InnocenceForSale.com/Jane (Innocence For Sale Book 3)

by Ada Scott

  “Yum, Italian is my favorite,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  “Is this what you do? Are you one of those celebrity chefs? Sorry if I should know that, I don’t watch those shows.”

  “Me? Hell no, I’m amateur at best. I mean, like you, my food has never killed anybody, but I’m more a… serial entrepreneur. I build businesses from the ground up with a view to sell them after they’re established.”

  “Really? How does that work?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, I dunno, I guess it seems strange to sell a business that’s working well. I assume they’re working well when you sell them, I mean.”

  “Yep, you get a better price for those ones rather than a business that resembles a plane heading toward a mountain. It might be counterintuitive to a degree, but think about it like this. No company can ever replicate to the kind of growth it experiences when starting from scratch, if you know what you’re doing from the start. I like to run businesses during periods of maximum growth, whatever business that may be.”

  I ate some of my pasta while I listened. “Mmm, it’s good. I guess that makes sense.”

  “How about you? The site said you’re a waitress and caregiver?”

  “Yeah. I know it’s not as glamorous as the other girls on there, but it’s hard to find something else to do back home. I’m trying to find another job.”

  “Where is back home?” he asked.

  “Um… sorry, I’m not supposed to say.”

  “Oh, right, well, what kind of job are you after?”

  I laughed. “I’m open to suggestions. I like to draw, so if I could choose then I’d love to get into something in art or design.”

  “That’s great. There’s a lot of opportunities. In design, at least. I don’t really know how the art world works.”

  “Hopefully.”

  “What kind of caregiver are you?”

  “Oh, that’s not exactly a job, but it takes up some of my time so Ada put it on there. I help out my mom because she’s in a wheelchair. She’s pretty self-sufficient, but needs help with some things, you know, we live out on a farm and not everything is perfectly smooth so sometimes she just needs somebody there to push her around.”

  “Your dad’s not…?”

  “He’s not around,” I said quietly.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s OK.”

  Kris and I talked as we ate pasta and sipped wine. We seemed to be in a reverse-race to see who could make their single glass last the longest, as he made sure to not drink his any faster than me.

  He was easy to talk to, which was another surprise for me given the situation and how much older than me he was. I tried to guess his age. Late thirties? A young-looking forty-something?

  After we’d finished our food and had been talking for about an hour, I finished off the last sip of my wine and grew quiet, looking over at him on the other side of the table.

  I lucked out here. Kris was a hypnotically handsome man with a wealth of experience. Maybe it was the wine talking, but he made me feel kind of funny, like some of the butterflies from the riot in my stomach had moved between my legs. All that and he was going to save my family’s farm.

  With a napkin, I dabbed at the corners of my mouth to make sure I wasn’t about to do this with any hint of green pesto on my face. Setting it down, I took a deep breath and stood up before circling around the table.

  Kris swiveled his body slowly to face me as I moved, my fingertips trailing along the edge of the table. Our eyes locked, like they had that first moment in the airport, and I sunk to my knees in front of him, pushing his legs apart.

  I shuffled forward, resting my forearms on his thighs, feeling the taut muscles of his quads bulging there, and looked up at him. Under his intense gaze, I felt like I was already almost naked.

  “I’ve never done this before, but I want to try, OK?” I asked, reaching for the zipper of his pants.

  I looked down and my breath caught in my throat as I could plainly see the outline of his cock semi-hard down one leg of his pants. It clearly dwarfed what little I’d seen of Anthony’s as it disappeared inside Rochelle.

  With another gulp, I slowly continued to reach for his zip. Could I even open my mouth wide enough to take that?

  The instant my finger touched his zip, Kris seemed to startle out of a trance. He grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away.

  “Hey, we’ve got all week. There’s no need to rush things. Why don’t we call it a night and we’ll see each other early tomorrow?”

  “Um… you… well, OK. If that’s what you want. Uh… do you want some help with the dishes or something?”

  “No, the maid will take care of it in the morning,” he said.

  Kris stood and helped me to my feet. I held on to his hands, stopping him from pulling away, and put them on my hips. His hands were so big I wondered how close he was to being able to make his fingertips and thumbs touch around my waist.

  “You know it’s OK to touch me, right?” I said.

  “I know.” His eyes were a window into a tempest of desire.

  “Good. Well, goodnight, Kris. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

  Ada coached me on all the right things to say, but I really meant this one.

  Kris

  After a night plagued by dreams about Amy, I worked out some frustrations in the building’s gym and had the coldest shower I could handle. By the time I returned, the maid had been and gone but I didn’t see any sign of Amy yet.

  I dropped my bag and stood still for a moment. In the silence I could just make out the sound of the shower running in Amy’s en suite. My mind tormented me by flashing images of beads of water running down her smooth, naked, body.

  It didn’t help knowing that I could just barge into that shower, grab her by her hair, throw her on the bed and fuck her to my heart’s content. If I won this bet, I was going to have to come up with something that would make Kevin’s life hell for a while to pay him back for this.

  It was a fucking crime to have to send Amy away at the end of the week without having had my cock in her. I sat at the breakfast bar, poured a bowl of cereal grumpily and munched on it as if it was a voodoo doll in Kevin’s image.

  Behind me, the door to Amy’s room opened. I looked around to see Amy walking in my direction, wearing a bathrobe. This was the first time in my life I’d ever considered a bathrobe sexy, and wished it hid more of her legs.

  “Morning, can I join you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, help yourself.” I gestured at the box of cereal, milk and fruit. “I’ll get you a bowl.”

  “No, don’t get up. Where are they?”

  “They’re in that cupboard up there,” I said.

  Amy opened the cupboard and looked up at the stack of bowls. She had to rise to the tips of her toes and reach for them, which only served to make her bathrobe ride up higher.

  I determinedly stared at my own breakfast, ignoring the voice in my head that was begging me to sweep all this food off the bench, lift her up and take her right here just to see what kind of sounds I could fuck out of her.

  She managed to lift the top bowl off the stack and came back to the breakfast bar via the cutlery drawer. Using the spoon, she chopped a banana over her cereal and then poured on some milk.

  “We’ve got a busy day today,” I said.

  Amy’s jaw stopped moving mid-crunch, then slowly started up again. She swallowed hard and I realized what she must be thinking.

  “No! Not… well, I mean, we’re going to be out most of the day.”

  “Oh… doing what?” she asked.

  “I’ve got most of the week off work, but there’s a few really important events happening that I absolutely can’t get around. You’ll be my date for them. Got to keep up appearances, portray the right image. Some folks don’t think you’re successful if you haven’t got a beautiful woman on your arm”

  “You think I’m pretty enough?” she asked.
r />   I snorted in disbelief. “You’re pretty enough to make the other women give up and go home.”

  Amy beamed and quickly turned back to her food, but smiling and eating at the same time wasn’t the easiest thing to do. After a few more mouthfuls, she looked at me again.

  “What’s happening today, then?”

  “I’m entertaining a potential investor on my yacht today. It’s disguised as a reward for a bunch of our highest-performing employees that we’ve invited him and his wife along to, but it’s really all about him. He’s this Texas oil tycoon type with old, old, money. My co-founder and I have been hoping he’ll take the opportunity to buy us out completely, or almost completely.”

  “What should I wear?” Amy asked.

  “It’s casual.” I paused and realized a great drawback of this social engagement today. “You like to swim? People tend to try out the jacuzzi or jump off the back to swim in the ocean.”

  “Yeah, I like to swim, sure.”

  “Got a swimsuit?” I hoped, if she did, it was one of those old-fashioned ones that were basically a swimming-kimono, complete with a cap for her hair.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a couple bikinis and a sarong. One probably wouldn’t be good for this, the other is pretty standard. Is that OK?”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “Straight after breakfast,” I said.

  “Oh. Alright.”

  Any hopes I had that maybe Amy didn’t look good in a bikini were smashed shortly after I helped her on board and introduced her to a few people. Kevin was there, of course, and my voodoo cereal didn’t appear to have done much damage to him.

  After introducing her, Kim from customer service and Jane from accounts receivables immediately wanted to drag her off to the jacuzzi so they could be the first in. That was fine by me; I needed to call Kevin an asshole in private anyway.

  I just hoped Amy had her story down. It was pretty simple, we went over it in the car on the way. We met in a club, she’s from out of town visiting a friend, she’s a freelance designer. Keep it simple.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Amy asked.

  “No, go ahead. Towels are by the hot tub, you can leave your stuff anywhere you want in the meantime.”

  “OK, see you in a bit then.”

  Amy pulled her shirt off and untied her sarong. Either the world stopped for a moment, or the way everyone and everything including the slap of the ocean against the dock went silent was all in my head.

  The black bikini was far from the scandalously-micro end of the scale. It was even a little conservative, if that could ever be said of a bikini, but she rocked it. She fuckin’ rocked it.

  While her eyes were distracted by the task of removing her outer layer of clothes, I couldn’t help but take her all in. Without the wedge style shoes she’d been wearing at the airport, she struck me as even more petite than I’d first thought, with a slim body that was perfectly in proportion to her height.

  When the sarong came off, I saw she had a scar on her thigh, or rather, several of them in a cluster. In all honesty, I was glad to see them.

  Not because I reveled in her pain or any kind of bullshit like that. It simply meant she was human after all, and it wasn’t like it was enough to knock her down from the perfect ten she’d been advertised as.

  She put her clothes in a shoulder bag and put it on a seat, before rising to kiss me on the cheek. When she did that, her firm breasts hugged my arm for a moment, and then she was off with Kim and Jane. I jerked my head to the side and Kevin followed me to a clear area with a smug look on his face.

  “This isn’t fair,” I said.

  “I know. I think after all these years losing bets, purely to lure you into a false sense of security, I’m gonna to get paid.”

  “Think you’ve been playing the long game, huh? No chance, fucker. I’m starting to enjoy this kind of life, think I might become a monk after we sell up,” I lied.

  “Speaking of which, where is that cowpoke?” asked Kevin.

  I laughed and nudged him with my elbow, then pointed at a long white car approaching the dock. It even had a set of horns on the hood as an ornament.

  “Now, who could that be?” I said.

  The potential new owner of Obvius.ly, Anson Allen, followed his wife out of the back of the car. If I didn’t know better, I would have said he wore the same outfit every day, but the reality was he probably had dozens of the same cowboy boots, hats and everything in between.

  “Morning, Anson, Elly,” I said, helping Elly Allen on board.

  “Howdy. Thanks again for the invite, much appreciated. I’m lookin’ forward to talkin’ to some of the staff, get a feel for what the company looks like from their perspective. Maybe then I can get the real dirt, huh?”

  “You’re welcome to try,” I said. “Everybody here knows their job inside out, so you’ll get to know all the different parts of the business at least, even if it doesn’t get too dirty.”

  “Well, I’ll look forward to that.”

  We set off for a leisurely cruise around, and not too far out of, the harbor. Everything was going great, even if the Allens did look a little out of place amongst the younger demographic typically employed in a tech startup.

  Then Amy came back briefly and I introduced her as my date, before her new best friends Kim and Jane took her away again. Anson was polite enough while Amy was there, but after she left, he had a look on his face like somebody about to give a fatherly lecture.

  “Everything OK, Anson?” I asked.

  “Well, son, somethin’s been botherin’ me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I couldn’t put my finger on it until just now. Every time we’ve met outside of the office, you’ve had a different lady on your arm.”

  “And?”

  “The way a man is in life is the way he is in business. You can’t commit to a woman, how do I know you committed in the business? Always distracted by something shiny and new so you never see anything through to the end? That little lady is the shiniest. She looks like the newest too, she must be half your age.”

  “With all due respect, Anson, I keep my personal and business lives separate.”

  “Well, that may be. You might be the first person that ever managed it.”

  “My track record speaks for itself.”

  “Well, that may be,” he repeated. “I’m tryin’ to be open-minded about everything. That’s why I came all the way out here, left home, to invest in somethin’ different, but sometimes I feel like maybe I ain’t a good fit for this kind of business.” He gestured at a bikini-clad manager of social-media-marketing jumping off the side of the boat.

  On the outside, I tried to remain calm. On the inside it was like a military command bunker that had just received news about World War III starting.

  The Allen family, and all that sweet old black-gold money, were the only potential buyers we were currently courting that could reach into their deep pockets and swoop in on the business without endless boardroom and shareholder debates. Their money, once split amongst our shareholders, would push me into that fabled billionaire realm.

  “Look, at its core, this business is like any business you’ve been involved with. We have suppliers, we have customers, and we keep track of all the same numbers for the same reasons. On some level, every business is the same thing with a different skin on it. Look at it like that and you’ll see Obvius.ly is thriving.”

  I waved my hand around to gesture at the floating party. “This is just the skin. Customers subscribing to an app through a phone in their pocket is just the skin. You don’t want to go back to Texas, where they’ve got a copy of the financial documents, and try to explain how the flashing lights and the bells and whistles of a tech startup was too much for the Allen family. Come on. You know your way around a business.”

  Anson mulled it over while a hush swept over the military command bunker in my brain. Soldiers, clutching gas masks, looke
d up anxiously. A General held his breath waiting to see what number he should write next to the word ‘DEFCON.’

  Amy

  After the all-day schmoozing-cruise was over, I thought we’d head back to Kris’ penthouse, but instead he instructed the captain of the boat to take us to the other side of the harbor for dinner. My protests about having not packed anything for a dinner date were quashed, when he told me everything I needed was already in the bedroom below deck.

  A sleek black evening gown, matching shoes and purse were laid out for me. Everything fit as snuggly as Cinderella’s glass slipper.

  I even felt like the girl from that fairytale when he offered me his arm and we walked along the waterfront, looking out at the water while the sun set behind us. He’d changed while I was down below and looked every inch the success that he clearly was.

  I’d never had dinner at a restaurant where the staff addressed me by name before, nor had I eaten a plate of food that might have been a work of art. The best thing about it, though, was that they still had the option of plain old ice cream for dessert. Kris ordered ice cream too, but went for triple chocolate over my cookies and cream.

  “So you’re seriously going to sell Obvius.ly?” I asked. “I know you said you like to sell after the period of maximum growth… but aren’t there any exceptions? I mean… everybody’s heard of Obvius.ly, it’s a big deal.”

  I took a spoonful of ice cream and Kris licked his lips as he watched me slip it into my mouth, then raised his eyes to mine. “Sure, there are exceptions. If you’re especially passionate about the business in question, the specific way it generates revenue, then that’s a factor. I’m more passionate about the business of business growth, though. That’s just me. I’ve got too many ideas to just do one thing.”

  “Where do all these ideas come from? Like Obvius.ly… how did you know how to do all that?