by Nikki Chase
“Thank you,” I simply say.
I acknowledge his thoughtfulness, but I don’t mistake it for kindness.
I’ve worked with Heath long enough to know that he often throws in some unexpected bonuses at the end of negotiations, just to seal the deal. That wasn’t a spontaneous offer.
The strategy works well, although I’ve always thought Heath’s clients were suckers for buying this cheap move.
But now, as I sit on the other side of the negotiation table from Heath, I recognize how sincere he comes across. He puts so much thought into every little thing that it feels personal.
Even though he can be ruthless toward certain big corporations, Heath is a courteous, reliable business partner who keeps his side of the bargain.
I know I’m in good hands. And I know he’s going to be a great dad, if he approaches fatherhood like he approaches his business.
“I believe that’s everything,” Heath says with a small smile as he slides a copy of the contract across his desk.
“Yes.”
I take the contract and flip through it. Everything seems familiar because I’ve done nothing over the past few days but read every clause, over and over again. I don’t know if I was looking for an excuse to bail or to go all in.
But right now, I’ve made my decision. I take the fountain pen Heath’s offering and sign my name on the dotted line.
There. It’s done.
I’m really doing this.
Heath
“Let’s go,” I say as soon as she shows up in my office.
Kat looks delicious today, but then she always does. A thin pink blouse covers her body, affixed to the skin of her cleavage by gravity and skimming the rest of her upper body demurely. Her white lace pencil skirt shows off the flare of her hips.
My strait-laced personal assistant with the tight bun on her head. I can’t wait to peel off her office-appropriate clothes and plunder the prize within.
Her hand is still on the door handle. A cute little frown appears on her pretty face. “Where?”
“You’ll see.” I put my arm around her delicate shoulders and lead her out of the office.
She keeps insisting, though, and I keep refusing to answer. She puts on a mirthless expression in the car.
“You don’t like surprises, kitten?” I ask.
“Not when I’d planned to spend the day at the office,” she answers curtly.
I chuckle. She’s always been highly organized, which makes her a great personal assistant. She wrangles my schedule like she was born to do it.
“I only told you to show up at the office in the morning as usual. I never said anything about staying in the office the whole day. Sounds like you were anxious to get started on the baby-making,” I say. “Did you want to pick things up where we left off the other day?”
I know she remembers the kiss I gave her in my office. With her sparkling green eyes, she panted and begged me for more.
But it’s not my style to gobble up everything in front of me, like I’m in a cheap buffet joint.
No, someone like Kat… I want to taste her, really savor her. An exquisite beauty like her doesn’t come around often. And she’s not just a looker—I’ve seen glimpses of her brilliance and her sensuality.
I can’t wait to enjoy this arrangement.
To me, sex without intimacy is like a dish without any spices. But I get the feeling that being with Kat is going to be like an explosion of tastes… and not just in my mouth either.
But I need to wait. It’s going to take a little preparation to get her to the right state of mind.
“Let’s keep this professional,” she retorts, which only proves my point. She’s not ready yet.
“Work can be fun, too, kitten,” I remind her.
“Spoken like a true workaholic.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Fair enough.”
Kitty’s got claws!
“I’m just saying, it’s okay to enjoy your work. That’s why you want to be a romance author, right? Because you enjoy the work?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she admits.
“You know what they say about all work and no play.”
“Is that what this is? Play?” she asks.
“You can say that.”
I take no more questions and ask Kat to tell me about herself instead. But beyond saying that she lives with an investment banker (the roommate who made notes on her smutty manuscript), she doesn’t reveal much.
When I ask her about her family, she mentions having a step-mom and step-siblings, but gets even more tight-lipped than usual. It really makes me wonder what her life is like.
She stops talking about herself altogether when we pull up outside the airport and park the car. It’s her turn to ask questions now.
“Why are we at the airport?” she asks with suspicion in her voice.
“You don’t have to plan every second of your life, kitten. Let loose a little. Go with the flow,” I say as I get out of the car. I smile to myself when she follows me and we make our way into the airport building.
Kat’s jaw slackens as a man in a smart suit drives up in a caddy and takes us past the lines at the checkin desks and the security checkpoints.
“Are we… flying somewhere?” she asks. The widest part of her hips brushes against my thigh as the caddy whizzes past other travelers.
“That’s generally why people go to airports, yes. To fly somewhere.” I give her a smile.
It’s so amusing to watch her try to figure out what I’m planning. I can almost hear the gears turning in her mind. But she’s not going to guess this one.
“You’re not… This is… not human trafficking, right?” she asks in a small voice, as if she realizes how ridiculous it sounds but still has to ask.
I burst out laughing. When I finally calm down, I give her a dramatic, sinister look and say, “If this were human trafficking, you think I’m just going to tell you?”
“No?”
“Not a chance.” I shake my head.
“You really did make your money from stock trading, right?” she asks.
“Stocks, humans… Whatever makes the most money. What’s the difference?” I pause to watch her decide whether to laugh at my lame joke or run in the other direction.
She lets out a nervous laugh. “You’re not going to fool me. I know some finance nerds who are big fans of your work.”
“Sure.” I hop off the caddy when it stops. “But they don’t know all the things I do on the side.”
Kat catches up to me in the jet bridge connecting the airport gate to the private jet. “Ha-ha. Very funny. Where are we really going?”
“Shopping.” I nod at the flight attendant welcoming us on board.
“Shopping for what?” If anything, her tone only gets more insistent after getting an answer for one of her many questions.
“Wine.”
The flight attendant directs Kat to her seat. She lands her luscious ass on the leather and folds her toned legs gracefully. She keeps her eyes on me, waiting for an explanation. “Where?”
“A winery.” I know she’s just going to keep asking the same question, trying to get me to reveal more information about the location. “You’re going to work overtime tonight. We’re probably only going to reach our destination at the end of the day.” I pause. “Or is it going to be morning again when we get there, because of the time difference? I can never tell.”
“We’re flying far enough for there to be a time difference?” Kat asks in a surprised voice.
“Yeah.” I fasten my seatbelt.
I usually like this big, comfortable seat with plenty of leg room, but right now I hate that the spaciousness of the aircraft also means that there’s a wide aisle between my hands and her sexy little body.
“So we’re probably flying to the east or the west…” Kat’s voice trails off as she thinks.
“Hint: we’re going to fly over the Atlantic.”
“We’re going to Europe?” Kat asks
in a fascinating mixture of disbelief Apprehension, and excitement.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s going to be about ten hours until we get there. You’d better rest up. It’s going to be morning when we land.”
“Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said ‘overtime,’” Kat says.
I laugh. I don’t often have people challenge me, and that’s the way I usually like it.
But with Kat…
I don’t know. Even when she’s being a sassy smart-mouth, she’s entertaining. There’s an honesty about her, a genuine quality.
Most people want something from me. Money. Connections. Power. Assistance.
I’m not saying Kat doesn’t want all those things. Let’s not pretend that I’m not paying her to be here. I’m not delusional.
But she acts like she doesn’t need all those things. Like she could take it or leave it. I can’t tell if it’s pride or if she’s here for a different reason.
Is it me she’s staying for? Is it something else?
I’ve worked my ass off to build my business from an unknown investment firm into an international hedge fund management company worth billions of dollars.
If there’s anything I know, it’s that I can make anything happen if I really put my mind to it.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll crack Kat’s armor and show her how much fun this can be, if she lets go and follows her instincts.
Sure, this agreement is about having Kat deliver my baby. But that doesn’t have to be all it is.
I’ve decided that Kat will be my next project. I’m going to tame her.
Kat
As if the impromptu trans-Atlantic flight on a freaking private jet isn’t crazy enough, we’re met on the tarmac by a black sedan at our destination. The rear door of the car is open, held by a man in a tweed flat cap, a pair of white gloves and a big, friendly smile.
“Merci, Alain,” Heath says as he hops in beside me on the backseat.
The man nods and closes the car door.
The interior of the car smells like fresh lavender and vanilla. The leather seat feels buttery soft on my skin—except for the few inches between Heath and me. That space is electric, like I’d risk a zap if I were to get too close.
This feels like a dream, and not just because I’m suddenly all the way in France, when I’d never even traveled out of the country before—say, to Canada, for example.
To be honest, though, this morning… Or was it yesterday morning? This time difference thing is really messing with my head.
Anyway, when I walked into Heath’s office—whenever it was—I was considering cancelling the whole arrangement.
Who cared about my romance career? If it was meant to be, it would happen.
And there was never any guarantee that I’d get a lightbulb moment that shines a light on the circumstances of my own birth and helps me understand my birth mother. Same went for the tearful reunion with my dad.
These were just pathetic, impossible, childish wishes.
But then Heath knocked me completely off my balance. Who the hell just randomly takes a girl to another continent just to have some wine?
But then again, who the hell just randomly hires a girl to have his baby?
The answer to both is Heath Anders.
He just keeps coming up with surprises. This is not just about him having the money to do these things, but also about his spontaneity.
Contrary to what I told him, I actually love surprises.
It’s just that I was already feeling conflicted, and he was making it hard for me to stick to the decision I’d made while tossing and turning in my bed last night.
When I saw him, I couldn’t end it. I wanted to know what else he had up his sleeves.
But if nothing else, at least the lack of sleep allowed me to snooze like a baby in the plane, all the way to the south of France. That’s probably one of the reasons why I still feel like I’m trapped in a surreal dream.
“So this place we’re going to, it’s this small, organic vineyard. Most vineyards in this area are like, 100 hectares, but this one is only 6 hectares. The couple that owns the place doesn’t use chemical fertilizers. They have pet donkeys and sheep to help with that. So these animals just graze among the vines and fertilize the soil naturally,” Heath says, suddenly chatty after dodging my questions about our destination the whole flight.
“Did you read the guidebook on the flight here?” I ask, only half-joking.
“Something like that,” he admits with a boyish grin. “You were asleep for a long time.”
“You said to rest up.” I shrug.
“I’m not complaining,” he says. “I enjoyed watching you sleep. You looked so peaceful.”
I’m not sure if that’s a compliment. “Uh… thanks?”
“I took some pictures and videos, I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t help it, especially when you starting moaning my name…”
“I what?” I ask, louder than I intended.
Heath chuckles, and laugh lines appear around his startling blue eyes.
“I really did that?” I ask again. I need to know.
“No,” he says, still grinning from ear to ear.
Relief and embarrassment flood my chest at the same time. I’m glad I didn’t actually do that, but I’m annoyed that Heath has pulled a fast one on me again.
Or maybe I’ve been in a bad mood all day. Without knowing what we were about to do, I couldn’t come up with a challenge for today. And now it’s… I don’t even know the day anymore because of the time difference.
“You didn’t say my name in your sleep, kitten,” he says as he traps my gaze, his eyes darkened by lust. “But you’ll scream it out loud while you’re wide awake. Soon. You’ll see.”
The small vineyard is enchanting. It’s like something straight out of a fairy tale.
The main building is an old stone cottage, that nevertheless is equipped with all the modern comforts, like Wi-Fi, which is very important to me. I need it to check Jane’s latest notes on my manuscript, which I update on Google Docs whenever inspiration strikes.
All around us are other squat, old buildings that have probably stood here for hundreds of years, keeping watch over the village, generation after generation. The rolling green hills around us have been here even longer.
Everything’s old. Ancient. It’s like stepping back in time, to an era when the world was small and everybody knew everybody else.
The wines are exquisite, and the food is out of this world. Everything’s fresh from the local farms: the eggs, the breads, the jams, the milk, and the butter.
Now, I’ve had all these foods before, but not like this. I feel like holding up any one item from this meal and going, “Now this is bread” or something equally theatrical. They’re that good.
The couple who owns the place sits with us as we eat. They tell us about their vines, their traditional processes, and their little experiments to improve the subtle notes of the wines. It’s obvious they’re passionate about their products.
All I want in life is to be like them. I want to do something I love and watch people enjoy my work. That would feel so rewarding.
“I can see why you’d fly all the way here for this. This is easily the best meal I’ve ever had,” I say to Heath when we’re finally left to our own devices.
“Actually, I didn’t expect them to serve food as well. I thought it was just going to be the wines.” Heath takes another sip of the red wine.
I follow suit. “My first day, and I’m already drinking on the job.”
“And in front of your boss, too,” Heath adds.
“What can I say?” I give Heath a grin. “I eat danger for breakfast.”
“Actually, I think they call this déjeuner,” Heath says, pointing at the food on the table between us. “And it means lunch, not breakfast.”
I laugh as I recall that one French class I took years and years ago. I’ll admit that’s a good one.
I don’t know wh
at I expected, but I definitely didn’t foresee myself having such an easy banter with my boss, the rising star of Wall Street.
Sure, he’s got good looks and a truckload of money. But I didn’t expect him to also be funny, and that’s somehow more impressive to me than all the things he’s accomplished.
As the sun starts to set in the late afternoon, we leave town—sadly, before we get the chance to have dîner.
I don’t know why I expected us to stay the night. Probably because I’ve never actually flown anywhere for just one meal before. But then I’ve also never had a private jet waiting at my beck and call before.
And so I sleep the whole way back, my natural clock confused by the time zones that keep changing.
My first day has been delayed.
I’m relieved to have more time to think (although I can’t be bothered to calculate exactly how much time), but at the same time, this romantic trans-Atlantic trip doesn’t bode well for my resolve to keep things strictly professional.
It kind of scares me. Obviously, I shouldn’t get attached because we have an expiration date. Once my work with the baby—Heath’s baby—is done, there’s no reason for me to stick around anymore.
But it doesn’t make me want to turn on my heel and run away. On the contrary, it just makes me want to spend more time with Heath.
Looks like this going to be my challenge for many, many days throughout this strange arrangement of ours: try not to fall for my boss.
I’ve never failed one of my challenges, except for when I was trying to decide if I should sign Heath’s contract.
To be honest, these challenges have been getting easier for a while anyway, ever since I moved out of Vera’s, so maybe I’m overdue for a good one.
Heath Anders, I’ve decided. You’re my next challenge, and I’m not going to fail this one.
I’m going to let you have my body however you please, but my heart belongs to my fictional heroes. You’re just a stepping stone so I can introduce them to the world one day.
Kat
“Why have you been ignoring my phone calls, Kat?” Vera asks, her voice dripping with venom.
“I haven’t been ignoring you, Vera,” I say wearily into my phone as the big Anders Capital Management logo on top of the office building comes into view. I’m tired of the way Vera always assumes the worst of me. “I’ve just been busy with my new job.”
