by North, Paige
Huh.
That’s when I start to piece everything together: this suite, Jaden’s team of lawyers, the driver he had at his beck and call last night, the way he seemed to command everyone around him to do his bidding while wearing those expensive clothes and shoes…
Jaden’s obviously loaded—and he’s got the arrogance to go with his wealth. No wonder he’s so unruffled about our night of heavy drinking and stupidity, because he’s got the money to erase all of it.
God, I wish I could erase everything on my end, but, first, I want to erase how icky I’m feeling after losing the contents of my stomach in the toilet and being so terribly hung over. I slouch to the door, lock it, and then make good use of the complimentary toothbrush and expensive toiletries I find on the marble counter. After I discover my white dress wadded up in a ball near the bathtub, I decide that I’d like to wash my panties in the sink, then dry them with the hair dryer. If I have to put on my party dress again, it might as well be with fresh panties.
I take a quick shower, allowing the hot water to wash away the idiocy of last night. Well, at least most of it, because by the time I slip on my dress, bra, and clean underwear, my mistakes are still clinging to me.
Married.
Even if I was drunker than a skunk, how did I let things go that far?
As I think about how Jaden kissed me, my pulse picks up speed. Okay, so maybe I was living in the moment. But I’m not usually this dumb. Still, I feel real dumb when I pick up the diamond ring from the counter, where I set it before my shower. God, it’s beautiful, but I just can’t put it back on. Instead, I leave the bathroom with it and go to the master bedroom, setting the ring on a nightstand so Jaden can keep it.
It looks really lonely just sitting there.
So stop looking at it, right?
Yet there I am, still staring at it when I hear a knock on the front door of the suite.
I’m debating whether or not to answer it when Jaden appears in the bedroom doorway, dressed in a new pair of perfectly creased dark pants, barefoot, and shirtless. He’s still got that sexy stubble, but his hair is damp from a shower and slicked back, and the scent of soap wafts off of him to me. It shouldn’t make me think yum, but I do.
“I ordered room service,” he says. “Have some coffee and toast. You’ll feel better.”
“Doubtful,” I mutter as he leaves to answer the door.
My stomach feels hollow as I find my phone on the floor next to my heels. When I turn the phone on, my screen lights up with a blast of missed texts and calls from last night and early this morning from my friends.
Crap.
As I read them, I hear the room service attendant speaking with Jaden and rolling in a food cart.
Each message gets worse, and I haven’t even checked my friends’ voicemails yet.
First, there are the texts that make it very clear that, at one point, I told the girls I’d met a guy. I never mentioned his name. And, even though Rachelle, Millie, Tanya, and Cindy tried to talk me into rejoining the bachelorette party, I was adamant about hanging out with my party boy, even after they protested.
Then I wrote this gem: I’m perfectly fine!!! Catch the flight without me, because I’m living life to the fullest, YOLO style!!!
And then there are their panicked texts from this morning.
Tanya: WHERE ARE YOU?
Millie: Girl, we’re one the way to the airport! We have your stuff because we have no idea where you are!
My flight. Yes, I told them to leave without me, but that was Drunk and Evil Everly talking. Shit. Maybe if I get a move on now, I can still catch my plane…
But as I realize I only have twenty-five minutes before it takes off, I group text everyone to let them know I’m truly okay and it’s definitely fine to leave without me.
Shit. Shit. SHIT.
Their group texts come back in a flood.
Cindy: Dammit, Everly, what happened?
Tanya: YOLO? WTF???
Millie: You’ve got some explaining to do.
Rachelle: Go, Everly!
I tell them again not to worry, and I’ll give them the entire story later. Meanwhile, my heart is slamming around in my chest, because I never screw up like this. Is the airline even going to let me make other arrangements? Will I have to stay in Vegas longer without any of my stuff? Dammit, I’ll have to get someone to cover for me in the salon…
But, worst of all, I’m married.
Feeling like a complete disaster, I put down my phone. I can hear the room service guy in the next room talking to Jaden.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Nash. You’re too generous.”
Jaden must’ve given him a whopper of a tip. Obviously he can afford it, just like he can afford to accidentally get married.
But wait… Did the attendant say Mr. Nash?
That would make him Jaden Nash.
It’s not a common name. I didn’t even catch it while filling out last night’s marital paperwork. But now my stomach fills with leaden dread as I think about that name.
Ally Steel, the business that keeps our town running… Nash Industries, which just bought it with the intention of trashing it and making a profit and, in the process, ruining my small town and everyone who lives there.
Jaden Nash.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, oh my God.
Sick dread settles in my stomach and my chest gets to tight I can barely breathe.
My husband is the man who’s set on destroying my town and everything important to me.
With my legs shaking, I walk to the other room, which is decorated like an Italian villa, all lavish open spaces and rustically expensive furniture. It even comes complete with a shirtless god named Jaden who has muscles in his back that flex as he lifts his coffee cup to his lips. He’s staring out the floor-to-ceiling penthouse suite window at the Vegas Strip outside, totally oblivious to my presence.
There’s no way this could be the same Jaden Nash.
I clear my throat, and he glances over his shoulder. For a moment, I could swear his gray eyes light up when they catch sight of me. As he checks me out again in that lazy, appreciative way he has, I heat up all over. I’m a throbbing network of pulsing, buzzing electrical impulses, connected by lust. My clit knots up as I remember how Jaden kissed me last night after slipping the diamond ring onto my finger at the chapel drive-through.
I’ve never been kissed that way.
I’m not sure I ever will be again.
But, even so, I fist my hands, digging my nails into my palms to wake myself up.
Jaden Nash. Nash Industries.
Please, God, no.
“Mr. Nash?” I ask. “Is that what the room service attendant called you?”
He shrugs and leisurely sets the coffee cup down on a table. “That’s my name.”
“Jaden Nash, the new CEO of Ally Steel?”
He frowns, as if wondering why the hell I would know that. Then he turns to face me all the way, and my heart throbs at the full power of his shirtless beauty. God, he’s tight all over, like a sculptor took his sweet time in creating all the sexy ridges of his stomach and the sleek lines of his chest and arms.
“No,” he says warily. “I’m not the new CEO of Ally Steel.”
I exhale with profound relief.
“I’m the new owner,” he says.
My relief turns back to horror because, holy crap, it’s true —somehow I hooked up with the very man who is going to shut down our town’s manufacturing plant and put my family and friends out of work just to increase profits.
And I didn’t just hook up with him—I married him.
7
Jaden
I’ve never seen anyone’s expression go from curious to horrified like Everly’s just did, and as the color drains from her face, something sinks inside of me.
I have no idea why. Has she somehow heard about my acquisition of Ally Steel and she thinks I’m some kind of rapacious business monster because I’m about t
o salvage the company as I see fit? Odd, because Ally Steel was one of my quieter deals.
Hell, why should I even care what she thinks when all she is to me is a drunken accident—one that I’m going to get annulled ASAP?
As she stares at me with those angel-blue eyes, a throbbing sensation starts up deep inside of me, and with every brutal pound it expands, taking over more than just my cock. It creeps upward with pummeling heat, fisting into a ball, settling into a place in my chest where my heart should be.
I have no fucking idea what I was doing last night when I married her. All I remember was a sharp longing for her that felt a lot like this—needing and wanting and craving with a hunger that wasn’t satisfied last night. Don’t get me wrong—kissing Everly was damned good, but I’ve got to have more than that.
Maybe she sees the voracious darkness in my eyes, because she takes a couple of steps back, then starts looking around the main room.
“My purse,” she says randomly. “I haven’t seen it, and I’ll need it when I leave.”
Where does she think she’s going? “Sit down and have something to eat. We’ll talk about how to deal with this annulment.”
“No. I need to get out of here. Now.”
She begins searching around in earnest—behind the thick, fringed pillows on the sofa, then under the grand dining table behind it, then near the piano and wet bar.
I leisurely pick up my coffee cup and watch her flailing around. “I don’t remember spending enough time in this room last night for you to have lost your purse in here. You might want to check the master bedroom.”
“What are you saying? That we spent a lot of time in there?”
“We feel asleep in there, much to my disappointment.”
I send her a grin, but she only looks panicked, then stomps away.
I follow her to the bedroom. I really shouldn’t be this entertained as I lean against the doorframe and then take a drink of my black coffee. And when she gets on her hands and knees to search under the bed, I go past entertained and straight into turned on. How can I not be when her luscious ass is sticking in the air?
My cock stirs beneath the zipper of my trousers, and that lustful, yearning throb I felt before centers itself in my groin and torments me.
Those curves of hers are magnificent.
With a frustrated sound, she pops up from under the bed and crawls toward the glass coffee table, looking under it. Then she pops up from there, too, and then peers around.
I smile. “Just in case you were wondering, I was an absolute gentleman last night. Once you tore off your dress in the bathroom and then stumbled in here wearing your bra and panties, I kept my hands to myself.”
“Only because you passed out, too, Mr. One Shoe On, One Shoe Off. And you sure weren’t much of a gentleman when you somehow got me to marry you.”
“And how, pray tell, do you know that was my idea?”
She blinks at me from her spot near the bed. “Wasn’t it?”
I shrug, because it actually might’ve been both our drunk-ass ideas, but I’m enjoying teasing her. Yet, as she peers at me for another beat, that horrified look returns to her gaze, and it brings me back to that strange moment in the main room when she asked me about Ally Steel.
She stands up to search the room some more, and I walk over to put my coffee down on a nightstand. The glimmer of her diamond band catches my eye, and something like the loneliness I was feeling last night clenches inside of me. Even though we shouldn’t be married at all, this ring belongs on a finger, not discarded on a nightstand.
“How do you know about Ally Steel anyhow?” I glance away from the ring and toward her. “Most people aren’t all that familiar with the company, let alone the fact that I recently bought it. I’m actually better known for my other business ventures…” Not to mention the model and pop stars and actresses I’ve been with.
But if Everly knows about that last part, she doesn’t say anything. “I’ve heard a lot about you—mostly that you’re the asshole who’s intent on putting everyone I know and love out of work!”
I bristle at the word “asshole.” But I can see she’s upset, so I give her some slack. “Don’t tell me—you live in one of the small towns where Ally Steel has manufacturing plants.”
“Yes, I do. And I’m well aware of how you plan to pick apart the one in Norfolk, Ohio, tearing it to pieces and then selling them off. You’re also going to relocate the jobs my family and friends have, just so you can make a few extra bucks. God, what kind of cruel twist of Vegas fate made me marry you?” She points at me and wags her finger. “You. Are. An. Asshole.”
The more she says it, the more my hackles rise. Yeah, I’ve done a lot to earn the reputation, and normally I wouldn’t give a shit about what someone thinks about me. But hearing it from her bothers me.
“Everly. Sit down and we’ll talk about this rationally.”
“Nope.” She stalks around the room, overturning pillows and getting more frustrated every time she doesn’t find her purse.
Out of patience, I calmly walk over to her and scoop her into my arms. She gasps just before I toss her onto the rumpled bed, where she bounces a couple of times, looking at me as if I’m the very devil.
Better than being an asshole.
“Listen to me,” I say in the most level voice I can manage. “There’s more to taking over a struggling company than you realize. Yes, Ally Steel seems to be successful to the casual eye, but revenues have been falling year after year, and the shareholders expect profits to rise.”
As she defiantly slumps back against the big pillows and glares at me, her light blond hair spreads angelically over the linen. She crosses her arms over her heaving chest, and the gesture pushes her beautiful tits higher in that tight dress, making them rounder, juicier. My mouth waters, even as my blood screams through me.
I grit my jaw and continue. “The people who buy Ally Steel’s stock demand growth. Meanwhile, the company is unable to compete with overseas manufacturing prices.”
“Thanks for enlightening me,” she grits right back. “I’m so happy that the most arrogant prick in the universe is giving me a Business 101 lecture to try and make me feel less upset about his decision to put everyone I know out of work and basically destroy my town.”
Fuck, she’s really trying to get a rise out of me. And I am rising. My trousers feel tighter with the way my cock is straining against my fly, pounding and demanding.
“Everly,” I say from between my clenched teeth. “You obviously don’t want to acknowledge that Ally Steel is going down. Either it happens in this way—with me ‘swooping in’ to profit from it—or it happens when the revenue dries up and the town is left in the lurch anyway.”
“I’d prefer it not happen with you, the arrogant prick. Do you know how many members of my family have worked at the plant over the years? Do you have any idea how many families you’re going to put into the poor house? I hear their stories every day when these people come in to my hair salon, and if you cared to listen, I could even tell you their tales.”
In my anger, this little detail almost escapes me—she’s a hairdresser? We never talked about our jobs last night. We only…
Fucking got married.
But as I remember all the kissing and drunk romancing that happened, something catches in my chest. It pounds right along with my false, dark heart, then heats up and slips downward until it pools in my gut, where it beats some more, faster and heavier. It makes me ache like a son of a bitch as my gaze latches on to Everly’s beautiful breasts rising and falling. Then I run my eyes up to her plump lips, which are slightly parted with her gasps. Then I look into her gaze, finding that she’s watching me right back, frightened…and excited.
Just as excited as I am.
I take a step toward the bed. “You can be as rude and insulting as you want, but it’s not going to change the fact that I own Ally Steel now, and I’m going to do what’s best for it.”
“You deserve for
me to be rude and insulting.” Her whisper is heated.
I take another step toward her, and her arms fall away from her chest, revealing how hard her nipples are under her dress. My dick responds with a sharp tug, blood taunting it, killing me with every hot second that passes.
Nobody ever stands up to me like this. Not my peers, not my army of assistants…nobody. But here’s this petite girl I only met last night, and she’s got guts enough to give me the business.
I’m more turned on than I ever thought possible.
And when I’m turned on, I go after whatever it is that’s making my cock throb. I always get what I want, and right now I want this girl with the innocent anticipation in her eyes, reminding me that she blushed when she brought up the subject of blowjobs last night.
Like the devil I am, I see an opportunity here, and I pounce on it.
“What if I gave you a chance to change my mind about closing the manufacturing plant, Heavenly?”
She balks at my question, then narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?”
I pause, and during the next tense moment, her gaze strays from my face to my chest. Her eyes go hazy, and I know she likes what she sees. She wants me just as much as I want her.
“What I mean,” I say, “is that I’m going to offer you a deal.”
Her gaze snaps back up to mine.
A ruthless smile takes me over. “In order to persuade me to keep the Norfolk plant open, you must spend the next forty-eight hours with me here in Vegas.”
Her eyebrows draw together in sweet confusion.
“And,” I say, “you must do anything and everything I want.”
Her eyes are huge as she starts to understand.
I hold up a finger. “The entire time, you aren’t allowed to speak to me about business. However, I’m going to give you a portion of our last evening together to try and change my mind about my decision to reorganize the Norfolk plant.”
She shakes her head against the pillow, her light hair moving against the linen, making me fist my hands because I’m dying to tangle my fingers in her silky strands again, just as I did last night. I’m dying to have a lot more of her, too, and I’m dying to do it now.