by Scott, J. S.
Mara shrugged, uncomfortable because he had just summed up her work habits perfectly. “Pretty much. The kitchen needs some updated appliances. I have to pull the taffy by hand, so my ability to make it in larger quantities is limited. I make as much as I can for the market.”
“Christ, Mara. You have this amazing ability, and you aren’t doing this in mass? What the hell are you thinking?” Jared asked harshly. “This is the money you live on, right? This is how you actually survive? I know damn well you haven’t kept yourself afloat on sales from your shop.”
“The doll shop is a tradition in my family,” she told him angrily. “And I hardly have the funds to start another business. The market works for me.”
“Bullshit. You could be making good money if you’d switch your product, put a store online.”
“That would require capital—”
“Which you’d probably make if you weren’t letting your funds get drained by keeping a losing business,” Jared interrupted.
She hated his words because he was absolutely right. “It was my grandmother’s store, and then my mother’s. Now it’s mine,” Mara answered stubbornly. “I know I failed and I’m losing the doll business. I went to a year of business school, Jared. I know it wasn’t a good business anymore, and I couldn’t really make money. But I wanted to hold on to a part of my mom. It’s all I have left.” Her eyes flooded with tears of frustration and leftover grief.
“You don’t need the doll store, Mara. You have your memories. What do you think your mother would have wanted you to do?” Jared asked in a much calmer, gentler voice. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to starve to keep the store going. I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted you to be working every minute of the day to survive. Times change, progress happens, and tradition isn’t going to keep you in funds. You can’t sell enough dolls to make a living anymore. It would be an incredible hobby, but you can’t keep yourself solvent.”
Mara’s heart squeezed, the truth in Jared’s words hitting her hard. It was nothing she didn’t already know, but to hear it said out loud was painful. “My mom and I barely got by. When she got sick, I started doing the Saturday markets with some of the skills and recipes she passed down to me from my gran—making taffy, jams and jellies, relishes and sauces. It kept us afloat. I never knew things were as bad as they really were until Mom got sick and I took over the finances during the last year she was alive. I knew the outlook was depressing, but I wanted to keep it going for her.” Mara swiped at her tears irritably, hating her own weakness. “She sent me off to business school, and she didn’t have a penny saved. If I had known—”
“You didn’t know,” Jared growled. “Stop blaming yourself.”
Mara looked up at him in surprise, shocked that he was defending her. She’d made some lousy business decisions and she knew it. “I can’t help it. I was an adult. I should have known our situation. She never told me.” Her mom had never given her a clue that she didn’t have the money to send her only child to college. “I went for a year before she got diagnosed with cancer and I came back home. Seven years later, I’m still paying the student loans she took out to do it. And I never even finished.” Mara vented her grief and guilt to Jared as if she’d known him forever, realizing how good it felt to talk to somebody. Kristin was her best friend, but Mara had never wanted to mention her financial woes to her. Kristin would have wanted to help, and her friend had it tight herself.
“Are you about done beating yourself up now?” Jared asked her patiently, folding his arms in front of him and leaning a hip against the metal folding table. “Because if you are done blaming yourself for your past, which were entirely understandable actions considering you lost your mother only a year ago, then I’m going to make you a proposition.”
Mara brushed the last few tears from her eyes and stared at him blankly. His eyes were liquid and heated as he glared back at her. “What?” she asked curiously.
“I’m willing to put up the capital for a new business venture for you. I’ll provide the equipment, space, and start-up capital if you want to start a business selling your consumable products,” he told her briskly.
“You want to be an angel investor?” Mara folded her arms in front of her and looked him directly in the eyes. “You’re a billionaire. What interest can you have in a small business?” Even if she was successful, the money made on her business would be peanuts to him.
“First of all, I’m not what anybody would call an angel of any type.” Jared shrugged. “I like the products. One of the perks is I’ll get unlimited supplies.”
Mara rolled her eyes at him. “It’s not like you can’t afford to purchase them. Come on, Jared. You’re trying to help me, and I appreciate it. But I need to figure this out on my own.”
“Why? It’s a legitimate offer.”
His statement was laughable coming from a billionaire who did multimillion-dollar business deals, but she was curious now. “For what percentage of the business?” she asked doubtfully, watching as he scrambled to come up with an answer. Jared Sinclair wasn’t offering to go into business with her. He was offering to help her. Her heart melted as she watched a flicker of indecision move across his face, his businesslike facade temporarily faltering.
“Ten percent, and unlimited product,” he said decisively.
Mara snorted. “How in the hell did you ever become a billionaire? That’s not a serious offer. It’s a charitable donation to me.”
Jared ran a hand through his hair, looking frustrated. “I don’t need more money. I need a project I can believe in,” he told her bitterly.
“You don’t like what you’re doing, owning one of the most profitable commercial real estate companies in the world?” What exactly did he mean by needing something he could believe in?
“It’s big business. Big buildings. Big money changing hands. Big commercial buildings. It’s not a challenge anymore. It never really was.”
Jared had helped to build some of the most impressive, enormous buildings in the world, and that wasn’t demanding enough for him? “You don’t like it,” she decided adamantly. “You don’t like what you do.”
“Maybe,” he agreed grudgingly.
“But you believe in my products?” Looking at the tortured look on his face, Mara believed him. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he really did want to be her mentor.
“I believe in you,” he snapped.
“Do you hate what you’re doing that much?” she asked gently.
“I don’t exactly hate it,” he grunted. “But I don’t like it, either. I have competent upper management who can do most of the work now. I’m basically a figurehead, the guy who makes the final decision. But everything has already pretty much been decided by research and professionals chasing the deals and the details, the pros and cons already figured out. All they need is my okay. Maybe I need the challenge of building a business from the ground up again.”
“It’s never going to be a huge moneymaker,” she warned him calmly, moving back enough to place her coffee in the bed of the truck and hop up on the tailgate to sit. Jared was a lot safer from a distance. “I know I can turn a good profit, but it isn’t the kind of money you’re used to dealing with,” she continued, relieved by the distance she’d put between them.
“I don’t give a shit about the money. I never did. I had more than enough money to live a life of luxury for the rest of my life and never do a single day of honest work. Success doesn’t always involve huge profits. I just want you to make enough to live comfortably. I want to teach you how,” he admitted roughly, his graveled tone sounding like he wanted to show her much more than business. Moving around the metal table, Jared set his coffee down before he stalked her, slowly pursuing her until he finally pinned her body against the open tailgate of her battered truck with his much larger, muscular form.
Mara’s breath hitched as she inhaled his masculine scent, feeli
ng intoxicated by his nearness. He placed his hands on both of her knees and ascended slowly along the sensitive skin of her inner thighs with his thumb, stroking until he reached the tops of her thighs. Once there, he moved his hands up and gripped her hips in an urgent motion, pulling her forward until her saturated core was flush against his hard, steely erection.
Mara shuddered, her body melting into Jared’s as she looked up at him. His expression was strained and hungry, like a starving predator that had finally spotted prey. “And what do you get?” she questioned shakily, her nerves raw from trying to pretend she wasn’t ready to crawl up his big, muscular body and beg him to satisfy the ache he was causing to pulsate through her entire being.
“Satisfaction,” he answered in a husky voice before his mouth covered hers.
He swallowed her needy moan greedily, and he plundered her mouth with a dominance that turned Mara inside out. Helpless to do anything else, she wound her arms around his neck, threading her hands into his coarse hair, luxuriating in the feel of Jared taking her over completely. He demanded. She gave. He tilted her head, grasping her hair to position her head, demanding better access to her mouth. His tongue surged through her lips and into her mouth, his teeth taking small nips at her bottom lip between the bold thrusts. Strong hands moved down her back with brazen, possessive strokes that finally landed covetously on her ass as he cupped it like it belonged to him. He wasn’t gentle as he yanked her forward, bringing her core as close as it could get to his engorged cock with their clothes on.
His embrace was bold and volatile, and she responded to his wildness with an equally frantic need all her own. Yearning. Tasting. Touching. All things that she had wanted to do to Jared Sinclair in her fantasies.
For a few moments, Mara let herself go, forgetting everyone and everything as she submerged herself in the feel of Jared’s mouth and hard body claiming her. In the back of her mind, she knew there were probably other vendors at the market watching curiously, but Jared’s body was blocking her from anyone’s view, all of the other stands now behind him.
Her body nearly imploded as he squeezed the cheeks of her ass, released her mouth, and his tongue starting exploring the sensitive skin of her neck. His ragged breathing, the feel of the warm puffs of air he was expelling against her flesh, nearly making her come undone.
“Jared. We have to stop,” she panted with very little conviction. Her hands were raking over his scalp, fisting his hair and pulling his mouth against her neck for more even as she said the words. “People will talk.”
“Let them,” Jared rasped against her heated skin. “I don’t give a shit. As long as they can’t see you I don’t care. I want them to know you’re fucking mine, Mara.”
Mara tilted her head back and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Oh, God. Jared. Please.” The fact that he was temporarily staking his claim just made her even hotter, more desperate.
Her mind whirled as she tried to comprehend the fact that Jared really did want her. His passionate touch, the hard erection between his legs, and the seriously ravenous look in his eyes told her that he was doing more than just teasing her. She wanted more . . . and that need was mutual.
He nipped at her earlobe, and then soothed it with his tongue. “What do you want? Do you want to feel my cock inside you? Do you want me as much as I want to be buried as deep as fucking possible inside you?”
“Yes,” she whimpered, tightened her legs around him so she could feel his length. “Please.”
“Jesus, I love to hear you beg. Do you know what it does to me when you respond to me like this, to know that you want me as much as I want you?” His hands squeezed the cheeks of her ass tightly, possessively. “All I want right now is to lay you down in the bed of this truck, strip off those shorts, and bury my face between your legs, Mara. I need to taste you. All of you. Your taste would be so addictive that I’d keep licking that sweet pussy long after you’d already come screaming my name more than once.”
Mara’s already-pebbled nipples grew impossibly harder as they abraded against his chest. Sweet baby Jesus, she was ready to come just from listening to him talk, feeling his body and mouth taking control of her. “Jared,” she whimpered, her entire body hot, tight, and needy. She let go of her death grip on his hair and let her hands explore his body. Cursing the material of his soft shirt, she molded her hands over his muscular back and strong biceps, squirming against him as she encountered a body that was completely ripped. “I want to feel your skin,” she breathed softly, her voice vibrating with raw passion.
“Sweetheart, you’re going to feel all of me if you don’t stop rubbing that hot pussy against my cock,” he warned ominously, finally ceasing his exploration of her skin to lean his forehead against her shoulder. “Fuck. The market must have opened.” His chest was heaving, but he moved his hands from her ass to her hips.
Panting, Mara slowly came to her senses as she heard the volume of voices in the field increasing steadily, many headed directly toward them. “It’s open.” She dropped her legs from around his waist.
Mara caught a glimpse of Jared’s face as he straightened reluctantly. He looked as ravaged and tense as she felt. She could sense the effort it was taking for him to back off, his whole body tight under her fingers as he backed away. He took a deep breath, and then released it, one of the muscles in his jaw pulsating as he looked at her darkly. “It’s closed now for you. I’m buying out your stock, and you’re spending the day with me.”
She knew she should argue, but it would be pointless for her to do that. “I can’t keep you from buying everything,” she told him with more calm than she was feeling at the moment. Placing her trembling hands on her thighs, she met his flaming gaze with one of her own. “And I’ll only spend the day with you if you actually ask me.” His dominant personality might heat her blood, but she wasn’t letting him get away with bossing her around. Telling her how she was going to spend her day was way too high-handed.
“I did ask you,” he argued in a husky voice.
Mara shook her head. He was a billionaire, and she was pretty certain that people jumped when he told them what to do. But that wasn’t asking. And she wasn’t jumping. Folding her arms in front of her stubbornly, she informed him, “You told me. Can’t you just ask?”
“Well, will you?” he grumbled hesitantly, like he was afraid she might say no.
She shot him a sunny smile. It wasn’t exactly a polite invitation by conventional standards, but for him, it probably was. “I’d love to, Jared. Thank you.” Like there was ever any question? It wasn’t often that she had a morning off, and she’d like to spend it with him. Actually liking Jared Sinclair was dangerous, and desiring him was even more so. But she wanted to examine the possibilities of a new business.
And I want to explore Jared Sinclair . . . in every way possible.
Mara’s breath caught in her lungs as Jared shot her a genuine grin at her acceptance of his offer. He was handsome under normal circumstances, but when he smiled at her like that, his curved lips and that happy expression making it all the way to his gorgeous eyes, she was toast.
She exhaled shakily as he looked away and started eagerly packing jars back into boxes and loading them into the bed of her truck.
“I can pack the stuff up and drop it at my place,” Jared drawled as he hefted several boxes easily into the back of her truck as she moved aside.
“You mean you’ll actually be seen riding in my poor old vehicle?” Her truck was beyond old, and should have gone to the truck graveyard a few years ago. But it did run, and it got her where she wanted to go. However, she couldn’t really see Jared Sinclair, billionaire extraordinaire from the elite Boston Sinclairs, riding in her beat-up pickup.
“I’ll even drive,” he agreed readily. “Are you trying to say I’m a snob? Believe it or not, when I was right out of college, I actually used to have a construction work truck similar to this one
. I think I kind of miss it.”
“But your other car was probably a Maserati?” she teased him playfully. “This is my primary vehicle.”
“Actually, it was a Bugatti,” he answered gruffly. “And a couple of others.”
“How many vehicles can one guy have?”
He shrugged. “More than he can count. I have at least one in every residence I have. But not all of them are outrageously expensive,” he added defensively. “I have an inexpensive vehicle here in Amesport.”
Mara bit her lip to keep from smiling. How did one tell a billionaire that a Mercedes SUV wasn’t exactly an economy car? She hadn’t meant to imply he was a snob at all. He was just living his life as it had been handed to him, and how he’d gone on to earn the extravagant items that were normal for him. She’d actually never seen Jared as being conceited or full of himself, even though he’d been born rich and had become even richer. In fact, beneath his external facade of measured control that he usually showed to the world, she had a feeling there was a warm center somewhere inside him.
Don’t forget that he discards women as fast as he picks them up.
Ignoring her negative thoughts, Mara reminded herself that what she had heard about Jared was gossip. She’d never had or seen any firsthand knowledge of Jared being a dog, and her mother had always taught her to judge people for herself rather than listen to what others were saying.
“No,” she finally answered. “I don’t think you’re a snob at all. But you are just a little too pretty for my old truck,” she told him cheekily, eyeing his gold watch, designer clothing, and his now wet leather shoes.
Giggling at his disgruntled look, she bent over to retrieve her coffee thermos.
Whack!
Mara squealed and dropped the thermos as his hand connected with her backside, and he wasn’t particularly gentle. “Ouch. What was that?”
Jared leaned in close to her ear. “That was too pretty of a target, sweetheart, and it was payback for insulting my manhood.” He rubbed the area he’d slapped discreetly before moving his hand.
