Then a cold anger filled Hannah. After a minute, she said, “One million is not enough.” Nothing will be enough.
“Ha! I knew you didn’t care about Markus or Victoria,” Elijah said with a smirk. “Why my son is emotionally invested in you, I have no idea, and I’d rather he not be hurt any more than necessary. So. Let’s be practical. Two million?”
Lord. How arrogant he can be? “How about ten percent of Markus’s worth?” she asked. “I can take check or cash.”
His knowing smirk faded. “Don’t be ridiculous, girl.”
She pressed a button on the telephone. “Donovan, Senator Blackthorn is leaving.”
“What are you trying to do?” Elijah growled, stepping in front of her. “We’ve established that you don’t love Markus—”
“You don’t love your son, either, Senator,” Hannah said. “Or you wouldn’t be haggling the price.”
“What fucking logic is that? Billions of dollars are materially different than a few millions.”
“Exactly, and you have just put a very cheap price tag on your son’s happiness,” she said, saying a silent prayer when Donovan pushed the door opened.
Annoyed, Elijah stared down at her for a minute and then hissed, “This is not over.”
I know it is not. “Good afternoon, Senator.” She picked up her book, pretending to ignore as the disgruntled Elijah made his retreat.
When the door closed, she exhaled and put her face in her trembling hands. Feeling she had somewhat betrayed her mother by taking a personal interest in Markus’s case, she shouted to the closed door, “Curse you all the way to hell, Senator. All the way to the bloody burning hell.”
West Village
4:30 p.m.
“Jacob, isn’t this the woman who babysat Sarah?” Carmen showed her husband a photo of Markus and Hannah smiling at each other. “And isn’t this your new boss? And his parents, oh! Senator Blackthorn and his billionaire wife, Judith Greene!”
Jacob glanced from his laptop to the iPad his wife was holding. “That bitch took a fifty dollar advance and never came back to earn it.”
“That fifty dollars can be our invitation to their wedding!” Carmen exclaimed as she read out loud bits and pieces of the article. “Says here they are to be married the Saturday after next! At his beach house in Sagaponack!”
Jacob tuned out his much younger wife’s tales of her mundane interests—they bored him to death—and concentrated on the email on his laptop screen. If he didn’t get back full control of Velid Pharmaceutical, he could be dead for real, and not just from boredom.
“And—oh! Listen to this—the babysitter is the daughter of his father’s ex-housekeeper. Lucky poor girl landed herself quite the handsome billionaire.” Carmen caressed Jacob’s arm and purred seductively, “I want to go to this wedding, Jacob. I am sure you’ll get us an invitation, won’t you, darling?”
“I’ll try, Carmen, I’ll try.” Jacob sighed. “But for now, I want to prepare a snack for my associates and their foreign partners. They will be arriving in one hour.”
“Whisky? Wine?”
“Include the best Champagne. We’re celebrating the buying of Velid Pharmaceutical.”
“Oh, Jacob. Such good news,” Carmen exclaimed and pecked kisses over Jacob’s sheep-like face.
“This is the crowning of years of hard work, darling.” Jacob pulled his wife into his arms and kissed her on the mouth. “I’m going to buy you a huge diamond tomorrow. We are going to be richer than ever.”
CHAPTER 17
Sagaponack
Markus Blackthorn’s beach house
5:00 p.m.
Markus stopped pacing and sat in the armchair, opening his laptop again.
It seemed to him that having sex with Hannah had just awakened his already hyperactive hormones. He was on edge, horny and agitated, in a way that no amount of running—or masturbation—could cure.
His fingers drilled on the armrest as he sipped his whisky and tried to make sense of the numbers on the screen, just to close it with a thud and rise once more.
He resented Hannah for his restlessness and had taken measures to deal with it the only way he knew, but as the time ticked by he wondered if he wasn’t doing the very thing to make it worse.
He looked at his watch to see if he could cancel the appointment, then he shrugged. In the great scheme of things to get Victoria back, Hannah was just a pawn, incidental even.
The intercom beep pulled him from his thoughts. “Yes?”
“Mr. Blackthorn,” said security from the gates. “Ms. Laura Smith has arrived.”
“Direct her to the pool house.”
He put down his whisky and walked to the other side of his house, where a half-indoor, half-outdoor swimming pool was located.
He opened the door and saw a stunning, blue-eyed blonde in a slinky designer dress getting out of a chauffeured black car.
Laura—or whatever the woman’s real name was—didn’t remind him of Hannah at all. Curvaceous and tall, her eyes were sultry with make-up and her lips shone with bright, glossy red lipstick. She purposely shoved her hair to her back when she straightened and swayed her hips as she lithely made her way over to him.
With a smile, she said, “Hello, gorgeous.”
Markus gestured her inside. “Come in.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” he offered, just to be polite. He knew she wouldn’t accept anything.
“No, thank you,” she answered as predicted, approaching him with a smile on her face. Wasting no time, she undid the belt of his robe, pushing it open and traced a line up his chest with a manicured nail.
When she leaned in to kiss him, he caught the scent of her expensive perfume, sweet, too sweet, almost sickening. Nothing at all like Hannah’s.
Cupping the woman’s face in his hands, keeping her red-painted lips away from his, he ordered curtly, “On your knees.”
She didn’t hesitate and dropped down on the hard floor, pulling down his swimming trunks and taking his half-erect penis in her mouth and hand.
He grunted, grabbed her head, and took control. He was fully erect now and she was still taking him all in, making loud slurping and sucking sounds, and then rubbing her face in his crotch, easily deep-throating him.
He wasn’t surprised. Escorts of her price were professional, trained to please the client.
Yet, he didn’t feel pleased. Much less, pleasured.
Her hair in his hands was not as silky as Hannah’s, her mouth wasn’t anything like Hannah’s tight body. She didn’t smell of fruits and flowers, her forced, faked whimpers and groans were nothing like Hannah’s soft moans and sighs.
He should not be thinking about Hannah right now. But he couldn’t seem to help himself. He could feel the perfect heaviness of Hannah’s breasts in his hands, her nipples rising to a peak under his tongue. His sac tightened and his thrusts became uncoordinated. Hannah’s flavor in his mouth, her moving under him, his name in her voice when she came.
His eyes flew open, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d shoved the woman off him. “Stop.”
She looked up, stunned, swiping a hand at her mouth. “What?”
“Please, leave.” He put himself to rights, closing his robe and knotting the belt, for good measure.
She got up from the floor and smoothed her dress. “Did I do something wrong?”
This is wrong. “No. I…I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll make sure you’re paid and that the agency knows you did your job well. Now please go.”
He turned his back on her, hearing the sounds of her moving around the room and the door closing behind her.
When she was gone, he went to the sauna bathroom and disrobed. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he grimaced at his image. “I am in deep, deep shit.”
Under the cold shower water, he lathered his hands with an excessive amount of liquid soap and cleansed himself of all traces of the escort
—lipstick and scent and touch.
He told himself it was illogical to feel embarrassed by hiring a prostitute and then sending her away without reaching completion.
And wondering about what would Hannah’s opinion of what he had done shouldn’t matter. Not that he was telling her.
But he couldn’t convince himself or erase the disgust he was feeling at himself in that moment. The woman’s touch kept haunting him and something was burning inside his guts.
He cleaned himself again, changed into shorts, and went for a run along the sea, hoping the feeling of the sand under his feet would banish the sickening debased feeling that was making him more angry than he’d been before.
The moon was already high in the sky when he returned, sweaty and exhausted.
His house lights shone brightly through the windows, arcing out onto the lawn like a sanctuary against the cool, dark night.
The waves licked his feet and the crickets chirped. The homey night sounds he loved were everywhere, but this time, they made him feel the weight of his loneliness.
He took another cold shower and prowled his enormous empty house for an hour. Played a bit of piano, ate a simple ham and cheese sandwich. He even watched a film on TV, something he hadn’t done in at least a year.
None of it had done a damn bit of good. Hannah was front and center in his mind.
He felt something for her. Something new. Something real. Something he didn’t know what to do with. He had no doubt that he felt something and he didn’t want to acknowledge that it scared him.
He couldn’t understand how—or why—she had made him lower the defenses he used against everyone else. It was usually like a suit of armor around him but now there was nothing.
He punched the pillow. “Now I just have to figure out how to deal with it.”
When Markus finally fell into a light slumber, the sunrise was starting to sweep the horizon pale orange.
Blackthorn Corporation headquarters
Monday, October 6, 2014
10:30 a.m.
Markus was a master at sifting through the undercurrents, picking out the details that were crucial, and ignoring what was irrelevant.
The only thing he had learned though in the last dragging hours was how much Hannah had messed with his mind because he couldn’t draw one single conclusion about what had happened between them in the bedroom and then with him and the escort in the pool house.
Meeting to discuss Velid Pharmaceutical suited Markus’s dark mood all too well. He was in a mood to be irritated. And he was getting more irritated by the minute. When his eyes arrived at the end of the document, the pencil in his hand snapped in half. He raised his eyes to Caterina Krupin, the lawyer responsible for drafting it and he spoke in an icy voice, “You are fired.”
The beautiful woman gasped and glanced toward Benedict Lockheart, her boyfriend and Markus’s partner, but he just sighed and angled his head towards the door.
Benedict was Blackthorn Corporation’s Chief Legal Officer, in charge of identifying key areas where the litigation risk was high and his analysis on Velid Pharmaceutical had been accurate. It had to go. But Markus had requested him to take measures to reduce every risk before they sold it or shut it down. Caterina had done a poor job at it.
The silence in the room was broken only by the opening and shutting of the door as she exited the meeting room.
“There was no need for that, Blackthorn,” Benedict said.
“There shouldn’t have been. But you let sex go to your head. She is inept, at best.” Markus pushed the file toward Benedict. “Go over it and fix it. You have an hour.”
“Jesus, you can really be a stringent prick sometimes,” exclaimed Benedict.
“I may as well be,” he grumbled. “I do everything around here.”
Benedict stood from the chair and straightened his glasses. He was, and had always been, the most bookish and serious of the partners. It was unusual to see Benedict angry, but Markus had done it.
“May as well be top asshole too? Yeah. You’re definitely acting like it, anyway.” Benedict slammed the meeting room door behind him, leaving Markus and Aleksander alone.
Aleksander, who’d been listening while he reviewed the final Velid Pharmaceutical documents before giving his opinion, didn’t look up. “He’s right, you know. You’re being an asshole. I mean, more than usual.”
“Screw you, Alek,” said Markus, swiveling his chair to look out at the Manhattan skyline. He wondered where Hannah was, who she was with, if she was smiling, or reading, or taking a nap. Or brooding over what had happened between them. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and while it hadn’t affected his work yet, it was definitely messing with his temper—and with his body.
“Yeah. Screw me. Okay. But…” Aleksander cleared his throat, and though Markus didn’t turn back around, he knew his friend had moved closer because his voice was nearer to him when he spoke again. “I think you just managed the impossible: you pissed off Benedict.”
“He shouldn’t have put her in charge of Velid if he wished to keep her working with us.”
“You could have told him that, instead of firing her yourself.”
“Yeah, I could.” Markus took a deep breath and sighed, turning around. Sexual desire and its satisfaction were old companions of his. The soft feminine skin and the intimate taste of a woman, the consuming need of reaching climax inside a tight body and the explosion of senses at the end when there was nothing but a physical relaxing of muscles and mind. They were all familiar to him, but he was tied in knots right now.
There was something different in that storm of passion he had shared with Hannah. Something that made him want to do it all over again—to experience it again.
Or perhaps…not.
Markus couldn’t decide. All he knew was it had been something deeper, lovingly, and utterly terrifying. And she had to go and say I was paying her. Ruining it. “What a mess.”
“What the hell, Markus? You nervous for the meeting tomorrow or…is it something else?”
Make it lots of somethings. Markus abruptly stood up and paced the room.
“You don’t seem nearly as pleased as you should be for a man marrying in a fortnight, my friend.” Aleksander’s amusement never wavered.
“Something might have gone wrong Saturday night,” Markus grudgingly said. “She is in an unpredictable mood.”
“She is a woman after all. She’s bound to be unpredictable,” Aleksander said ruefully.
When something bothered him on an emotional personal level, he usually resorted to trying to frighten it away, seduce it, or buy it off. When those methods didn’t work, he was at a loss. With Hannah, nothing seemed to work. “It makes it difficult to know how to treat her.”
“If you have forgotten how to treat a woman, Blackthorn, then I fear there is no hope for you.”
Markus resisted the urge to toss his partner across the room. Ridiculous. He was not used to losing control of his emotions. “I haven’t forgotten anything,” he said a little more forcefully than he intended. “I just have too much on my mind.”
It was a convenient excuse, but Markus knew it was only that: an excuse.
Aleksander moved forward to clap his hand on Markus’s shoulder. “If you need a friend…”
“Thanks, Alek.”
When Aleksander closed the meeting room door, Markus sat again and opened a file, but after a few minutes, he gave up because his mind was sifting through the events of the night and day before.
“This is what happens when you are used to getting what you want. The first time you see something you can’t have, it becomes an obsession,” Markus mused out loud. “It’s not like you really want her, it’s just because you can’t have her.”
And that was another convenient excuse.
CHAPTER 18
15, Central Park West
Senator Blackthorn’s apartment
9:00 p.m.
“Good evening, sir.” Jackson Thompson wa
s still impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit and tie at that hour, and didn’t know how many hours more before he could go home, shower, and change.
“What do you have for me?” Elijah demanded, motioning for his private assistant to enter his office.
“I’ve got the info you requested on that Senate bill.”
“Thanks. I’ll read it later.” Elijah accepted the file from Jackson and put it in his drawer, locking it. Then motioned with his cigar for the younger man to be seated. “I need a special favor. It’s personal and confidential.”
“Of course, sir.” Jackson took out his pen and a small black leather Moleskine from his inner suit pocket.
Elijah reclined in his chair and puffed his cigar.
Jackson looked up and waited for the Senator to speak.
“I want a detailed report on Hannah Kristensen.” Elijah watched the orange glow of his cigar for a moment before suddenly crushing it out in the ornate onyx ashtray. “And I mean detailed, Jackson.”
“Don’t worry, sir.” Jackson scribbled in his notebook and closed it. He smiled at the Senator. “Is from the day she was born to the label of the underwear she’s wearing today enough?”
Elijah just smiled. “That’s all for now.”
Markus Blackthorn’s penthouse
11:55 p.m.
He had arranged brief meetings to fill in the gaps between previously scheduled longer meetings.
Anything to keep his wayward thoughts from straying to Hannah and his unmanageable body getting primed for an encore. Anything to keep from spiraling down into the damn loneliness that visited him from time to time.
All that had made him more than irritable. It had made him mad.
The truth was, while his pride had been pricked by the way Nicola had played him, his anger toward her was a cold thing. But when Hannah implied she was in his bed just because he was paying her, he had felt a blood fury.
He had become even more furious when Donovan, on the way home, had told him that Elijah had paid a visit to Hannah while he was away. He was not even going to ask Hannah about it because he knew what his father had tried to do, and her still being there was proof enough for him that Hannah was the best choice—his right choice.
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