by Megyn Ward
No. Not different worlds.
Different planets.
Different galaxies.
“Thanks.” I sit back in my seat and look out the window while he leans forward and mumbles something to the driver. The driver nods and shifts into drive, throwing me back against the seat.
We head toward the center of town. In short order the taxi pulls up in front of a run-down shack. The smells of bread baking and some wonderful greasy meat roasting made my stomach groan. Zach asks the taxi driver to wait and we make our way across the sidewalk and through an ill-fitting wooden door. A food counter is butted close to the front door, a middle-aged woman behind it with skin the color of bitter chocolate stares at us with no expression. Zach orders jerk chicken, conch fritters, and French fries. “Oh, and two orange juices.”
The woman shuffles behind a tall dividing wall to the kitchen, yelling in the patois language of the island.
Zach leans against the counter and folds his arms across his chest, his forearms tanned against the red W. “It’s not traditional breakfast but I guarantee it’s the best jerk on the island.”
“Meat sounds great.”
He raises his eyebrows and I realize what I just said. “Protein. I mean, greasy food after a night of drinking always tastes good.”
Okay, Kylie get your mind out of the gutter.
His amused smile continues. “And orange juice.”
My cheeks burn. “How do you know about this place?”
He shrugs. “It’s not the first time I’ve been out all night.”
Intrigued by his evasive answer, I push. “That doesn’t really answer my question, now does it?”
He looks away from me, focusing on the scarred countertop between us. “I woke up on the beach next to a wino. Since we’d obviously spent the night together I offered to buy him breakfast and he brought me here.” He’s making a joke of it, but I can tell that it remembering the situation bothered him—whether it was waking up to a homeless man or the fact that the man had been homeless in the first place, I can’t tell. “Afterwards, I gave him enough for a few bottles to see him through.” He shrugs. “I’ve been a regular ever since.”
The woman at the counter didn’t treat him like a regular. “So they know you?”
His face falls into a frown and he looks away. “Yeah, but they don’t like me.”
I’ve seen him drunk. I don’t blame them.
“You live at the Blue Heron?”
“It’s my parents’ condo.” The frown falls further into a scowl, like maybe he’s wondering what my angle is. Why I’m asking. And he’s right to.
“You can afford your own place if you work for Jonas Knightly.” I try to make it casual.
He looks away again. “I’m not home much.”
Something about his tone derails my line of questioning. “But your parents want you to be.”
He frowns and changes the subject. “What about you? Your family?”
I fold my arms across my chest, holding them tight against my ribs like armor. “I don’t have family.”
He cocks his head. “Everyone has family.”
“Not me.” I shake my head and try not to think about my mother. How ashamed she’d be if she knew what I was doing. How I was trying to use Zach when all he’d ever been is nice to me. “Tell me about yours.”
He avoids my eyes. “Niles the Great—my father. He comes from money, made more money, thinks I ought to be making money too.”
“You don’t want to?” I can’t imagine it. It doesn’t make sense. Don’t rich people always want to get richer?
He looks at me, his gaze so bright and blue I suddenly have a hard time breathing. “I’d rather be happy.” Before I can ask him what that means, he continues. “My sister Alicia is two years younger. She’s the rebel. No one tells her what to do—not even Niles.” He grins, half proud, half envious. “She always has my back.”
“What about you?” I shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t get close. Shouldn’t get involved but I can’t help it. The more he tells me, the more I want to know. “What are you?”
“Me?” The grin slips a little, goes hard and bitter around its edges. “I’ve always done the right thing. Made the right choices. Had my whole life planned out. Knew exactly what I was doing. Where I was going.”
I take him in. Hand tailored dress pants, damp and rumpled. College T. Bare feet. Somehow disheveled and sexy as hell, all at the same time. “What happened to you?”
He laughs at my blunt question and the sound of his amusement burns my cheeks. “It’s been a rough year,” he says.
“It couldn’t have been that tough.” I shrug, steering the conversation back on track. “You’re working for Jonas Knightly.”
“You keep saying that like it’s a good thing.” He keeps grinning, but I have the feeling he’s anything but amused.
“It’s not?” Somehow, my reasons for questioning Zach have shifted from pumping him for information about my father to trying to understand him better.
“You met the man.” He shrugs. “He’s a dick.”
I can’t argue with that one but still his assessment grates on me. Makes me angry. Not because I disagree or feel defensive over the man who is my father but because there’s such an air of familiarity to his words. He knows my father and I don’t. Can get to him and I can’t.
Before I can push the conversation any further, the woman scuffs from the kitchen with a brown bag already starting to slick with grease. I snatch the bag while Zach pays and head out of the restaurant, my bare feet sticking on the grease of the tiled floor. I plop back in the taxi, ripping open the sack to pull out a paper tray of chicken. I hold the tray over the back seat to offer the driver a piece.
He glances at the food, at me, then at the restaurant, where Zach is stepping through the door. He grins and plucks some chicken from the tray. “Thanks.”
I’m not sure anything in my life has ever tasted as good as this chicken, unless it’s the conch fritters. Between bites I mumble my address to the taxi driver. I gulp orange juice and stuff myself with spicy, greasy food.
We pull up in front of my pink and blue house as the sun splashes across the tips of the trees. A few roosters try to roust people from their beds. At my house, their effort is wasted. No rousting will be happening for a couple more hours.
I open the taxi door. “I’ll drop the clothes off at Blue Heron. Thanks for…” What was I going to thank him for? For buying me drinks, and rescuing me from the ocean? Giving me the kind of mind-blowing orgasm that I’ll still be thinking about when I’m ninety? Buying me the best jerk chicken I’ve ever tasted. Getting me home in relatively one piece? All of it?
He cost you your job, Kylie.
And he got it back for me. I lost it again, all by myself because I have a temper and can’t keep my mouth shut.
He owes you.
No, he really doesn’t.
I push myself out to the taxi, half sad, half relieved at the prospect of never seeing him again but he jumps out of his side of the taxi and hurries around it before I get too far up the walk. “Wait. Can I see you again?”
No.
This guy is everything I hate. Rich and entitled. Connected and pampered.
Asking him to fuck me had been stupid. Stupid and dangerous. I don’t regret it, but my heart drops when I think about my Mom. She’d fallen in love with a man above her station and what was she left to show for it? She never acted like she regretted me, but I know she didn’t want that same kind of hardship for me.
Guard your heart.
She said it to me more than once and whether I want to admit it or not, it’s the tenet I’ve lived my entire life by.
Guard your heart.
He continues before I have a chance to turn him down. “I have to work today but tonight? I can take you to a real dinner.”
A real dinner? I don’t even want to think about what that means. Probably expensive wine and fresh flowers on the table. Jacket and tie. Peopl
e like me, waiting on us hand and foot.
Different galaxies.
I open my mouth to tell him no. To tell him it’s been fun, and he was great, but I don’t want to see him again. What comes out sounds nothing like no. It sounds a hell of a lot like, “Okay.”
His face splits into a grin and he looks relieved. “Great.” He steps into me, reaching up to slip his hand around the back of my neck to tilt my head. “I’ll pick you up here.” He brushes his lips against mine, skimming his tongue along my lower lip, the feel of it bringing back the memory of what it felt like to have him moving inside me. “Seven o’clock.”
I nod because I’d need oxygen to form words and I’m fresh out at the moment.
Chapter 18
Zach
I’m tired but, for the first time in weeks, not hungover as I drive from the Blue Heron to JK Investments. The time was still in the single digits, with the sun starting to dazzle. For the first time in what feels like forever, I have something to look forward to. All I have to do was get through my first day of work and I’d get to see Kylie again.
I thought about her. All of her. How perfect she’d looked floating on the water. The way moonlight and shadow-dappled her skin. Turned her hair into a glowing halo around her face.
Now you’re going to fuck me and take me to breakfast.
Blood rushes from my brain to my cock so fast I practically see spots.
Christ.
I’ve spent the last two weeks fucking my way from one end of this island to the other. So much of it my dick went numb days ago and all it takes is the thought of her unbuttoning my dress shirt to get me hard.
Focus, asshole.
That’s the problem though. I am focused. For the first time in months. I’m awake. Paying attention.
But I’m focused on the wrong thing.
I should be focused on my new job, not Kylie.
Don’t you mean focus on being Jonas Knightly’s manwhore?
And just like that, my dick goes numb like I stuck it in a bucket of ice water.
I cross the quiet lobby to the elevator and I am greeted with a total lack of enthusiasm by Jonas’s personal assistant when I step out onto the top floor.
“Is he in?” I ask the woman with no personality.
“No.”
Right. “Do you have any corporate information packets or brochures?” Maybe I could study up on JK Investments. Take them back to Kylie. She seemed interested in Jonas’s outfit, despite the fact that he was a total dickface to her.
The assistant, who I am convinced is a robot, stands and saunters to a filing cabinet that looks like a modern sculpture.
She returns with a bound, glossy booklet. I survey the lobby. There are a couple of plastic chairs, but the sofa looks like my best bet. At first, I sit up straight and study the brochure, then I peruse the financial magazines splayed on the glass coffee table and try to look alert. After a couple of hours, I give up, slouch back and close my eyes.
A kick to my feet jolts me awake. My mouth feels dry, my throat a little sore, like maybe I’d been snoring. I blink and jerk to sit.
“Morning, sunshine.” Jonas stands in front of me with his hands on his hips, legs spread. “Enjoying your time on the bench, I see.”
“Been here for hours.” I lick my lips, trying to get some moisture into my mouth and try not to sound as pissed off as I actually am. “You said bright and early.”
Jonas starts for his office, his back to me. “Early is a relative term.”
Fuck, I hate this guy.
I stand and follow him. He stops at IR’s desk. “Judith, do you have that file on Liesa Temple?”
Judith? The robot has a name?
She hands over a manila folder which Jonas passes off to me. “Read this. Liesa will be here in an hour.” He disappears into his office, leaving me to twiddle my dick.
He sticks his head out before I can decide what to do. “Well?”
I take that to mean I’m supposed to follow. He plops into his massive desk chair and indicates the seat in front of his desk for me. He rocks back and forth with his fingers forming a pyramid in front of him, tapping his index fingers together. “So, what’s your plan, Zach?”
“Plan?” I’m suddenly having flashbacks of every heated discussion Niles and I have had over the past year and a half. Is this where I tell him I want to make a fuck-ton of money and be a retired billionaire by the time I was thirty?
I guess not because he laughs at me. “Yeah. For Liesa. What’s your game plan?”
Oh. That.
I don’t have a plan so much as a method. Take her to dinner, flash my dimples, tell her I’ve never met a girl like her before and she drives me crazy. It’s worked for me so far and I’m an if it’s not broke don’t fix it kind of guy. “There’s that new restaurant on the west side with a great sunset view.”
He rolls his eyes. “Girls like Liesa, they’ve been pursued their whole lives. From the time she was born people have been trying to get close to her, get her money.”
“People like you?” I say it before I can stop myself and even though I’m pretty sure I’ll live to regret it, I don’t try to backtrack. It’s best this dick knows exactly what I think of him.
Thankfully, Jonas laughed. “Exactly like me. Liesa doesn’t trust anyone. You’ve got to have a strategy.”
Jonas reminds me of a shark circling. “So, you want me to be her friend?” I’m trying to figure out what he wants from me besides the obvious.
Jonas places his hands on the armrests of my chair and leans close. “Liesa has friends. She has advisers. You need to be more than a friend. You need to be her—”
“Fuckboy?” The word pops out of my mouth before I could stop it. I’m not sure why I’m so upset about it, considering the way I’ve been throwing my cock between every pair of open legs I can find but it does. Maybe because it’s no longer my choice.
Or maybe it has something to do with a certain temperamental blonde who happens to look amazing wearing your clothes.
“This is the gig of a lifetime, bud. A beautiful, rich girl. Lonely, looking for love.” Jonas pushes himself from the chair and lets out a guffaw. “Call it what you want but you’re not getting combat pay for this job.”
A lead ball falls into my stomach. “I thought you said Liesa was in on this?”
Jonas strides to the bar and grabs a crystal decanter of amber liquor. He holds it up and raises his eyebrows to ask if I want a drink. I don’t but what the hell? I have a feeling I’m going to need to be drunk to get the job done.
He brings over a leaded crystal glass with two fingers of alcohol. I sip what has to be the finest scotch on the planet.
He lowers his glass and licks his lips. “She’s not an easy touchdown. More like the two-point conversion. She knows someone will make a play, but not who and when. She’s doable but there will be a heavy defense.”
“Can you quit with the sport metaphors and just tell me what I have to do?” Jesus, this guy is ridiculous.
He exhales slowly. He knows I don’t like him and despite his frat guy routine, he doesn’t like me either.
Good.
“She doesn’t trust guys, period. But you get her to fall for you and you’re in. Get your friends to help. Go in a group until she lets her guard down. She’ll love you, trust you, while you create great television. We all get rich.”
Fall in love with me? That was a hell of a lot more different than just fucking her. I set the glass down, no longer interested in the buzz I’m chasing. “That could take a long time.”
“You’ve got a week.”
I choke.
He sits his empty glass on the sideboard. “A week to get her into bed. You’ll need to stick with her longer, of course, to seal the deal. At least a whole season, maybe two.”
What the fuck?
For some reason, Kylie’s face flashes in front of me. The way her fingers felt lace between mine while we waited for our cab. The way she shared her chi
cken with the driver on the way back to her house. The way she felt wrapped around me right before she came.
“A season?” Is this guy high?
Jonas shrugs. “Maybe two.”
“No way.” I shake my head. “No fucking way.”
He drops the frat guy act. “We’re talking about your inheritance. Your entire future. I can either make it all disappear, or you nut up and play ball. I’m talking one year.” He holds up a finger like he thinks I need a visual aid. “One—and you’ll be fucking the brass ring, not working for it.”
“Why me?” I look around the room like I’m trying to find the answer on my own. “There's a shit-ton of guys out there who’d kill for an opportunity like this.”
“And you’re not one of them.” He seems unconcerned by my obvious objections to the plans he and my father have concocted for me. “You’ve got the looks and the pedigree. You seem fairly intelligent and your current situation with your father makes you malleable.”
Malleable. There’s a glowing recommendation.
“Liesa needs Prince Charming, not some middle-class dimwit planning to sell insurance his whole life. She needs the fairytale—someone as privileged as she is. Someone who knows how to enjoy leisure time.”
Yeah, trying to figure out how to fill up your endless hours of leisure time must be hard on you.
What Kylie said yesterday comes back to me, the shame of it burning a hole straight through my gut.
Because she’s right.
He jerks open a drawer and pulls out a sheaf of papers, spreading them on his desk. He swivels his chair to give me his profile and taps on his computer.
I guess that means I’m dismissed.
What’s the matter with me? Jonas is right. This should be a piece of cake. Meet a girl, bed her, get her to love me. I’ve done it a hundred time without even trying. So, why does this seem like the end of the world?
You know why.
Kylie.
He doesn’t glance up. “For god’s sake, change your clothes before she gets here. You’ve got an hour.”
I looked down at my crisp button-up, dress pants and leather shoes. I look ready for my corner office, not ready to seduce a reality starlet.