by Alice Bello
Charlotte was staring at me.
“Hungry?” I asked, holding up the two white paper bags.
She frowned, her brows knitting, and then she laughed.
“I’m famished, Mr. Saint James.”
And we ate.
Chapter 4
Flirting with Disaster
Dante
Our next stop was a bit off the grid.
In a shadowy part of the west end we pulled up to the front of an old four story building that was hiding under a hulking railroad trestle. A single overhead light illuminated the front door and a colossal boulder of a man stood sentinel.
Covered in tattoos and wearing blue jeans and a leather vest, I took him as a bouncer.
He could have been a bouncer/doorman for many a breed of establishments: gay bar, leather bar, cutting edge nightclub.
But since the building was surrounded by over fifty motorcycles—mostly Harley-Davidsons—I hazarded to guess this was a biker bar.
A big one.
I saw Taz staring out his window at the building. If the partition was down, I could imagine him growling.
“Time for phase one of our little inter-date,” Charlotte said as Edward opened her door.
Cute.
But what was she trying to do, bringing me to a bar like this?
I slid out of the limo behind her, and as I stood I let my hand graze her round, firm bottom—just for a moment—before settling my hand in the supple curve of her back, gently guiding her toward the front door, and the gargantuan tattooed doorman.
I waved Taz off when he went to follow us.
Whatever Ms. Rampling had in mind, I’m sure I could handle it on my own.
It would be more fun too.
Though I was sure Taz would magically show up if anything did happen.
He was like that.
The doorman’s steely gaze slid over me, assessing me, and then washed over Charlotte in a completely different way.
“Sure you two are in the right place?”
“Yes, I am,” Charlotte said, playfully.
I kept my hand on her back and put her to the side of me, away from the doorman.
“What can I say? The lady likes to live dangerously.”
The doorman gave a harsh little bark of a laugh. “Well, she’s in the right place.”
Inside the bar was loud, smoky and filled with the smells of sweat, leather, Jack Daniels and sex: any biker club’s wet dream.
There were women in numerous levels of undress, one actually being fucked atop one of the three pool tables—men still playing, bouncing pool balls off her bare ass. Booze and beer free flowing from a long straight bar against the wall, and smoke—redolent of both tobacco and cannabis—rolled in slow clouds through the bar.
The grunting sounds of arm wrestling, two minor brawls, the crack and clack of the pool tables and a pinball machine mixed with loud conversations, cat calls, wolf whistles and very bad singing.
Charlotte led me through the throng of beefy, tattooed men straight to the bar. She leaned over to the bartender, a man in faded denim and a bandanna on his head, and handed him a fifty dollar bill. She had her round, sinfully luscious bottom stuck out, and I don’t think it was by accident.
The bartender took the fifty and then laid out two bottles of Budweiser and two shots of tequila.
So far she wanted me off balance, placed in uncomfortable and alien situations, in environs that could well endanger my life and limb… and now she wanted to get me drunk.
This was shaping up to one hell on an interesting interview.
I moved to her side and leaned against the bar, letting my eyes drink in her milky flesh, the way that black cocktail dress molded to her body,
And how her head swiveled and nodded.
Oh, it’s like that.
I leaned in and let my lips graze the flesh of her earlobe as I said, “If you’re planning something involving one or more of these bikers and goading me into a fight…” I licked her ear and watched as it sent a shiver through her. “Then this interview is over, and I will blacklist you with all the clout at my disposal.”
I straightened myself to my full height and saw a burly tough guy in ragged denim walking toward us.
Charlotte looked up at me, her expression surprised and then piqued with anger.
I’d read the situation correctly, one of my more useful skills. And now she had only a few seconds to decide if she wanted the interview or to piss me off.
“Well?” I asked. She had three seconds and I would pull the plug on this. Sure, there might be some blood if I really did get into it with the man coming toward us, but it would be quick and I’d be out the door before anyone knew why the man was on the floor, unconscious.
One… two…
Charlotte rolled her eyes and sighed. “Fine.”
She was sexy even in defeat.
She turned toward the tough guy and ruefully shook her head and made a slashing cut motion with her hand.
I saw Taz at the other end of the bar. Like I said, he would just materialize when danger approached. He’s like that.
The tough guy scowled, and then shook his head. Without missing a step he sidled up to the bar and ordered a beer.
“So what were you looking for with that, Ms. Rampling?”
She bit her lip again, but I pushed the image that had intruded on me earlier out of the way. I needed to pay attention to the woman in front of me.
“Just wanted to see if you’re as tough as I’ve heard.”
“Tough?” I had to laugh. “I assure you I’m a formidable businessman. That would not need proving in a setting like this.”
“I heard you like to fight—physical fights. And that you train every morning with your security people.”
I leaned back against the bar and looked around at the milling bikers. “I don’t enjoy fighting. But yes, I train every day.”
She waited, taking her time. “Because of what happened to your parents?”
Yes. Their being victims of a home invasion back when I was in my junior year had demolished my world… and my sister’s mind—we’d both been there when it happened.
“My parents are off-limits,” I said, staring Charlotte in the eye.
I had never discussed it with anyone, except Marjory. And I wasn’t about to start now.
After a few beats she nodded and took a swig from her beer, then chased it with the shot.
“So what isn’t off-limits, Mr. Saint James?”
Ever adaptive… I doubted anything fazed this woman for long.
“Business…” I reached over and drew my thumb over her bottom lip with my thumb and caressed her cheek. “Pleasure…”
“I’m not really a business reporter,” she said.
Lie.
I’d read her earlier work when she was rising up the newspaper ranks. She was a sharp, observant reporter who didn’t shy away from any subject.
It was only recently that she’d moved toward more sensational exposes.
“Then why are we here?” I looked out over the denizens of the bar. “Unless your fantasy is to get fucked on a pool table or in what’s probably a filthy bathroom stall.”
Her eyes drank me in and then skittered across the bar. “Been there, done that.”
Provocative…
She turned toward me, hitting me with both her amazing breasts and her mesmerizing eyes.
“So what had been the plan before I hijacked you?”
I glowered down at her and felt myself getting hard—there had been so many plans for tonight.
Chapter 5
Two Weeks Later…
Lucy
I was frantic. The contingency play was going to be used.
The plan for if Dante had to travel somewhere for business.
The one where he jetted off around the globe… with my assistants with him.
And I’m stuck back here, running things.
Because I’m so damn important… so damn irreplac
eable.
I was absolutely miserable.
Dante would be out of the country for three whole weeks.
I’d had my Dante fix five days a week, with cameo fixes via text, Skype, and sometimes emergency meet ups back at the office.
And now I was going to have to go three weeks without him.
Gaaa!
All day long Maggie, Sydney, and Jenifer had been bouncing off the walls with irrepressible excitement.
I was trying not to hate them all.
But truthfully I adored all three of them. This would be so great for them. Business travel experience. They would learn so much in those three weeks.
They’d also get to see my Dante shirtless.
Nope… I hated them.
Maybe I could somehow find someone with the flu that I could send into their little bullpen to infect them…
“You’re Lucy, right?” a woman’s voice interrupted my utterly evil thoughts.
I knew that voice immediately.
My head snapped back and my eyes took in the older woman before me. “Mrs. Roark?”
“It’s very nice to meet you, finally…” she looked around the space my desk took up. “Dante always says you’re too busy for us to have tea.” She speared me with her gaze. “Are you too busy?”
I gulped and stood up. “I’d make time for tea… or anything else you’d like.”
She nodded approvingly. “Good. There’s a place I’ve been dying to try out on Canal Street.”
I couldn’t suppress the smile on my face. I must’ve looked deranged.
“Today, though…” she said, “I need a car to drive me somewhere.”
“Of course!” I grabbed my phone to call for a car. “Where are you going?”
“Westchester.”
My stomach dropped.
I froze like a deer in headlights.
“I can’t believe Dante knew Tessa was out there in that musty old house all by herself!”
Oh dear god…
She gave me a hard look. “I can tell by your face that you know all about this.”
I bit my lip. “Yes. He asked me to set up a staff for the house, and for an old friend to visit her.”
“The Whitmore boy?”
I nodded. “He’s a doctor now—a neurologist.”
Mrs. Roark seemed to mull this over for a moment. “Good. But I still need that car. I’ll be waiting at the front entrance.” And then the older woman turned and walked out of the office.
I dropped down into my chair, shaking my head… and then I called for the car.
###
I hadn’t been able to get two words written on my lunch. I hadn’t even touched my chicken salad sandwich.
Thoughts of Dante leaving plagued my thoughts.
Dante had been at a charity luncheon for the past few hours, so I’d been left to wallow in my impotent rage and irritating misery.
And then, like a flock of crows Maggie, Sydney, and Jenifer came into my territory in the sprawling room in front of Dante’s office, their heads down, looking… nervous.
“What’s wrong, ladies?”
Sydney had something in her hands, and she glanced over to her two coworkers anxiously.
For Heaven’s sake…
“Spit it out!”
I cringed when I saw all three of my assistants flinch.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to force a smile. “I’m just a little…” I shook my head. “You know… stressed.”
Jenifer’s eyes got wide like a cartoon character. “So you’ve read it?”
“Read what?” I asked, looking at each of them.
They did that looking to each other anxiously thing again. And that’s when Maggie took whatever it was out of Sydney’s hands and handed it to me.
It was a magazine.
A copy of Commons Magazine.
Dante was on the cover, his stunning blue eyes glowering sexily from the page.
The tagline: Saint Sex
Good grief, it was that horrible Rampling woman’s exposé on Dante.
I rolled my eyes and held it out to the trio. “I’m sure it’s riveting.”
Sydney bit her lip and held her hands up, begging off accepting the magazine back.
“You really need to read it.”
I looked down at it. What had Charlotte Rampling done?
There was a bright yellow post-it marking where the article started.
“What’s it say?” I asked Sydney. I so didn’t want to read it.
Sydney wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head.
Jeez… really? “It’s that bad?”
More nervous looks at each other.
Okay, fine.
I opened the magazine and started reading.
Dante’s sexy, Dante’s mysterious and aloof and saw right through what she’d been planning for him.
Yeah, Dante’s sharp like that.
Dante took her up to his penthouse apartment for a gourmet dinner, the finest wine was served… and then they were alone.
I shook my head. If she was going to write a blow by blow account of what happened, I was not going to read it.
“They had sex,” I said, my voice cracking with strain. That happened when I was angry. “Big deal.”
“Keep reading,” Jenifer said, her eye brows so drawn they were nearly one.
Okay, back to the article.
Dante stripped her down naked in front of the enormous fireplace at the heart of the living room. “He then pulled my hair up into a messy little bun on the back of my head.”
I blinked…
He did what?
“I had a moment to reflect on a certain young woman in Dante’s employ. A pretty little thing who had her blond hair styled in that exact fashion.”
My eyes bugged out as I read more.
“He bent me over a writing desk by the west bank of floor to ceiling windows, spanking me to the view of the Chicago skyline. By then I was ready to get to the main event. But Dante was just getting started…”
I closed my eyes and bit my lip. This was ridiculous.
“I’m not going to read about her having sex with our boss.” I looked up at them and shook my head. “Take this trash and burn it.”
Maggie came forward, turned the magazine around and paged through the article.
When she turned the magazine back around to me she pointed to a paragraph and said, “Read this.”
Jenifer gasped and Sydney slapped her hand over her mouth.
Dear lord…
I started reading again.
“Though sex with Dante Saint James was a near religious experience, and I would recommend it to anyone, there was one glaring, inescapable elephant in the room. The specter of his personal assistant, Lucy Hopewell.”
I felt my stomach drop, and my flesh start to tingle.
Is this what having a stroke feels like?
“First Dante styled my hair like his executive assistant’s, and then he bent me over a desk. After a slew of sex games, him lapping champagne from my breasts, and then fucking me in his bed for… who knows how long. I gave up counting positions and orgasms at number seven.
“But then, when Dante finally came in the magnum sized, ribbed for her pleasure condom deep inside me, he gasped out the name ‘Lucy.’”
No…
No. No. No. No. No.
That lying bitch!
She had to be lying.
Right?
I continued reading, my face red hot, my spine straight and my heart thumping in my chest.
“Lucy Hopewell has been Dante Saint James’ executive assistant for over two years now. She started working for him right out of college, and is known throughout the business world as the gatekeeper of Saint James LTD.”
And then I started to hyperventilate.
“Ms. Hopewell also writes self-published billionaire erotic romances under her penname LP Hopewell.”
Oh my god, oh my god…
That bitch!
Every fantasy I’d ever had about Dante was in those books.
“And though I’ve only met Lucy Hopewell one time, I know the look of complete and total love when I see it.”
My jaw dropped as I read the last lines of the article.
“Saint Sex himself is in love with his assistant, whether he knows it or not; and she loves him right back. Now if someone would be kind enough to tell them both about it.”
I sat there looking off out the stunning view from the windows to my left.
Dante wasn’t in love with me.
Dante wasn’t in love with anyone.
That much I was one hundred percent sure of.
But the moment he read this he would know I was in love with him.
“Order me a car,” I said to my assistants. I pulled up my schedule for Dante and scrolled back to the day he was meeting with Charlotte Rampling. I had her home address, since he had planned on picking her up before she’d shown up to hijack him.
I looked to find my assistants still standing there. “I need that car now!”
Chapter 6
Confrontation
Lucy
Charlotte Rampling lived in a fifth floor walk up apartment on the edge of the Gold Coast of Chicago.
No wonder the bitch had such great legs!
I pounded on her door for over five minutes before I heard the scrape of a chain being slid back.
She opened the door in just a short t-shirt and pink panties, her hair the proverbial rat’s nest, eyeliner smudged.
But that only made the woman look like a supermodel doing a Calvin Klein shoot.
I hated her even more.
“You really are something, pipsqueak.” She stretched and then yawned. “I was having the best dream before you started that annoying woodpecker shit.”
There were so many things I wanted to shout at her, but what came out was, “You big, stupid… liar-face!”
I pulled out my copy of Commons Magazine and almost hit her in the nose with it, like she was a bad dog.
Thankfully I didn’t do that—I would never live that down. Instead I held it up to her and said. “This piece of crap is all lies. You need to print a retraction right now!”
She looked at me nonplussed. “It doesn’t work that way, sweet cheeks.”