by Crowe, Liz
Screw Jack.
Oh yeah. Bad choice of words.
She breezed by him heading back to her desk.
“Bye,” he hollered at her retreating form. “Tell Adam I said ‘hey.”
That last comment made her turn to look at him. He had one eyebrow raised, still leaning on the counter — a damn advertisement for manly perfection – absolutely the worst possible thing for her. Sara ground her teeth, turned back around and raised her hand in a mock salute good-bye.
Jack eased himself into the late-afternoon downtown Ann Arbor traffic. The near perfect waning summer day made him crank his car windows down, and the satellite radio up. He had money in the bank, a woman in his bed and frustration rustling around in his brain. He cursed whatever weak compulsion had led him into Sara’s office. The strange impulses he’d fought for weeks since encountering her at that condo were annoying. He’d done everything he could to quell his need to see her, to touch her, again.
The blond client had provided some distraction from his alarmingly intense obsession with Sara but had proven to be a real handful lately. She wanted his near-constant attention. Sent him texts all day long, and had seemingly taken a vow to drain every ounce of his sexual energy. He always thought that well was pretty deep, but her clinginess had gotten real old, real quick. A couple of times she’d even pleaded with him to forgo the condom. The second time she’d asked, he’d cut the scene short, furious. He’d bolted from her place that night, his gut aching with something more than simple unrequited lust.
The phone buzzed insistently on the seat next to him. He sighed. Back to work. But his thoughts kept drifting in a Sara Thornton direction. This infatuation or whatever he had buzzing around in his brain was going to kill him if he didn’t do something soon. Her perfume ghosted through his senses. Jack repressed a groan of frustration as he pressed the phone icon on the steering wheel, prepared to handle whatever shit storm had developed in the last half of his day. He idly wondered if she realized she was dating a man engaged to be married and made a mental note to stay on top of how that unfolded. She might need a shoulder, and he planned to position himself correctly when the need arose.
*
Sara dressed in her best suit the morning of Adam’s closing. His purchase had been smooth — a real anomaly in today’s real estate market. As a mortgage broker himself, the loan portion had been seamless. Despite her pique at his recent disappearing act, Sara looked forward to seeing him and making up with a bottle of wine and cooler of cheese and fruit in his expensive, new, empty space.
What had started as a hot hook-up in the very condo Adam was closing on had led to an intense three-week period of dates, intimate dinners, and flowers delivered to her office — the very sort of thing that many nearing-thirty-year-old women would have given a Manolo allowance for. Sara had loved it, had given in briefly to fantasies of big weddings and suburban McMansions. Her natural tendencies to avoid emotional connection, thanks to her parents’ volatile relationship, had been hard to overcome but, she’d been trying.
The fact that Jack-fucking-Gordon, the client stealer, had inserted himself into her dreams and fantasies hadn’t helped one bit, however. Sara had caught herself more than once picturing his bright blue gaze over hers, imagining his large hands on her flesh, all while she was supposed to be making love with Adam. Staring at herself intently in the hallway mirror of her small condo, Sara attempted to ignore the little voice that kept reminding her that the guy honestly was not so great in bed but, he’d made up for it with his wildly romantic gestures — at least until recently.
She shrugged off the looming doomsday sensations. Beggars can’t be choosers. He is a great guy, who would make a very lovely, stable spouse and would no doubt coach little league and do all the shit your own dad never did.
Sara took a deep breath and tried to get her mind to pinpoint what was truly bugging her as she threw the car into reverse and mentally ran through the reasons she had to avoid a man like Jack, and hold onto one like Adam. The conversation she’d initiated with one of the agents who’d known him nearly ten years ran through her brain on a repeat loop.
“Jack Gordon? What d’you want to know? How many millions he’s made or how many women he’s fucked?”
The man could not possibly be interested in her. No way. Even enough to randomly stop by her office? Ridiculous.
The gossip she now got on a regular basis backed up his rep as a cocky, womanizing jerk and then some. The mature, good girl in her felt he was best left to the likes of her secretary or wide-eyed vacuous clients, like the one he’d stolen from her. Sara knew she was strong enough to resist Jack, but something about him made her want to see him, to be around him, and that compulsion irritated the shit out of her. The wind ruffled her hair and cleared her muddled head. Feeling stronger and more in control every minute, she parked in the title company’s lot and gave herself a little pep talk.
Adam must be reacting as many men did when they started to actually feel something more than simple lust for a woman. Yes — that had to be it. He had been trying awfully hard this week to get back in touch with her. Of course, she’d ignored him, making him work for it a little. Sara smiled to herself in anticipation of how she’d make her recent bitchy attitude up to him later.
Maybe she should settle down. Her mother, father and brother harped on it enough. She liked Adam and wanted her family to be happy with her. However, at the same time she truly enjoyed her independence. Something in her resisted the exterior pressure to “mate” and “reproduce” even at nearly thirty. She needed something else. Something she had yet to identify, but which had hovered ever closer in the past few weeks for some reason, just out of reach.
As she breezed into the Arbor Title office, where Adam’s deal was scheduled to close, and greeted the receptionist and the other realtors gathered in the lobby, each waiting for their own transactions to commence, subtle misgivings began stirring in her brain. They all looked at her a bit strangely, but she tried to brush it aside. Kim, the closing officer, ran up to her, a stack of legal documents clutched in her arms with an unusually stressed look on her normally calm face. Kim never got rattled, no matter how difficult a closing.
“Oh, hey Sara, um, your uh, client is here already.”
“OK, well, let’s get going then,” Sara looked at her, trying to figure out what caused the unflappable woman to seem positively wigged out. “What room,” she asked, trying to get Kim to focus.
“Oh, well, down here.” The woman motioned, indicating the second room, one dominated by an enormous granite-topped table.
Sara started to move in that direction, but Kim put her hand on her arm to stop her.
“Sara, you should know,” she started, just as Adam walked out of the room.
“Hi Sara.” He didn’t move from the doorway. “I tried to call you to let you know I’d moved the time up an hour — I had a last-minute conflict so…”
Sara stared at him, realized what he was saying — her closing had happened without her there. She started to walk towards him on autopilot.
“Oh, well, gee Adam, I could have used this hour for something else I guess.”
He moved toward her, and she had the distinct feeling he wanted to head her off, to keep her from entering the closing room. Her temper flared as she walked past him, eluding the hand he held out. Inside the doorway, Sara took in the sight of a perfectly gorgeous young woman seated at the large table. She looked up at Sara and smiled.
“Oh, hullo, you must be Sara.” The woman had a charming city-bred English accent. She stood and stuck out her hand. “Adam has told me so much about you. Thanks for your help with all of this. I’ve been away a month getting my mum sorted out, she’s been ill so…” The woman kept her hand out, waiting for Sara to take it.
Sara stayed frozen to the spot, but recovered enough to touch the woman’s palm. She blinked, stupidly, while her brain focused on an enormous diamond ring on her left hand. The room darkene
d and Sara had to remind herself to take a breath. Kim grabbed her hand, slid a chair under her collapsing body.
“I’m Lou — Louise, actually, but no one calls me that. I’m so looking forward to getting all settled here. I’ll be at the U, finishing my residency.” She babbled on, completely unaware that Sara nearly passed out from shock as the vision of what she had been doing with this woman’s fiancé for the past month ran, montage style, through her head.
Adam stood outside the door, one hand on the jamb, the other on his waist, his head bowed, as if praying. Lou gathered her stuff and walked past Sara to join him. Kim came back in, carrying a cup of water. Sara suddenly realized why the fellow realtors in the lobby had been staring at her. The reality of the whole mess nearly suffocated her. Kim turned to face Adam and his fiancée.
“Well, ok, then, thanks guys and congratulations.” Sara watched her glare at Adam, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. Lou stuck her hand out again, since Kim didn’t seem inclined to do so first.
“No, thank you, and you too Sara,” she leaned around Kim who blocked Sara from view.
Sara stood up realizing what she had to do. She fixed her professional smile in place and shook Lou’s hand before reaching out for Adam’s. She stared at him — her own face neutral while her brain spun its endless loop of that first encounter, when she’d gone against everything rational, let go of her long-developed reserve and let this man fuck her silly in an empty condo.
Livid, mortified and facing the hard reality that once again, she’d managed to fuck up her own love life in front of this entire goddamned office, she watched them depart, on their way out the door to their new life together — in the condo she’d sold him.
Kim tried to reach for her but Sara held her hand up, not willing to give in to her public defeat. She looked up at the ceiling, willed the tears back. It was her own stupid fault. She knew she should not have gotten involved with him, but she had anyway in her typical, fuck-logic-lets-have-some-fun sort of way. That’s what had gotten her to where she was.
She had no one but herself to blame — although he was certainly responsible for the bit about not telling her he already had marriage plans. She sighed and walked out the door, not speaking to anyone.
A hot wind dried the tears forming in her eyes. She resolved to stop her selfish behavior, get her focus back where it belonged — where it had been before Adam had interrupted her. She did not need a man. She knew that — had known that – but she’d let her body’s need for contact overrule her brain. This would never happen again. Not even for Jack Gordon. Most especially not for him.
She sat in the car, collected herself and then drove towards her office, her mind already on the work ahead — deals to be closed, clients to be contacted, money to be made. She added Adam and the memory of today’s shock and humiliation to the steaming pile of shitty love-life moments already occupied by the college boyfriend who’d dumped her on graduation day, and shoved them both to a small, dark recessed corner of her mind.. She made one more resolution: Never rely on a man emotionally — get what you want if you must physically, but emotional needs were best met by friends, family and in your own head.
Once parked, she grabbed her phone and erased Adam from her contacts. Hope he realizes he just lost one of his best referral sources Asshole. The tears she’d held back streamed down her face as she sat in the sweltering car.
CHAPTER THREE
Sara’s phone buzzed with a text, nearly falling off her desk before she could grab it.
“295, take it or leave it. I’m dying here Sara!”
“I’ll get back to you” she shot a text back before heading to her desk to call her buyer.
After nearly a year, the most difficult buyers of her career had decided that Jack’s stale Lansdowne listing was their dream house. She’d been forced to deal with him almost constantly for the last two weeks. It exhausted her, pretending she didn’t thrill to the sound of his voice or that her scalp didn’t tingle in anticipation when she caught one of his incoming texts.
After the Adam disaster, Sara had spent a solid year ignoring men, including Jack. She’d disciplined herself into a smaller skirt size, used the time to hone her career onto a serious fast track, with referrals and closings piling up along with her bank balance. Her brother, Blake, who owned a successful brew pub in town, worried about her single-minded obsession and lack of any social life, but she reminded him that the last time she had one of those, that guy had married someone else.
Sara and Blake had grown up very close to one another. She relied on him and his partner, Rob, for most of her emotional support — and her meals. Rob was a French trained chef, who, coincidentally enough, had been a fraternity brother of Jack’s at Michigan State. He’d filled Blake’s ears with tales of Jack’s reputation.
Not that he has anything to worry about.
Sara sighed and dialed her buyer’s number once again. She wouldn’t touch Jack Gordon with anyone’s ten-foot pole. The fact that he had stayed out of her way fairly effectively hadn’t escaped her notice.
Figures. He probably senses you’re kryptonite.
And now this. She had buyers, who seemed to get off on Extreme Negotiation; and his seller didn’t want to close any deal. Mainly because it meant she wouldn’t get any more contact with her “Special Realtor.”
Jesus. What a soap opera.
She smiled when her buyer answered, preparing for yet another round of death by nickels and dimes, as visions of Jack Gordon’s impish blue eyes and full lips swam through her mind, causing her to close her eyes. Sara reminded herself once again that she was a better woman for avoiding him, for focusing on herself and her career all this time. Her body begged to differ, already reacting to the concept of having Jack in direct proximity once again.
*
“Ok, we finished the inspection and there are some issues, as you might expect.” Sara closed her eyes prepared for an earful.
“I don’t doubt it.”
Jack seemed quieter than usual, not filling the phone line with his usual poor me, why can’t you control your people bullshit. Her suspicions grew, wondering if he was messing with her, trying to catch her off guard somehow.
“Well, um, I’ll get back with you, probably tonight, with our conditions for contingency removal.”
“That’s fine. By now I’m used to getting screamed at by her anyway.” A deep sigh filled Sara’s ears. “Let’s hold this one together, shall we,” he finally asked. “I can’t take much more of this seller.”
“Fine, talk soon. She hung up without letting him respond.
Sara put her hands on the steering wheel before starting her car, trying to control her shakes. Why did she let him get to her anyway? Hell, he was just a guy for crying out loud. All guys were complete assholes as far as she was concerned.
Focus, Sara, focus. You’ve been fine since Adam, no need to fall back into this game with anyone now, much less a guy like Jack.
Jack leaned back in his chair after she hung up on him once again. He stared up at the familiar ceiling of his office, sighed, and stretched his arms over his head. His mind drifted back, as it had so many times, to the moment he’d first laid eyes on Sara Jane Thornton.
His assistant Jason stuck his head in the door, nearly making Jack dump himself backward onto the floor. His eyes sprung open erasing the image of Sara’s deep green gaze — and gorgeous tight ass — from his mind.
“Jack,” Jason fiddled with his earpiece. “She’s calling again — where are you this time?”
He groaned. “Fucking-A, why can’t the woman take a hint?”
He’d had gone a lot of years able to escape serious commitment. The one time he’d allowed himself that luxury he had got bitten on the ass so hard he’d been reluctant to sit much since. The fact that the ass-biter had been his first foray into a Dom/sub relationship had made her betrayal that much worse for his ego. Now, he’d miscalculated, once again; had severely misread the blonde woman’s moti
ves.
Jason shrugged, already taking the next call. He’d been Jack’s assistant for ten years, and was used to his boss’ love life. He’d proven himself invaluable more than once, deflecting one woman or another. Plus, he was a spot-on, licensed assistant when it came to the business of real estate. Jack leaned into his keyboard, ignoring Jason again. The young man waved a hand in front of his face.
“Dude, what the hell am I supposed to tell her?”
“Tell her I joined the Peace Corps, moved to Outer Mongolia and am unavailable for the next ten years. Christ, I don’t know. That’s why I hired you; make some shit up.”
“I’m on it,” Jason turned and moved down the hallway towards his office, already making excuses.
Jason was worth his weight in salary. He’d come up with something. He always did. For about the millionth time that week, Jack wished he’d never, ever met the crazy blonde client.
But, in the most perfect of ironies, thanks to Sara, he got to deal with her daily. Jack looked back at his computer screen. Images of Sara covered the monitor — from her real estate website and blog mostly. She had a real handle on using social networking, a pro at keeping fresh photos and testimonials from happy clients.
Jack ran a hand through his hair. Never in his adult life had he felt so attracted to a woman who had no apparent interest in him beyond professional. Of course, he was stuck dealing with a crazed bitch of a seller he’d been trying to ditch, just so he could stay in contact with the woman he’d give anything to get the time of day from. An alien state of affairs for Jack — not one he liked much. His phone buzzed.
Sara.
“Yeah.” He kept his voice gruff.
“Okay, I emailed you their list of stuff. It’s long and pretty ridiculous I won’t kid you.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Ok, thanks.” She stopped, not hanging up for a change.
Jack felt himself relax at the sound of her voice. He smiled, pictured her eyes, her hands, her lips, and had to shift in his chair. He tried not to acknowledge the things spinning in his brain. The suddenly vivid image of Sara, naked, on the bed, wrists tied in front of her and on her knees…whoa, what the fuck? He rubbed his eyes and refocused.
