Sinful Play

by Blazie James

  Sinful play

  A BILLIONAIRE EROTIC ROMANCE

  Sinful Series (Book Two)

  Blazie James

  Contents

  Title Page

  Forward

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Coming Soon!

  Why Authors Love Your Amazon Reviews

  Copyright

  Forward

  ◆◆◆

  Hello Darling,

  Sending many blessings to you for picking up Book Two of my Sinful Series. If you have not read Beautifully Sinful (Book One) go here to get your copy for free.

  Grab a glass of wine, sit back and enjoy.

  Love,

  Blazie

  Be sure to join my newsletter!

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  Chapter One

  Robert

  I hated flying, I hated my job, and I hated my father.

  Only two of those statements were true. As desperately as I wanted to hate my father I couldn't.

  The stewardess smiled at me as she delivered my drink. They always smiled at me. I wasn't stupid enough to believe it had anything to do with my looks or my personality. I was rich.

  I was richer than their bosses. Hell, I was richer than the CEO of this particular airline if their last quarterly report was any indication. She didn't know that, of course.

  The only thing she knew for sure was that I was willing to pay nearly eighteen-hundred dollars for a ticket on a flight leaving in five minutes just to get first-class and be left alone.

  And she knew my suit probably cost more than her car.

  I hated that, but I guess a great deal of that hate was self-directed because as much as I bitched about how shallow and fake people were just because I had money, I still wore the suit and threw money around to get what I wanted.

  I also still treated people like playthings.

  Jesus, Hillary!

  I reached for my phone and almost turned it back on. I didn’t though. I couldn’t face her right now. She was going to be pissed and I didn’t want to explain things. I seriously considered flirting with the stewardess just to get my mind off the whole situation.

  I couldn’t get past the idea it would be cheating on Hillary and that didn’t make any damn sense at all. There was nothing to our relationship that even suggested it was a relationship for God’s sake.

  I waved the stewardess down and ordered another drink, downing the first in front of her. Then, I opened my briefcase and pulled out some numbers to review. That didn't help because the damn projections were for The Mill, and if there was one thing I didn't need to consider it was how Fieldscom was going to streamline the place, suck every bit of originality out of it and make the shareholders just a little bit more money.

  I glanced back at my phone and seriously considered sending Hillary a text, anything that would at least make me seem like less of a prick.

  She hadn’t thought I was a prick before I left. Hell, she’d been pretty damned happy with me.

  I got an image in my head of her neck and face flushed with orgasm. I closed my eyes and leaned back, savoring the memory. She'd been so wonderful in bed.

  She'd been eager and excited and I had never experienced that with a woman who wasn't also promiscuous as hell. Hillary didn't seem like an easy lay at all, though.

  We'd just connected somehow despite the battles. I'd certainly never experienced that with a woman who fought me every step of the way. I could understand her resistance. She knew what I would do in the restaurant. She knew it, and she wasn't going to make it easy on me.

  That wasn’t why she’d been happy with me before I left, of course. She’d been happy with me because of the contracts and bonuses I’d put in place, signed and delivered to human resources before anyone back at Fieldscom could stop it. That was the critical success here. In fact, that was the thing that—

  I sat up straight.

  Damn it. That was the thing that would ensure I caught hell when I got back home. I was going to catch enough hell that I downed my second drink and pressed the call button to order another.

  In fairness to my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, I couldn't really pretend that the business plan made no sense.

  In fact, if I looked at it from a strictly financial perspective, it was really fantastic. If someone I really cared about wanted to invest in something with a very high upside potential but also a great deal of stability, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any business better than the restaurant division of Fieldscom.

  We took popular restaurants and used economies of scale and best business practices to make them more profitable then expand on them. In the process, a restaurant like The Mill would end up branded with fifteen or twenty locations.

  That meant a few thousand jobs at the restaurants and more jobs for all the suppliers. On the whole, I couldn’t deny that the business was sound and, on balance, good for people.

  Eighty percent of all new restaurants failed. Ninety-two percent of the locations we opened were still operating successfully a decade later.

  I could handle this when the restaurants we bought were on the brink of bankruptcy. That happened with a great deal of frequency because people just didn’t know how to operate a business.

  Knowing the best way to cook risotto didn’t give someone the ability to understand a profit and loss statement or a balance sheet. We bought a great many restaurants whose primary problem was just a great chef who shouldn’t have tried to be an owner. I could handle those. The real choices for the owners were bankruptcy or us, and we served a fine purpose then.

  But The Mill was different. There were cases when the business had to sell but it was in great financial shape. Some external factor—in this case, it was cancer—meant there had to be an ownership change. Those were hard to deal with because in those cases, it didn't feel like I was rescuing a damned thing.

  On the contrary, I ended up taking a successful enterprise and turning it into a bullshit version of itself, a version with fake personality instead of real character. There was a pretty damned dramatic difference between taking a concept that failed and making it work and taking a concept that worked and sucking the life out of it to generate a lot more money.

  I’d done that eleven times.

  Those restaurants and the chains built around them earned Fieldscom close to forty million dollars a year in revenue. Except when I visited them on business trips, I wouldn't eat in any of them.

  In each case, I'd gone into a diamond and found a way to clone semi-precious reproductions with a round brilliant cut but none of the authenticity.

  Hillary was the very first person who ever stood up to me in one of these situations. She cursed me with all the curses I threw at my father for the very same reason and I was stuck in a position where I had to argue with her about it. It was maddening in more ways than one.

  I liked that woman.

  I liked that she fought for what she believed in, losing battle or not. I liked that she wouldn’t back down and I liked that she participated in my petty little scheme to at least take care of the employees while not suggesting in any way, shape or form that she was willing to compromise. In other words, the employees got their contracts and their bonuses but she was still going to fight me every step of the way.

  I was rich.

  I was sickeningly rich.

  That meant I had a great deal of experience with women. I had experience with women my parents would call the marrying type, appropriate women (one-word sums that up—rich.) I had experience with women I imagined almost no parents on Earth would consider appropriate women for altogether different reasons.
>
  I'd bought a bit of peace with her, shared that I felt the same way and did what I could, what little I could, to make things a little bit easier for the employees when The Mill turned into another mass-produced corporate restaurant. That wouldn't last, though.

  No matter what I did or said, I would still be the man responsible for destroying what she loved, and I knew it.

  I was still an asshole for taking off, though.

  The airplane had WIFI. I wanted to turn my phone on... but I didn’t. I used the airplane’s phone to call the corporate office and arranged for a car from the pool to pick me up at the airport. I went over some notes on potential acquisitions I’d already gone over time and time again. I flipped through the in-flight magazine. I did anything and everything I could to keep from giving in to the temptation to read my messages.

  I already knew I was a prick. I didn’t want to read it from Hillary right now.

  I called the stewardess, downed another whiskey and managed to sleep for the remainder of the flight. I didn't feel any better when the seat belt sign came on and I didn't feel any better when the plane landed.

  I felt even worse when I saw Karl Jergen waiting for me at the gate. Karl was to the family something akin to a majordomo. I sighed and said, "Hello Karl." He extended his hand and I shook it.

  “Good to see you, Robert,” he said. He was the only one in the family—well, sort of in the family—who respected my dislike of Tres as a name. He took my tickets, handed them to an employee I didn’t know, and said, “He’ll get your baggage.” Then, he gestured and we started walking.

  “You have a meeting at eleven with your grandfather and your father,” he said.

  “Eleven? They’re not nearly as angry as I thought they would be.”

  He chuckled. "Oh yes, they are. But your father is out of town and doesn't arrive until seven tomorrow morning. Your mother already has a breakfast scheduled. You're first on his list."

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

  He chuckled again. “Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t. There’s one perfect way to describe what you did, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Futile.”

  He had a point. We walked from the terminal. In clear violation of every airport rule, there was, our limousine was right at the door. It had probably been there for a half-hour or more. He opened the door for me and I wondered if he thought I was going to bolt or turn right around and get a ticket elsewhere.

  We sat inside and I asked, “Do you think I’m out of line, Karl?”

  “What I think is irrelevant,” he replied.

  “Come on, Karl. You did everything but change my diapers. I’m asking sincerely.”

  He laughed and as the limo started, he reached for two highball glasses and poured a generous amount of scotch in each. He handed me one and sipped from his. “I did change your diapers, Robert. It’s not an image I care to revisit.”

  “Really?”

  “The answer depends on your motivation. If you’re doing this to irritate your father, you’re out of line. If you’re doing it to get laid, you’re out of line. If you’re doing it because you sincerely think it’s the right thing to do, you’re not out of line.” He pointed to my glass. “Drink that before I go on.”

  I downed it.

  “Jesus, Robert. Are you in college, for Christ’s sake?” He shook his head with a smile. “Whether or not you’re out of line, the action was still futile. You’re not going to completely upend a business plan that earns the shareholders significant profits, especially when it’s not a clear moral issue but more of an emotional issue.”

  I opened my mouth to respond but I realized he was right. It wasn’t cut and dry. Even the sanitized, easy access restaurants we created served good food. They employed thousands of people and gave a measure of security to neighborhoods. “I don’t think the business plan should be abandoned,” I said. “But there are instances where preserving a brand makes more sense than transforming it.”

  “Maybe. Where am I dropping you?”

  “The hotel,” I replied. I didn’t want to deal with the house or the staff and I didn’t feel like heading to my empty apartment. At present, I wanted people to suck up to me.

  “You got it,” he said.

  I picked up my phone and turned it on. Dozens of notifications chimed but I ignored them and dialed the Stairmont. I had a suite there I paid for year-round. I reached the concierge directly and asked him to prepare my room. Then I sighed and decided to face the music. I checked my emails and texts. During the flight, I'd received forty-nine emails and twenty-eight texts. I had eleven voicemails as well.

  Not one of the damned things came from Hillary.

  Chapter Two

  “Why are you home, Tres?”

  I fought back a pretty significant urge to tell my grandfather to call me Robert. We were in my grandfather's office.

  Officially, my father was the CEO and my grandfather was the chairman of the board. While my father's office followed whatever current office décor was in fashion, my grandfathers were more classic in nature, with wood paneling, an enormous desk and even a full bar against the wall. The room itself was enormous as well. Some house floor plans would fit in it.

  I eyed the bar, stood and walked toward it. My father eyed me as I poured a few fingers in a glass but form wouldn’t let him say anything until I had responded to my grandfather. “Everything I needed to get done was done. It wasn’t a good use of company resources for me to stay there.”

  I had responded. The firm was satisfied. "Do you think you're above the rest of the family, Tres?" My father said even though he pretended it was a question. "You think you don't have to rise through the ranks like everyone else? You're too good for that?"

  I drained my glass and poured another. I was about to drain it again but the idea of getting drunk just to irritate Dad was stupid. “My name is Robert, not Tres. I don’t call you Junior and I don’t want you to call me Tres.”

  Just to piss my father off, I directed my response to my grandfather. “I didn’t ask to be a part of the company at all. I was offered four different positions with other firms. I turned down my dream job with an M&A firm I wanted to work with.”

  “Tres!” my father said sharply. I ignored him.

  “I took this job based on assurances that I would be given a level of authority commensurate to my skill set, my MBA, and my ability. It is written into my contract.”

  “Why are you home?” my grandfather asked again.

  “Because in my contract I have decision-making power. I have authority over my schedule and how I use my time. I’m home because I’m more needed here. It’s that simple.”

  My grandfather sighed but my father spat out, “So your grandfather had to start at the bottom. I had to start at the bottom. Your uncles all started at the bottom. You’re special, though, and get to just start wherever you want. You think relying on your name makes you professional?”

  I whirled on him. “I think relying on a contract makes me professional. I think it makes me smart, too, because it’s clear I would have gone nowhere relying on your word.”

  My father looked like he’d been slapped. It was a good look on him. I felt like twisting the knife but I decided to de-escalate. “Okay, let’s calm down.”

  As if to illustrate my point, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I drained the glass and put it back on the bar. Then, I said, “I wanted to get into mergers and acquisitions. I wanted it on my own, not associated with Fieldscom unless it was a brand new division. You wanted me to be a part of the company, and I get that. We had a deal, though. It was important to me that I made decisions and I set my schedule."

  “Yes, but—”

  "He's right, Junior," my Grandfather said. Then, he turned to me and said, "But there are still certain things we expect from you. Listen, if you had your own M&A firm, and that maybe something in your future, you would still have expectations of portfolio com
panies. You would still change things about your acquisitions."

  “I wouldn’t change the core—”

  “What I care about right now isn’t The Mill or any of the restaurants,” my father said. “I care about you just throwing up your hands and changing direction without anyone ever getting a chance to say anything about it.”

  “My contract says nobody gets the chance to say anything about it unless I decide they do,” I replied. I was primed for the battle but my phone rang and just to frustrate my father I answered.

  “Hello, Mr. Kensington.” It was Hillary, and the formality in her voice felt like a knife between my ribs.

  “Hillary, I’m glad you called. I—”

  “I just want to inform you we’ve implemented those changes you required. We got a call informing us someone would replace you and I wasn’t certain if I should report things like this to you until the representative from the company arrives.”

  If she had been reading stock charts, there would have been more emotion in her tone.

  “Look, I just—”

  “And, of course, we’ve already printed all the reports and will be mailing them to the district office until the POS system is replaced and—”

  “No, I—”

  “No? You would prefer we send them digitally? Is that what you would prefer, Mr. Kensington?”

  “Why is it right now—”

  “Tres!” My father said and I whirled on him.

  “Hold on,” I said angrily. “And my name is Robert, damn it!" Into my phone, I said, "I'll have to call you back." I looked at my father and said, “Sorry, Dad. I was a little too busy trying to talk to yet another person your damned company is destroying!”

  “It’s your company, too, Tres,” he replied bitterly. “It’s about damned time you start acting like it is.”