My lips were still tingling from his heated goodbye kiss when I returned to my room to grab my laptop and then sat down at my desk. Even though Jett had cleared his schedule for the week, countless messages cluttered his email inbox and voicemail. I went through each one of them, registering names and queries. The urgent ones received an immediate answer with the assurance Jett would get back to them as soon as he could. Two hours later, the business correspondence had been dealt with, and I was free to accustom myself with the company’s financial reports and major property accounts.
Mayfield Properties was a huge company with hundreds of millions in turnover and as such had a dozen board directors, all pocketing their fair share of profits. At the top of the ladder were Robert and Jonathan Mayfield, father and son respectively, followed by Jett, who at thirty-one was the youngest board member and probably the only one engaging in direct sales and property acquisition. Because of his young age, I had thought he was gifted his place in the company by his father, until I glimpsed the sales and profits Jett had made in the last year alone.
Holy cow.
The guy knew how to make money, and a lot of it. I almost choked on my breath as I counted all the zeros on the spreadsheets: one hundred million worth of properties, most of them spread across the United States, with some sprinkled throughout Europe. There was a systematic approach to it. His clients were exclusively business moguls and celebrities who came to him based on recommendations. They either had a particular estate in mind or very specific ideas of what they wanted, and it was Jett’s job to make it happen. He found the right estate, groomed the owner by paying for all-inclusive trips to the most luxurious places I only knew from tabloids and television documentaries about the lives of the rich and famous, and then somehow persuaded them to sell at a price convenient to his clients. Nothing new about that approach, only that Jett seemed extremely good at what he did, and with very little college education. I was impressed, not to mention a bit star-struck, at all the well-known names that seemed to pop up in his files.
The guy was famous in his own right. One day an equally famous or rich woman would adorn his side. Probably someone as tall and beautiful as Sylvie, with sky-high legs to match an exotic and luxurious name, which was okay since I didn’t want to be with Jett.
Or did I?
I couldn’t help the sudden pang of jealousy piercing through my heart. What would it be like to be part of his personal life, introduced as the girlfriend rather than the personal assistant slash secret lover, who had to sign a contract so the world wouldn’t know about her? To travel the world and make plans for the future?
A future with Jett.
Sleeping with a rich man was one thing, wanting to date him was another. I rolled my eyes at the brief onset of fairy tale attitude and pushed the nasty thoughts to the back of my mind, hating myself for letting them cloud my perception of what our agreement was all about: no relationship, just no-strings fun as long as it lasted. I had been okay with it. Heck, I even stressed the importance of being able to get out if I so desired. When did it all change?
The moment you entrusted him with your past.
It was the look in his eyes—a tiny flicker of intimacy intermingled with a growing sense of trust—that broke through barriers and made me see him in a different light. I’d let him get under my skin, and now he had started to occupy my every thought. It was the way he touched me, as if what we had was special. It was also the way he made love to me, making me feel wanted like no one had done before. I wanted to know everything about him, which is what I was doing right now, investigating his life under the pretense of finding out more about his business, but in reality I was searching Google and the gossip pages of various online tabloids for glimpses into his private life and gossip on alleged dates and girlfriends. In my thoughts I had become we. My heart began to drum in my ears as sudden realization dawned on me.
I barely knew him, and yet I was falling in love with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For the next few days Jett and I established a routine: we spent most of the time inside the house, having sex in all possible places. Every afternoon, we’d half-heartedly return to work, and I enjoyed the break from him. While our physical relationship was taking me to new heights, so were my feelings for him, and I needed a bit of space to clear my head. It was the day before our flight back to New York, during one of those ‘breaks from sex’ that his father called. Not realizing I was talking to Robert Mayfield on the other end of the line, I tried to divert him with the excuse that Jett wasn’t available to take any calls until he said, “Ms. Stewart, please be so kind as to get my son. I trust he’ll be available when he hears what I have to tell him.”
It wasn’t like me to feel intimidated, and yet there was something in the old man’s voice that made me put him through right away, even if it weren’t for Jett’s prior instructions to do so. Focusing back on work, I managed to push Jett’s father out of my system when Jett barged in, his face a mask of irritation and anger.
“Did he say anything to you?”
I bit my lip, confused. “What?”