“They’d been sitting on his desk for a month,” Jessie said those words like they had absolutely no meaning.
But they had all the meaning in the world to Lexi. Had Luke wanted to find her? See her again? Make something a go with her? She ruined that, didn’t she? She’d brought him to his knees and made him weak and helpless. “And he went to all of these last year?”
“Yeah, that’s why he got the first round of invites.”
“The other years...did he go alone?” she asked through a tightening in her stomach.
“Hardly.” Jessie scoffed. “He brings a different woman to each event.”
A fire raged through Lexi. Dropping the envelopes on the desk, she blurted, “Are you kidding me?”
Jessie frowned, catching on to her meltdown. “Is there a problem?”
Recovering, she said, “No, sorry.” She cleared her throat. “You sound super busy with the renovation. I’ll respond to these.”
Jessie spun around to face her monitor. “I have all the RSVPs saved, so you can just copy and paste into each email you send.”
“Shoot that off to me, and I’ll work on it today.” She scooped up the mind-bending stack. Some of these invites were even heavy.
“Done.” Jessie, who wore an adorable little suit with open toe ankle boots, tossed a smile over her shoulder.
Lexi had worn her khaki shift dress twice already. And that dark plum shiny polish on Jessie’s perfect feet reminded Lexi that crammed into her ballet flats were unpolished toes in need of a pedicure. Maybe after work she’d indulge herself more than just a tempting lipstick.
By the time she strolled back to her desk, she saw the notification from Jessie on her computer. The girl worked fast. “Oh, is Luke’s calendar shared with mine yet?”
“Yeah, you should see his name on the right panel.”
“Yep, there it is.” His calendar was a slipshod list of first names only in scattered boxes throughout the day and week. She had to find time to sit with him about the contract, despite the keep-your-distance rule. “You want distance, here you go,” she muttered.
Dearest Luke...
[DELETE]
Dear Luke.
She shook her head.
Luke.
She smirked.
Asshole.
[DELETE]
Mr. Hart.
Mr. Hartless.
[DELETE]
Mr. Hart,
In accordance with your terms that, I, Alexis Markham, your intern/assistant, stay away from you, something that I would like clarified at your earliest convenience, please reply herein and tell me how to submit forth my comments to the Chevalier agreement when I have them ready for you.
Alex Markham
She hit [SEND] with a giggle. Come on, he had to find her sign-off funny at least.
But she also didn’t give a damn at this point. He’d made her think his weakness was a weapon to use against her. Something to make Tristan fire her ass. That sword cut both ways since Tristan would be furious at Luke if he knew what almost happened the other morning. Something told her Luke lowering his pants and letting her jerk him off in the gym would bring the hammer down harder on him. She was a third-year law student from NYU, cute, and down on her luck. Another job wouldn’t be too hard to scare up. Luke couldn’t get another COO who also happened to be his brother. Unless Gray wanted the job, which she had a feeling he didn’t.
Not seeing a response from Luke yet—she didn’t even know where he was since his office door was closed and he’d been avoiding her—she opened Jessie’s email and clicked on the attached excel file.
Sure enough, Jessie listed all the VIP parties in column form. The affair name, the address, the times, the foundation or charity, the RSVP email, and the host. Far off to the right she saw the woman Luke took to each event.
Luke’s freaking love life had to be managed with a spreadsheet. She assumed he banged every single one of those women. Tristan’s ‘reputation’ warning now made more sense. Luke had proved insatiable with her. If not these women, then someone else he met at these functions. In coat closets, bathrooms, dark hallways... Those images grabbed hold of her, every sordid image ripping open her heart. Luke had aptly held her against doors, the wall of his bedroom, his private office, and masterfully tore the craziest orgasms from her.
“Hmph,” she let slip, reading the names of these women and their contact info. “That could be useful information.” A small bio trailed the end of each entry. Actress. Dancer. Model. Heiress/Friend.
She scoffed, he had female friends? Oh wait, it was italicized. Yeah, she figured out what kind of buddy that was.
But Luke had told Jessie to reply no to all the invites. After he’d slept with Lexi. If he’d been planning to track her down and ask her out on a proper date, why had he looked at her like she was poison after she made him lose control in the gym? She messed so much up. No, she didn’t mess up. Fate did that. The same force that brought them together now threw lighting strikes to keep them apart.
Luke needed another jolt.
Only she jumped, when she saw him standing at her desk.
His dark charcoal double breasted-suit, buttoned up elongated his towering frame. “Good morning,” he said with blank eyes. Despite saying good morning, the tone suggested he wanted to her to have anything but.
She stood as well despite feeling self-conscious about her cheap dress and worn-down flats from all the treks up to Penn Station. After the mani-pedi, she had a trip to buy new clothes in her future to step up her game around here. These were just costumes, though. The real Luke and Lexi lurked beneath these threads. Half-dressed maniacs crossing the line in the gym.
The glare in his electric blue eyes suggested he tried to push the man who wanted her far far away. A dude so strung out he lowered his pants in a public place and let her stroke him to a fever.
“Yes, sir?” she said, dropping her sweater on the pile of invitations.
“I saw your email,” he said with no emotion, but a trickle of mist broke out on his forehead.
“That’s what the reply button is for. That’s the whole point of emails. You don’t have to talk to the person.” Or glare at them.
A small giggle squeaked out behind Luke in Jessie’s cubicle.
He kept his eyes narrowly focused on her. “Did you write up notes on your opinion of the contract so far?”
She tapped her chin. “I believe we never resolved the written or oral request.”
His cheek ticked again at her mentioning oral. Yeah, he loved head.
“So...oral?” she asked with her tongue getting restless in her mouth.
Jessie stood up and stared into her cubicle with a ‘what the fuck’ look on her face.
Lexi increased the torture by licking her lips. At this point she loved tormenting Luke.
“Written. Please.” His arms dangled against his thighs and his hands balled into white-knuckled fists. “By the end of the week?”
“You got it, boss.” Although this sucked because her notes would take hours to write. Not letting him in on her ire, she leaned against her desk and stared him down.
“Thank you,” he said and slowly turned away.
Just being near him got her heart pounding. Dressed like that, he looked lethal as hell. He was too damn handsome for his own good. She’d always had a level head, but he could crumble her resolve like a stale cookie.
When Luke’s office door slammed shut, rage soared through her. She jammed her butt back in the seat and got her email open. She located the four events taking place the following week.
“He he.”
God bless Jessie. In another tab, the girl had included acceptance and rejection language used in the replies to the event managers. And look at that... How to inform the applicable ‘date.’
The guy used boilerplate language to ask these women out. That should have made her feel better. These women meant nothing to him other than arm candy followed by a tumble in the sheets. Except, s
he fell into that category, too, in a way. A woman he’d used. Her chest got tight, and a sob built in her throat.
Pushing that self-deprecating nonsense deep down in her gut, she copied the RSVP address for next Monday night’s gala into her email and responded that Luke would be attending. With a date. And added a cheerful sorry for the late reply.
When Jessie came back to her desk, Lexi asked, “Is there a way to send a message from Luke’s email account?”
Nodding, Jessie leaned over and tapped a few icons. “Here you go.” The girl smelled like lemons bursting on a tree in the sunshine.
All Lexi smelled on her skin was old hotel soap. “Thanks.” She added Macy’s perfume counter to her makeover list.
Smirking, Lexi started a fresh email under Luke’s shadow account.
To: Candy Winters
Actress? Sounded like a porn star.
Subject: Next Monday night Met Gala.
After the opening boilerplate garble Jessie had included in the notes, Lexi added:
Candy, honey, sorry to be so last minute, but I’d love for you to attend the Met Gala with me next Monday. Are you free, honey?
She shrugged, guessing that’s how Luke talked to these women. He called her honey that night, so she figured that was his one-night-stand jibber jabber. Even if that made her feel utterly awful.
After she hit [SEND], Lexi dragged in a breath ready to message the next date for the next evening’s event, but gasped at Candy’s lightning-fast reply.
Luke, baby! I was afraid you forgot about me. Of course, I’m available. For you. Always. I’ll make sure to wear....
Lexi didn’t bother reading the rest and only hit [REPLY].
Great. See you there.
These should annoy the hell out of Luke. She reached out to the other women who’d attended the events with him, all the same message. All the same rocket-fast responses.
“Good grief, ladies, have some self-control and play a little hard to get,” she mumbled to herself.
“Oh,” Jessie said, passing her desk. “After you reply to all of them, give the envelopes to finance, so they can still make the donations.”
Lexi slapped the screensaver to block the salacious messages. “Got it.”
After deleting all the messages from Luke’s inbox so he couldn’t see them, she wrote up her notes on the agreement. He showed up at her desk again at three pm, and tossed her a cold update that he was leaving. That was it. No mention of where. If she were his assistant, shouldn’t she know this stuff?
When the time on her computer read 5:04, she realized Luke never came back. Oh no, had Candy written back again? Her heart pounded. And the others? Lulu, Simi, and Victoria. The last being an heiress. That one hurt the most. Luke Hart, the hotel CEO, and Victoria Holden, the fashion designer and daughter to billionaire Lance Holden, made the perfect fit.
Lexi exhaled, seeing nothing in his email account.
Next Jessie shut down her computer and gathered her bags to go home. A lawyer’s day ended when the work was done. Only, she wasn’t a lawyer, yet. She wasn’t getting paid to be a lawyer. Getting Luke to sign this agreement was the ticket to her JD. The sooner the better. Only, summer classes didn’t start until June. Her mother needed her at the resort when reservations usually picked up.
Luke wasn’t pounding down her door to get this done. Pounding. Poor choice of words, counselor. Pushing past the lust building in her chest, she closed her notebook and shut down her PC. “Hey, Jessie,” she said when the girl passed her desk to go home. “Where’s a good nail salon around here?”
Tristan’s assistant put on a cute thinking face. “Try Master Class around the corner. They take walk-ins.”
“Thanks so much.” Lexi felt giddy for the night ahead of her.
A mani/pedi, a little shopping therapy, followed by that kitchen sink thing at Serendipity with a dozen scoops of ice cream. And then maybe chase those puppies around because she’d probably be insane from all the sugar.
Strutting through the lobby, she caught a glint of gold set against gritty dark charcoal. Luke sat at a table in the corner, only he was alone this time. A bottle of beer sat in front of him and in his hand was a book.
From the cover it looked like a Sc-Fi novel. Interesting. He looked content with relaxed shoulders and one ankle crossed lazily over his knee. The work day was done. He was the boss, who clearly wanted to be alone, and she was just the assistant. That was the only solid undeniable part of their relationship. She had to face it. She was a one-night stand.
At twenty-six, she needed to buck up. There might be more men who’d use her. She might even use a few, here and there. Only time would tell. Squaring her shoulders, she marched toward the marble stairs to head out the front entrance.
With one last glance, she caught Luke watching her. Again, with a blank face. Figuring what the hell, she blew him a kiss. That got a smirk.
The smile should have been a satisfying victory, but Lexi’s professors didn’t call her tenacious for no reason. She pushed her tongue against her cheek to signal a blow job. The ‘oral’ conversation she wanted to have instead of writing a boring report.
She didn’t wait to see his reaction, she sailed out the door to paint her toes blood red. When Luke found out she committed him to four hook ups next week with women who sounded like they were chomping at the bit to devour him, he’ll want to murder her.
Luke
THAT WOMAN WAS GOING to be the death of him. The book had lost Luke’s interest after watching Lexi visually offer him a blow job. He jumped to answer his phone after one ring to get that image out of his mind: Lexi’s pink hair spilled over his bare legs taking him in her mouth. Fucker was so vivid in his memory, it may never leave.
“This is Luke.” He didn’t bother to screen the call, the blood feeding his brain cells had left his head.
“Luke, baby, it’s Candy. Why didn’t you return my email?”
He squeezed the phone. Candy? Why the fuck would she be calling him. Email? “What are you talking about?” he asked, trying to switch screens to confirm he’d not gotten an email from her.
“I asked you if I should pack an overnight bag for next Monday.”
His feet hit the marble floor, his heart finding its way into his throat. “What?”
“It’s only five-thirty, how many scotches have you had already? Next Monday. The Met Gala. I got your email today.”
“I didn’t send you an email.” Had he? He trekked up the escalator to get back to his office.
“Yes, you did. It came from your account. You asked me to the gala. And I said yes.”
His legs jerked to a stop. Just how out of his mind had Lexi made him, that he blindly emailed Candy?
“We had such a crazy night last year, I thought I should pack a bag. And maybe you should take the week off,” she purred.
For fuck’s sake, he thought, sloppily swiping his key card to get into the offices.
“Um.” He put the phone down on his desk and hit the speaker. “Hang on.”
He logged into his laptop. He didn’t see any messages from her in his inbox, which made him feel better, he wasn’t losing it. Then he checked the Sent folder, and he had to sit down.
Candy.
Lulu.
Simi.
Victoria.
“Um,” he slurred into the phone again.
“Call me back when you’re sober.” Her voice faded with a few mumbled expletives.
Who the hell emailed these women? He narrowed his eyes and pushed away from his desk. Staring into Lexi’s cubicle, he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He spun around and checked out Jessie’s desk. The pile of invites he’d given her last Monday was...gone.
Had Jessie not understood him?
Grunting, he went to storm away, only something shiny caught his attention. A flash of bright white stuck out of one of Lexi’s drawers. The lining to a fucking invitation. He took a breath and opened the drawer.
His heart thundered i
n his chest, seeing all the envelopes. This was her doing. Unless...Jessie gave Lexi the wrong instructions.
No way. He made his intentions clear to Tristan’s assistant. They’d even talked about it. Jessie seemed shocked because every year he’d gone to all the events. Every single one who had invited him got the CEO playboy for the night. And much to his disgust now, all the women he’d brought ended up in his bed.
He swiped through his phone to find his calendar and gasped. There they were. Each night next week, he was hitting the VIP circuit. With a different date.
This had to be Lexi’s doing.
What was the point of this, though? Pushing him into the arms of four women? That was the last thing he wanted. Or was she trying to make him look like a fool so he’d have to break all these dates?
He knew how to find out...
He scooped up his phone and called Candy back.
“Sober already?” she asked with a wry edge to her voice.
“No. I mean yes. I mean, I wasn’t drunk before. I have a new assistant. She must have emailed you.” And three other women, but he kept that to himself.
“That’s cold, Luke, baby.”
“I’m busy.” And now, he had to attend these functions because Lexi RSVP’d.
“Yeah, yeah.” Candy exhaled, sounding bored. If he bored her after thirty seconds on the phone, a snooze-fest was coming her way next week. He was responsible CEO Luke now. Not the wild and crazy careless man she’d met a few years ago. At least he liked himself better this way. “So, am I sleeping over?” she snapped. Angry sex. His favorite. “I’ll need at least a toothbrush.”
His head hurt. “Can you meet me here at the hotel tomorrow and we’ll talk about it? Say, noon?”
Bossy Billionaire Page 11
