by Cherry Adair
"I'll be seeing these clients again next year, and probably the next." His mouth tightened. He got the point. Jessie forged on. "My clients are a long-term commitment Joshua. By next January you won't even remember my name. I'll be mistress number—" she waved a hand "—whatever." She crossed her fingers behind her back for implying she'd still be around then. By next month she wanted him out of her life.
"I'll be gone fourteen days." Joshua searched her face. Jessie had no idea what he was looking for. Capitulation?
"Have a safe trip."
There was a long pause. "I'd like you to do the interior design on the resort I'm buying in Tokyo."
Jessie closed her eyes and sighed inwardly. The multi-billion dollar resort in Tokyo was a very big carrot to dangle indeed.
"I prefer residential to commercial." She hardened her heart. She had a bad habit of believing she knew what he was thinking and invariably ended up being wrong. There wasn't a needy bone in this man's body. If Joshua wanted her in Tokyo, it was for his convenience.
He'd told her what a good hostess she was, how well she fit in with his business associates and their wives and mistresses. Fine. Well, this time, he could do his entertaining on his own. She had other things to do and people who needed her immediate attention. Besides it was his fault she had PMS.
She leaned over her desk and snagged her day planner. "Let's coordinate this trip and I'll make time—"
"By the time you've thought about it," Joshua stated in a voice sharp enough to chip ice, "I'll have contracted Evelyn Van Roosmalen to do the job." He fastened the buttons on his navy-blue cashmere coat and strode to the door. "I beg no woman, Jessie." He reached for the doorknob. "You only had to tell me once. I won't ask you again."
"Joshua—" The door shut quietly behind him. "Damn!" Jessie spun her chair around before sprawling inelegantly in it. "Damn and double damn."
* * * * *
Joshua pushed away the paperwork he'd been trying to concentrate on for three hours. Damn her. She was his mistress, for Christ's sake. What in the hell did she want? He'd never had a mistress who made him feel as if he were jumping through flaming hoops. And she did it seemingly without guile.
She never complained, usually complied and rarely caused even a ripple in his normal workday. He'd become used to her waiting for him at his house in the evening. Used to the novelty of helping her prepare a meal in his kitchen. Damn well complacent about having her in his bed at night.
He felt annoyingly uncomfortable making Jessie get up to go home. Usually he left the woman right after sex. But she refused to let him sleep at her place.
Somehow, spending the entire night with a woman had always implied an intimacy he'd never wanted, a level of trust he'd never experienced. This way the sex act was easy—fast, satisfying and impersonal. Intimacy was different. Intimacy required vulnerability, loss of control.
It was probably a good thing the affair with Jessie Adams was over.
Joshua stared at the clouds drifting by the window of his 727. The pressurized cabin was cool, the way he liked it. Except that he could smell the faint scent of Jessie's perfume on the still air. She hadn't been on his plane since the trip to Greece. The aircraft had been cleaned several times since then and yet her fragrance lingered still. That annoyed him. Joshua scrawled a note to himself to inform the flight crew to make sure the plane was scrubbed down after every flight. His pen pressed so hard he gouged the paper.
He'd been forced to be emotionally independent early in life. He'd learned the lesson well. It was damn hard for him to trust anyone. But, damn it, he wanted to trust Jessie. He wanted it badly enough to relax his guard once in a while, like a dog belly-crawling for a pat instead of the stick.
From the hidden speakers came the faint sound of a dreamy Brahms waltz. Something Jessie would love to dance to, her tall, slender body pressed against his chest, her arms stealing up around his neck, her fragrant hair tickling his chin as she hummed along, out of tune, with the music. Joshua laid his head back against the velvety nap of his seat and squeezed his eyes shut against a headache starting to throb in his temples.
How dare she presume that he would come running back when she clicked her fingers. Like a goddamn lap-dog. He didn't need her. He didn't need any woman, least of all her. She was too tall, her breasts were too damn small...
Joshua wished to God he hadn't thought of her breasts. Which, of course, like everything else about the woman, fit him to a tee.
He wished he'd never met her. Never tasted her soft, pouty mouth, never held her in his arms or felt her velvety skin beneath his hand. Never had her slick and panting under him, crying his name as her slender body convulsed time and again.
He hadn't become a millionaire by being dictated to by anyone. He called the shots and people obeyed or were eliminated from his equations. He made a thousand competent decisions a day. Had thousands of people working for him who considered his word law. Jessie Adams was dangerous. She reminded him of things he'd never had.
He'd left Jessie five hours ago and already his body ached for her. Joshua gripped the armrests with fingers that turned white. He was getting too involved. It wasn't emotional, of course. But his body craved hers like a drug. He'd never before bedded a woman as sexually compatible. That was all it was.
If any one of a number of other mistresses in the past had done to him what Jessie had done today, that would have been the last time he'd have seen her.
Hell, he hadn't seen his mother since she walked away from him when he was kid. And he was a lot less forgiving now. He'd been shunted between two hedonistic, uncaring people who had the misfortune to be parents. His mother's pregnancy had been cold-bloodedly calculated to snag Joshua's very wealthy and totally unromantic father. Wife number five, the only wife to give him a child. The marriage endured for three years. Joshua had been the pawn in their power-play game of revenge.
Neither wanted him. Both fought over him. He wasn't being volleyed from parent to parent for anything other than power and money. If his father had him, his mother toed the line. If his mother had him, her expenses skyrocketed as she squeezed his father mercilessly. Until his Uncle Simon and the family lawyer had insisted young Joshua be sent to boarding school where he wouldn't expect anyone to care and therefore would never be disappointed.
He'd never seen his mother again. His father had died of a massive coronary when Joshua was seventeen.
Joshua pushed himself upright and drew the papers on his desk closer. To hell with Jessie. She wasn't worth all this introspection. When he said jump to a mistress, she sure as hell better ask how high.
He paused, his eyes on the phone at his left hand. He could call her and give her one more chance. He'd make sure she understood she'd been given a reprieve. It was damn inconvenient when he was so busy to be looking for another bed partner.
Joshua picked up the phone.
* * * * *
Juggling two bags of groceries Jessie managed to open the back door into her kitchen as the phone started ringing. Rushing, she set the bags down. Her heart gave an illogical leap. Joshua. Apples rolled from the bag and her eggs landed, box open, to splatter on the tile floor. The second her hand touched the receiver the ringing stopped.
Jessie picked up the phone anyway. For a moment she stood there in her kitchen, eggs slithering across her clean floor as she clasped the phone and its dial tone to her chest. Her heart was beating much too fast for a short sprint across her kitchen.
Jessie carefully hung up phone.
* * * * *
MAY
Joshua had not called once in the three weeks he'd been gone. There had been an unusual amount of hangups—people not leaving messages. But Jessie knew that Joshua would always have something pithy to say to her machine when she wasn't there. The hang-ups were just coincidences.
Joshua's absence was intolerable. Once again her C days had come and gone while he was somewhere else. Damn him, the least he could have done was call. He'd been gone a we
ek longer than he'd said.
The enormous black wrought-iron gates slid open, the gold Falcon, wings spread, parted in the middle as she drove her five-year-old Toyota up the herringbone brick driveway to the house.
Joshua's home was a two-story English Tudor set on six acres of prime real estate just south of San Francisco. Behind the stone wall surrounding the property, emerald-green lawns and deep flower beds, filled with a brilliant profusion of spring bulbs, lined the long entry to Joshua's very private estate.
The weeks he'd been gone had crept by, no matter how busy she kept herself. He hadn't even bothered to call her himself this morning. One of his secretaries had called and set up an "appointment" for Thursday evening at seven. Typical Joshua. He was still ticked off that she hadn't gone with him. Jessie wasn't going to tell him how close she'd been to hopping a commercial jet and surprising him in Tokyo.
She was starting to get desperate. Perhaps she shouldn't limit their sexual encounters to just her fertile days. Perhaps she should go with what her body was telling her and have sex as often as she could. The law of averages made a compelling argument for increasing her chances of conception.
She parked beside a brilliant bed of pink parrot tulips, right over the drip pan Barlow had discreetly supplied weeks ago. She grinned.
The crisp breeze played with her hem as she hopped out of the car. Perhaps she should have worn something a little more conservative. She looked like a wild gypsy with the brilliantly colored, ankle-length, ruffled skirt and off-the-shoulder blouse. Hardly appropriate donning for May, but she'd changed so many times before coming, she finally decided she needed the added confidence of the bright colors.
Her hair was its usual wild, curly tangle around her shoulders and the air currents ruffled through it as Jessie sprinted up the shallow brick steps curving up to the massive black front doors. She shivered. The spring air felt crisp on her bare arms and caused the gold charms on her hooped earrings to tinkle softly as they brushed against her cheeks.
The doors were slightly ajar. She rubbed her arms briskly as she stepped into the dim entry hall checkered in black-and-gray Italian marble. She'd been here so many times, she knew her way around the mansion by heart.
She'd love to redecorate the house out of its official, cookie-cutter, corporate mold. Bold colors, she thought, her skin adjusting to warm air as she closed the front door behind her. Teal and sienna, gold and royal purple. She'd strip the tall windows of their fussy layers of draperies. Let the sunlight pour in to warm both house and man.
Jessie's heels clicked across the marble, dulled a little on the polished parquet of the corridor and then became muffled on the thick burgundy carpet of the formal living room. Every one of his homes carried the same corporate colors as his office, planes and yacht.
Joshua stood at the Palladian windows at the far end of the room overlooking the rose garden. Outside, the gardeners had turned on the sprinkler system. Water sparkled in lazy swoops across the freshly mowed lawn. Other than dropping the sheer back across the window, he didn't acknowledge her arrival.
"I'm here," she said unnecessarily, tossing her purse onto the white brocade sofa and stepping up behind him. Her heart suddenly pounded with anticipation, her mouth dry. Obviously her body had made up her mind for her.
More sex, more often.
He didn't turn around as she slid her arms around his waist. His stomach contracted, his only acknowledgment. Rock hard under her fingertips, his skin felt warm, alive. Jessie rested her cheek against his broad back. "How was your trip?"
"Profitable."
"Did you get any rest?" Jessie felt the exhaustion dragging at his shoulders beneath her cheek.
"I'm not a child. I know my own limitations."
"No, you don't," Jessie scolded as she felt his stomach clench under her hands. "You push yourself to the very edge. One day you should play hooky with me and smell the roses."
"I suggested that, you declined."
"Japan?" Jessie tried to turn his large body. He remained like a blasted rock. "Tokyo wouldn't have been playing hooky, Joshua. You probably worked eighteen-hour days, and I would have been sightseeing and waiting in a hotel room for you to come to me. Come upstairs, and I'll help you relax." Jessie ran her hands up his flat stomach, pressing a series of kisses on his back.
"Is sex all you think about, Jessie?"
Jessie gave a soft, incredulous snort of laughter. "Talk about the pot calling the kettle black." He had no idea how close to the truth he was.
"We've been apart for three weeks, and all you can think about is going upstairs and having sex."
The smile died on Jessie's face. "Good Lord. You're serious." She moved a step away from him. "Joshua, I can tell how exhausted you are. I just wanted to help you relax. That doesn't always mean we have to make love."
"Have sex."
"Make love, damn it. I missed you more than you'll ever know. And that has nothing to do with sex." Oh God. Where had that come from? Jessie thought, panicked.
"I don't want you to love me."
"I know." Jessie squeezed her eyes shut. I'm trying not to.
"And I'll never love you. From observation, love isn't all it's cracked up to be. It binds you, strips away your pride and strength with nothing in return."
"You've had more experience. I'll take your word for it," Jessie hedged. "But I did miss you holding me. Turn around. Kiss me. Please, Joshua." Her voice sounded thick. Her heart took up a dull, heavy beat as he remained facing the window before turning around slowly. He looked down into her upturned face, using a finger to trace the curve of her cheek.
The feel of his fingers on her face was unbearably tender. A contradiction to the rock hard look in his pale eyes.
"Did you miss me, Jessie?"
"Yes. Very much." She ached for him to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close to his broad chest. She uselessly yearned to have him welcome her into his arms. Every time they were apart, it seemed to Jessie as if they had to start again from square one. The man had the worst timing of anyone she knew.
He dropped his hand from her face, reaching into his jacket pocket and withdrawing a glossy black paper bag with gold corded handles. "Here."
She looked at the bag. Jewelry wasn't what she wanted from him. "I told you I don't want you to keep buying me things, Joshua." She refused to take it from him. "Don't make me feel… cheap."
He ran his knuckle down her cheek as he stared down at her meditatively. "No, you're not cheap, are you, Jessie?"
"I'll stay for as long as it suits us both, but I won't be bought." Her cheek was immediately cold as he dropped his hand.
"Just open the damn thing. It's no big deal."
Jessie didn't care about the present. Why hadn't he kissed her? Was this his way of punishing her for not joining him on his trip? She absently took the bag from him, and inserted her hand into the iridescent, gossamer-thin paper inside.
She pulled out a delicate rose quartz box the size of her palm. It was crusted with pearls, what looked like pink diamonds and intricately woven gold leaves. It was feminine, delicate and quite unlike anything he'd given her before.
"It's exquisite." Jessie looked up at him. Please don't just stand there with that hateful cold look on your face. "Thank—"
"Open it."
Jessie clicked open the lid. Inside, nestled on a bed of blush-pink satin lay two pale green spheres, each about three quarters of an inch across. Earrings. She lifted one from the box. It moved in her hand. Jessie stared at it. Not an earring. It had no back to it.
"Marbles?" she asked, puzzled. She flattened her palm, and the small ball rolled across her hand.
"Benwa balls," Joshua told her.
Jessie put the thing back into its box, then gave him a puzzled look. "Benwa balls?"
"You insert them into your vagina," Joshua said, watching her face. "You'll have continuous orgasms when we're apart."
Jessie pulled a face. "Sounds exhausting. Think I'll pass."
/>
"These particular benwa balls were hand carved over a thousand years ago." He removed both balls from the box. "Give me your hand. See how they move? That's because they've been carefully weighted so that they'll continually shift inside you. They're made from white jade found in Myanmar, Burma. This particular jade is called moss in snow—see the little flecks of darker green? They're said to have magical powers."
"Well, anything that can give a woman multiple orgasms without human contact, must," Jessie said with a small smile. "But if these things are over a thousand years old I'd hate to think how many women have… used them. Ew. Thank you for the gift, but I'll definitely pass."
Joshua took the box from her and inserted the jade balls. He snapped the lid closed then shoved the box in his pocket. "They're nonporous and sterilized. Do you think I'd give you anything that would harm you?"
"No. But I'd still prefer to have something as intimate as that in its original, sanitized, shrink-wrapped packaging, thank you very much."
"Go upstairs and wait for me," he said coldly. "I have to make a few calls."
Jessie gave him a narrow-eyed look before turning on her heel and leaving the room. She left a drift of Joy and disappointment in the room behind her like an invisible ghost.
He should have given her more diamonds. She'd liked the earrings he'd given her for Valentine's day. The benwa balls had been too intimate, too personal. He'd been thinking of her pleasure. The antiquities had cost enough to support a small nation, and she'd dismissed their value as casually as she would a Cracker Jack box toy. He'd seen the disappointment in her eyes when she'd opened the damned box. She'd expected jewelry. Something she could wear and show off. Damn. He rubbed the ache between his eyes.
Once when he'd been about twelve, he'd given his mother a purple leather coat. It had cost him his month's allowance and humiliating hours trying to choose the one he knew she would like. The memory of her laughter made him cringe to this day. The color, of course, had been all wrong with her skin tones and didn't he know that she had wanted a red fox fur, for God's sake?
