by Amy Brent
“Would you care to talk about it?”
“Is that something you’re capable of doing without referencing last night?” I asked.
“It pains me that you think so little of me, Olive,” he said, grinning. “I figured you would’ve known me better than that.”
“Which is why I asked the question, Mr. Fox.”
“Ah, such coldness with the professionalism,” he said. “Your body was quite warm last night, even with you establishing your dominance.”
“I’m willing to offer you two-hundred thousand for the property,” I said.
“I could easily get double that with any other offer,” he said.
“Not when people find out you fucked someone in it.”
Wesley stared at me from across his glass, and he snickered before he shook his head. In Malibu real estate, reputation was everything. If you were selling a piece of property, you had to treat it with decorum and respect. It was obvious he tended to the split property on the beach, but it would be obvious he didn’t have any respect for the shack on the property. That would get anyone to easily lower their price to three-hundred and fifty thousand, but if it began to circulate that he’d screwed someone in the house? It would be easy for a rumor like that to morph into him running some sort of a private sex club out of it, reserved for those who wanted the thrill of having sex on the beach without actually being on it.
“It would be hard to push a rumor like that,” he said. “Not without destroying your own reputation in the community.”
“And I suppose that’s the risk you take. Do you want to pit my reputation in my community against your reputation in yours? Or do you simply want to take the two-hundred thousand, invest it wisely, and have me take the property off your hands?”
“Two-hundred thousand, as well as three percent of the resort,” he said. “Think of it as a return investment on my account.”
“Investments require monetary exchanges,” I said.
“And I’m pretty sure handing over a piece of property for lower than floor price constitutes more than a monetary investment,” he said.
“Two-hundred thousand and two percent of the resort, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
I saw the glimmer in his eye as his grin reached the rest of his face, and I knew I had him where I wanted him. I’d made him a deal he couldn’t refuse, which meant I had more to hold over his head when the time came. I had more than enough information to dig back into the files of his past. I simply had one more move up my sleeve in order to have everything I needed.
“Would you care to take a picture to commemorate this occasion?” I asked.
“Certainly.”
I dug around for my phone as Wesley got up and walked around to my side of the table. He crouched behind me and laid his cheek against mine, and I faltered. I had to bite back a sigh of relief, and I had to prevent my eyes from fluttering closed. His skin felt warm against mine, just like he had last night.
“Ready?” he asked.
“One, two, three!”
I snapped a picture of his face and saved it to my phone. Now that I had a full-on shot of what he looked like, I could run him through the database. I could pull up pictures from the internet of people who looked like him and see how far back these cons went.
Yep. I had him right where I wanted him.
At least, I hoped so.
Chapter 9
Wesley
I couldn’t get the lunch I’d had with Olivia yesterday out of my mind. I’d tried everything I could to convince her to come see me at work. I’d tried getting her to come back to my place before I tried going to hers, but she simply wasn’t having it. Olivia told me she was currently in a hotel because she was having an addition put on her home, but all I did was try to reassure her that I didn’t care about any of that. If anything, taking her back to a hotel should make her feel safer because that meant I still didn’t know where she lived.
But she kept refusing, and I found myself disappointed.
I wanted to have sex with her again. That much, I was sure of. From the moment she sat down at the table and wrapped her fingers around that wine glass, my cock had started to twitch. The sexy banter between the two of us had throbbed my cock, but the moment we started talking about the building, I caught a glimpse of a woman I didn’t quite know. Back in high school, Olivia was reserved. She always walked with her shoulders slightly slumped, and she never really looked people in the eye.
But during that lunch, she’d been anything but the girl I knew from high school. She was sexy, confident, and had no issues staring me down. She’d grown and blossomed into a woman whose pussy I simply couldn’t get enough of, and I couldn’t get her off my mind. I was mesmerized by her, like my cock craved more of her than any other woman I’d ever been with. It was unlike me to be so entranced with someone like this. Usually, I was in it for the money. I had a plan, a fake name, colored contacts, and a different hair color. I got to pretend to be someone else before taking what I wanted from them, but this was different.
Olivia knew me in ways that made me uncomfortable, and yet, her body was just as magnetized to mine as I had been to hers.
I decided to surprise her. I was familiar with the hotel she was staying at, so I drove on over to surprise her. A quick flirtatious conversation with the lonely front desk attendant provided me with her room number, and soon, I was heading up the elevator to the fifth floor.
I simply couldn’t believe it. Olivia Hart was back in my life again. Out of all the people I’d ever encountered in my life, I never expected to have another encounter with her. I never thought in a million decades I’d ever come across her path again, much less have the ability to please her. I never could persuade her to have sex with me in high school, but I sure as hell persuaded her to do many other things.
The juice between her legs tasted sweeter than I remembered, and just the thought of tasting it again clouded my mind as the elevator doors opened.
I wanted her again, and that was exactly what I would get.
I walked down the hallway to her suite before I raised my fist to knock on the door. I rapped lightly before I listened to any sound behind the door, and then I knocked again when nothing happened. The confidence I had been walking with soon drained between my toes, and I felt another wave of disappointment roll over my body.
Why the fuck do I want to see her so badly?
I knocked one last time before I gave up. Raking my hands through my hair, I strode back to the elevator so I could head home. She obviously wasn’t here, and I honestly didn’t care to track her down anywhere else. I didn’t have to work today, which meant the entire day was mine. If I wanted to, I could go down to the beach and have someone piling into my bed within the hour. Someone who wanted to be with me. Someone who wanted to roll around in my sheets instead of tossing every advance I could come up with back in my fucking face.
But even as I slid into the seat of my car, my mind wafted back to only one thought.
The fact that I had to have her.
I headed back to my house and flopped down onto the couch. I fell asleep with her on my mind and woke up with my cock standing tall and proud and tenting my pants. I slid my pants down my legs and groaned at the pain coursing through my pelvis. I wrapped my hand around my thick dick, precome already oozing from the top as Olivia’s body wafted back to my mind. My hand slowly began to pump as I reminisced at the feeling of her tits on my face, but before I could even set a decent pace, my phone buzzed on the floor.
“Fuck!”
I leaned down and grasped it before answering the call.
“What?” I asked.
“Mr. Fox?” my lawyer asked. “I just wanted to let you know the contract will be ready to go by tomorrow.”
“Oh, hey there. Um, thanks. I’ll give Miss Hart a call.”
“I’ll drop it off at your place in the morning,” she said.
I hung up the phone and immediately dialed Olivia. This was the exac
t in I needed, professional so I could get in front of her once again. I knew if I could see her one last time, I could convince her of what she needed. I knew she had been wearing a padded bra at lunch. I knew she’d been trying to hide how her own body was reacting. That made her a smart businesswoman, no doubt about it. But she didn’t understand the way I could now read people.
I had to for the line of work I indulged in.
“Mr. Fox,” Olivia said.
“Miss Hart. I take it the rest of your day was delightful?”
“Busy,” she said. “Once I get going, I have a million things that I have to get done.”
Ah, so she really hadn’t been there in her hotel room. That brought an odd sort of comfort to me, and I didn’t really understand why.
“I wanted to call and let you know my lawyer phoned me.”
“A lawyer, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. “She’s helping me negotiate this contract. Anyway, she said it would be finished by tomorrow, so she’s dropping it off in the morning. Care to meet and sign the details then?”
“You know, drawing up the contract is usually my job, Mr. Fox,” she said. “Are you that insecure about me commanding this deal?”
“Not a bit. But you did seem a bit distracted at lunch, so I thought I might take something off your plate. Less to worry about. The deal can be executed quicker, and we can all get on with our lives.”
“How very considerate of you,” she said. “I’d be more than willing to meet up tomorrow and sign it. Did you have any particular time or place in mind?”
“Well, the lawyer’s dropping it off in the morning. Why don’t I cook us lunch here, and you can simply come on by?”
“Lunch won’t be necessary for a second day in a row,” she said. “I’ll only be stopping by to sign the papers before I get on with my day. I can take them with me and get them officially processed so you can wash your hands of everything.”
“Don’t worry about such foolishness,” I said. “I enjoy being a part of the process.”
“Shoot me your address, and I’ll see you around eleven tomorrow morning?”
“Choosing to meet in the morning?” I asked. “Bold move.”
“Not particularly. Just a long day ahead of me. I’ll see you then.”
“I’m counting down the minutes.”
Chapter 10
Olivia
“Holy hell, Olivia,” Destiny said. “Please tell me you’ve got something.”
“I’ve actually got quite a bit. I’m sending you a photo over to your phone. I want you to tell me if this guy looks like the man you were trying to describe to me.”
I sent the picture I’d taken of the two of them and waited for Destiny’s reaction. I heard some clicking over the phone before Destiny let out a gasp, and that was when I knew I’d done well. Granted, I wasn’t going to tell Destiny I’d known him, much less slept with him. It wasn’t any of Destiny’s damn business when it came to how I ran my investigative services or how I got the information I did.
All that mattered was the tears of joy I could hear in Destiny’s voice when I got back on the phone.
“Oh, my gosh. You found him. He doesn’t. . . he didn’t look like that, but that’s him. Those eyes. They weren’t blue. They were gray like yours. But I’ll never forget that cute little mischievous glint behind him. What else do you have?”
They were gray like yours.
I had no idea why that phrase hit me as hard as it did, but it knocked the wind from my lungs.
“Gray like mine?” I asked.
“Yeah. That’s what they reminded me of the first time I ever met him. He had eyes the color of yours. What’s his real name?”
“Wesley Wilton,” I said.
“So, the Wesley Fox on the card is wrong, too.”
“Yes,” I said. “Apparently, Mr. Wilton had a bad relationship with his mother and wanted to get as far away from her as he could. So, he changed his name. It’s legally Wesley Fox, but it wasn’t always that way.”
“Poor guy,” Destiny said. “I bet he needs a hug.”
“Stay with me. Remember the money he took?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Right. That bastard. What else you got?”
“His address, his cell phone number, and proof that he works at the place regularly that was on his card. I’ve got all I need to track everything down on him. I’m taking the picture I just sent you and funneling it through my software. I’ve set it to pull any image of a face that fits a ninety-five percent match of him, disregarding physical features. If we’re gonna drag him through the mud, we’re gonna do it with all the women he’s done this to.”
“You don’t think this is the first time?” Destiny asked.
“He was too professional when he did this to you. Being around him has only confirmed my initial theory. He’s a con man. He’s luring women he knows has money. He’s using fake names, fake careers, and fake outward appearances to manipulate them into trusting him, and then he strikes when they’re at their weakest and takes what he can get his hands on.”
“I can’t believe I let someone like that in my home,” she said. “My kid lives here!”
“And that’s why we’re gonna nail him. I’ve got him in a con of my own right now.”
“Giving him a dose of his own medicine,” she said. “That’s good. What’re you doing? Posing as a sly little rich girl and enticing him into bed?”
I swallowed thickly at her statement. I wasn’t ever sleeping with Wesley again. This needed to be a professional thing. Destiny had just backed me into a corner where I now had to lie to her, and that wasn’t going to become a habit of mine. I wasn’t going to start lying to the people who hired me. They deserved my decorum and my professionalism, especially for the rates I charged.
I’d stop lying to them after I told this one.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m posing as a real estate investor and developer. Mr. Fox has a piece of split property right against the ocean on a strip he’s apparently been trying to sell. I’m about to go over to his place to sign the contract of purchase. It’ll give me a chance to scope out his home and take a few pictures before I come back and check on the software. We’re close, Destiny. Just hang on a bit longer.”
“Get him, Olivia,” she said. “Nail his balls to the wall.”
I hung up the phone before I raced around to get ready. I didn’t have time to piece myself together professionally, so I pulled on a summer dress before throwing a light cardigan around my shoulders. I slipped into some flip-flops before I twisted my hair up into a bun, then I grabbed my purse and headed for my car.
“I will not sleep with Wesley. I will not sleep with Wesley. I will not sleep with Wesley.”
All the way to his home, I chanted to myself. I kept reminding myself of the lie I just had to tell a client and how guilty it made me feel. I kept reminding myself that this wasn’t the guy I’d dated in high school. This wasn’t the little boy who had a pained relationship with his drunken mother. This was a man who had blossomed into one of the best liars in Malibu. He took women for their money without any regard for how they felt about him in the process, and then he left them high and dry after robbing their fucking purses.
I white-knuckled my steering wheel all the way to his home.
When I pulled in, I noticed the lack of cars in the driveway. For a moment, I considered calling him to make sure I had the right place. But Wesley stepped out onto his balcony and waved at me, so I knew I was where I needed to be.
The question was, where was everyone else?
I got out of my car and headed to the side door before I slid it open and stepped in. Wesley was coming down the stairs just as I rounded the corner, and he smiled before he ushered me into the kitchen.
“My lawyer dropped these off about an hour ago.”
He slid the documents toward me as I slowly maneuvered in front of him. If I could keep the kitchen island between us, I could keep this professional. There
was no reason for him to be any closer than he was, but I was painfully aware of his fierce, prying stare on my face.
“I figured your lawyer would be here to witness all this,” I said.
“She’ll come by later and do it. She’s a busy woman.”
“It’s usually not legal to sign papers without the witness here to, well, witness.”
“She assured me it would be all right,” he said. “If it makes you feel better, I could film us signing the documents.”
I looked up at him slowly and saw the sly grin spreading across his face. I leaned heavily into the kitchen island, trying to keep my balance while muscle memories of his pulsing body against mine tried to push to the forefront of my mind. I threw my gaze back to the documents, reading over the gibberish while I tried to look like I knew what I was reading. I clocked the two-hundred thousand dollars, along with the two percent he bargained for with the resort, and I felt good enough about the documents sitting in front of me.
After all, once I nailed him to the wall, these wouldn’t even matter anyway.
“Do you have a pen?” I asked.
“Of course.”
I held out my hand so Wesley could place a pen between my fingers, and his skin lightly grazed mine. A spark flew between us, ripping both our hands back before we shook out the static shock. Wesley was snickering, and I couldn’t help but giggle. Of all the times in all the places for something like that to happen, for some damn spark to fly to set my breasts puckering again, it had to be now.
