by Paige North
Before I can get my head back on straight, he’s standing in the open doorway. He looks back at me and says, “You’ve made your choice. Now you’ll have to live with it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Instead of answering, he shuts the door with a hearty slam, and I swallow, knowing I have just fucked up.
Ajax
She wants a battle? She’ll get a war.
I have to admit though—that was not what I expected to see when I banged on that tenant’s door.
I knew the old man’s daughter had taken over his place after his death, but of course our files don’t exactly contain snapshots of tenants—and certainly not in skimpy lingerie. Damn. If I knew Ellie Taylor was living in 10F I might have bought the building long ago.
Beautiful or not, she’s costing me money and major delays so she has to move.
I go up to my penthouse to shower and get ready to tackle another day of crises, overdue deadlines and basically doing everything in my power to keep my name on this building before some other shark tries to steal it out from under me. Half the big realtors in the city are just waiting for me to crash and burn but I will never let that happen. I’ve survived much worse.
In my penthouse, I take the elevator to my second floor. My back and legs are throbbing from the intense workout I did, so I skip the stairs.
The accident may have been ten years ago, but the ache in my bones still lingers. I follow the doc’s instructions on workouts, and I work with a trainer whose clients are some of the top athletes in the city (including two Olympians) and who knows about training after breaking your spine and shattering your legs. Still, no matter how strong I get, there’s always the lingering pain of my past that I can never quite shake. Not to mention the physical scars.
If only it was just physical. The memories are worse than any bodily injury…
I strip off my sweaty shirt and kick off my shoes. I stand in front of the large bathroom mirror, turning slightly to see my back. The scar from the surgery run the length of my spine. It’s not as red and angry as it used to be, but there it is, and always will be. As if I need the reminder. My legs, strong as they are, have the same look. Pink scars around my knees and one on my left leg down the shin. I don’t often wear shorts, but having just come from the gym in my own home I hadn’t thought about it. Ellie didn’t notice which is good. I don’t like anyone thinking I’m broken or weak.
The scars I don’t mind. It’s the fact that my body is trying to tell me I’m weaker than other men that I won’t accept. So I train, and I build my body back up. I may never throw a football for a thirty-yard pass again, but I’ll win in other ways.
I’ll win by buying Ellie Taylor’s apartment. And she’ll never see a figure nearly as big as six-point-five million dollars again. She had her chance, and she won’t get a second one.
In the shower I let the warm water wash over me. I like to focus on the day ahead after my workouts and as I shower, but today my mind keeps flashing back to Ellie. Was that some ploy, opening up the door in that little nightie? She certainly has the legs for it. Not my usual kind of girl—she’s about three inches too short and lacks the modeling resume I tend to enjoy. But still…
When I finish, I wrap a towel around my waist and step into the sauna. It’s exactly what my muscles need after the killer workout and stressful meeting with the tenant in 10F. I shouldn’t even let myself think of her by name. She’s just a tenant who needs to be bought out—or forced out. I toss some water on the hot rocks, lean back against the wall, and open up my towel. I close my eyes and relax.
At least, I try.
Fine, I can admit it—she’s beautiful. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a woman look so angelic, so luminous first thing in the morning. Her pale skin practically glowed, and even though her hair stuck up at odd angles from the messy bun she had it in, the overall look was sexier than any woman I’ve ever woken up with—and I’ve woken up with a lot of women, sometimes several at once. I can’t think of a single one who compares to Ellie—I mean, 10F.
I need to think about my day ahead, but my day ahead includes dealing with 10F. So I think about her as the sauna warms and relaxes my muscles, sweat rolling down my back and chest. She’s pretty ballsy turning me down, and that kind of money too. Why would anyone do such a thing? That kind of money may not be make or break for someone like me, but I know it’s life changing for most people. So why didn’t she bite? Why did she reject me? I picture her crossing her arms over that thin little slip, trying to act like a boss but just coming across as infuriatingly sexy. When she crossed her arms, instead of covering herself up she pushed her breasts up even higher. I can see them now, so full and white as the moon.
I can’t help myself. Or at least, my body—my dick can’t help itself. It grows hard at the thoughts of her. All I can do is give it relief.
I don’t want to get my thoughts mixed up with 10F. I need to keep seeing her as the enemy, not as another woman I’d like to fuck. So I picture Amber from last week (or was it Alexa?) as I wrap my hand around my cock and start pulling on it. I think of Amber’s tits—round and firm in my hand as I dip my head to suck on them. It’s not long before I realize it’s Ellie Taylor I’m picturing myself with, pulling her into me as I suck her tits. I picture her head falling back at the euphoria of having my mouth on her, kissing and licking her tits. My cock grows bigger and harder and I jerk faster as I picture her arms wrapped around my neck and pulling me closer. She whispers, “Fuck me,” in my ear, and push her up against the wall and quickly take out my dick. Of course, in my fantasy she’s not wearing any panties, so I can bury myself up in her warm, wet pussy quickly and easily. I hear her cry out in my ear. Picturing what it’d be like to touch her, to be inside her, to hear her sweet voice so close to me, her breath on me, sends me over the edge. I come, hard, moaning out my own ecstasy. Naturally she comes with me.
Afterward, as the fantasy slowly recedes from my mind and clearer thoughts move back in, I tell myself that’s the only time that will happen. Ellie Taylor—10F—needs to stay out of my private thoughts. To me she can only be a nuisance who needs to be removed from the premises. Her apartment will be replaced by a luxury office space, and my fantasies of her can be replaced by a real-life high-fashion model.
The woman in 10F is an enemy who needs to be conquered. And I will conquer her.
Ellie
The city shimmers with the heat of the day. As I walk across Fifty-Seventh Street I can see ripples of heat against the streets. Why do I bother fixing my hair in the morning when it’s going to be ruined two minutes after I walk outside?
My meetings for the day are over, and thank goodness. I might melt if I have to race around town in this heat.
A feeling of loss is beginning to hover over me. There’s a lot to do when a person close to you dies, and not just the mourning part of things, which is definitely a full-time job that no one wants. The loss I’m feeling has nothing to do with my dad dying, but of this whole process of his death coming to an end—the paperwork side of things.
When Dad was sick, all my time, energy and focus was on him. When he passed, there was an avalanche of legal matters to attend to, and that’s what I’ve been doing for many weeks. That’s been my full-time job. But I just finished one of my final tasks—this time with the probate lawyer, one of our final meetings. She gave me a checklist of things one must do when a loved one passes, and I’ve done most of them: informed insurance and credit card companies, cancelled Dad’s memberships, notified the election board. I’ve been selling some of his furniture too, the pieces that have no value, sentimental or otherwise. (Not the chair, of course.) I wonder what I’ll do when I get upstairs. How am I going to move on with my life?
I stop in a bodega a couple of blocks from the building to get a cold drink and a magazine. I should call some of the friends I’ve neglected in the last year. I should try to get my life back, but the guilt of moving on feels paralyzing sometim
es. Maybe I don’t want to move on. Maybe I can’t.
The a/c is humming furiously when I open the door to the bodega and walk the dimly-lit aisles for something that will fill the void. I get a flavored sparkling water then browse the magazine rack. I need something light to take my mind off the day behind me and the day ahead.
Of course, he’s there. As soon as I see those steely blue eyes staring back at me, my heart kicks up its beating. The last person I want to see is Ajax Remington, but at least he’s only watching me from a magazine cover—two covers, in fact.
One magazine is a headshot, super close as if focusing on those laser eyes alone. The headline reads, What’s the Real Cost of Remington’s Latest? This magazine is an actual business magazine. The other that has him on the cover is decidedly not. It features him shirtless on some white-sand beach with the headline, What’s Sexier? Ajax’s Bod or His Billions?
I buy both magazines, despite the fact that I already own a third with his face on the cover and it’s sitting in my apartment.
As I walk to the counter I grab a bag of chips to go with my comfort loot. As I turn out of the aisle, I collide with a wall of a person in a suit of such soft fabric that I wonder, in a flash, if I could get it in blanket form.
Everything in my arms tumbles to the ground. Magazines scattered, chips go splat and my sparkling drink is surely on the verge of explosion as it rolls away from me.
“Whoa, there,” a voice says. “You okay?”
I look up and see him. Ajax Remington, in the flesh.
We both pause on seeing each other. Words have left me, but they never seem to leave Ajax.
“Look who it is—10F,” he says. “Fancy meeting you here.”
I gather myself up as best I can and say, “I’m surprised to see that you’d lower yourself to come in here.”
“This place? I love it!” he says with fake enthusiasm. “It’s got the best selection of Italian sodas in midtown. Of course I come here—that is, until I get the gourmet market set up on the ground floor of my building.”
“Ugh, your building,” I mutter as I begin to pick up my items scattered on the linoleum floors.
“That’s what the sign says,” Ajax replies, and bends to help me pick up my mess. As he reaches for the tabloid with his beach body on the cover, my embarrassment takes over and I try to snatch it out of his hand. He jerks it back too quickly for me. He stands up to his full height, and I see the gorgeous suit that fits his body perfectly. What a change from the way he looked in his workout gear when I saw him the other day.
I’m not sure which look I like better.
“Interesting reading material,” he says, a smirk on his face. He picks up the business magazine as well. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were doing some homework? Or do you read about me for pleasure?”
“Thanks for your help,” I say, grabbing the magazines out his hands as he chuckles.
“So what’s your vote?” he asks.
“My vote? You mean on my apartment? I told you, I’m not selling.”
“No,” he says. He points to the tabloid and says, “What do you think is sexier, Ellie? My bod or my billions?”
“You’re disgusting,” I say as I push past him to grab my drink from the floor. I can hear him laughing as he follows me to the counter. I stack everything up as the guy begins ringing me up. Ajax leans on the counter next to me. He smells rich—a mixture of sandalwood and something mildly citrusy. I don’t why it smells rich—as in wealthy—on him but it does. He has a little twinkle in his eyes as he watches me. I dig my credit card out of my bag and wait for the total.
“You don’t have to lurk,” I say, side-eyeing him. A full look in the eyes might make me tangle my words, and I don’t want him to know that his very presence has an affect on me that is unfamiliar, exhilarating, and annoying.
This guy is the enemy, and I can’t forget that.
“Just waiting my turn,” he says. He looks at the counter display and plucks a packet of gum as if that’s what he came here for. Doubtful.
“That’ll be seventeen twenty-seven,” the clerk says. I hand over my card. “Credit card machine is out. Cash only.”
I dig in my wallet for enough cash but all I have is a few ones.
“I don't have it on me,” I say. I look around the shop and ask, “You have an ATM?”
“Out of order,” he says.
“Okay, um…”
“You know,” Ajax begins, and leans close so that only I can hear, “when I have my market, we’ll never have these technical issues.”
“Maybe not, but you’ll still be defunct human being.”
He chuckles, and his smile is so annoyingly charming as he reaches for his inside suit pocket.
I say, “Don’t you even. I’ll go upstairs and get cash.”
“No, no, let me,” he says, peeling off a twenty from what I can’t help but notice is a Mafia-style stack of money. “I’m just being neighborly. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to fall behind on your homework. Tell me: which picture do you like better? Close up or full body?”
“You’re a jerk,” I say.
“Some thanks I get for bailing you out.”
“I have money,” I say. “Just not cash.”
“You could have had six-point-five million, but we both know how that turned out.”
My items are placed in a brown paper bag, the receipt dropped in the top.
“Thanks,” I say to the clerk.
“What about me?” Ajax says, and follows me outside into the sun.
I stop and turn to him. “I’m paying you back. Just let me go to an ATM.”
“No need if you answer me one question,” he says. “Will you be looking at those pictures of me on the beach when you get in bed tonight?”
“You’re disgusting,” I say, but my face flushes hot in this bright sun. My comment only makes him chuckle again, but his eyes are suddenly dark and hungry.
Yeah, he’s rich, and sure he’s got a nice body. But those eyes—geez, that’s what’s getting me right now.
It’s like he knows he could devour me if he wanted, and he likes knowing it without necessarily having to act on it.
I can’t let him get to me. “At least I sleep well at night, my conscience free. Can you say the same?”
Something flashes across his face, and I think I’ve gotten to him.
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” he admits. “But that might have had something to do with the woman in bed with me. Then again, sleep wasn’t really the goal.”
I push past him, racing across the street as a car honks at me. As I hop the curb on the other side I hear him yell out, “You didn’t even say thank you!”
Ajax
Upstairs on the tenth-floor office a few hours later, Patrick intercepts me and informs me that the real estate agents are all waiting for me in the conference room.
“It’s already time?” I say, looking down at my Rolex. “They’re here about the sales of the luxury apartments, right?”
“No, the commercial space,” Patrick says.
“The commercial space that isn’t available,” I mutter.
“The specs that we do have are in the folder at the head of the conference table.”
“Thanks, Patrick,” I say, and head down the hall.
When the meeting is done, I head to my office and shut the door.
Everything I told the agents was based on a lie. They think the floor is free to renovate, but as of now it most certainly isn’t.
I worked out the specs with the sales team on what the rest of this floor of offices is going to look like—sleek, modern, luxurious but with full capabilities for running a company—and now I need to make sure it happens.
But it won’t happen if 10F stays.
She has to go. And I intend to make her.
She doesn’t want to sell? Fine. I offered her an insane amount of money for that little place that is smaller than my closet. More than I should have. She had
me so tied up I almost lost my cool. I’ve been in boardrooms with the biggest sharks in America; I’m certainly not going to get played or flustered by some girl in barely-there clothes flaunting herself at me. She must not know I get that and more every day of the week, if I want. If she’d read all those magazine articles I bought for her this afternoon closely enough (particularly the tabloid, with it’s inflated but generally accurate accounts of my travels) she’d know all I have to do is snap my fingers and I’ll have a woman at my apartment in five minutes.
No. I shake my head. This is about property. This is about business. I would never admit it to her but she is single-handedly threatening my entire business by staying in that apartment.
Finding an apartment might be harder than ever in Manhattan, but not with the kind of money I offered her. So if she has some vendetta against me, or some fear of finding a new home, then that’s her problem. My business is my life, and I will save it at any cost.
I have a new job. Negotiating is no longer the game. Driving one woman insane is my new play.
I make a few phone calls and even more promises.
At nine o’clock that night, things begin happening.
“You Remington?” the foreman asks. “I’m Barry. This is the crew.”
He points to the men behind him in scruffy clothes, hard hats tucked under their arms.
“That’s me,” I say, and shake Barry’s hand. “Thanks for coming so late.”
Barry shrugs. “As long as you’re paying. Double, yeah?” He looks at me sideways as if expecting me to renege.
“Correct,” I say. “Work through the night. Quitting time is when the day shift arrives, usually around eight.”