by A. C. Arthur
She fixed her clothes, then brushed at her hair.
“Don’t apologize,” she told him. “I wanted it. I mean, I don’t know why but I did. But I can’t do this right now. I have to stay focused. I have to get this job done without any interruptions.”
“Is that what this is, Hailey? An interruption?” he asked her, a small part of him amazed that she’d been able to categorize what was tearing through him so simply, while he was still struggling to figure it out.
She looked up at him then. “Yes,” she said quietly. “It is. You don’t understand because you don’t know me, Jerald. You don’t know anything about me accept the fact that you like having sex with me.”
She paused, took a breath and then continued. “There’s more to me than sex. And if I weren’t in the situation I was in now, I might be willing to let you find out. Even though I don’t even know if that’s your intention at all.”
“I—” he began.
Hailey held up a hand to stop him. “No. Please don’t give me some practiced explanation, or even a lie that you think I need to hear. Because I don’t.”
“Is he doing something to you, Hailey? Is he threatening you to make you stay? Blackmailing you maybe?” Jerald asked because he still wasn’t completely sold on her simply being Mendoza’s translator.
She frowned at him then, shaking her head. “I’m not sleeping with him for money. I’m not some paid piece of ass, if that’s what you’re thinking?”
He hated how she’d said it, hated that he’d actually thought that very thing.
“I’m just trying to understand. If it’s simply that you need money for school, why don’t you take out a student loan? Do you have any idea what type of man he really is?”
“No,” she said adamantly. “And I don’t really care. All I know is that I need this job. I need the money he’s giving me because a student loan is not enough. It’s not going to pay my grandmother’s…” she paused then, clenching her lips together and taking what he thought were meant to be steadying breaths.
“Like I told you before,” she continued. “I didn’t do anything with you that I didn’t want to. I decided, Jerald. Not you. Just like I’m deciding to take care of what’s important to me first, before even considering anything else. It’s my business and I know what I’m doing.”
She turned her back to him then, moving over to look at the control panel.
“You know you pushed the alarm button. The fire department and hotel security’s probably already on their way.”
Jerald stood to the back of the elevator trying to digest all that she’d said to him when there was a jolt and the elevator began to move again. It was taking them down to the lobby he saw as the lighted numbers went lower and lower. He adjusted his clothes and waited for the doors to open, expecting, just like she said, to see the fire department and hotel security.
They were both mistaken.
When the doors to the elevator opened Ronnel Mendoza was standing there. Two very bulky men, arms folded over their chest behind him. Jerald kept his eyes on Mendoza.
Hailey was about to step out of the elevator first, when Jerald moved to stand beside her. They stepped out together when Ronnel immediately reached for her hand.
“Are you unharmed?” he asked her.
Before she could answer Jerald said. “She’s safe, Mendoza. But your business is not. You have a week to make up your mind. Seven days before the Feds release a report of the findings from their investigation. Do you know what they’re going to say, Mendoza? Do you know how that report is going to affect your already floundering company?” Jerald reached up to straighten his tie after that last question.
“I do,” he finished when he saw Mendoza staring at him angrily. “I know exactly how it’s going to affect you and the stocks of your company.”
He smiled then, walking slowly towards the front door. Leaving Hailey with him and hopefully leaving Mendoza with something else to think about other than the fact that he and Hailey had been alone in that stalled elevator together.
#
Later that night as Jerald lay in his bed, sleep cleverly evading him, he decided to text Hailey to see if she was alright. He’d been waiting a half hour and she hadn’t responded. Every part of him wanted to get up out of that bed, slip on his clothes and drive over to the Mendoza estate, but he knew that would be a mistake.
There was still a deal in play with Mendoza. Busting in his house and dragging Hailey out of there would most assuredly kill that deal in the water. Sure, Mendoza thought he wasn’t going to do business with Carrington Enterprises, but he would. D&D Investigations had emailed Jerald a copy of the report that was going to be released next Friday. He knew that once it hit the air and once Mendoza was arrested, his company would be up for grabs. He had to get Mendoza to make the deal with him before that happened.
Now, however, Hailey was also a factor.
She was in that house, working for him.
What would happen to her after Jerald closed the deal and Mendoza ended up in jail? How would she get the money she needed then? And what the hell did she need that money for?
Getting out of bed Jerald left his bedroom heading to his home office. He booted up his laptop and when it was ready typed in Hailey’s name. He wanted to know everything there was to know about her. Everything she’d done in her life and most importantly everything she needed.
Why? He wondered even as he continued to read through the information from the first search he’d performed.
What did he plan to do with this information once he found it? And why the hell did it matter? She was just another woman. Right?
Wrong.
She was the one he’d slept with not once but twice, and the one he desperately wanted in his bed again.
CHAPTER 5
Jerald slammed his hands on the steering wheel.
He was doing the right thing. At least he’d thought so an hour ago when he’d awakened from the most fitful night of sleep he’d experienced in too long to recall. He’d dressed for work in a navy blue suit and light blue shirt and just when he was about to put his tie on he thought of her again.
At the party on Friday Hailey had mentioned her grandmother, Katherine Glory Jefferson. She had not said anything about her grandfather, Arthur Marvin Jefferson. He died six years ago, around the time Hailey would have been graduating from high school. As far as his limited online searches could take him Jerald could not find any siblings and there were only old obituary listings from a funeral home in Maitlin, Virginia. Jean and Paul Jefferson were killed in a car accident. Hailey would have been seven years old at the time.
All weekend he’d thought about her, that seven year old girl that had lost her parents and was sent to live with her grandparents.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket dialing a number without even thinking.
“Good Morning,” he said the moment Noble finished his greeting. “I’m going to be in late. Have Mandi print the Makisig stock reports and I want the projections for Mendoza’s accessories line on my desk when I get there.”
“Jackson’s back. He’s in the office and already requested you meet with him regarding this deal. What do you want me to tell him?”
“Tell him I’ll see him when I get there,” Jerald replied.
“And when will that be?”
“About an hour or two.”
“Is there something wrong? Something I can help with?” Noble continued.
Jerald had just started the engine and wanted to get moving as soon as possible. He did not want to go into the details of his personal life with his assistant. “No. Just do what I asked. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
He disconnected the call before Noble could ask another question. Jerald slipped his phone back into his pant pocket and pulled out of the parking spot in the garage. He had a lengthy drive ahead of him and he wanted to get there early.
As he drove, Jerald considered calling someone else. But then he’d
thought better of it. Maybe this situation wasn’t that serious to call in what Jackson had referred to just a few months ago as the top guns in the investigative field. Besides, this was a personal matter and Jerald always kept his personal life away from business.
Until now, he thought almost twenty minutes later when he’d finally made it out of the city. Mendoza was a big deal to Carrington Enterprises. At the same time—and for reasons he still wasn’t ready to own up to—Hailey was a big deal to him.
For weeks, Jerald had watched only the recording he’d had of their night together on the beach. Totally disregarding the other twenty or so videos that he’d acquired over the last months during his appointments at The Corporation. He’d simply lost interest in watching anyone else.
A key factor to that decision could have been that during those other exploits he had never been as hard and undeniably aroused as he had been with Hailey. The second recording further proved that point as he’d grown obsessed with watching that one, loving the way she looked atop him, her heavy breasts jerking as she pumped.
That year after the accident, not only was Jerald going through rehabilitation to learn how to walk again, but he was also wondering if he’d ever receive an erection again. Not knowing had haunted him day and night as, at nineteen years old he was still filled with raging hormones. The urgings hadn’t ceased which made the fact that there was no release in sight all the more painful. And as time had passed and he continued to lose hope, he’d taken to watching porn videos.
In the years after the accident, when he had finally been able to achieve an erection, with the aid of medication most times, he’d had sex with a female. But it wasn’t like he’d experienced before and Jerald feared it never would be again. That’s when he’d decided to deal only with professional women. Their autonomy and lack of expectations were just what he needed. It wasn’t until he joined The Corporation, however, did the idea of videotaping those escapades come to mind. Each time he watched one of the videos, he figured, it confirmed that he had healed—to the best of his ability. He could get a hard-on without those little blue pills and he could achieve an orgasm as well as bring the same pleasure to a female.
But none of that—not the pills, the videos, the professional women he walked out the door without looking back, none of it—could compare to what he’d felt when he was with Hailey.
That’s why he was driving well above the speed limit heading to the Mendoza estate at a little before eight on a Monday morning. It was also why he’d spent a good portion of the night learning more about her situation. Jerald wanted to help her. He wanted to get her away from Mendoza before anything could happen to her.
Once again, Jerald pulled to the side of the road just before the wrought iron gates leading up the hill to Mendoza’s house. He had no idea if or when Hailey would be coming out but suspected she wasn’t the type to want to stay closed up in a house all day long. Something vibrant in her eyes and her easy smile made him think she was more the outgoing and adventurous type—two things he’d never prided himself on being. Maybe that was something else he liked about her.
What he definitely did not like was the way he’d begun to feel like an obsessed stalker where she was concerned. Whether he was sending her demanding text messages or pulling her into elevators, or even now, sitting on the side of the road waiting for her. Jerald knew things were getting out of hand. It was all so out of character for him that he felt like berating himself. Not only was Jerald Carrington not a man that begged, he had certainly never chased a woman in his life. The fact that this woman, out of all the people he’d ever known, had brought out this behavior in him was telling. It was obvious and then it was a mystery to him, as if he knew the answer, had known it all along but refused to accept it. In other words, he was screwed.
#
“Ten minutes and I’m out the door,” Hailey yelled up the steps to Rhia who was still getting dressed.
“We’re going to the beauty salon so I don’t get why she’s doing all that primping,” Malaya who was sitting on the last step, playing a video game on her tablet said without looking up.
Hailey only half listened to the little girl as she held the keys in one hand while checking her cell phone for messages with the other. She was waiting on a call from her grandmother’s doctor. Instead she found a text message from Ronnel telling her to have the girls back by noon. Skipping over the message she frowned as she recalled the complete shift in his mood in the last week.
It had started the day after she’d come from Jerald’s house. That had been the first time that Ronnel had made any mention of her literally being at his beck and call. She grimaced as she remembered Jerald saying as much the other night in the elevator. But Ronnel had not wanted her to go anywhere or do anything other than be at the meetings with him and attend to his daughters. Giving her the instructions about the keys to the SUV had been a sure sign of that. She’d taken that and the way he’d begun popping up as if he were checking on her with the girls, as part of the job. She didn’t have to like it. Hell, most people didn’t like some aspect of their jobs, but it still paid the bills. So she’d sucked it up figuring she only had a couple more months to go and then she’d look back and it would all be worth it.
Friday night, after the party at the Ritz Carlton, however, Ronnel had pushed another button that annoyed the hell out of her.
“Do not be with him,” he’d said the moment they were in the house.
The entire limo ride had been in silence, with her sitting on one side of the backseat starring out the window and him on the other. Her mind had been circling around everything she’d said to Jerald and why the hell she couldn’t seem to stay away from him. If truth be told, he was the one who had insisted she come with him. But in the end, she’d made the decision to go. He hadn’t picked her up, carried or dragged her for that matter. Just as it had happened on the island and when he’d sent her that text message, Hailey had gone of her own free will.
What did that mean?
Did she really want to be this guy’s mistress? Was sex with him worth sinking low enough to be considered someone’s side chick? Because, without a doubt Hailey knew that’s what she would be. For one, it wasn’t as if Jerald were begging her to go out on a date. No, he was just persistent as hell—and all too convincing—when it came to getting her so sexually excited that she couldn’t think of nothing else but jumping into bed with him. And two, she was clearly not in the same league with the Carringtons, or anyone else that had been at that party the other night. To be perfectly honest it was the first time Hailey had even been in a Ritz Carlton, let alone on its rooftop loft for a party of some fancy movie producer. She’d found that out later that night when Rhia had come into her room asking about the dresses and the hairstyles she’d seen at the party.
At any rate, Jerald Carrington was not the man for her.
But she’d be damned if she’d let Ronnel Mendoza, her employer, tell her this.
“You do not belong with him. I make payments to you,” he told her in his very best broken English.
Perhaps because she’d been standing in the foyer staring at him as if he had lost some part of his damn mind.
“I was not with him,” she’d replied, trying to hold on to every piece of respect and patience she could.
As a child Hailey had always had a quick temper. Pops said that came from her grandmother, but she’d never seen Gram so much as raise her voice at Pops. During her elementary and middle school years she’d even had problems with back-talking to her teachers and other students. It seemed that whenever she was provoked she’d reply in turn. Until the day one of her teachers called Gram up to the school. Her grandmother—the one who supposedly had the same bad temper—had not yelled or even looked at Hailey in a cross way. What she did was take her home and wash her mouth out with the bar of Ivory soap that sat in a dish beside the kitchen sink. As Hailey cried, soap bubbles foaming at her mouth, Gram had simply said, “You’d better learn t
o hold your tongue before something far worse than a good cleansing happens to it.”
Hailey hadn’t known what that meant at the time, but she did know she didn’t want that awful taste in her mouth ever again. From that point on she’d learned to do just as Gram had said and hold her tongue until it was absolutely necessary to do otherwise.
Tonight, that restraint would come in handy.
“He is a thief!” Ronnel continued pulling the scarf roughly from his neck and clenching the material in his hands when they’d entered the house. “He think he can take everything I have. My company. Mi mujer. No. I will not allow him!”
He’d called her his woman and Hailey had immediately blanched. She was not his woman. Did he think that just because he was paying her? Why not? Hadn’t Jerald thought the same thing?
“I am here to translate for you and your daughters,” she’d spoken in as calm a voice as she could muster in an attempt to set the record straight. “That is all.”
“Then you do as I say,” he’d immediately shot back.
“I will do my job,” had been her response before turning away and walking up the steps.
She hadn’t run, but walked just in case he thought he had something else to say. Hailey had no idea how she was going to react if he had. Was she going to lose her temper and, in turn, this job. Oh goodness, she hoped the hell not.
And she hadn’t. Ronnel sent her an apology text early the next morning and had kept his distance throughout the entire weekend, but he’d made certain he knew exactly where she was with the girls and had even begun giving them timeframes to come back. It was an act of control. Hailey knew this, just as she knew she had no other choice but to go along with. As long as he didn’t touch her and didn’t declare her his mujer again, these weeks would go by without a hitch. She would get her money and get the hell away from him and from Jerald Carrington. As both men were driving her just a little bit crazy.