by Emily Bishop
His hair was dark and rich, like gleaming mahogany, and it was shaven at the sides while being kept longer on top. His dark eyes, though not clearly visible from this distance, were large and bold, framed with thick lashes. I knew them to be the color of milk chocolate, streaked with hues of forest green when the light caught them.
Everything about him was symmetrical, most obviously his cheekbones and strong jawline, but it extended to the way he smiled and held his body.
Though he was fully-clothed, the way the fabric stretched over his six-foot-something frame betrayed a body as chiseled as his jaw. I wouldn’t have minded carrying out an inspection just to be sure, though.
I’d never asked a guy out before, but I was seriously considering breaking that virginity for this guy when Mandy spoke up beside me.
“Wait, I recognize him,” she said suddenly, her voice becoming bubbly and excited. “Do you know who that is?”
“Uh, no?” I did my very best to block out the jet set socialites of Manhattan but Mandy followed their every move, so it was no surprise to me that she recognized someone that I didn’t.
Mandy reached for her purse and pulled out a copy of Talk New York, the biggest lifestyle magazine in the city at the moment. Right there on the cover, under cursive lettering that read Model CEO, was the face that I’d been inches away from not fifteen minutes before, the face of the man who smelled of pine needles and spice.
The same man I definitely wasn’t asking out now. My entire body went cold. He was one of them.
One of the only groups of people I held complete and utter disdain for—the rich. The ultra-wealthy who wielded their money like swords and didn’t hesitate to use said swords to cut off those they deemed lesser than them at the knees.
No, thank you. I’d had more than enough of that life while I was growing up. I had no desire to get involved with anyone like that.
I should have recognized the air of wealth surrounding him, but I’d been too distracted by his good looks to notice. His suit was perfectly tailored to his athletic figure, and the material didn’t look cheap. He probably paid more for that haircut than I earned in a week. The glittering watch peeking from his jacket cuff could buy a small country.
“I can’t believe the Barrett Hart is in Roy’s Diner,” Mandy breathed. “Excuse me while I melt into a puddle of lust.”
My snarky retort died on my lips when the clang of the countertop bell sounded. “Demi, order’s up.”
Great. Of course, it is. “Thanks, Rob.”
The elderly cook smiled kindly at me, then went back to his grill. I grabbed the plate he’d set down and tried to reconcile the witty guy with amusement shining in his eyes and an honest plea in his voice when he asked me stay, with the ruthlessness I knew to lie in the very heart of the elite.
The problem was, I couldn’t do it, especially not when his lips curled up into a genuine smile when he saw me crossing the busy diner with his food.
He’s just hungry, I sternly told myself and slid the plate onto the table. “It’s an Old-Fashioned Brooklyn Burger, our specialty. Hold the pickles.”
My voice sounded flat, even to myself. He glanced at me curiously, probably since I’d been so friendly and receptive earlier. Then, he turned his eyes to his burger. “This looks great.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d eat carbs,” I muttered under my breath.
Apparently, I hadn’t said it quietly enough, despite the din of the crowd around us. He shot me an incredulous look. His eyes crinkled at the corners as if he was trying to keep from laughing out loud.
“Carbs are life,” he said.
“True,” I agreed before I could stop myself.
“Really?” he asked, a note of disbelief in his voice. “But you’re a woman living in New York City.”
“Thanks for pointing that out,” I replied dryly. “I can’t believe I missed it.”
He threw his head back and laughed. It was a low, rumbling sound, like thunder rolling in from the distance. “You’re something else, you know that?”
“You don’t know me well enough to make that observation,” I told him.
“I’m a remarkably good judge of character,” he said, nipping at a fry.
I rolled my eyes. “Would you like a serving of humble pie for dessert?”
Barrett smirked. “I can be plenty humble when the situation calls for it. This one just doesn’t, because you really are something else. Will you sit down for a minute, please?”
“Can’t. Sorry, I have to get back to work.” With that in mind, I turned to leave. Warm fingers closed around my wrist, lightning fast. Sparks shot up my skin. I gasped and pulled away from him.
His gaze locked with mine, his eyes simmering in a way that made it obvious that he had felt whatever the hell that was, too.
Maybe it’s static electricity, the logical part of my brain tried arguing.
“Please,” he said. “I’m just asking for one minute of your time. I have a proposition for you, and you’ll want to hear it.” His voice was just slightly breathier than before.
It wasn’t static electricity, the realist in me countered. Unfortunately, I was afraid that the realist might be right. There was something magnetic about him, so despite my better judgment, I slid into the booth to listen to what he had to say.
“One minute,” I said, holding up my index finger.
“Okay, let’s cut to the chase, then. My name is Barrett Hart. I’m the CEO of BHA Models, and I want you to come work for me.” His voice was crystal clear but I was sure that I’d misheard him.
“Why do you need waitresses at a modeling agency?”
The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “I don’t.”
That’s what I thought. My jaw threatened to drop as I choked out my next words. “You want me to come work for you as a model?”
“You got it.” He flashed me smile so hot that if I kept staring at it, my panties would melt. They wouldn’t even need to be dropped.
That won’t do. I averted my eyes and focused on the random photographers milling about on the street, wondering what the heck they were doing there. Then it hit me. They must be there because they knew he was in the vicinity.
“I already have a job,” I told him, my resolve strengthened by the realization that there were actual photographers waiting for him. Who wanted that kind of life?
Not me. That was for damn sure.
“I can see that,” he said, still smirking. Almost like he thought he would win me over. “But I can offer you the dream.”
Barrett pulled out his wallet and slid a stark white business card from it, allowing me to catch sight of the stack of bills he was carrying around with him. My blood ran ice cold. The man might draw me in like a magnet but I wasn’t interested in a life with that kind of money involved. Not again.
Before handing the business card over to me, he scribbled something on the back of it with a pen that he pulled from his pocket and probably cost as much as a month’s rent on my apartment. “That’s my figure on the back. Look it over. Then give me a call. My personal cell’s on there, too.”
“Thank you,” I said politely, accepting the card but ignoring the figure he’d written onto it. “But as I’ve already told you, I have a job.”
“Just think about it?” he implored me.
It was time for me to get away from him before that magnetic force he projected sucked me in again. I pushed up from the booth and took a step back so he wouldn’t be able to touch me again.
“Enjoy your burger.”
With that, I turned on my heel and walked away from him.
The trashcan in the back beckoned to me as soon I pushed through the bright red door marked Staff Only. Without hesitating for so much as a second, I marched over to it and dropped the business card inside, still without having looked at the figure he was offering me.
It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t let money dominate my life. I wasn’t going back there. Not even for the hottest guy in all of Man
hattan.
Chapter 3
Barrett
Here, have the dream of every woman in Manhattan on a silver platter, I said.
Enjoy your burger, she said.
It was ridiculous, really. But I wasn’t able to get the fucking waitress out of my mind. I slept like shit that night and was tossing and turning the whole time. She was exactly what I needed for the agency. She was beautiful in a way that didn’t scream “just another fake model,” with a wit that I was sure the camera would pick up on.
She was everything I didn’t know I needed. So much so that I made her a starting offer that rivaled what some of my best girls got paid. My phone should’ve been blowing up with calls from her but there wasn’t so much as a peep.
The waitress, whose name I could kick myself in the balls for not having gotten, still hadn’t called me. My gut was telling me that she wasn’t going to, and my gut was seldom wrong.
Instead of putting me off, her silence was only making her more tantalizing. The memory of those ice-blue eyes and the feel of her ass on my lap was enough to make me harder than the concrete surrounding the pool that I was looking out at. But I wasn’t going there.
I rolled over on my bed, folding my arms behind my head and staring out of my window as the sun started rising the next morning. The ocean lit up with orange hues beyond my expansive yard.
The commute to the north shore of Long Island, where my house sat in a gated community, was less than fun but once Nancie had come along, I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice.
I couldn’t give my niece her parents back but I could give her every damn other thing she could ever want or need. In this case, a home among the grand estates and magnificent mansions of the moguls and luminaries of New York City.
Ten years ago, when I bought my first property, I’d chosen it based on its proximity to the popular clubs and bars at the time. It had been kitted out to the max, with everything that a twenty-two-year-old bachelor’s heart could desire. What it hadn’t been designed for was the sudden arrival of a ten-year-old girl. But that was exactly what it got.
Once the shock of the accident and the fact that I’d been named the legal guardian to my younger sister’s daughter wore off, my priorities changed. I was suddenly looking at safety and schools and a backyard where Nancie could play, instead of how fast I could get my latest conquest home from a club.
Children had never been part of the plan for my life but life was what happened while I was busy making other plans. My sister, Rebecca, had been on her way home from a movie when her car skidded off the road on that fateful, rainy night. It rolled four times before it came to dead stop when it hit a traffic light.
I’d been drunk as a skunk and in the process of dropping more money in one night than most people made in a month when I received the phone call that would change my life forever and make me the father that I never expected to be. Well, uncle and father figure to the niece I loved but had no idea how to raise.
It was difficult enough when she was a kid who just wanted a pool, a lawn, and a pony. It was fucking impossible now that she was a teenager. The only thing I knew about teenage girls before Nancie was how to make sure they were eighteen before I charmed them into bed. Which was not fucking happening to Nancie on my watch.
She’d been acting out recently, no doubt taking advantage of having a guardian and uncle who was severely distracted by work but I’d set aside some time this weekend to figure out what had been going on with her. There was a time when I knew everything going on in her life. Now, not so much.
With that in mind, it was probably time to go find her. Nancie was an early riser, and even though it was Saturday, she’d probably already been for a swim and had to be around here somewhere.
Padding to the kitchen, I was surprised to find Nancie dirtying up the Caesarstone counters in an attempt at making breakfast. The early morning light was filtering through the windows and glass doors of the open living areas that combined our kitchen, living room, and dining areas. The light hit her hair in a way that shone with my exact shade. The shade I once shared with her mother.
Her mother, who, just like Nancie, only cooked breakfast when she wanted something.
“Good morning, pipsqueak.” I greeted her with the nickname I’d given her when she was still in utero. “What do you want?”
Nancie twirled to face me, pulling earbuds I hadn’t noticed from her ears and giving me a bright smile. “Whatever do you mean, dearest and best uncle?”
I groaned. I wasn’t going to like what was coming. “Other than covering our entire kitchen in flour, I know that there’s a purpose to your surprise attempt at breakfast.”
“Can’t a girl just want to cook breakfast for her favorite uncle?” She smiled, flipping what I think was meant to be a pancake in a pan on the gas stove.
“I’m your only uncle,” I pointed out. “And no, as you keep reminding me, I pay a chef precisely so we don’t have to cook.”
“I wanted Katy to have a break this morning,” she said, a coy smile on her face as she twirled a lock of mahogany hair through her fingers, fixing me with the emerald eyes that she inherited from her father.
“Well, if you’re suddenly in the business of giving people a break from what they get paid to do, I have a ton of stuff you can help me with after school on Monday.”
“Of course.” She smiled sweetly. “You’re so neurotic, though. I’d probably only be there ten minutes before you kicked me out.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, and she laughed, turning back to her blobs of batter. “What gives, Nance? Neurotic or not, I know that you haven’t suddenly become a humanitarian, and I know that Katy wouldn’t have surrendered her kitchen to your particular brand of fire hazard without good reason. Which brings me back to original question. What do you want?”
Nancie pouted and stuck her out bottom lip, even when the corners of her lips were twitching up. “I’m not that much of a fire hazard.”
“And yet, I’m pretty sure those flames are licking higher than they should be,” I told her, inclining my head to where her pan was about to catch on fire.
Nancie yelped and started swatting the pan with a dishtowel. A second later, I was by her side, lifting the pan and shutting down the burner. Raising an eyebrow at her, I motioned for her to sit at the kitchen island.
“You were saying?” I asked.
She exhaled a deep breath, crossing her arms on the stark white island and staring out the window at the ocean for a second, before snapping her eyes back to mine. “I was just trying to do something nice for you.”
“Yeah, why’s that?” I asked, deciding to try my hand at pancakes since Katy clearly wasn’t around, and I was starving. “Let it be known that there was a time that I could cook. Somewhat. Apparently, it’s time to see if I still can.”
“Do I need to have a reason to do something nice for you?” Nancie asked, trying to keep a straight face, but the corners of her mouth were curling up.
“Since it seems that I’ve raised a brat,” I teased. “There absolutely has to be a reason.”
Nancie threw her head back and laughed, then stuck her tongue out at me. “Well, at least you’re taking responsibility for the way I turned out.”
I shrugged, raising my hands in mock surrender. “Couldn’t have done that badly since you’re in one piece and all.”
“That was your only goal? Keeping me in one piece?” She arched a manicured brow. When the hell did she start plucking or waxing or whatever?
“Yup, I was aiming for the stars.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed, giving me a thumbs up. “Well done.”
“Well, it looks like I can make pancakes,” I told her, sliding a plate in front of her. “So, since I’m feeding you now, out with it.”
Nancie’s teeth sank into her bottom lip. She hesitated, then squared her shoulders and looked me right in the eye. “I’m going on a date this afternoon. I want you to meet my boyfriend when he picks me
up later.”
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “Boyfriend? Since when are you dating? You’re too young to date.”
“I’m seventeen,” she scoffed. “Do you honestly expect me to believe you weren’t dating by that age?”
“I believe this is a prime example of the old adage, ‘do as I say, not as I do,’” I answered dryly. “Shouldn’t you still believe boys have cooties or something?”
Another eye roll followed my question. “I’m seventeen here, not seven.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I told her. “But I’m sticking to my theory.”
“I bet you were a terror by my age.”
She wasn’t wrong, but there was no way I was admitting it.
My eyes widened innocently. “Me? Never. At your age, I was playing computer games and doing my assigned reading every night.”
Nancie howled with laughter, nearly choking on a bite of her pancake. “I’m sure. Was playing computer games code for getting wasted when you were my age?”
I tried and failed to bite back my laugh. “No, I’m not that old.”
“Thought so. In that case, Scott will be here in a couple of hours. Be nice.”
Damn it. I wasn’t ready for her to start dating, never mind meeting the damn guy who would likely be groping my niece before the day was out, if memory of my own teenage years served me correctly. I leaned against the counter, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Fine, but I hope he’s ready. I’m going to go oil my shotgun real quick.”
She laughed but gave me pointed look. “You don’t have a shotgun.”
“Good point. I’ll just have to go get one real quick then.” I shrugged.
“Don’t you dare,” she said, hopping from her stool and giving me another look. “I’m going to go get ready. Thanks for breakfast.”
“I’ll make you pancakes personally every morning for the next month if you stay home with me instead. Deal?”
She shook her head, flashing me a small smile. “No deal. Your pancakes were good but Scott is great. Just promise me you’ll give him a chance at least?”
“Sorry, sweetheart, you don’t have a deal, either. I do promise not to shoot at first sight.”