Chapter Eleven
Hudson
O ver the next few days, I keep things strictly professional.
I have to, anyway, I have a tricky deal I’m pulling off and Scarlett needs to be able to keep up with my schedule and anticipate my needs.
She has a way of working that’s intriguing, unusual, and it works. She calms people by talking and then charming them into forgetting whatever thing it was they wanted from me, and she’s actually good at organizing things for me better than I would have, which is saying something. It’s not the way I go about things, but it’s logical in its own way and I’m not messing with it. Or her.
I’m definitely not messing with her.
Shit. That kiss… I’d only meant to warn her off or tease her and I hadn’t expected it to be so mind blowing.
I don’t like using that term, but it fits.
Turning my chair, I stare out the window at the deep blue sky from my office. The sun streams in like there are no cares in the world. But that’s a stupid thought and I dismiss it.
What I can’t dismiss is Scarlett and that scent; Scarlett and the dark honey hair and hazel eyes; Scarlett and those soft lips and hot kisses. What’s worse is I can’t dismiss her smart-ass mouth and surprising intelligence.
It’s not surprising she’s smart. I knew that when I first met her. What’s surprising is the way her intelligence works, like she’s plugged in a little differently.
It’s alluring.
And fuck. I like her and I have to stop.
She has secrets, though, and I can’t decide if they’re ones everyone tends to have, or if they’re big and going to fuck me over.
“Mr. Sinclair?” I look up, startled at Georgina.
She hovers nervously. You’d think the woman hadn’t been working at my personal reception desk for the past eight years. “I knocked, but—”
“Sorry, lost in work.” I look at her. And wait.
“Mr. Jenson is here.”
“Send him in.”
My father’s lawyer walks in a few minutes later. He’s an older man, and dressed expensively and conservatively, the way a rich man like my father would want his personal attorney to be. Subtle class that never overshadows.
He doesn’t sit. Instead, Jenson wanders over to the floor to ceiling glass wall and puts his hands, linked, behind his back and stares out, the picture of ease.
I narrow my eyes.
And wait.
“Just wanted to drop by, see how things are going,” Jenson says.
Crossing my legs, I nod. “You’ve never dropped by in your life. I doubt you’ve done that to your husband.”
Jenson turns and shrugs. “Your mother also spoke to me, not long after you did. Between us, I don’t give a fuck about the sincerity of this relationship, just that you pass the criteria. But your mother had questions.”
Why my mother is in contact with my father’s personal lawyer is anyone’s guess. Then again, her relationship with my father after the divorce and all his subsequent divorces is also anyone’s guess, so I leave it be.
“What sort of questions?”
Jenson shrugs again. “Who she is, and everything else. Your mother said she met her. She liked her, but she was…concerned about you getting involved with someone who works for you.”
“It happens, and my money’s more than protected. The family name, too.” I lean back in my chair. “If that’s her concern.”
“Not everything is to do with the Sinclair name and money, Hudson.”
I just laugh. He’s so wrong.
“And it would be a union that must last past the cut-off date, as you well know,” he says, delicately as possible. “As we discussed.”
“Your concern and my mother’s is…touching. But I’m old enough to take care of things on my own. I’ve gotten to this point in life, after all.”
“I think—” Jenson starts to look uncomfortable at this point, “—your mother is concerned over your happiness.”
“I have everything I want.”
The man nods, then he comes up to my desk and the delicate veneer falls away. “You have less than four weeks to get everything you say you want, Hudson. Don’t screw it up. It’s the one and only chance.”
“I’m aware.” I make a point of looking at my watch. Scarlett will be here shortly with what I need before I head to my meeting, and this little get together has outstayed its welcome. “If there’s anything more?”
“No, Hudson. Just remember what I said. And your mother’s concerns.”
“You’re distracted.”
I glance at Scarlett, who sits prim and proper and businesslike to the point of military issue armory, and I sigh.
She’s bubbling beneath the surface. Too much energy that creeps into my blood, heightening my senses, and makes me too aware of her and way too aware of the tension between us.
“We’ve got less than four weeks now. It’s time to up the ante.”
She breathes out, running her hands over the thighs of her cropped trousers as she sits on the leather sofa in my office, looking for all the world like I’ve sentenced her to death. I frown.
But I don’t say anything. I tuck it away as we get to work, finding myself distracted by her.
Scarlett smells too good, and I never realized before that subtle is a lot more dangerous than overt.
Subtle means I want to move closer, slide my mouth close to the skin of her throat as we go over the dates and what I need for work. It means I want to touch her, see if the top she wears, a lightly billowy thing in red that’s buttoned up and casts shadows when the light is right and suggests if I get up close and real personal I might be able to see what lies beneath.
As we work, I hand her a printed page and our hands brush. It’s an accident and it’s like someone punched me in the solar plexus.
“I need those people,” I say, pointing to the top four on the page. “I need them pushed back, but I need them not to feel like that.”
She turns and hooks her hair behind her ear where she wears tiny little white gold studs I hadn’t noticed before. Scarlett bites down on the corner of her lip and I want to lick it.
I’m not sure why I’m reacting this way. Maybe the kiss. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t had sex since before we met, which is odd because I had time last night, at drinks with my brothers and some woman who made it more than obvious she wanted me. Except I went home. Alone. My excuse was work, but truth is, that woman who has everything I like didn’t do it for me.
“I could reschedule,” Scarlett says, the soft slide of the material covering her thighs moves through me like music, “but from your face you don’t want that.”
If I continue to sit here so close to her I’m going to lose all sense of purpose. I get up and go to my desk where my phone is, and I quickly pull up my schedules for the next two weeks.
“It’s not that. I just don’t need them yet.”
“I can butter them up. Send them little things—”
“I’m not a gift shop.”
“What I mean is things that mean something to them. I’ll talk to their people and keep them chugging along, like…like someone you think you’ll want to date down the track but not now and you want to keep hanging on, for when you decide you want them.”
Surprisingly apt, but I keep that thought to myself. “Like deep freeze?”
“But more pleasant.” She grins and it lights up the room. “I’ll get on to that for you.”
My phone buzzes and it’s Magnus.
Short and to the point.
Family bullshit thing. Be there. Tomorrow. The usual .
That’s his way of saying there’s a Sinclair family event that I’ve gone and forgotten about. Sure enough, it’s there on my calendar. I text him back.
Wouldn’t dream of it, I say.
Bring your project.
My brothers are all assholes. Jesus.
It doesn’t matter. This could all be classed as a project, the thing with Scarlett, because in a way it is, I simply don’t like it being called that.
I turn back to Scarlett, who’s waiting for me, a little impatiently—not how a PA should be waiting, but I let it slide—and say, “I have a family event tomorrow. You’re coming with me.”
“It’s Thursday.”
The guy, Danny, her whatever the fuck he is, comes to mind and I give her a dark look as that thing I think might be jealousy stalks through me.
“Yes, it is.” I move up to her, a little too close, and the heat between us rises and the pulse in her throat is leaping. “Problem?”
“No. I just….” She stops, then takes a breath, her hazel eyes deepening to topaz. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Out with it, Scarlett,” I murmur, taking hold of her shoulders and drawing her closer. “We need to communicate or this won’t work.”
“Fine.” Her voice is a little shaky, and her gaze drops to my mouth for a long beat I feel in my cock, and then back up to my eyes. “Fine. You tell me we have to keep things on the down low. But I’m your assistant, your PA, and you treated me like that the other night. So is this work or a date?”
“A date.”
I didn’t mean to say that, but the words are out.
“Well, how do we do that? So people believe it’s natural. This is family—”
“I’ll show you exactly how and why they’ll believe this has progressed.”
And I kiss her. It’s seduction, pure and simple. Controlled, though it’s hard, much harder than I thought it would be to do that, something I’ve never had a problem with before, and a work of art in its bringing her crumbling down around me.
Which she does.
Scarlett opens like night jasmine at the touch of the moon. She flowers for me, her mouth opening and inviting me in, the soft little sounds she makes as she kisses me back, the way her body flows in against me and I’m losing my footing, too.
It would be so easy to sink down into this, succumb to this creation of ours, and see where it leads.
But I don’t.
I break the kiss.
Then I let her go and step back. “Like that, Scarlett.”
She nods, her hand shaking as she raises it to her lips.
“You also need to make it look good,” I say. “Now I have a meeting to get to.”
“Ten-four, boss man,” she said, but she’s shaking when she leaves, which pleases me.
Her off kilter adds to the authenticity of what I’m attempting to pull off.
Problem is, I’m tangled up in this, too. Far more than I want, deeper than I should be.
And that doesn’t please me at all.