by Moriah Jovan
Her husband, Bryce Kenard. Now, he shocked me. The burn scars that matted half his face gave him an animal sexuality that cloaked him like an aura. He had the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen in a man. I couldn’t imagine what a man like that saw in a woman as mousy as Giselle, and I wondered if he could be lured away from her.
Eilis Logan, whom I’d also only seen as a nude on canvas. Taller than I, zaftig, with shoulder-length blonde hair, one green eye and one blue eye— It was too bad that she would be my natural enemy in this little project.
And finally, her husband, King Midas, Sebastian Taight, the object of my curricular fascination and my predecessor in unconventional corporate-restructuring methods. He was perfect in a carefully unstudied GQ way, black Irish from his white-tinged black hair to the same ice blue eyes.
He had noticed my scrutiny of his wife, and glanced between us, then smirked.
“I think not,” Eilis murmured dryly.
“No?” Sebastian drawled low enough so only the two of us could hear. “Eilis sandwich?”
She raked me from head to toe. “Tempting. But...no. I don’t share.”
“Damn,” Sebastian and I said at the same time. And all three of us laughed at a joke everyone else was straining to hear.
“Too bad it took an imperial order to get to meet you, Cassie,” he said, holding his hand out. “Another month or two and I would’ve stormed your office.”
And with one handshake, I knew I’d earned the respect of a man who respected very little. “I find it’s not always good to know too much about one’s idols.”
“That’s true. Your dad was one of mine.” I stiffened. “I was...disillusioned.”
Ah, yes. If he had followed my father, he would have known what happened to him. It had never occurred to me that King Midas and I might have learned from the same master; thus, my affinity for Taight’s style had nothing to do with serendipity and everything to do with familiarity.
“Relax,” he murmured with a warm smile. “I didn’t summon your father. I summoned you.”
I nodded and took a deep breath.
Intriguing, yes, this clan of entrepreneurs, philosophers, artists, and lawyers with some strange fraternity I couldn’t pin down—
Then Ashworth introduced me to Mitch Hollander.
Ordinary. An ordinary man in his mid-forties who felt comfortable in his own skin, comfortable with who he was, and comfortable with his ordinariness amongst the cadre of extraordinary people in the room. He was athletic, with a broad chest and shoulders, and stood an inch or two over six feet. He had short, thick sandy hair that curled slightly. His eyes were an unremarkable blue.
I couldn’t stop staring at him, and the rest of the people in the room faded.
He shook my hand in an odd way, with his left hand covering our clasped right hands, but it had no hint of sexual intent and, in fact, he seemed to be above such base human needs. A Mormon bishop, akin to a Catholic priest. Ah, yes, the Man-of-God Handshake. Thoroughly non-threatening while at the same time being loving and caring—and sincere in it, too. I remembered my boring priest and suddenly wondered what Hollander would be like in bed.
Then I got a little obsessed by the idea. My very curiosity about him intrigued me; of all the overtly sexual people in this band, none of them had caught my fascination more than the one ordinary man—
—who happened to have built a steel empire, so I shook off those errant thoughts and got down to business.
Honestly, fucking these people’s minds had to be at least as pleasurable as fucking their bodies, but once I immersed myself in the business at hand, that ceased to be of any importance at all.
By the end of the meeting, I had wrestled with Eilis—and, somewhat surprisingly, Knox—over my plan to split the former Jep Industries back to its own entity. Knox’s opinion was negligible, his objections clearly rooted in the fact that he’d worked so hard to get Hollander Steelworks and Jep Industries consolidated that he didn’t want to see his work undone. But Eilis had real concerns and was a worthy opponent, flinging questions at me as fast as I could catch them.
Kenard and Ashworth grilled me on details, and took copious notes to help them ascertain some of the more complex legal and long-term economic aspects inherent in such a move. They asked every question I knew they would ask, and got answers that satisfied them.
Sebastian, obviously bored, had pulled out a sketchbook and pencil. He seemed to pay no attention to the proceedings at all, but I knew better.
Both Justice and Giselle had disengaged themselves from the meeting soon after it began. They tapped away at their laptops, serious expressions on their faces. Curious, I actually stopped the meeting and asked what they were doing.
“Uh...bookkeeping?” Giselle said warily after a minute hesitation, as if she thought I were reprimanding her.
Justice looked at me over the top of her glasses and, with a straight face, announced, “I’m having cybersex.” Knox nearly fell off his seat laughing, most everyone else chuckled, and I couldn’t help but smile, conceding the point that it was none of my business. Then she grinned and went back to it. Whatever “it” was.
Throughout the presentation, Hollander made no comment whatsoever, nor had he laughed at Justice’s joke. He had simply leaned back, relaxed, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and took it all in with an expression I couldn’t read. He had watched my relatively loud scuffle with Eilis and Knox like someone watching a tennis match, back and forth, back and forth. For someone who had to make the decisions—difficult ones—he didn’t seem terribly stressed about it.
Finally I had finished detailing my plan, answered Kenard’s and Ashworth’s questions to their satisfaction, earned Sebastian’s approval with a faint nod, and thoroughly quelled the objections of both Eilis and Knox. I turned to Hollander, wondering if he even understood what had happened since he stared right through me and hadn’t seemed at all engaged.
“Mitch?” I said, and watched his eyes focus on me fully.
“Do it.”
Both Eilis and Knox piped up again, a token protest, really, but he held up a hand. They snapped their mouths shut.
Well. That was easy.
My minions would put the plan in motion and what would have normally taken me eight hours today and another six weeks in a flurry of emails and phone calls had taken me all of three hours with no bloodshed.
I gave Hollander a little smile as I began to pack up my displays and my laptop, careful not to look too long lest he believe me to be interested in him personally, which would not be an incorrect assumption.
Morgan and Giselle amused themselves with an obviously familiar game of swapping increasingly clever insults across the table.
Knox sat quietly, playing with Justice’s curls and reading over her shoulder while she worked with great concentration. Then he pointed at the screen and said, “You might want to reword point four. Wilson hates that trick.” She looked at him incredulously. “I’ve done it before. He’s never said anything to me about it.” Knox held up his hands. “Just sayin’.”
Sebastian had his phone plastered to his ear and Eilis leaned against him to hear the other side of the conversation. “What do you mean, they don’t miss us? ... No, we’re not going to stay another three or four nights. Elliott’s sick and— ... He was running a fever when we left, remember? ... Oh, he was, too. Mom, are you trying to kill my kids?” Eilis plucked the phone out of his hand. “Dianne,” she said into it, “I’ll keep Mr. Mom away as long as I can... No, thank you.” Sebastian growled at her when she terminated the call and calmly handed his phone back to him.
Bryce leaned into Giselle and whispered something in her ear, interrupting her and Ashworth’s game. She stared down at the table while she listened. She flushed and her hand curled into a fist. “Yes,” she whispered hotly when he finished, staring into his face with a mixture of adoration and lust. “I would love to.” No, that was not a man who could be lured away from his wife. Ah, well.<
br />
I felt unfamiliar stirrings of sentimentality. Who were these people that watching and listening to them could make me want to sigh as if they were a Hallmark Christmas special come to life?
Then there was Hollander, standing with his back to me, staring out a bank of windows that looked toward the business end of his mill, his hands in his pockets, his suit coat gathered over his wrists. It was a stance I’d seen thousands of men take thousands of times, but there was just something about him...
He turned then and caught me staring at him, though I hoped it was simply a stare of speculation and didn’t betray my now driving need to know what it would be like to fuck a squeaky-clean Mormon bishop. He returned my look without blinking. His lids lowered. His mouth twitched.
Ah, he and I understood each other perfectly then.
“Dinner?” he said underneath the familial conversation and laughter behind me.
“Delighted. Seven?”
“I’ll pick you up.”
I turned with a smile, then left to arrange for a hotel room and find a killer outfit.
* * * * *
Roxanne
I dressed carefully, Jack’s instructions ringing in my head.
Still, I wanted to see if Mitch could be distracted, rattled. I wore a white blouse with a low cowl that showed a touch of cleavage—what I could muster up with a push-up bra, that was. A simple red skirt that went to my knees wasn’t sexy by itself, but combined with red suede peep-toe heels, it should do. Understated, but very, very clear in intent.
I know how to finesse men. It had taken some trial and error to learn this as Nigel trained me to be the sophisticated whore I’d set out to become. He had taught me how to lead the conversation exactly where I wanted it to go and never, ever allow it to get off track. I could anticipate any man’s conversational rabbit trails and steer accordingly, without letting him know that I had an ounce of brains.
Mitch Hollander could not be steered, and I realized that the minute he handed me into his navy-and-silver Bugatti. Moreover, he knew exactly what I was about and with a droll expression, dared me to continue to try. That fascinated me as much as it puzzled me.
We sat in a French restaurant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and comfortably conversed about absolutely nothing, as we had since he’d picked me up. (How he knew where I was staying, I had no idea, but I was getting the distinct impression he could flex his power without seeming to stir so much as a finger.)
Tonight at least, Hollander was a master at negotiating meaningless conversation with utmost aplomb, as if he did so on a regular basis. He spoke, gestured, and held himself with some strange mixture of confidence, strength, and humility I had never encountered in a man before.
No arrogance, no swagger.
His cohorts, Taight and Hilliard, Kenard and Ashworth, had arrogant alpha-male swagger down to a science. Though I couldn’t tell who was the alpha in that barrel of testosterone, I understood and appreciated men like that. The women, as powerful as their men, had their own swagger. As do I.
Hollander I did not understand. He knew that and used it like a weapon.
I had my first shock when the wine steward came around and Hollander did not wave him away. “I’m not versed,” he murmured in a voice as rich and warm as a stream of the darkest Belgian chocolate, “so I’ll have water, but feel free to serve the lady.”
Just to be perverse, I chose the most expensive wine on the menu. Mitch relaxed back in his chair, his elbows on the arms and his fingers steepled under his chin, and simply watched the sommelier and I. At long last it was done and I sat back in my seat to watch him watch me, and I raised my wine glass in a small, somewhat mocking, salute.
His eyelids lowered almost imperceptibly and the corner of his mouth curled up.
For a man of God, I decided, he might know a whole lot more about how to seduce women than I’d given him credit for. The thought disturbed me.
I decided to quit the bullshit and be completely transparent. He would see it as a tactic, and it was, but at this point, I had no other tricks up my sleeve. I waited until after we had ordered our entrees.
“What,” I asked slowly, never taking my eyes off him, “does a Mormon bishop do, precisely?”
He smiled slowly as his eyelids lowered, and I crossed my right leg over my left knee. He didn’t miss that and his eyebrow rose. I nearly laughed because this man was so out of the realm of my experience.
“A Mormon bishop,” he replied with some care, “is a low-level executive, ah, a project manager, I guess, of a ward—a congregation. He has two counselors who help and a cadre of management types and assistants to delegate responsibilities to. My nearest female counterpart in that hierarchy is the president of the women’s auxiliary. Relief Society. She reports to me directly, but has the same structure.”
“Who’s the CEO?”
“The president of the Church, also known as the prophet.”
“I suppose any large organization like that would have to have a fairly rigid structure.”
“Yes.”
“How much time do you put into it?”
He thought a moment. “Twenty-five, thirty hours a week maybe.” I nearly dropped my glass. “I only have one child at home now, and he has his own timetable so it’s easy to lose myself in it. Most bishops have wives and children at home and they sacrifice just as much as the bishop does.”
Oh, hell, I wasn’t even going to bother with etiquette. “And you don’t get paid.”
He shook his head. “No. We don’t have paid clergy.”
“And you’re the low man on the totem pole?”
“Yes.”
“Like a Catholic parish, right? So you have a diocese?”
“A stake. The stake president is my, ah, boss.” He broke out into a grin and I had to smile. The Hollander of Hollander Steelworks was the low man and had a boss.
“How do you get that job?”
“If you’re smart,” he said wryly, “not voluntarily.”
I laughed.
“You get called. The stake president asks you if you’d be willing to accept the calling. You accept. Or don’t. By the time you get to that stage, you probably have a reputation for accepting other jobs and doing them as well as you can.”
“Is this a lifetime position?”
“No, but there are days it feels like it.” He relaxed back into his chair. Stared at his plate. Played with his utensils. Suddenly, I felt like I was witnessing a man in the throes of an unpleasant epiphany. “A bishop is usually called for five, seven years at the outset,” he said slowly, still not looking at me, still lost in whatever had jerked his attention from our flirtation. “Usually only once. It’s a very stressful job.” He paused. “Sometimes, you serve out your term and then move up the ladder. Mostly you just go back to being a regular member of the ward.”
Ambition! There was his chink. “Ah, you want to move up?”
He looked up at me then. “No. This is my second term.”
Was that fatigue I saw? I didn’t know; he covered it too quickly.
“How many years do you have in this one?”
“A little over seven.”
I blinked. “That means you’ve been at this...?”
“Thirteen years, with about a year between terms, give or take.”
“So...” I said carefully. “This isn’t supposed to be your life’s work. Not like a Catholic priest.”
“Correct.”
“And you don’t want to advance.”
Whatever emotional well he’d dropped into, he suddenly came out of with a smile. “The pay is lousy.”
I had to laugh then. “So why don’t you just turn in your resignation?”
He waved a hand. “Oh, it’s not that simple. Someone has to be found to replace me and if I’m released—if I quit or get fired—I could always be asked to fill some other equally stressful position.”
“Can’t you just say no?”
“I could,” he said slowly, as if he
’d never thought of it before, but I knew better. “Yes, I could, but I wouldn’t. I would do whatever I was asked to do.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s part of what the faithful do; they serve. They sacrifice. They give their time and their talent and their money to keep everything running.”
“Your church is rich; why don’t they pay you?”
“Sacrifice. Emotional investment. Obedience. Love. I don’t know. Pick a reason, any reason.”
I couldn’t pick a reason. I didn’t have reasons like that. I didn’t know people who thought in such terms as sacrifice and love and emotional investment. Obedience. Good God.
“So. Ms. St. James—”
“Cassie, please.”
“That doesn’t suit you.”
Interesting. No one had ever been so bold as to say so, if they’d even thought about it at all. “I don’t much care for it myself, no,” I finally admitted.
“Cassandra.”
I smoothly pulled my right leg farther up my left. “Did I detect a bit of a French accent when you ordered?”
“Yes.”
“You speak French?”
“Yes.”
Damn. I wanted to undress him already and our entrees hadn’t even arrived. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so aroused by so little so fast. It made no sense. I knew men who spoke French and Japanese and Greek and some all three. One man, one relatively ordinary-looking man who spent the equivalent of a three-quarter-time job working for his church for free in the name of faith, love, obedience, and sacrifice—
Inconceivable.
“Tell me, Cassandra,” he murmured, that heavy-lidded look doing more to me than I wanted it to. He had me pinned like a butterfly. “What did you do before grad school and Blackwood Securities?”
The fact that he asked meant he really didn’t know, that Sebastian hadn’t seen fit to tell him (which was interesting in its own right), and the answer was the only thing that would free me from the hold he had on me.
