With a chuckle, he strode to the door, his muscles flexing with each movement. “Maybe sooner,” he said.
After allowing herself one quick peek at his strong buttocks, she turned off the flowing water before leaning back to rest her head against the rim, enjoying the feel of the steaming water against her smooth skin. She knew she had a busy day ahead of her and was already running behind on meetings, but she needed a few precious moments alone to regain her balance.
Nearly an hour had passed by the time Jessa came back down to the foyer with its grand ceiling and elaborate chandelier of scrolled ironwork that perfectly suited the neutral décor and rich wood trimmings. Tucking her clutch under her arm, she left the house through one of the towering glass and metal front doors.
Her lover was gone, and her circular stone-paved drive was free of his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. That suited her just fine. Playtime was over.
Jessa climbed behind the wheel of her new convertible Porsche—like her nails and her lipstick, it was cherry red and glossy. It was May and there was just enough bite in the air to keep her from putting down the top during her forty–five–minute commute to Manhattan. Like every other morning, she was anxious to get to work, and she tapped her nails against the steering wheel to release some of her energy as she drove.
The notoriety that came calling after the attempt on her life had pushed her into the reality TV–, Instagram-, and blog-post-driven world of fame. Even as she struggled with her own redemption in the wake of the damage she caused to so many lives, she had stepped into the spotlight. News interviews. Talk shows. A New York Times best-selling book, The Mistress Memoirs. Book tour. Endorsements. Infamy.
And enough money to eventually start her own business where she could combine her experience as a mistress with her need to redeem herself.
Jessa was thankful for the on-site parking at the thirty-story building in the Garment District of Manhattan. She pulled her car into her reserved spot next to the silver BMW of her partner and friend, Keegan Connor. She grabbed her crocodile Birkin and strode over to the elevator. Offering the man standing there a smile, she stepped on when the door opened and he stepped back to allow her to enter first.
“Do you work in the building?” he asked.
She held her bag with both hands and gave him a look. Tall, handsome enough in a blond hair, blue eye kind of way, and surely wealthy enough from the cut of his clothing, but not for her. “No,” she lied. “Going to visit the hubby.”
He gave her a nod of understanding before focusing on his phone.
When the lift stopped at the twelfth floor, he gave her one last appreciative look before walking away.
White boy looking like a treat. With a soft bite of her bottom lip, she enjoyed the view of him until the door closed.
Her thoughts refocused on work when she stepped off onto the twentieth floor and walked the short distance to the frosted glass door of her office suite. She opened it and paused. Her stylish waiting area was filled with beautiful women of all shapes, sizes, and nationalities.
For a second most of them diverted their attention away from the phones or magazines they were idly flipping through to glance at her. They all looked away, probably assuming she was there for the same purpose as them.
Wrong.
“Good morning, ladies,” Jessa said, her voice soft but authoritative. “I will be with you all in just a moment.”
She smiled when they all looked to her again. Sat up a little straighter. Tried to make eye contact. Respected the head bitch in charge.
Jessa strode across the wood plank flooring colored in bright red and felt invigorated.
“Good morning, Ms. Bell,” said Felisha, their freckled and petite shortbread-colored receptionist, handing her a stack of mail.
Jessa eyed her. “Are we all set?” she asked.
Felisha nodded.
“Give me five minutes and start showing them in,” she instructed before walking down the short hall leading to their two offices and conference room. She stopped at the door of Keegan’s office and cleared her throat.
Keegan looked up, pushing her turquoise spectacles atop her bright red hair. She smiled and sat back in her chair. “Well, look who the cat finally drug in,” she teased, her Texas accent still in place.
“I couldn’t get out of bed,” Jessa said, sifting through the mail and stepping inside the small but stylish white office with bold splashes of color to set the incoming bills on her desk.
Keegan snorted in derision. “Who was in it?” she asked, with a playful but sly look.
Jessa just shrugged. “I’m ready to start the interviews if you are,” she said, purposefully changing the subject.
“Good, these ladies have been waiting for more than an hour, darlin’,” Keegan said, rising to come around the modern glass desk and hand her a list of names.
“Patience is key in this business,” Jessa said as they walked to the conference room together.
Keegan had gone from being Jessa’s interior decorator to her friend and now her business partner. She was a godsend in the days after Jessa sent that text and blew up her friendships. They were both in their mid-thirties and had a sense of humor. That was where the similarities ended.
Keegan was a white Southern belle with a brash tongue who was good in business.
Jessa was a black city girl with more than enough city slick to get what she wanted when she wanted it.
Together they ran Mistress, Inc., and business was booming.
“Send in the first applicant,” Jessa said via the intercom once they settled in their seats behind the oval-shaped conference table.
“Remember beauty and brains, sugar,” Keegan said to her just before the door opened and the first young lady entered the room.
Jessa eyed her and then dismissed her, drawing a line through her name on the sign-up sheet. She was pretty enough and had the right build, but her eyes revealed her lack of confidence. Not a good start to the day.
“And you’re twenty-five, Lori?” Keegan asked, checking the head shot she handed her.
“I will be in two—”
“Thanks, Lori,” Jessa said, dismissing her.
Lori looked surprised.
Keegan looked annoyed.
“Good luck with your acting career,” Jessa said with a stiff smile before turning her attention to the next name on the list. She pressed the button on the intercom. “Next, Felisha.”
“You are messier than cow dung, darling,” Keegan drawled.
One by one, beautiful out-of-work actresses entered the conference room and took a seat before them. And one by one, Jessa was more and more disappointed. She knew exactly what she was looking for, and that hadn’t walked into the room yet.
A tall brunette entered with more breasts than hips. Jessa dropped her pen and swiveled in the chair to look out the windows at the sun beating down on the skyscrapers. The city that never sleeps was filled with those who creeped, and the wives or husbands of cheating mates wanted help exposing them. It was beyond hiring private detectives or personally snooping through phones and social media accounts. Some wanted control.
That’s where Mistress, Inc., filled the void.
Jessa reached for her iPad from her Birkin and logged into the security system software. The camera in the waiting room showed eight more applicants waiting. She eyed each one and then sighed. The door to the outer office opened and her eyes shifted to watch a woman walk in wearing a strapless black jumpsuit that suited her small breasts and wide hips. Jessa arched a brow. She was beautiful, poised, and magnetic. Every other woman in the room watched her, and their envy was clear.
The woman used slender hands to swoop her bone-straight hair over one shoulder before she smiled at Felisha and handed over her application.
Jessa turned off the tablet and eyed the young woman sitting before them with a mass of honey-colored curls that suited her light brown complexion. She double-checked her name. Lacey Adams.
�
�And you understand that you are not to have a sexual relationship with any client,” Keegan said. “This is not a cathouse. We’re serving up justice, not kitty-cat.”
Jessa bit back a smile at Keegan’s snark.
“Yes, I understand,” Lacey said with a nod.
Keegan looked to her. Jessa said nothing.
“Okay, Lacey, we’ll be in touch,” Keegan said, sitting back in her chair as the woman rose and left the conference room.
“Hire her,” Jessa said, rising to walk around the table and leave the conference room herself. She walked straight to the new woman and extended her hand. She’s more beautiful in person.
She rose and matched Jessa’s intense stare with one of her own.
“You are?” Jessa asked.
“Charli Cole,” she said, her voice soft and husky.
Men love that.
“You’re hired,” Jessa said.
Charli gave her a smooth smile that spread across her pretty face like soft butter on a hot roll.
Jessa gave her one last look before turning and walking away.
Chapter 2
Two months later
Jessa grabbed her daughter close to her and pressed kisses to her neck.
Delaney laughed and sighed before she pressed chubby cheeks to Jessa’s face. “Love you, Mama,” she said, her eyes still bright with joviality.
Jessa smiled. “Love you, Del,” she said softly, her guilt paining her.
And I love Georgia, too.
Jessa released her four-year old, and Delaney went running across her brightly colored playroom to her nanny, Winifrid. Watching them, she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them before settling her chin in the groove between her knees. Is it possible to love someone you have never met?
For so long, Jessa had forced herself to forget the daughter she bore at thirteen. The baby she was never allowed to see. The baby born from a rape by her own father.
Please, no, Daddy! No!
Jessa flinched, hating the vile and violent memory imprinted on her life. Never would she forget the smell of the liquor on his breath, the dazed look in his eyes, or the feel of his body on hers. In. hers.
“Shit,” she swore, forcing herself to breathe.
Well over twenty years had passed, but still the pain clung.
As did her thoughts of Georgia.
Is she okay?
Was she normal?
Does she wonder about me?
Sometimes she wished she didn’t know her name.
Over the years, the pain and shame of her past had finally begun to lose some of its bite until Eric Hall Sr. used his wealth and influence to unveil her childhood secret to force her hand during the contentious custody battle for Delaney after Eric’s suicide. Although she eventually defeated Hall’s tactics by videotaping and blackmailing him with his attempts to bed her—his deceased son’s ex-mistress and mother to his grandchild—she was unable to be freed of her thoughts of the child she was forced to give up.
Georgia.
Eric Sr. gave up her first name but redacted all other info about her from the file. He saw it as punishment to keep information from her, like the grandchild she kept from him and his wife.
He didn’t know he freed her.
As much as she had begun to ponder her daughter’s whereabouts and well-being, Jessa had not attempted to locate her. She had the resources to do so but felt that if Georgia discovered she was born of incestuous rape, it would do nothing but cripple her. She could only hope that Georgia’s life was far better without the knowledge of the shattered foundation upon which she was born.
And now her second child might one day have to grapple with being born of an adulterous affair, and her father killing himself after thinking he had killed her mother. She was hell-bent and determined to hide that truth from her daughter; she could only hope another round of the karma she wrought wouldn’t take that decision out of her hands.
She made no excuses for choices she made. Alienations. Betrayals.
But she was not whole. Her being had been shattered. Once as a child when she stood at a window and waited for the return of her mother, and then again with her innocence lost to her very own father. And once more when her husband died and the happily-ever-after she dreamt of was snatched away.
Hurt people liked to hurt people, and she had hurt plenty.
Self-reflection was hard, especially when seen through the lens of truth.
Jessa released a heavy breath, thinking of the many moments where she chose wrong over right. When she had lashed out in anger, been petty, or wanted to see lives implode at her hand. I am a horrible person.
“Was,” she mouthed. “I was a horrible person.”
Right?
She wasn’t sure and she needed to be sure. She joined a church, paid her tithes, and felt she was providing an invaluable service to marriage through her business. She forgave her mother and tried her best to build a good relationship with her. She was a good mother to Delaney. She was a better friend to Keegan than she had been to Renee, Aria, and most definitely, Jaime. Her days of being a mistress were over. She was a better person.
Right?
“Mama. Mama. Ma-ma.”
“Huh?” she said, turning away from where she had been staring out the window. Her eyes landed on Delaney and she was taken aback by how much of Eric she saw in her round little face.
“This is all your fault.”
“You need me just like I need you.”
“You destroyed me.”
“You complete me.”
“Both you bitches used me.”
“Anything you want. It’s yours. Just say the word.”
“I hate you.”
“I love you.”
She trembled as she remembered the look of rage on his face as he tried to choke the life from her body. In the moments before she’d lost consciousness, she thought she was dying, even as he tried to revive her. When she’d heard the gunshot echo throughout the room, she knew he’d killed himself and prayed he would join her in hell.
“Look, Mama.”
And now I’m raising our child.
She forced a smile as she rose to her feet and walked over to look down at her beloved child behind the wheel of her bright red Power Wheels Porsche. “Winifrid, it’s not too hot today. Why not take her outside and let her enjoy the lawn,” she said, nervously stroking her palm with her thumb. “I have to run an errand, but I should be back in an hour.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jessa left the room and entered her suite, grabbing her bag and making sure her phone was in the back pocket of her wide-leg denim pants before she stepped into the hall, ignored the loud soul music blaring from her mother’s room, and made her way down the stairs to leave her home.
She paused as she entered her car.
Why the name Georgia? Was her new family from there?
Some days her daughter didn’t cross her mind, and others—like today—she felt drowned by the weight of her past.
She closed the driver’s side door and started the car, leaning forward to pull her iPhone from her back pocket. She dialed with her thumb as she drove down the short driveway and turned out onto the street.
Jessa rolled her eyes at her neighbors unloading their tan Honda crossover. They waved and smiled at her. “Hey, you boring assholes,” she sang lightly as she gave them a forced smile and waved in return.
Suburbia still sucked.
“Hello, Jessa.”
She glanced up at her rearview mirror. “I need to see you,” she said, her eyes showing her hope that he was available.
“It’s last minute.”
“It’s urgent,” she countered.
He chuckled. It was deep and rich. “It always is.”
Jessa frowned so deeply her arched brows dipped.
“Come on, Jessa.”
She ended the call. “It always is,” she mimed sarcastically as her car accelerated.
S
oon she turned onto the driveway of the New Hope megachurch and parked next to a black Mercedes Benz with the license plate REV1.
As she made her way inside the expansive white building with floor-to-ceiling windows, her heels clicked against the tiled floors, breaking up the quiet. A side door opened and she stumbled backward in surprise before smiling at the tall and broad handsome man standing there. He had the same kind of dark and delicious handsomeness as Morris Chestnut, Lance Gross, or Kofi Siriboe.
Their body type, too.
She allowed herself a quick up-and-down glance at him in loose-fitting, distressed denims and a burnt orange V–neck T-shirt that accentuated his smooth chocolate complexion.
“Is it okay if we meet in here?” he asked, stepping back against the door to push it open wider.
“No problem, Reverend Dell,” Jessa said, fighting the devil tempting her to brush her body against his as she passed him.
When she moved to Carmel she had wanted to maintain her newfound ties to church and her salvation, so she visited several churches before settling in at New Hope. She was proud to note it was Reverend Evan Dell’s concise delivery of the Word and not the fit of his suit that drew her. In time he had become her religious mentor and counselor. Thankfully, she ignored any urges to seduce him and was grateful for his advice.
“It’s good to see you, Jessa,” Rev Dell said, waving his hand to offer her a seat on the first polished wood pew before sitting as well. “It’s been a long time.”
She crossed her legs and set her phone face down on the seat beside her. “I know I’ve missed a few Sundays,” she said. “But my tithes are paid faithfully, right?”
He tossed his head back and chuckled.
Her eyes dipped down to his smooth throat. She forced her eyes away. I rebuke you, devil. Get from me.
“I prefer your presence on the pew to your check in the church’s bank account,” he assured her. “You can’t buy your way into heaven.”
Right. “I’ll be to church Sunday,” she promised.
Jessa saw him as a gauge of her success in becoming a better person than she used to be, and felt properly chastised.
Mistress for Hire Page 2