One Long Embrace (Eternal Bachelors Club #5)

“That’s not the point.”


He laughed and pulled himself out of her, then turned her and drew her against his body. “Tara, making sure you enjoy yourself is the point. And I’ll be happy to drive that fact home again later if you need another demonstration.”





14


Jay groaned when he saw the number of emails awaiting him in his inbox. Dressed only in a pair of shorts, he was sitting in his office alcove on the boat, a steaming mug of coffee next to him. It was early morning. Tara was still asleep. He’d worn her out the night before, and she hadn’t even stirred when he’d left the bed and quietly walked upstairs.

He was glad for some time alone. Not because he was getting sick of her company, far from it. But he had to run a business, and do so without Tara getting wind of it. She’d turned out to be quite adventurous and without any inhibitions in bed. Just what he liked in a sexual partner. Though somehow those words didn’t seem to fit. She wasn’t just a sexual partner. He wasn’t quite sure what to call what had started developing between them. It was too early to call it a relationship, yet too late to dismiss it as a one-night stand.

They were still in that awkward stage where nothing had been said about things like exclusivity or where they were heading. Too early to know whether he was making a huge mistake by hiding who he was, or whether it was the best thing he could have ever done.

He sighed and scrolled through the messages, quickly answering those that needed an immediate reply. He made good progress, until he opened an email from Nadine, his interior designer. He’d hired her only six months earlier to work exclusively on the interior design of the new yachts that Hannon Boats, the company he’d built from scratch, was due to start selling in the fall. He took a sip of his coffee and read, eager to find out what great concepts she’d come up with.

His eyes flew over the short text. Blinking, he read the message again.

…regret to inform you… an offer from Bluestar Yachting I couldn’t refuse… immediate effect…

“God damn it!” he cursed.

How could this have happened? He’d given Nadine a more than generous compensation package, and she was thanking him by quitting without notice? And to work for Bluestar Yachting of all places—his biggest competitor, who’d tried numerous times to get spies into Hannon Boats so they could copy Jay’s proprietary designs?

Jay slammed his fist onto the desk. But he wouldn’t be where he was today if he let such a setback get to him. Not even gracing Nadine’s email with a reply, he fired off an email to his assistant, Karina, advising her of the news and instructing her to cut off Nadine’s access to company records and wade through the list of possible candidates she kept on hand. An email to the company lawyers was next, advising them to send a letter to Nadine to remind her of her confidentiality agreement and that a violation thereof would be costly for her.

But he was still not satisfied. He needed to replace her immediately if he wanted to remain on schedule with production of the new yachts. He wasn’t confident that the pool of applicants they kept on file would yield a suitable candidate. He needed more recommendations. Without hesitation he composed an email, laying out all requirements for the job and fired it off to his friends. Zach was on top of the list, so were Daniel and Xavier, but he also sent the same email to Paul, Hunter, and the others, in fact to all the members of the Eternal Bachelors Club.

They weren’t just friends. The club was more like a brotherhood of men who respected and helped each other whenever necessary. Only months earlier the club had banded together to successfully dispel vicious rumors that Daniel’s then-fiancée and now-wife, Sabrina, was a call girl. Maybe now the gang could help him with something much easier. All seven of his fellow members—well, six members really, since Daniel had to leave the club on the day of his wedding—ran successful businesses and had the right contacts everywhere. One of them would know the ideal person for this job.

Jay leaned back in his chair and stretched. There was nothing else he could do right now but wait. The sound of bare feet on the stairs made him swivel. He closed the computer just as Tara appeared.

Jay ran his eyes over her as she approached him. She wore his bathrobe and by the looks of it nothing else. He could get used to that. To her.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked and sat down on his lap. She wrapped her arms around him as if she’d done so a million times.

He drew her closer for a kiss, brushing softly over her impossibly red lips. “Good morning.” He casually put his hand on her thigh. “I wanted to let you rest after last night.”

“I don’t need any rest.”