Chapter 4 #3
Marina was able to handle that with aplomb, and she eventually—grudgingly—earned their respect.
Whoever I choose next has to be able to do the same thing, or she won't even last a week. Instead, they will bully her into submission, and my plan won't work.
On a human level, I don't want to put anyone through that. The guilt would eat me up if I had to watch them turn her into a shell of who she was. This woman must be strong, resilient, and self-confident enough to withstand their mind games and other bullshit.
In a nutshell, the criteria are: a woman I like, who is not an actress, who knows how to behave in good society, who has some kind of business or entrepreneurial background, who is young, attractive, healthy, and able to have kids.
She also has to be strong-minded, witty, capable of standing on her own two feet, and tough enough to handle the worst that my family can throw at her.
Finally, while she should be attracted to me well enough to sell the ruse, she should not like me all that much. She mustn't get caught up in her emotions and actually fall in love with me.
That would be an epic tragedy of Shakespearean proportions—worse than that would only be me falling in love with her.
But of course, that's not going to happen.
Or to her becoming pregnant, but that's not going to happen either, because the relationship won't be real. No sex equals no babies. Simple.
I'd known it was a tall order before I'd started looking, and it rapidly became even more apparent when I started to look for any likely candidates.
I found exactly zero. Not a single one did I come up with.
Not in several months of looking, so I'd given up.
To be totally honest, I'd forgotten about the whole idea, until my sister Steph just raised it again this afternoon.
Sure, the pressure's even greater now. I have to do something if I'm going to stop my father from acting on his word and giving the CEO role to my brother, but where am I going to find the right woman?
A woman with all those qualities and a woman who would be willing to take on the job.
Where the hell will I find one of those on short notice, in time to stall my father's plans?
Where do I even begin to look, come to that?
And then, just as I'm paying the taxi driver and stepping out of my cab, I see Jenna.
She's just a yard or so ahead of me, stalking up the steps toward the doors of my apartment block, anger in every step.
It makes her hair bounce, and her hips sashay like a cat.
A panther perhaps. Lithe, sexual, slinky, as if she's teleported here directly from the Brazilian rain forest, rather than walked up from the subway station.
All the noise from the traffic and people surrounding me fades away. It's as if there was only me and her, and these other millions of people no longer exist. Just a fiction. A background hum.
Lust pounds in my ears as memories flood my mind.
Her gasps and cries. Her grip on my shoulders, and the fucking insane wet heat that pulled me deeper inside her.
What is she doing here? Has she come to tempt me out of my mind again? Does she want a repeat performance?
I certainly do.
A horn blares louder than even New York's usual standards, and by cruel fate, she turns my way to look and she sees me.
She stops, pivots, and now she's coming toward me.
Her eyes speak of murder, not lust, telling me to scrap any idea of a repeat performance.
Yet, her anger's still strangely seductive. It arouses a dark heat within me. I feel myself twitch and stiffen in my pants.
"There you are," she says. "I've been looking for you."
Her eyes sparkle prettily in her anger, and it takes a second for me to stop staring at them enough to gather what few wits I can manage to find.
"Have you?" I manage to force out, doing all I can to keep a neutral, uninterested expression on my face.
But it isn't easy when all I want to do is grab her, throw her across my shoulders, and take her up to my apartment to have my wicked way with her again.
"Yes. We just got a message that your finance department isn't approving our expense report. What's up with that?"
Not sure what to say, and still only half registering what she's talking about, I stammer out something about me not having been at work this afternoon due to personal commitments, but she cuts in, rudely, ending my explanation mid-sentence.
"Listen," she hisses. "I don't give a damn what you've been up to this afternoon, and I'm not going to interrupt your evening at home, either, but we do need to talk.
I'll be at your office tomorrow morning, first thing.
Don't try to avoid me. Believe me, you can't get rid of me that easily.
" With that, she flashes me an expression that if looks could kill would certainly have left me for dead, turns on her heel, and heads back down Central Park West, her backside swaying provocatively as I watch, until eventually I can see her no more.
I stand on the sidewalk, my cock tented in my pants, and a strange ache of loneliness descending over me. What if she'd come up to the apartment? If those twenty or so minutes of sordid action over my office desk had been that good, what would a whole night of genuine lovemaking be like?
"Everything okay, sir?"
"What?" Startled, I look around, to see Alvaro, the Cuban doorman standing next to me, looking a little concerned for my wellbeing. I quickly pull myself together.
"Oh… yes, yes, just fine, Alvaro, thank you, just fine. Here," I hand him a fifty that I happen to find in my pocket, though I'm not really sure why. "That's for your concern."
"Well, thank you, Mr. Wolfe." His voice registers pleasant surprise.
To be honest, I'm surprised myself. I don't normally give out generous tips for no real reason.
Still, today has been a strange day all around, I think as we head up the steps.
Alvaro, all smiles and pleasantries, calls the elevator for me, and gives me a salute as I step inside.
It must be somewhere between floors eleven and seventeen when the thought hits me... Jenna Marlowe… could she be the one?
Could she play the role of my fake fiancée?