Cherish Hard (Hard Play #1)

by Nalini Singh

  “Fine. Your VP contract will be for the summer only.”

  It was obvious Jacqueline thought Ísa would be well entrenched in the corporate world by then, with no desire to leave. Which told Ísa exactly how well Jacqueline knew her. Because Ísa would rather take up chewing nails as a fun downtime hobby.

  “I’ve already committed to teaching night classes at the school. I won’t pull out of that. I gave my word.”

  “If you’ll recall, I’m the one who taught you to keep your word.” Still clearly in a good mood after her bout of familial blackmail, Jacqueline put her hands on her hips. “How many hours will that take out of your schedule?” When Ísa told her, she said, “Done. I’ll have Annalisa bring in the contract.”

  Ísa was entirely unsurprised to discover the contract had already been drawn up. Jacqueline had been sure she’d win. She always won. Except when she didn’t care about the outcome. Then she just pulled out of the fight. As Catie’s father had discovered when he’d made noises about a custody battle.

  Jacqueline had taken the opportunity to sign over full custody to Clive.

  It was forty minutes later, after Ísa had read and signed the contract, insisting on a number of changes along the way—all of which made Jacqueline beam like a proud lioness—that she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Who was the man I met as I came in?” she asked in a voice as casual as casual could be while her heart thumped and her thighs pressed tightly together.

  “Noticed his blue eyes did you?” Jacqueline asked, her own gaze on the contract as she checked that Ísa had signed everywhere she was required to sign.

  Obviously, the Dragon didn’t trust her progeny with the killer instinct not to wriggle out of the agreement unless it was ironclad.

  “You have good taste,” Jacqueline continued. “Have fun, but don’t let him distract you from the job. And for God’s sake, don’t start believing you’re in love with a nice piece of ass like I did with Clive and make the mistake of marrying him. Sleep with him and get him out of your system.”

  “Mother.” That was pushing it even for Jacqueline.

  Not appearing the least abashed, her mother put down the contract at last. “Sailor Bishop’s a new contractor—landscaping. Some excellent ideas, so if you do sleep with him, try not to dump him until after he’s completed the job. I once made that mistake with another contractor—he kept breaking down into tears on the job and couldn’t even give me a concise site report.”

  Ísa wondered if Nayna had ever had a conversation like this with her mother. “Maybe we should talk about my duties as VP,” she said, the topic of Sailor Bishop fraught with far too much danger.

  “I was getting to that. I want you to handle the Fast Organic project from here on out.” Jacqueline began to bring up the files.

  And Ísa decided there was a silver lining to being blackmailed into being a VP: given the workload, she’d have no time to give in to the temptation to see Sailor Bishop again and finish what they’d started.

  * * *

  SAILOR COULDN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT his redhead… and that single flash of hurt he’d glimpsed in her expression before she went all mad Fury on him. What Cody had done, the cruelty and planned humiliation of it, had really, badly hurt her. Enough that the shadows lingered to this day.

  He stabbed his shovel harder into the earth, his shoulder muscles tight. “Asshole.”

  Sailor truly didn’t consider the other man a friend of any kind. The idea of being associated with a guy who’d done what Cody had was abhorrent to him. Sailor’s mother and father would tan his hide if he ever disrespected a woman that way—hell, Sailor would tan his own useless hide.

  But Cody, it appeared, had gotten away with it.

  Sailor had never heard a word about anyone confronting the other man on the subject. He’d considered doing so himself, but he’d been on his own confused path back then, and getting arrested for assault had simply not been on the agenda. Not even for a beautiful redhead whose tears haunted him.

  Only now she wasn’t a mysterious redhead.

  She was Ísa, his glorious, fiery spitfire with skin of moonlight and a heart that carried scars still from that night. Scars that had almost put a halt to their relationship before it began.

  So, even though he had a hundred things on his plate, he picked up his phone and managed to find someone who had Cody’s number. The other man was understandably startled at hearing from Sailor but agreed amazingly quickly to meet up with him for a drink after work.

  Sailor was waiting in dirt-streaked khaki shorts and a light brown Bishop Landscaping T-shirt, dirt-caked work boots on his feet, when Cody drove into the small parking lot behind the bar where they’d agreed to meet. The other man parked his shiny white Audi in the spot next to Sailor’s battered truck, Cody’s car the newest model on the market.

  Sailor knew that because his brother Jake was a gearhead. Jake was mostly into grunty muscle cars, but he kept up with all kinds of car news and had a habit of sprinkling car facts into the conversation. He’d also left a couple of his magazines behind at Sailor’s place the last time he’d hung out there.

  So Sailor knew the car Cody was driving was worth in the vicinity of a hundred thousand.

  He’d have been impressed if he didn’t know the Audi was courtesy of Suzanne’s parents’ money. Cody did work—as a financial consultant, whatever that was—but it was in Suzanne’s family’s business. As far as Sailor was aware, the other man had never held a position totally independent of his fiancée’s family company.

  Getting out of the vehicle, the suit-and-tie-wearing male with a modelesque jawline and impeccably cut hair of rich brown shot him a smile. “Hey, Sailor. It was great to hear from you.” There was something too enthusiastic about the greeting, directed as it was to a man Cody had only ever run across when their teams played one another.

  “I have to tell you,” Cody continued before Sailor could respond, “I haven’t had a chance to catch up with the any of the boys for a while. My fiancée, Suzanne—you might’ve seen her at some of the interclub functions—likes me at home.”

  Sailor wondered exactly how long a leash Suzanne permitted Cody. From the way Cody was tugging at his tie, it looked like the other man was contemplating an escape. Sailor didn’t think he’d get very far before he remembered the fancy car and the fancy house and the fancy yacht. “I’d say it’s good to see you Cody, but it isn’t.”

  Face falling, Cody appeared to only then notice the otherwise empty parking lot. “Hey, is the bar not even open?” A hint of trepidation.

  “No. It opens in an hour.” Which was why Sailor had asked to meet now.

  Cody took a step back. “Look, Sailor”—he lifted up his hands, palms out—“whatever you’ve heard, I didn’t do it. I haven’t even thought about you in months, not since that last game.”

  That last game where Cody’s team had been beaten to a pulp by Sailor’s. And where Sailor might’ve taken a little too much pleasure in tackling Cody facedown into the muddy earth.

  He always had the most fun at the games that involved Cody. He hadn’t consciously realized why until this instant. No one could arrest you for assault on the rugby field. Not when body-slamming contact was part of the game and bruises expected.

  “Back in college,” he said, “do you remember Ísa?”

  A sudden blink… followed by a tide of creeping red. “Yeah.” Cody dropped his head to stare at the oil-stained concrete of the parking lot. “She was sweet. She never ragged on me like Suzanne does.”

  “So why were you such a fucking asshole to her?”

  A long silence before Cody sighed. “Suzanne told me if I said those things, she’d go out with me.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Sailor’s hands fisted. “You’re blaming your fiancée?”

  “I was just going to break up with Ísa when Suzanne… when she told me she wanted me, but Suzanne has this thing against Ísa.”

  Because Ísa was blindin
gly beautiful in both body and spirit. Something Suzanne’s jealous little mind couldn’t handle. “And you went along with this plan to hurt Ísa, hurt the girl you were supposed to love? What the fuck kind of man are you?”

  Cody looked up with a befuddled frown. “I didn’t know she was your sister.”

  That was when Sailor decided there really was no point to the conversation. Instead, he said, “This is for Ísa.”

  And then he punched Cody.

  15

  Ísa the Barracuda

  THE MAN HAD A GLASS jaw. He crumpled to the asphalt with a whimper.

  Sitting up afterward, his suit jacket torn at the elbow and his hair no longer so flawlessly combed, Cody cradled his jaw as blood poured from his nose. “What the fuck?” Pinching his nostrils shut, he tilted back his head. “You punched me.” The words came out whiningly nasal.

  Sailor flexed, then fisted his hands. “Tell me you didn’t deserve that.”

  Going pale when he lowered his head and saw Sailor’s hands, Cody gulped. “Jesus. Yeah, yeah I did.” Weirdly, the words actually sounded genuine.

  Sailor watched as the other man sat up on the concrete with his back against his fancy car and dug around in his jacket. Finding a wadded-up tissue, he tore it up and began to plug his nose.

  “I think I made the wrong choice that night, Sailor.” A pitiful moan, the torn tissue sticking out from his nose like a fungal growth. “I’ve been thinking about Ísa for months. Ever since I saw that photo of her on Trevor’s page. She was at some theater event with her mother that Trevor’s cousin put on.”

  Sailor had no idea who Trevor was and he didn’t care. “You’re too late,” he said. “I don’t think she’d give you a chance even if you turned up with a truckload of chocolates and diamonds.” The idea of Cody going anywhere near Ísa ever again had him seeing red.

  Breathing past the urge to plant another one in Cody’s face—it’d be unsporting against such a pathetic opponent—he said, “And what about your wedding? Bit too late for regrets, don’t you think?”

  Cody nodded, face set in glum lines and his white nose growths now faintly pinkish. “Suzanne’s got everything planned. I just have to turn up on the day.” A shuddering sigh, his hand rising to cradle his jaw once more. “Do you know something? Her family doesn’t even have as much money as Ísa’s.”

  Sailor looked at his scraped knuckles and seriously considered smashing Cody’s nose in, unsporting or not. He managed to control himself only because he realized he’d probably already done a very stupid thing for a man trying to get a new business off the ground, one that required bank loans and the trust of CEOs like Jacqueline Rain.

  And yet he couldn’t make himself be sorry.

  “If you’re planning to press charges,” he said, “here’s my phone so you can call the cops.” Cody’s phone had fallen out of his pocket when he crashed to the ground; the screen was so cracked it looked like someone had taken a hammer to it.

  “I don’t want people to know the real reason why you punched me.” Cody lifted pleading eyes to Sailor. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? I’ll make up some story to explain the face and jaw.”

  “Fine.” Sailor turned and got back in his truck before he shoved the fungal growths even further up Cody’s nose, his anger at the other man unabated.

  Finally getting to his feet, Cody called out, “Hey, so is she your sister or not?”

  Sailor thought of Ísa’s lips under his, her thighs so sweetly tight around his body, the scent of her drugging his senses, and said, “No Ísa isn’t my sister… but she is mine.” He screeched out of the parking lot before Cody could reply.

  Sailor had to get to a job, finish the work he’d promised to do.

  Again, his eyes fell on the scraped knuckles with which he held the steering wheel. Nope, not sorry. No one had a right to do what Cody had done to Ísa.

  * * *

  ÍSA MADE IT THROUGH HER first day in the vice presidential office without murdering Jacqueline. She’d never admit it to her mother, but the company had a nice feel to it, the employees cheerful and genuinely happy to be there. As for the work, it was difficult, but to Ísa’s intense horror, she understood it all. She couldn’t even fake stupid questions—she was a terrible liar. In desperation, she tried working slowly, so as to annoy Jacqueline, but found that her brain refused to cooperate.

  It was like her mother had brainwashed her while she was still in the womb.

  Frustrated with herself for being so good at a job she hated, she deliberately took every single break to which she was legally entitled, using that time to work on the poetry that was her outlet and the saver of her sanity. The breaks slowed things down a little. But not anywhere near enough.

  When Jacqueline came to see her after lunch, she had a beaming smile on her face. “I knew you’d be perfect for this position,” she said. “Look how well you fit in.”

  Ísa banged her head against the desk after the door closed behind Jacqueline.

  She had to figure out a way to sabotage this without breaking her word, or her mother would be blackmailing her into eternity. But how could she let down Catie and Harlow? Harlow would probably survive—his heart would be broken, pulverized more like it, but he was a smart kid. He’d be all emotionally messed up, but he’d be able to support himself and he’d eventually set up a business to rival Jacqueline’s.

  But Catie… Catie needed her mother in ways she’d never articulate. And if Jacqueline cut Ísa off in punishment, she’d lose her ability to make sure Jacqueline paid at least some attention to her thirteen-year-old youngest child. Clive certainly wouldn’t be able to manage that—he hadn’t even been able to make mother-child moments happen while he and Jacqueline had been married.

  It was a teenaged Ísa who’d negotiated time for Catie in her mother’s schedule.

  In return, she’d agreed to learn the ropes of the company without complaining.

  “Knock, knock.”

  Glancing up at her open door, she saw Ginny with a huge latte balanced on the tray she’d clipped to the arms of her wheelchair so it’d be stable. “It’s like you read my mind,” she told the other woman as Ginny wheeled herself in and put the latte on Ísa’s desk. “You’ve been fantastic today.”

  “It’s far more interesting working for you than being Jacqueline’s junior assistant,” the brunette confessed. “I haven’t had to make a single stupid craft thing all day.”

  “Don’t get too used to it,” Ísa warned after stretching out her back, then taking a restorative sip of the coffee. “I have no desire to be trapped in Crafty Corners hell.”

  Ginny’s face fell. “Oh, come on Ísa,” she wheedled. “You’re really good at this—I did some work for the last person your mother put temporarily in this position, and you’re like a rocket compared to his hand-powered car. You have the instinct.”

  That was the last thing Ísa wanted to hear.

  “Oh,” Ginny said, “I almost forgot. A small package arrived for you.” She reached into a bag she had on the back of her wheelchair and pulled it out.

  “Thanks, Gin.” Putting the unassuming brown box aside as she returned to the work she’d been doing, Ísa forgot all about the package until seven that night. Ginny had already clocked out, and Ísa was packing up to go too when her eye fell on the box.

  Guessing it was either a corporate gift from a client or a sample from a hopeful craft inventor, she made quick work of opening it. “Ouch!”

  She instinctively brought her finger to her mouth. But there was no blood, not even a real dent in her skin. Opening the flaps of the box with more care this time, she frowned at what she saw within. Not quite certain what it was about, she began to cut open the box so she could remove the object without further stabs.

  Box surgically dissected, she pulled out the packing peanuts to free the perfectly potted cactus within. Dark green with wicked spines, it was potted in a pretty terra-cotta pot… on which someone had written in white ink: Pointy spiky t
hings don’t scare me.

  Beside it was a tiny sketched image of a kitten-heeled shoe.

  Ísa pressed her lips tightly together to keep from smiling.

  Putting the cactus aside to take home, she looked in the remains of the box for any other sign of who’d sent it, found nothing. The external packaging didn’t provide much of an answer either. There was no return address. But Ísa didn’t really need any further evidence. Who else but a gardener would fight with plants?

  Her lips tugged up at the corners despite herself.

  She carried the cactus carefully down to her car, then into her apartment complex. Slogging up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, she tried to think of a fitting rejoinder.

  “No, Ísa,” she ordered herself. “No playing this game. He’s too young, and you have a plan.” To find a man who was ready to settle down and create the kind of family foundation she’d always lacked.

  A firm place on which Ísa could stand and where she could shelter Catie and Harlow. And a strong pair of arms on whom she could depend, a man as rooted as an oak, with a heart in which Ísa wasn’t an afterthought but a priority.

  She could almost taste it, she wanted that dream so much.

  A twenty-three-old with demon-blue eyes was not going to be on the same page as her. He’d just begun to stretch his wings, sow his wild oats. Even Devil Ísa knew that. Though it didn’t stop her from whispering sinful suggestions in Ísa’s ear about how she should follow Jacqueline’s advice and have a whole lot of fun with him.

  Naked fun.

  Handcuffs and leg cuffs included.

  Ísa’s toes curled… before she was smothered by a blanket of self-recrimination. Look at her, thinking about using a man for her own degenerate purposes. A man who was younger than her and… well, okay, he wasn’t exactly innocent, but that wasn’t the point! She was acting just how you’d expect the offspring of Jacqueline Rain and Stefán óskarsson to act.