by Hannah Ford
“No, it’s just my friend.”
“Male or female?”
“Does it matter?”
“Very much so, Ms. Courtland.”
I swallowed. The conversation was starting to get away from me. “Mr. Sheer, I know you’re a very busy man, so I will keep this short. My sister, Violet, she’s dating your brother, Conner. Or at least, she was.”
At the mention of his brother, Landon’s face darkened.
“And you think he took your sister against her will?”
This I wasn’t sure about. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Conner’s brother, not when I needed him to help me. “No.”
His shoulders relaxed a tiny bit, but not much.
I twisted my hands in front of me nervously. Landon’s eyes drifted down to my hands, watching as I tried to get my bearings. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw something burn deep in his irises, something that looked suspiciously like lust. Knock it off, Aven, I told myself. Men like Landon Sheer are not interested in women like you.
I forced my hands back to my sides and began to talk. “Anyway, like I said, I don’t know where Violet is. She’s not answering her phone, she hasn’t been to work, and when she texts, she just says that she’s okay and she’s having fun and not to worry. But something’s off, and I just… do you know where Conner is?” I held my breath.
It was nothing like the speech I’d prepared, nothing like what I’d wanted to say to him. I sounded rambling and off.
“You haven’t answered my question, Ms. Courtland.” Landon began to unbutton his shirt now, his strong hands slipping the buttons through the eyelets until he was done.
He pulled his shirt off.
Oh, my.
I couldn’t help but stare. I didn’t even try to hide it. I couldn’t. His body was better than anything I’d seen in a magazine, never mind anything I could have imagined existed in real life. He looked as if he’d been airbrushed to life – his skin was flawless, tan and smooth. His arms were cut and defined, the biceps flexing with every movement.
He was tall and strong, and the muscles of his torso clenched as he threw his shirt over the back of the desk chair. He stood in front of me, shirtless, and I counted the ridges of his abs until I got to six, seven, eight…
Jesus. How was it possible that someone could be so good-looking?
“Ms. Courtland?”
“Yes, sorry! I… I mean, what was the question?”
“Was the person who texted you male or female?”
“That’s really none of your business.” I sighed. “Listen, I just need to know if you know where Conner is, or even where he could be? You must, right? Since he’s your business partner? Have you heard him mention my sister at all? Do you have a phone number for him?” The questions came rapid fire, and I willed myself to stop talking.
“You want Conner’s personal phone number.”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you just call his office the way you called mine? I’m surprised someone so persistent hadn’t thought of that.”
“I did, but they keep telling me he’s out of the office. Obviously, which is why I think he’s with my sister.”
Landon Sheer stared at me as if I were insane. Then he crossed the room and disappeared down the hallway. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to follow him or not.
But he came back a second later. He was pulling on another dress shirt, this one identical to the first. He held a fresh tie, and he slung it around his neck. His movements were smooth and elegant, his hands strong and in control as he deftly tied the knot.
When he was done, he pulled his suit coat back on.
Then he turned and looked at me.
“Answer my question, Ms. Courtland.”
“What question?”
“The person who texted you. Was it a male or female?”
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
“It has to do with everything.”
“Like?”
He sighed. “Do you know how much my time is worth, Ms. Courtland?”
I narrowed my eyes. God, he was arrogant. “Well, I know your net worth is 53.1 billion dollars.” I’d gleaned it from an article I’d read about him in the Wall Street Journal online. I’d had to pay $2.99 to access it, no small sum when you had 300 dollars to your name and your rent was due in a week. I’d sat there in my apartment, huddled over my computer, googling Landon Sheer and eating a pint of generic chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream I’d bought from the bodega on the corner.
I’d been trying to find out something that might break the ice when I finally got a chance to meet him – favorite color, favorite kind of music, favorite food. God, how naïve I’d been back then, thinking that perhaps I could do something to break the ice.
The thought of standing in front of this man, the two of us talking about music or me showing up with brownies because I’d read that I liked them was laughable. More than laughable - it was ludicrous.
“So if you’re worth 53.1 billion dollars,” I continued, “taking into account that you work eighty hours a week, I’d say your time is worth about $12,000 an hour.”
He leaned back against the desk, his eyes flicking over me. He was impressed. I could see it in his eyes.
“So you’ve now wasted six thousand dollars of my time. Counting the shirt that you ruined, you now owe me nine thousand dollars.”
“Not really,” I said. “You wouldn’t have been working during this time – you would have been downstairs at the party.”
“Networking is a big part of my business.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “’Networking is a necessary evil, and anything that could be done by computers can and should be.’” It was a direct quote from the article I’d read. “At least, that’s what I hear.”
He regarded me with those deep blue eyes of his, and he waited a few moments before he spoke again, as if he were considering his options and wanted to choose his words carefully. “Male or female, Ms. Courtland. You answer my question and then I’ll answer yours.”
“Female,” I admitted.
His eyes danced over me, and the irises turned dark and stormy. A breeze kicked up through the window, billowing the curtains and brushing over me.
My nipples hardened, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the cool breeze or because of the way he was looking at me. His gaze traveled to my chest, and I cursed myself for wearing a dress like this. I hated that he could tell my nipples were hard.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Ms. Courtland?”
I shook my head and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not answering that until you answer my question.”
“And what was your question?” He’d straightened up now, and I knew he knew exactly what my question had been. He’d just wanted to make me repeat it to be an ass. God, this guy was insufferable. Hot, but insufferable.
And yet something about him was magnetic.
If his brother was anything like him, I could see why Violet had run away with him.
“Do you know where Conner is?”
“I have an idea, yes.” He straightened up and pulled the key card out of his pocket.
“Where?” I demanded.
He was sliding the card into the elevator now, and the doors opened. He stepped inside.
“Where?” I repeated.
“Get in the elevator, Aven.”
“No.” I shook my head. Once I got into the elevator, we’d be back down at the party, back to where everyone was, back to where I wouldn’t have him alone. “No, I need you to answer my question.”
“I did answer your question.”
“No, you…” I trailed off. Because of course technically, he was right. He had answered my question. He said he had an idea of where Conner might be. I hadn’t asked him where, exactly, that was.
I went to go after him, but he pushed the button that closed the doors before I could reach him.
“You will learn soon enough, Ms.
Courtland, that if you have a chance with me, you should take it before it’s too late.”
“What the hell does that –?”
But the elevator doors closed before I could finish my thought, leaving me alone in the penthouse as the elevator took Landon Sheer back down to the ground floor.
Bastard.
“You’re not seriously going to eat that whole thing?” Emma asked me thirty minutes later, staring over the table at me incredulously.
“You’re not seriously judging me,” I shot back as the waitress at our favorite diner set down a double fudge ice cream sundae in front of me.
“Sorry,” Emma said, looking sheepish as she took a bite of her turkey club.
“It’s fine,” I said. I knew she didn’t mean anything by it. It wasn’t her fault that she could take food or leave it. Not like me – show me anything fried or a carb, and I would be all over it in a second. I wasn’t fat, but there was no way I was going to ever fit into the kind of clothes Emma wore, or be considered small or delicate. I sighed. “I’m just disappointed, you know?”
After I figured out my way down from the penthouse – Landon must have sent the elevator back up to get me, because it returned a few moments later, and I’d taken it back down to the ballroom -- I’d met up with Emma, who’d been at the bar, chatting up a guy with a goatee and broad shoulders who looked like he’d had one too many drinks with the way he was slurring his words.
Not that Emma cared about things like that.
She could throw down alcohol with the best of them, and had outdrank more than her share of frat boys during our four years of college.
I’d scanned the crowd for Landon Sheer, but he was nowhere to be found – not at the bar, not at one of the tables, not on the dance floor. (Yes, I’d checked the dance floor, even though the thought of him dancing was ridiculous.) The blonde he’d been talking to earlier was suspiciously absent as well.
“Tell me again what happened,” Emma said now. She set fork down, then reached up and tightened her slicked-back ponytail.
“Nothing. He was just a jerk.” I spooned a mouthful of ice cream into my mouth. “He just wanted to mess with me.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why would he take you upstairs just to be a jerk?”
“Maybe he’s a sociopath,” I said, shrugging. “It would make sense. No way anyone goes through life that good looking and turns out normal.” But even as I was saying the words, I realized that I didn’t believe them.
Landon Sheer had been messing with me, for sure. But there had been something else, there, too. I didn’t get the feeling that he’d been doing it just for fun. No, there had been something else, some other purpose. In fact, I got the sense that he didn’t do anything just for fun or without having a reason. Everything with him was calculated.
“So what now?” Emma asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, sighing. “I spent so much time trying to get in to see Landon, I didn’t stop to think about what would happen if he wasn’t willing to help me.”
“You just need a Plan B,” Emma said. Then she stopped. “Or…”
“Or what?” I felt myself bristling, because I knew what she was going to say. She was going to say that maybe I should just let Violet go, that maybe my sister had just taken off with her boyfriend and didn’t want to be bothered.
“Or maybe it’s time to just let it to, Aven,” she said softly.
“Let it go?” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying something in anger.
“Yeah. Look, I know you think that Violet would never take off without – ”
“She wouldn’t.”
“But maybe she just –”
“Maybe she just what? Got sick of me?”
“No! I didn’t say that!”
“You didn’t have to.”
My phone buzzed then, saving me from the beginning of a lecture I didn’t really want, and a conversation I’d been avoiding ever since Violet took off a week ago.
I looked down at my phone.
If you wanted dessert, Ms. Courtland, I would have been happy to oblige.
Immediately, that warm buzzing feeling I’d had when I’d been around Landon Sheer returned, settling back between my legs. How the hell had he gotten my number? And how did he know where I was?
I glanced around the diner, but there was no sign of him.
“Who is it?” Emma asked.
“It’s just…” I trailed off. “It’s just someone about a job.” The lie was out of my mouth before I could stop myself, and I instantly regretted it. Why was I lying to Emma? I was annoyed with her for bringing up the fact that my sister could have just taken off without telling me, yes, but I didn’t have to be a bitch about it.
It’s not like it was surprising, the way that Emma was reacting to Violet’s disappearance. The two of them had never gotten alone that well. Violet was my sister and Emma was my best friend – they always had a slight competition thing going on.
I typed my reply quickly.
Who is this?
I knew who it was, but I wanted to drive him crazy.
My phone rang immediately.
“I’m just going to step outside and take this,” I said, then thought better of it. “Actually, you know what? I’m just going to walk home.” I pulled some money out of my purse and threw it on the table. “I’ll see you there?” I said it as a question, but I was already moving through the tables toward the front door.
“Aven, come on, you can’t walk home in that dress! It’s freezing out! I’m sorry, I just – ”
But I kept going, praying she wouldn’t come after me.
She didn’t.
I raced around the corner of the building, onto 6th Avenue. I was in Times Square, one of the most touristy part of the city. Everyone who actually lived in New York seemed to avoid the area, thinking it was kitschy and only for tourists, but I loved it.
The big billboards, the restaurants, the marquees for the Broadway shows, the scents of the hot dogs and salted peanuts mixing with the exhaust of the taxis. Time Square was New York to me.
By the time I got around the corner, my phone had stopped ringing. My stomach dropped with disappointment, but it was short-lived, because the phone started ringing again immediately.
“Hello?” My voice was strong, confident-sounding, much better than the way I’d sounded up in that suite, like I was a little girl begging for some kind of handout.
“Why did you leave my party so early? Weren’t you having fun?” Landon Sheer’s voice was rough, ragged, and I felt my stomach clench. God, this man was sexy.
“Those kind of parties aren’t my thing.”
“Oh, really?” He sounded amused. “Then what is your thing?”
“I’m more of a small group kind of girl.”
“Or a one-on-one kind of girl?”
“Sometimes,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant and succeeding.
“You shouldn’t be out in the city alone.”
“How do you know I’m alone?” I looked around, trying to see if I could spot any sign of him. But it was impossible. I was in one of the busiest parts of the city, during one of the busiest times of night. Limos and cars went rushing past, and the sidewalks were crowded with people.
“I have a business proposition for you.” God, his voice. It was velvet, deep, heady, and I remembered how he’d looked taking his shirt off, his muscular pecs, the way his abdomen had rippled.
“You want to offer me a job?”
He laughed. A second later, a sleek black Lincoln Navigator car pulled up to the curb in front of me. The windows were tinted, but I knew he could see me, even though I couldn’t see him.
Instantly, I was self-conscious, aware again of my dress that was too short and all wrong, the shoes that didn’t fit and had caused me to trip and spill my drink all over him.
He could see me, but I couldn’t see him. It was just another technique he used to disarm me, to make sure he had all the
control. That same feeling I’d gotten before – that Landon Sheer was a man who didn’t do things halfway, that he was the kind of man who made calculated moves only – intensified.
“Not that kind of business proposition.” His voice was still coming through the phone, but knowing he was only a few feet away from me, just a piece of tinted glass between us made my pulse leap.
“Then what kind?”
The window rolled down then, and Landon Sheer’s blue eyes leveled me yet again.
He opened the door and got out, his 6’4” frame overwhelming everything around him and making me feel tiny. He stepped to the side. “Get in.”
I got in.
It wasn’t even a question, really.
Inside, the car smelled like leather and new car, the kind of smell I associated with wealth and extravagance. I’d rarely been in a brand new car. Growing up, my parents had always bought used, and the only car I’d ever owned myself had cost me $1500 dollars and stalled every time I was at a stop sign for too long. I’d sold it before I’d moved to New York, and I’d been living off that money, plus my meager savings, until I could find a job.
I tugged at the bottom of my dress and glanced at Landon out of the corner of my eye. He was staring back at me.
“How did you know where I was?”
“It wasn’t hard to find you, Ms. Courtland.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked, ignoring my question.
“Oh, now you’re asking my preferences?” I asked. “If I answer, does that mean you have to answer one of my questions?”
“No.”
“God, you’re bossy. And arrogant.”
“Do you like being bossed, Aven?” His voice was even and calm, but something about the way he said the words, his breathing just a little deeper than usual, his voice laced with something … dangerous wasn’t the right word… dark was more like it.
