7. Harrison
7
HARRISON
M y father used to say, “You can’t control a man’s thoughts, but you can command his actions.”
That’s what I’m intent on doing today in the office—forcing men’s hands.
One man’s hand in particular.
On paper, Christian Geroux owns Ibiza’s greatest club.
In my mind, it’s already mine.
I’ve wanted it since I was twenty-one.
Finally, I got word he’s open to selling. I won’t waste this chance.
But making headway amassing the greatest collection of entertainment venues in the world requires the right frame of mind.
I finish my outdoor workout before seven, ready to take on the day and already thinking about my meetings and strategies for my next acquisition.
I’m not thinking about the young woman I installed in my villa.
At the time, it seemed like a way to supervise her. I regretted the decision the moment she tripped into my office uninvited yesterday, towed by my dog like a water skier behind a furry yacht.
After acting as if she’d have cut off a limb if it would have gotten her out of the contract she’d signed, she flipped my deal and proposed a new one.
Negotiation 101. When you have all the leverage, there’s no need to make further concessions.
But she caught me off guard, and I was curious what had changed for her since the night before when I’d set her in a cab with my favorite jacket around her shoulders.
The one I found swimming in my pool the next afternoon, the chlorine doing God knows what to the wool and the striped lining.
I ground my teeth together as I retrieved it with a cleaning implement, looking up to be sure she wasn’t watching from her balcony.
Clean your own pool , she’d said.
She’s nothing like the women I spend time with. She says she doesn’t care for money or wealth.
Except she asked for a raise .
Which means, on one level, she’s exactly like the women I spend time with.
Now, when I return to the villa after my workout, there’s a sweater hanging on the back of a chair at the dining table.
My first thought is of payback. Dropping this into the pool and picturing her finding it there.
What the fuck is she doing to me?
I’m thirty-five years old, and I’m giddy with the prospect of ruining something of hers just to see her reaction.
The fabric is surprisingly soft as I lift it. A thin woven cover-up that’s more feminine than I expect.
“What are you doing?” Natalia’s voice makes my spine stiffen like a schoolboy caught masturbating.
I glance back to see her watching from the kitchen. I lower the garment, trying to forget the scent, warm and floral with something like vanilla beneath.
“Removing this from my dining room.”
I start up the stairs to the open hallway that runs along one side of the villa, her sweater dangling from my fingertips like a limp rag.
Now, Rae’s door is closed—it’s midafternoon, and she’s still asleep despite not having a show last night—but sounds inside have me frowning. Movement, shuffling.
Is someone else in there?
The possibility arouses dark thoughts.
First, she destroys my jacket. Then brings someone home to my house…
I crack the door, and my dog comes barreling out.
Light beyond the door beckons, and I peer inside.
She’s alone in bed.
On her side facing the door, her dark hair is a wild mane around her head.
Her baggy T-shirt is twisted, pulling tight across her breasts, as if she was fighting sleep itself. Her lips are parted, her lashes a thick fringe that twitches against her cheeks as she dreams.
A rope tugs tight low in my gut.
Is there any time of day, alone or surrounded by people, when she finds peace?
I fold the sweatshirt and lay it on the dresser, taking in the belongings scattered around the room. My fingers itch to straighten the clothes and gadgets I went through myself when the bag arrived thanks to a call placed by one of my staff to the airline.
Denim. Off-label trainers. Cotton lingerie.
The wigs are curious. She owns as many of those as clothes, yet most women I know spend hours and thousands of dollars to try to replicate what her hair seems to do naturally.
There’s no sign of the unlabelled pill bottle I found in her bag.
It had to have been recreational. No seasoned traveler would pack a necessary medication in her checked bag and risk losing it with a missing suitcase.
Drug use in Ibiza is practically a prerequisite, and I can’t keep it out of my clubs. But I can keep it out of my employees, which was why I dumped the pills without a second thought.
Rae stirs, mumbling under her breath.
“What was that?” I murmur.
She repeats the single word, still sound asleep.
Adrenaline and dark triumph chase through my veins.
If she was mine, I’d shift over her on the bed, brush the hair from her face, and wake her slowly. The brush of a knuckle along the softness of her cheek. The press of my body against the curves of hers, enough to have her responding in kind even in sleep.
But she’s not mine.
I won’t claim another woman as mine again. I might take them to bed—not that even that idea has held much appeal recently—but I won’t offer them my life, my heart.
Because those things aren’t what they truly want and because they’re nothing I can offer again.
She’s here to fill my club and repay her debt.
I slip out of her room before she wakes.
* * *
The morning passes in a frustrating glut. The new initiatives at my clubs are taking time and money, and I’m being reminded what a headache acquisitions are as the man standing between me and my latest prize refuses to give a straight answer to my offer.
The club I’m seeking to add to Echo Entertainment isn’t only a line item on a balance sheet.
It’s personal.
Since my split with Eva, the tabloids accuse me of hiding out in my Ibiza villa.
I let them.
Perhaps there’s been some self pity, but I’m laying the groundwork for the biggest deal of my life. I’m in control of a multibillion-dollar company, not a fool nursing a broken heart.
From this day on, every ounce of my attention, my money, and my influence will be devoted to winning La Mer.
When I jog down the stairs for lunch, the sight at the bottom has me swallowing an irritated groan.
The sweatshirt is back on the kitchen table as if I never took it upstairs.
I watch Rae from behind as she makes coffee, moving easily around my kitchen in faded jeans and an orange T-shirt that has slipped off one shoulder. Her hair is caught in a thick ponytail that lays over the opposite shoulder and has me remembering how wild it looked earlier as she talks on the phone and rubs her neck.
“When can I speak with him?” She takes a sip from her mug, then makes a sound of displeasure. “I’m sure he’s up to his ass in requests, but have him call me.”
She hangs up, tucking the phone in the back pocket of her tight jeans.
“Boyfriend dodging you?” My slow drawl has the intended effect of scaring the ever-loving fuck out of her as she whirls to face me.
Most women find me appealing, but she seems to decide I’m barely worth sharing the kitchen with when she points at her mug. “Instant coffee should be banned. I pegged you as a sadist, not a masochist.”
She turns her back on me before I can respond, rubbing her temples before sliding one hand down to her neck.
Withdrawal symptoms . My sympathy fades.
“I meant what I said about staying clean while you’re in my employ.” The sharpness in my tone makes Rae stiffen.
“Well, now that you’ve tossed my stash, I guess I’ll have to. What exactly did that look like to you? E? Cocaine? GHB?”
“The newest craze is 2CB?—”
“Is that what was in my bag?”
My gaze narrows. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a headache. Not withdrawal.” She nods toward her notebook computer on the kitchen table before dumping the contents of her mug into the sink. “Been bent over that for twelve-plus-hour days since I was a teenager.”
“So, what, two years, then?”
The comment earns me side-eye as she puts a kettle on and fixes something else on the counter obscured behind her body. “I’m twenty-four. I’ve been doing this ten years.”
I cross to her and press a thumb into the muscle where her shoulder joins her neck inside the wide strap of her bra, and she sucks in a breath. “What are you doing?”
Rae tries to twist away, but I don’t let her. “It’s a trigger point. Breathe.”
“You are a sadist.”
“Give me thirty seconds. If it’s not better, you can call me whatever you want.”
For once, she does what I say.
The muscle starts to give under my hands, and I rub a small, deliberate circle that makes her hiss.
I let my curiosity get the better of me. “So, you started at fourteen. High school dropout?”
“Got my GED at sixteen and finished early so I could work on music.”
Determined .
“Plus, I don’t sleep much.“
I switch to the other side of her neck and dig in there. This time, she doesn’t jerk away.
“You looked as if you were sleeping fine this morning.”
She rips herself out of my hands, bracing against the sink and turning to level me with accusing eyes. “You were in my room?!”
“I returned your sweater. You’re lucky it suffered a kinder fate than my jacket.”
“And you stuck around to watch me.”
“You talk in your sleep. Not my fault you were saying my name.”
I’m expecting her to snap back at me, maybe even hit me, but her expression is shocked.
“I didn’t.” The whisper drags along my skin, and fuck if I can’t help thinking how she’d sound whispering other things.
“You did,” I promise.
Her throat works as she swallows.
A timer goes off, and she slips out from where I have her against the sink.
The knee-jerk disappointment makes me grimace.
I have no interest in her, not as a woman. But the rejection is still painful.
I turn to find her pouring coffee into a mug. She holds it out. “Real coffee. I bought it in town.”
“There isn’t real or fake coffee…” I take a sip, the flavors mingling pleasantly in my mouth.
Rae’s face lights with triumph, her lips curving. “I told you.”
Ash was right. She is really fucking pretty.
Especially when she smiles.
It’s the first time she’s beamed in my direction, because I would’ve remembered.
And it’s a good thing. If her negotiation had opened with that, she might own my villa right now.
My chest warms, my cold heart thudding harder against my ribs.
“La Mer,” she goes on, oblivious to my turmoil. “It’s bigger than Coachella, than Vegas, than anywhere. Why don’t you own it?”
“I’m working on it. The things most worth having take time to acquire.”
She reaches for the mug, and our fingers brush.
I wanted to catch her off guard, but it’s me who’s rocked when the bolt of attraction has my abs clenching under my dress shirt.
Her eyes widen before she pulls away and heads for the dining table.
“So, how are you going to fill my club?” I ask as she drops into the chair.
I grab the wrapped sandwich Natalia made me knowing I’d come for it when I was ready before returning to perch on the edge of the table.
“I have to give them a different experience every time. Plus, I’m figuring out how to get on the right people’s radar.”
“Debajo isn’t going to be the ‘it’ place,” she goes on. “It’s a basement. The place for those who don’t want to go to the ‘it’ place.”
“People like you? The rebels and outcasts?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
Her gaze flicks to mine, surprised.
“You’re abrasive and petulant.” I can’t help going on. “But add a wig, a hundred thousand euros of sound equipment, and some strobe lights? A rebel girl can turn into a nightclub goddess.”
Her lips part. “Goddess.”
“I’m not referring to your looks,” I say evenly, though the more I stare at her, the more I want to. “Goddesses aren’t defined by their beauty. They’re defined by their power. You have that, yet you react to the world instead of commanding it.”
I don’t know why I’m telling her this, but it’s been weighing on me since the first night I saw her play.
Maybe I see something in her I recognize, the feeling she’s been wronged and is trying—futilely, desperately—to set things right.
“Easy for you to say,” she replies. “People wait for you to act. By the time I have a chance, they’ve already made up their mind about me. Already decided things that change my present and my future.”
The earnest way she’s watching me, like my words are sinking in, has my chest tightening.
“Learn to take your power and no one can tell you what to do.”
Her dark lashes blink as she cradles her chin between her palms, inhaling slowly before letting the breath out.
“Well, damn. Thanks for the career advice, Mr. King,” she says, deadpan.
Insolent . Instead of offering her the chance to play Debajo, I could’ve let her languish in the obscurity she brought on herself.
And she’s repaying me with insults.
When her lips twitch in a smirk, a jolt of lust snaps down my spine.
I said I wanted to bring her peace.
I take it back.
I want to shut up that mouth that delights in insulting me, my cock, and the empire I’ve built. To watch those dark eyes cloud when I shove her back on this table, drag the denim off her legs and make her explode on my tongue.
It’s the first I’ve wanted a woman this powerfully in months, the first I’ve pictured what it would feel like to take my pleasure alongside hers.
But it’s attraction.
Meaningless. Harmless.
It won’t control me.
I reach across her for the mug. The next sip I take is better than the first. “No. Thank you.”
“For what?” Rae shifts back in her seat, wary.
It’s my turn to grin. “For the coffee.”
I head for the stairs, sandwich in one hand and mug in the other.
She’s still growling when I reach the top step.