Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Elaine? Fitz? Why is he speaking as if I know who they are?
“Ah…” He appears more grateful for my daftness than concerned about it. “Morris was wrong. You truly are in the dark.”
If he’s asking a question, he doesn’t wait for me to reply. He simply gestures for Jess to join us before invisibly handing the baton to me.
“What?” I mutter under my breath when Jess stares at me with a pointed brow. “Jack was…” I take a good three to four seconds to think of something, “… wondering if you’d…” Jack looks on the verge of coronary failure right alongside Jess, but I yank him off the ledge with a couple of words. “If you’d like to take his bets because we’re about to head out for the afternoon.”
Jess appears devastated.
Jack is on the other end of the scale.
He looks like a man who just spotted a pot of gold under the rainbow.
“Oh… sure. That will be great.”
Jess’s disappointment races toward the silver lining when I sling my arms around her shoulders and mutter in her ear, “Caleb forgets to lock the front door every afternoon before showering after his workout. The earrings you want to borrow for your night out are on the vanity sink.”
I’m torn between sending Caleb a warning message about an unexpected visitor and throwing him into the deep end when Jess’s eyes drop to her watch so fast, I’m afraid she may have burst a blood vessel. I’d do the former if I weren’t confident Caleb wouldn’t appreciate an afternoon visit. They’ve denied their attraction for months, so perhaps an X-rated run-in will help them sort out their shit.
After locking her massively dilated eyes with Jack, Jess says, “Thank you for the offer, but I must decline. I have somewhere very important to be.” With the wave of a psychopath, she makes a beeline for the closest exit, uncaring that today’s fiasco was supposed to be about meeting the new owner of Seattle Socialites, a fashionista magazine that was raved about across the globe but is no longer relevant with upcoming trends.
It’s been a Titanic for years now, but it grew worse when an elite member of Mr. Potts’s upper management got slapped with a sexual harassment claim from a client. The allegation cleared out about half of the riffraff. I’m hopeful the new owner will handle the rest.
Sexual assault isn’t kosher no matter the heir, but instead of avoiding the ramifications by moving twenty-eight hundred miles away from my hometown, I found myself smack bang back in the middle of a lawsuit my first year after accepting an intern position even with a graduate diploma in Business under my belt.
“Octavia?”
I gravitate toward the nurturing voice long before the briefest brush of Jack’s fingers down my white cheek has me leaning in even closer. “Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
Before all his question leaves his mouth, I nod. “Yes. I was just reminiscing.”
“About?”
He seems genuinely interested in my reply. Like nothing I could tell him would see him backing down now, but just in case, I murmur, “About whose office we left in shambles.” His half-concealed smile has my usually vibrant self striving to emerge from a dark pit I tossed it in, so I throw some extra glitter into the mix to light up the path even more. “And if there was any chance of a rerun.”
Jack’s grin gains him the eye of every lady in the room and even a handful of men. “There’s a chance. A very good chance.” He curls his arm around my waist like we didn’t meet only an hour ago before leading me toward the closest exit. “Although we may need to take it somewhere more private. Elaine has never been as muted as she was earlier.”
“I’ll have to issue her my apologies.”
After a farewell head bob to one of the creeps I mentioned earlier and a wave to another well-dressed man, Jack guides me out of the tent Mr. Potts had a coronary about when he learned how much they cost to hire. “You can do that tomorrow…” I can’t tell you which feature I like more. His panty-wetting face or the lust darting through his eyes when he mutters, “… when she issues me my wake-up call.”
“That’s a little bit presumptuous, isn’t it, Mr. …” I leave my reply hanging open for him to fill in as I did earlier, but when he fails to take the bait, I finalize, “Sleepovers are on the top of the commitment scale.”
Someone call in an emergency. I combust when he presses his meaty lips to the shell of my ear and whispers, “Not if you don’t get any sleep.”
With a breathy exhale that reveals I am swimming in waters way out of my depth, he pulls back, assists me into the back of a car that looks more sporty than all-terrain, then jogs around to the other side. I can’t hear what he mutters to the man holding open his door for him, but whatever he says, it must be unusual because not only does the African American man’s brows lift, but his eyes also almost pop out of his head.