Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“I don’t drink at parties either. I don’t drink at all,” she says, and I didn’t know that about her. I had no reason to know it.
“That so?” I ask, wanting more, always more with her.
“I didn’t drink on my twenty-first birthday.”
“Yeah?” I don’t hide a smile. This is good news. No, the best news. I hardly meet anyone who has the same lines as I do.
“I don’t want to be buzzed. It’s not my thing. I like control.” She takes a pause, her expression vulnerable. “I didn’t have it when I was younger.”
I hear everything she’s not saying. She was raised around uncontrollable situations, a man with a monstrous appetite, a world she had no say over.
“You want to make all your choices with a clear mind. You want to make them for you,” I say.
“Exactly.”
The more I talk to her, the more I let her in. I don’t usually share. I don’t like to. But Harlow breaks me down. “That’s why I walk around the park before events. To gird myself before I have to face a party. Moving around, walking, often the same path, helps me do that.”
“Why don’t you like parties, though?”
“My mom drinks. She’s an…alcoholic. I don’t tell people that,” I admit. But Harlow’s not people. I trust her. I don’t even know why, except maybe because she’s only ever given me reasons to trust her. “She was always throwing parties when I was a kid, having friends over. They all got drunk. All the time. They’d booze around my home, holding bottles, singing, dancing, talking about everything so damn loudly. I hated seeing everyone like that.”
“That sounds hard,” she says gently. “I get that. I do.”
“I don’t want to be like that.” Each word is a scrape. Dry and harsh. “I want to be…”
“In control?” She doesn’t say like me. She doesn’t have to.
“Yes.”
“So, should I go with you?” She sounds hopeful, eager.
My business should be at the top of my mind. My relationship with my business partner. The empire we’ve built. I have everything to lose, and still, I move to the couch. Sitting closer. “Harlow, I said this before. I need to say it again.” The words threaten to stick in my throat, but I press on. “Do you really think that’s a good idea? You and me at a party?”
“I like the idea,” she says, strong, certain.
I take her strength and swallow it, letting it fuel me. “So do I,” I say, quietly, telling the truth. “That’s kind of the problem.”
Her smile reappears for a second, then she seems to rein it in. “Why is it a problem?”
“You know why. It’s complicating things,” I say, frustrated again with our situation, with all the lines between us.
“But they’re already complicated,” she counters.
I stare out the window, Central Park below us, New York beyond. Then I look to the brunette beauty on my couch, my heart pounding mercilessly hard. I could crush her lips in a kiss, cover her body, fuck her till she’s lost her mind.
Get it together.
“They’re so complicated I can’t fucking think sometimes around you,” I admit, and it’s a wild relief.
“Same for me,” she says, breathy. “Same for me…Mr. James.”
Her lashes flutter.
It’s the first time she’s called me that and it’s too sexy, too dangerous.
My heart stops then starts again, beating in double time. “You know that no one in the office calls me Mr. James, right?”
“Do you like it when I do?”
I clench my fists. “Too much,” I rasp out.
She leans closer. I dig my fingers harder into my palm.
Then she whispers my name once more, letting it slide off her lips like she’s lingering on every letter. “Mr. James…”
I’m this close to saying fuck it to everything. To locking the door and pushing her up against the wall. To tearing off that shirt, and pressing my mouth to her lush, tempting skin.
But my office phone trills.
I want to thank the caller and curse the caller at the same time.
On the intercom, Jules announces that Carlos Mondez is on the line.
“He’s a friend who’s trying to get me an intro to David Fontaine. I need to take that call,” I say to Harlow.
Her green eyes sparkle, then her lips curve in a wicked grin, like she’s just cracked a case.
“Hope the party is short,” she says.
Me too, I mouth before she slinks out, whispering, “See you next week.”
I can’t wait for Tuesday to come.
15
CHECK MATE
Harlow
Since it’s a long weekend, I take off for the Hamptons with Layla and Ethan. By her family’s pool, I work on my report. I respond to the trust lawyers too, setting up a meeting for later this summer to review the funds I can access now.
Then, lounging on her outdoor couch under the June sun, an Arnold Palmer in hand, we work on my plan to deliver Bridger something he wants.