by Cynthia Dane
She left the executive office suite, going down the hallway and past the elevator toward the women’s restroom.
It was the only place she could think of to escape to. Quiet, clean, and a place where she could think. Or so she had hoped, for as soon as she caught her breath in front of the mirrors, the bathroom door opened, and Nadia rushed in.
“Are you okay?” She closed the door and stood a respectful distance away from Jasmine. “That was intense. I just want to make sure that you’re fine.”
Jasmine looked askance at her, hands pressed against the countertop. “I’m fine. Just a little freaked out.”
“That stuff she was saying…” Nadia didn’t finish her sentence.
After taking a deep breath, Jasmine stood up and faced her friend. “I don’t know what she was talking about. Ethan… I mean Mr. Cole…”
Nadia latched onto her slip right away. It was hard not to, when Jasmine could barely keep her act together. Don’t lose your cool. If Jasmine acknowledged it, she would only make things worse.
“Jasmine…” Nadia’s face paled, but she did not back away. “Are you sleeping with Mr. Cole?”
She said it so softly, and yet it was like a gun went off in the bathroom. Jasmine turned her lips up, the adrenaline pumping through her veins as if she were about to take off into a wild run. “No!” The exasperation in her voice was not fake. “How could you ask me that?”
Crestfallen, Nadia turned away. “I’m sorry. That was not for me to ask. But…” She glanced at the pretty barrette in Jasmine’s hair. “Never mind.”
Watching her step out of the bathroom drove a knife into Jasmine’s heart. My only real friend here. Who knew what Ethan was to her? Maybe he was only using her, like he used so many other women. How could Jasmine be so foolish as to think she was somebody special? That Ethan never went on dates like the one they had that weekend, then he never made love to a woman like he did to her, or that he never spoiled anyone else with jewels like he did her. He was a man with means, and too much disposable income for his own good. Jasmine had never had gifts like that before. She was too easy to manipulate.
“Is it that obvious?”
Nadia stopped with the door halfway open. She gave Jasmine a sympathetic look over her shoulder, her glossy red hair warm to gaze upon. “Be careful.” The door opened and closed, with her disappearing on the other side of it.
Jasmine leaned against the counter and then slumped to the floor. I’m so stupid. She didn’t cry, mostly because she was still too shocked. How could I be so blind? Her one day of allowing herself to fall in love would be the end of her. There was no way that Ethan Cole loved her back. Everything had been a lie. No, not a lie. Jasmine had simply seen things that were never there to begin with.
And yet a part of her still wanted to believe. Being able to believe in it would be the only thing that would get her through those last three months, and closer to her goals.
If Ethan Cole could use her, she could damn well use him too.
Part 4 - Cosigners
Letter From Monica
Ethan,
Please help. We’re in too deep. My heart breaks to write this, but I need your assistance now more than ever. I can’t give you more details. It’s too dangerous.
Monica
Ethan read that letter a thousand times the night he received it. Monica. A woman he never loved quite like that, but one who he respected more than most. He wanted to leap out of his chair and go to her side, to pull her away from whatever danger she faced and give her whatever she needed to start her life over.
Then he thought about why she was in that situation, and his need to save her was replaced with disbelief.
How could he be so blind? And how could he fix what had been broken for years?
His hand hovered over his phone. It would only take one call to buy out Jackson Lyle’s shares in the business. It would only take one call to destroy his career.
23
Three months of dating and playing personal assistant to a billionaire had not been kind to Jasmine’s body. For one, the man made her run around everywhere in high heels. Granted, she could just not wear the high heels, but then she wouldn’t look hoity-toity enough to be the personal assistant of Ethan Cole. Apparently his colleagues paid attention to the way she dressed.
Furthermore, there was a matter of what he did to her on a regular basis. If running around in heels wasn’t enough, Jasmine often woke up sore, tired, and with more bags under her eyes than a politician performing a filibuster for more than a day. I have thighs of steel. If Jasmine really put her mind to it, she could easily put a cantaloupe or honeydew melon between her thighs and crack it open. Only if someone films it so I can make a nice buck off it.
Finally, there was the food. Rich, succulent food that may have been made with better ingredients than what she usually ate, but still had fat, sugar, and starches in it.
When she first started going out with Ethan, Jasmine minded her food intake. She wasn’t counting calories, but it was more a matter of politeness. Even if he was stinking rich, she felt bad ordering expensive – really expensive – items off restaurant menus, and she avoided having more than one course if necessary. It was probably her upbringing. Her parents instilled in her frugality that had lasted for most of her life. After all, insisting on being dirty hippies meant keeping the budget clear for more kale and hemp clothing.
This was all before she realized that Ethan was probably just using her for sex and nothing more. After that, Jasmine made the resolution to use him as well. And the only way she could properly use him for anything was for money.
He’s my younger sugar daddy. She thought this as she cut into a piece of lemon meringue pie. Delicious. Jasmine loved the tart flavor as it rolled around her tongue and then slipped down her throat. This piece of pie was now a dessert staple every time Ethan brought her to his favorite Italian restaurant. Which happened fairly often. Sometimes twice a week if he was feeling it.
Jasmine was not exactly innocent herself. So when she decided to use him for his money, she started planting such ideas in his head. Whenever she would be with him in the afternoon, she would make an offhand comment about eating noodles or certain spices. Ethan would be quick to invite her out for a time, and away they would go, Jasmine stuffing herself.
And I have a new phone. A gift, to be sure. She went without answering any of Ethan’s texts and calls for a while, and when he naturally confronted her about it in the office, she said that her phone had broken. During his lunch hour, he took her to the nearest store and bought her the latest iPhone. She looked at it now, sending a text message to her friend Selena about how delicious the pie was.
Meals, electronics, and more clothes. Jasmine was getting to the point where she flat-out asked for these things, and Ethan would hand over one of his many credit cards or take her somewhere himself. The man did not appear to be under any delusion that Jasmine was not working him. But what could he say? Considering their arrangement, things were pretty equal.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Jasmine said with her mouth full. Ethan sat across from her at their private table, looking through a manila envelope. Jasmine couldn’t tell exactly what he was looking at, but it appeared to be black and white photographs accompanied by pieces of paper. Probably boring business stuff. If they went out during the middle of the week, like tonight, Ethan had a habit of bringing some work with him. Probably because he assumed he would be busy for the rest of the night fucking his toy back at the penthouse.
He glanced up at her but seemed more interested in the contents of the folder. “Sorry. Distracted. Is the food good?”
“Always.” She offered him a bite, but he declined.
“I don’t like lemons,” he said.
Jasmine took a bite for herself. She loved lemons.
It was a fine line she walked. Not just in this relationship, but in herself as well. She still fought with the idea she was in
love with him. It was useless to think. At the same time she didn’t want to come off as too cold. Everything was easier if Ethan was still enthralled with her. So she would do little things for him, like compliment him, offer him bites of her food, and even seduce him. I mean, the sex is still great. She had long lost count of the amount of times they did it. Sometimes it was as easy as a quickie in his office, or as drawn out as being tied to his bedpost in his mansion and having one orgasm after another denied to her. A part of her was able to separate her feelings from her sexual desires. But sometimes she would catch a smile, a glance, or even a touch, and she would feel those butterflies fluttering in her stomach once more.
“What are you even looking at?” Jasmine had finished her pie and wanted something better to do than just play with her phone. “Come on, don’t tell me those pictures are prettier than me.” She couldn’t say it with a straight face.
Ethan held one of the photographs up to the overhead light. “Just some things my private investigator delivered to me earlier.”
“You have a private investigator?”
“Of course.” He looked at her as if it would be insane not to have one. “A man in my position? There’s always someone to investigate.”
“Who are you investigating right now?” If it was someone she really couldn’t know about, he wouldn’t be looking at them in front of her.
Still, he looked at her as if he were debating whether or not to tell her. “Do you remember what Samantha said when she stormed into my office?”
“Yeah.” How could Jasmine forget that? It was the reason she made him wrap it up every time since. “What about it?”
“Well, had to make sure I hadn’t impregnated anybody.”
Jasmine snatched the photo out of his hand. It was a picture of a woman walking out of an apartment complex. She had sunglasses and a sun hat on, but there was a sticky note at the top that said “Eve” nonetheless.
“So? You a daddy?”
Ethan sighed. “Not as far as I can tell. He went and investigated every woman I had been with… that I could remember, anyway.”
How many is that? Jasmine didn’t want to know. “No kids, huh?”
“Not quite. One of them has had a child.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, but the timing is all wrong.” Ethan took the picture back and stuffed it in the folder. “Besides, even if she didn’t really want to, any woman who is absolutely certain that I got her pregnant would come knocking. There’s a lot of child support to get out of me.”
Would you be involved in that child’s life? Jasmine couldn’t tell. Aside from that one conversation after he told her he had a vasectomy, he never spoke of having children again. “What if I told you that I was pregnant?”
Panic flashed on Ethan’s face, but he quickly regained control of it. “I told you, I’ve had a vasectomy. Do you want to see the doctor’s test results?”
Ew. No. Jasmine scrunched her nose. “Vasectomies can fail. There is no 100% method of birth control. Or did you skip that day in health class?”
“I am aware. But the likelihood is pretty slim.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. What if I told you that I was pregnant? What would you do?”
Ethan leaned back in his seat, ignoring his empty plate of food. “Ask for a paternity test.”
Jasmine had rolled her eyes at him plenty of times before, but this response garnered the hardest one of them all. “Assuming it was for sure yours. And how dare you suggest that I…”
“Not suggesting anything. But before I can make any other decisions, I would have to know absolutely for sure.”
“Anyway…”
Another sigh. Ethan looked worn, tired. He looked like that a lot lately. Ever since the first quarter ended, he had been dealing with all sorts of business-related bullshit. Jasmine didn’t understand most of it. All she knew was that Ethan was pulling all nighters about once a week. Meanwhile, his useless business partner Jackson Lyle didn’t seem to put in any extra work at all. The one time Jasmine noted this out loud, Ethan told her it was because he was the one in charge of such things. “Without me, this entire company crumbles. Without Jackson, we lose some capital, but the world isn’t ending.”
Sometimes Jasmine got the feeling that Ethan was quite over his partner.
“But since you keep asking, it would depend on the situation. If it turned out I was going to be a father, I would do my best to do right by both the mother and the child.”
“I hope you know that doesn’t just mean throwing money at the situation.” Although that certainly helped.
“Of course not. But until such a situation presented itself to me, I can’t say for sure how I would react.”
Jasmine let the conversation drop there. She wasn’t pregnant, so this was all a hypothetical to pass the time. “By the way, I would in fact like to see that doctor’s note.”
He stared at her over the top of the envelope. “You’re kidding.”
“You want me to go out in the rain without a coat on, you better prove I won’t get wet.”
“I see.” That was all he would say about that.
Their meal shortly ended. Ethan called for the check and then called for their coats. He helped Jasmine put on hers, but did not offer her anything more than that. The maître d’ bade them farewell, and the next thing Jasmine knew they were in the back of Ethan’s limo.
She assumed that they were going back to the penthouse for sex. Or at least cuddling, since Ethan had more than once invited her over for no sex at all. At first it surprised her, but then she told herself that he was just like any other man. Sometimes he got lonely, and all he wanted was someone’s presence while he slept. Fine with her.
But they didn’t drive in the direction of the penthouse. They were going the other way – toward Jasmine’s side of town.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you home.”
“We’re not going back to your place?”
“Not in the mood tonight. Sorry. It’s not personal.”
That wasn’t the problem. The limo was hurriedly going toward Jasmine’s neighborhood, and she wouldn’t be caught dead with these guys there. “Pull over and let me off here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Finally Ethan turned his head and looked at her through furrowed eyes. “Why? It’s way too late for that to be safe at all. No, we’ll drive you up to your building.”
“Please, I insist. This limo won’t fit in that kind of driveway.” She was making shit up now. Last thing she needed was him knowing what kind of squalor she lived in. The embarrassment would haunt her for at least five years. Even if she never saw Ethan Cole again after the end of their contract, she would always remember the look on his face when he first gazed upon her ratty apartment building.
“No, I insist. Let me off at the street here.” They were approaching it way too quickly. Pretty soon she would be able to see if Pancho was making the rounds, let alone Juan driving around in his beat-up car. Holy Moses if he sees me like this…
After another ten seconds of arguing about it, Ethan conceded and told Carl to pull over. It was another block before he found a space big enough to accommodate the length of the limo. The moment Jasmine stepped out she discovered two young men sitting on a bench smoking and carrying on, both of them stopping their conversations to gape at her and the limo she was leaving behind.
“See you tomorrow.” Jasmine shut the door behind her, and the limo pulled away, leaving her to fuss with her mittens and the scarf around her neck.
One man looked at the other. “How much he paying you for that?”
Of course they thought she was a prostitute. Especially with the fancier clothes she was wearing lately, even the police officers she saw on a daily basis for over a year would look at her twice whenever she stood on a street corner. Why else would a fancy woman be seen standing around there?
“Not eno
ugh,” she mumbled.
The men shook their heads as she walked on toward her building. “Man, even a pretty lady like that can’t get paid right.”
“I hear ya.”
The worst part was that Jasmine didn’t have the energy to refute the idea that she was a prostitute. Because I am. Prostitute, lady of the night, hooker, escort, sugar baby… as long as Ethan didn’t call her a whore, she could live with it.
24
“Of course I would like to say that I told the guy to shove the hell off, but after five minutes of his shit I finally got a cop to come scare him senseless.”
