‘That sounds good…hell, I’m already drooling at the thought.’
‘You should be here now; Harpa’s made a curry that I’m about to demolish.’
Jack groaned. ‘Torturer. Look, good, I’ll fly down tomorrow and be at your place by…’
‘Eight? Is that too late?’
‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘I’ll be staying a couple of days.’
‘Good, see you then.’
Harpa was right – Cosima got through two plates of the curry then, giving up, groaned, placing her hands on her belly. ‘God, so good, Harp. Tell me again why you’re not a professional chef?’
Harpa colored. ‘Funny you should ask that…’
Cosima’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Huh? What’s going on?’
Harpa shifted nervously in her seat. ‘Cos…since we’ve been here, I’ve not been able to pick up the kind of clientele I need for the styling business.’
It was Cosima’s turn to look uncomfortable. ‘I know, and I’m sorry about that. It doesn’t seem fair that I get to have my dream job and you…’
‘That’s just it. I don’t think it is my dream job. I’ve been thinking it over more and more, and I’ve talked to Deacon…I’m going back to college, Cos. To become a chef, a professional chef.’
For a beat, Cosima was stunned then she grinned widely and leaped up to hug her sister. ‘Harp, that’s fantastic.’
She felt her sister relax in her arms. ‘Really, you don’t mind?’
‘Of course not – why would you think that?’
‘Because it’s a big change and because we’ll see each other even less than we do?’
Cosima didn’t understand. ‘Huh? Why?’
Harpa sucked in a deep lungful of air. ‘Because the college is in Seattle.’
‘Well, where is he?’
Sabine tapped her long fingernails on the glass table; her cell phone pressed to her ear. Margaret, Arlo’s fiercely loyal p.a. was telling her that Arlo was out of town.
‘I’m afraid I cannot tell you where, Ms. Karlsson.’
Margaret had always disliked her, but Arlo would never fire the woman because she was rude to Sabine. ‘She’s practically my mom,’ he told Sabine, ‘I’ve known her all my life.’
Now, Sabine narrowed her eyes. Margaret knew damn well where Arlo was. ‘Tell him to call me,’ she hissed and ended the call. Fuck it, she thought, I wanted to get this done, tell him I wasn’t going anywhere, that I love him too much to take no for an answer.
She sat thinking about what to do next, pondering blackmail or trying to steal Arlo’s schedule from Margaret – a nearly impossible feat, but Sabine still had some friends within the company. Sam, that I.T. guy who never stopped gawping at her whenever he was fixing something in Arlo’s office. She was sure she could get to him – whatever it took. Sabine was a mastermind at turning her feelings off – hell; she’d done it for years with the various men in her life. Except Arlo. Arlo she had genuinely loved. Cole too, to a lesser degree but then she’d only begun the affair to get Arlo’s attention.
Yes, that’s what she’d do – get Sam to hack into Margaret’s online scheduler…Sabine grinned to herself and went to grab a shower.
I’ll find you, Arlo Forrester, and show you just what you’re missing.
Cosima felt a nervous thrill go through when Arlo showed up at the office the next morning. ‘I thought we’d look at some sites,’ he said nonchalantly, and Tal had nodded eagerly.
‘Good idea…you both go check out the ones we ring-fenced, Cosima, I’m sure three would be a crowd.’ Tal couldn’t hide his grin.
Cosima shot her chuckling boss a death stare as she followed Arlo out to his Mercedes. Arlo was polite and courteous in the office, but when he started the car, he gave her a wicked grin. ‘Time to show me what you’re made of, Bedi.’
She couldn’t help returning his smile. ‘You better be ready, Forrester, I have a whole stack of potential sites and places up for sale.’ She waved a thick stack of papers.
They drove to each site, Cosima giving him the pros and cons of each. The first few were empty lots. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that although your initial outlay may be more if you build from the ground up, you get to build exactly what you want.’
Arlo nodded. ‘Right…that’s where I’m conflicted. I took a look through the papers you’re holding – Tal emailed the details last night. If you’d offered me an empty site, this time, yesterday, I would have gone with it. But there was this one place in the Quarter…’
‘The old ‘LaBelle’? I know, right, it’s fantastic,’ Cosima was delighted he’d seen the same potential in the old broke-down hotel that she’d seen. ‘Damn, Arlo, do you even realize the potential in that place? And it has that NOLA aesthetic you were talking about yesterday. I know it looks a mess, but there’s so much we could salvage there…keep the shabby chic about it, really infuse it with…’ She stopped suddenly and laughed. ‘Sorry, I got carried away.’
Arlo grinned. ‘Not at all. I was thinking the same thing myself. Listen, let’s blow off these other sites and go there now – I want to see it for myself.’
Cosima grinned. ‘Then hang a left here, sport.’
Arlo steered the car deftly through the traffic until they reached the outside of the LaBelle. It was an old building, one of the oldest in the Quarter, standing only seven floors high but almost a block wide. Cosima dug out her cell phone. ‘The realtor is only a few blocks away, and he knows we’re coming today. Shouldn’t be a problem to get him here.’
It wasn’t – he was there in ten minutes - and soon they were being led through the hotel, Cosima noting all the old features and fittings that could be salvaged, getting more and more enthused as they walked through. She looked at Arlo, waiting for his reaction. He nodded, looking around in silence for a few moments. Cosima, impatient, shifted from foot to foot. Finally, Arlo turned to the realtor. ‘How much? For everything?’
The realtor told him then there was another silence while Arlo considered. Cosima, her heart thumping, watched him.
‘You’ve got a deal…and I’ll throw in another two hundred grand if we can close escrow by Friday.’
The realtor’s eyes bugged out; he and Cosima exchanged a stunned look. ‘Well, I’ll see what we can do.’
Arlo smiled at him. ‘Make it happen, would you please? My…colleague and I are keen to start work on it.’ And he gave Cosima such a lust-filled, wanton look that she felt naked and hot under his stare. The realtor, clearly nonplussed, excused himself and went to make some calls.
‘I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you just bought the place, just like that.’ Cosima shook her head in wonderment. ‘What convinced you?’
‘You,’ he said simply. ‘The look in your eyes when you talk to me about wainscoting and staircases and hand-crafted metalwork. The sheer joy of turning this old wreck into something spectacular, Cosima. I haven’t felt that in years and today, you bring me here, and I find it again. Thank you.’
Cosima swallowed. Arlo’s expression was nothing but genuine; he wasn’t playing her, trying to suck up, trying for anything but the truth. ‘Thank you, that’s…’
She couldn’t finish because Arlo stepped forward and took her face in his hands, pressing his lips to hers. The kiss was so sweet it made her head swim but gently, after a beat, she placed her hands on his chest and pushed him away. ‘Arlo…’
He grinned unashamedly. ‘Just a celebratory kiss. No strings.’
Laughing, she shook her head. ‘You are the worst.’
The realtor came back in, beaming. ‘Mr. Forrester, I have good news. I can do one better than Friday. How would you like to be the proud owner of this hotel by Thursday?’
She agreed to go out to lunch with him but clearly, young Sam was expecting far more before he’d hand over the information. No problem, Sabine smiled to herself, as she led him to her hotel room. Sam looked like he could hardly believe it as she unzipped his pants and
reached for his cock. He tried to kiss her but she turned her head away. ‘I don’t kiss, Sam. I’ll suck your cock, and you can fuck me in whichever way you want, but I don’t kiss.’
She could tell he’d stopped listening at ‘suck your cock.' She sank gracefully to her knees and took him into her mouth, rolling her tongue around the sensitive tip, feeling it twitch and thicken as she tasted him.
When he was hard, she stripped off, pushing him back on the bed, and straddled him. He was only young, early twenties, but his cock was impressive and with a sigh, she impaled herself on it, riding him, thrusting hard onto him. His hands were on her waist, or cupping her small breasts, and she murmured encouraging words to him. Of course, he came too quickly, and she’d had to pretend to come, afterward excusing herself to the bathroom to finish herself, muffling her moan with a hand towel.
Strolling naked back to the bedroom, she smiled down at him. ‘So what have you got for me?’
Sam grinned and reached for his bag. ‘Printouts. Mr. Forrester’s schedule for the next three months. Looks like he’s going to be out of town.’
Sabine took the printouts, frowning. She scanned through them. ‘New Orleans?’ She kept looking, flicking through the papers again and again. Then she looked at Sam, her gray eyes cold. ‘What the fuck is in New Orleans?’
All day he’d been trying to resist touching her tawny skin then, in the old hotel, with the scent of her skin driving him crazy, he hadn’t been able to hold back, grabbing her and kissing her. She had kissed back too, before pushing him away.
It didn’t matter. Just in that brief moment when Arlo’s lips had molded so naturally to Cosima’s, he’d been taken back to the little villa on the water in the Maldives, her body twined around his, his cock buried deep inside her.
Arlo looked over at her as he drove them back to the office. Her dark hair had escaped the clip she’d used to put it up into a chignon, the faint blush of her cheeks reminding him of her afterglow, the breathless undulation of her body under his. God, the need for him to make love to her again was beginning to hurt and…
‘I still can’t believe you bought the place, just like that,’ Cosima said, chuckling. ‘The heady delight of being a billionaire.’
He smiled at her. ‘Surely your family is well off? I know your father’s assets were seized, but your mother…’
‘Put her entire earnings up her nose or injected into her forehead,’ Cosima interrupted, and he was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. She gave him a half-smile. ‘It doesn’t matter; Harpa and I have never needed her money, we do just fine. Money had never been an ambition for me.’
‘I respect that.’
‘Says the billionaire.’ But she was chuckling, and he joined in.
‘Hey, look, that’s just the result of my work, not the goal I was aiming for.’
‘What was?’
Arlo shrugged. ‘I just wanted to design beautiful buildings. Somewhere along the way, the practical side kicked in, and the company ended up going where the market dictated. Soon, we were mass-building hotels which were impersonal, functional and profitable. Now I want something different. I was recently shown how being spontaneous could bring great fulfillment.’ He slid her a sideways look and saw she was blushing.
After a moment, Cosima put her hand on his arm. ‘Arlo, I want you to know, whatever our situation is now, those few days in the Maldives were the best of my life. Truly. I’ve never had that connection with someone. Ever.’
After he’d dropped her back at the office, he went to his hotel and checked in with Margaret. His secretary reeled off a list of calls he’d gotten then told him Sabine had been calling.
‘Lord, that woman doesn’t know the meaning of ‘he’s not interested.'’
Arlo grinned. Margaret had never liked Sabine. ‘Thanks for putting up with her nonsense.’
‘No problem, dear, as long as I have permission to go full Mrs. Landingham on her.’
Arlo laughed. Margaret was a huge fan of The West Wing. ‘If only I were like President Bartlet, I’d be happily married to Stockard Channing, and she would hand Sabine her ass.’
‘Yes, she would,’ Margaret laughed. ‘Talking of happily married…’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Cole Trent is getting married. Just thought you ought to know.’
Arlo was stunned, but he gathered himself. ‘How’d you know?’
‘He came by to see me.’ Unlike Sabine, Margaret had been genuinely upset by Cole’s betrayal; she had, after all, seen both the boys through puberty working for their fathers, through college and had been as much of a part of their businesses as either of them.
Arlo sighed. ‘I don’t know what to say to that. Look, if you speak to him, pass along my congratulations.’
Margaret’s voice softened. ‘I will, dear. I’m hoping the idea of getting married rubs off on you.’
Arlo laughed. ‘I’m working on it, Margie.’
‘Don’t call me that.’ But she chuckled. ‘Call me if you need anything, dear.’
‘Okay, Maggie.’
‘Demon child.’
Arlo hung up the phone feeling remarkably happy. Margaret always had the effect, being as she was his de-facto mother and had been since his own mother had died. Arlo was almost forty and yet Margaret, with her joie-de-vivre still intact at nearly eighty, made him feel a like teenager.
Talking about feeling good…he flicked through his photos on his phone to the one he wanted. He had taken it surreptitiously; Cosima was asleep in a lounge chair, her dark skin a perfect foreground to the crystal blue ocean around them. They had said no names, no strings – he reckoned that probably meant no photos too, but right at that moment, Cosima in a white bikini, her breasts golden and ripe, and her belly gently rising and falling with her breath as she slept... God, she was a goddess, and I’m her willing slave…damn. He respected her decision to focus on work, and he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her career but for him, it was a foregone conclusion.
They would be together, and he couldn’t wait for that day to come.
Harpa opened the door and grinned. ‘Hey, Handsome Jack, come on in.’
Jack Hampton rolled his eyes at her. ‘Harpa, I hope you checked it was me before you opened the door?’
‘Yeah, yeah, Grumpus, come on in,’ She tugged him into the apartment, and he waved a hello at Cosima, who was watching the scene with amusement.
‘Hey, Jack, I hope you’re hungry. Harpa has made what I can only describe as a planet load of food.’
Harpa flipped her sister the finger, grinning. ‘Didn’t hear you complaining when you wanted to try it all.’
Cosima took Jack’s coat while Harpa grabbed them cold beers from the refrigerator. ‘How’s New York?’
‘Still there, despite their grief at you leaving,’ Jack winked at her, and she beamed. Harpa wasn’t subtle when it came to her crushes. Cosima poked her sister.
‘Serve already; I’m starving.’
The food was magnificent, and as they ate, Harpa told Jack about wanting to move to Seattle. Jack looked at Cosima.
‘You going with her?’
Cosima shook her head, smiling at Harpa. ‘This is Harp’s thing. My place is here.’
Especially now. All afternoon, all evening, she hadn’t been able to get that kiss out of her head. She’d nearly forgotten all of her rules and gone back to his hotel with him, even wished herself there now, naked and climbing on that incredible body of his, feeling his huge cock pushing deep inside of her…
‘Cos? Jack asked you a question.’
Cosima blinked and brought herself back to the present. Jack looked amused. ‘You looked absorbed in something.’
‘Just work,’ she smiled, and picked her fork up, ‘So to what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Jack?’
Jack’s expression became somber and just like that the atmosphere in the room changed. Cosima and Harpa exchanged a worried look. ‘What? What is it this time?’ Cosima felt a fi
st clench in her chest.
Jack sighed. ‘We have intelligence of another possible threat. To you, Cosima. We don’t know if it’s tied to your father but we got a call to say someone had been looking into you, Cos. Some detective from San Francisco.’
Cosima’s face paled. Arlo. That’s how he found her. On one hand, she felt relieved it wasn’t some random death threat; on the other, she knew she had to tell Jack about Arlo. She shoved her rice around on her plate for a moment.
‘I don’t think that’s anything…to worry about,’ she started slowly, looking away from both Jack and Harpa’s curious gazes, ‘I think it was to do with work. My…client is Arlo Forrester.’
‘The property magnate?’
She nodded. ‘He’s based in San Francisco. He, um, head-hunted me after we met a few months back. I assume the detective was to find out who I worked for, because when I met him, I was between jobs.’
Jack nodded, his eyes still fixed on her blushing face. ‘Work?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay then, well, if we find out anything else about the private dick, we’ll let you know. Good to know it isn’t anything more…challenging.’
Harpa, who had been watching her sister carefully, smiled. ‘That’s good news, because how many potential murderers does a girl need? What are they going to do, re-kill us?’
‘No-one’s going to kill you, Harpa. I won’t permit it.’
Cosima tried to smile. ‘Well, let’s forget all of that and just enjoy this amazing food, shall we? Harpa, tell us some more about this college course.’
Later, when they had said goodbye to Jack, Cosima started to clear the dishes, shoving the copious leftovers into their refrigerator. She studiously ignored Harpa who was standing, leaning against the doorjamb with her arms cross and watching her.
TORN: A Billionaire Romance Series (Contemporary Romance Novel) Page 4