise at the man who appeared in front of me.
"Didn't mean to startle you," he says.
He's a comfortable height so I can look at him without having to crane my neck. Brown hair tops his pleasant face crinkled in a wide smile.
"I'm Eric."
At the question on my face he chuckles. A friendly sound. One that warms my heart and makes me trust him immediately.
"Guess Jace neglected to tell you I was coming along." His exasperated tone makes me smile.
The tension in my shoulders dissipates. "You're coming to London with us?"
Eric nods. "Bet you're relieved not to be on your own with that." He points toward Jace now seated at the back of the small plane, head bent over his tablet already.
"You have no idea." I lower my voice to match his.
"Don’t worry, I'll protect you from the evil beast." His mock-serious words prompt a nervous giggle from me.
Jace looks at us, and then stares at Eric, who stiffens.
Something passes between them. A light touch on my shoulder as Eric guides me to one of the comfortable twin seats opposite Jace.
Eric takes the seat behind me.
As the door to the plane slams shut, I cringe. This is it.
When the plane begins to taxi, I feel as if I'm leaving behind everything familiar. Comfortable. Boring.
I'm shedding the girl from small town Gainesville who had come to Silicon Valley chasing a dream.
Now I am a woman of the world, en route to London, with a boyfriend who loves her.
Except that's not true either.
Truth is, I'm going to a city halfway around the world, with a man I barely knew. And who's going to expect sexual favors of me.
What does that make me?
A fake girlfriend?
A call girl for hire?
No. Just someone desperate to do right by her family and her employees. Someone who had bet it all on an idea and lost. I'd been so confident that I could make it happen. I had never even given thought to what would happen if it all went wrong.
Optimist that I was. Or plain foolish, really. And now I must pay the price. My
stomach rolls a little as the flight takes off and I grip my seat, to stave off the sickness rising to my throat.
"Cold feet?"
Jace is perceptive all right. He'd had to be to make it this far in the business world.
"If it's any consolation, I haven't done anything like this before." He sounds a little taken aback himself.
I want to trust the authenticity of his words.
No way. He's a master manipulator, is all. He's trying to win me over, relax the tension between us so our relationship feels more genuine to his family.
"No," I snap, "just realizing this is how the other half lives."
"You mean the plane?" He looks around him. "Merely trappings."
He raises his shoulders and the movement stretches his T-shirt across his chest.
My eyes are at once drawn to the tattoo that peeks out above the neckline. I resist the urge to follow the shape of the corded neck muscles toward his chin. Instead, I stare out the window as we continue to climb, tearing through the clouds.
"It's okay to look." Sliding the tablet into the sleeve set against the wall, he reaches toward me.
I shrink back.
He leans close, and my breath catches in my throat.
Fresh pine, and sweet cloves. He smells wild and earthy. Sensual. I can see the creases at the edges of his eyes. That full lower lip that hints at hidden depths, invites me to sink my teeth into it.
And before I can stop myself, I lean forward to do exactly that. When he snaps my seatbelt into place with a resounding click, I jump, blinking in surprise.
Jace leans back, eyes gleaming.
Oh. He enjoyed that little trick.
My nails bite into my palm. I will not slap him again. Will not.
The sun's rays slant through the window, blinding me for a second. Then the plane breaks through the clouds, and levels out. Now we glide, the difference startling after the bumpy ride of the few seconds ago.
"Your first trip to London, right?" He asks.
"You went to boarding school in England, didn't you?" I respond.
Question for question. Only fair.
That gets his attention.
"Did some research of my own." I pause. "Google search."
