Chapter 7
SILAS
“The meeting is at ten in the general manager’s office on the third floor.
I sent you an agenda of talking points about the merging of employees,” Bradley said.
I had him on a video call, but I couldn’t see his face since I was looking at a different window on my laptop scanning the agenda I’d opened from his email.
“Do you need me to give you bios on each of the Hyport leadership who will be there?”
“No.”
“After, a car will take you to lunch with the owner of the boutique hotel in Frederikshavn. She’s made the trip down from the north to meet you.”
He pronounced the town completely differently than how it looked written in my travel itinerary. I didn’t speak Danish, but it sounded like Bradley did.
“Name?”
He shared her name and a brief bio.
“After?”
“Airport. Flight back to Denver. Then you have three hours of meetings, meet-and-greets and–”
“Send that info to me tomorrow and I’ll go over it on the plane.”
“Will do.”
My cell rang and I grabbed it from the side table. “It’s Dex,” I said.
“Tell him good game yesterday. Two goals and an assist.”
I’d worked with Bradley long enough to know he was sharing the stats, like the amazing assistant he was, so I could praise my brother regardless that I’d missed the game.
“Thanks, Bradley.”
The video call ended and I swiped my cell.
“Where the hell are you?” Dex asked right away.
“Denmark.” I slapped my laptop closed. A quick glance out the hotel room window offered nothing but inky black.
This far north, it was dark early this time of year.
It didn’t matter to me because my internal clock had no idea what time it was.
All I knew was that I wasn’t tired, which meant jet lag was fucking with me. What else was new?
Since the summer, Mav was content with the James Inn projects and nothing more.
He hadn’t stepped foot in the Denver corporate office in three months.
He wasn’t involved in this Hyport sale. Theo and Dex never had a hand in the business.
That left me to carry on James Corp, to run the family hotel business.
And grow it, the latest step of that with the Hyport deal.
That meant travel. That meant being a better juggler than a clown at the circus.
“Jesus. You travel more than I do,” Dex pointed out. “Is this all for that merger?”
That was saying a lot since my not-so-little brother was a professional hockey player and pretty much on the road eight months out of the year. But he stayed mostly in North America. Me? Lately, I was on every continent but.
“Yeah.”
“That’s the deal that Dad fucked up, right?”
I sighed. “Yes. He slept with the owner’s personal assistant. Among other things.”
“Figures,” Dex said on a grunt. We both knew how much of a philanderer and total dickhead our father was. He fucked anything that wore a skirt. The younger the better. He hadn’t cared if his actions were far from ethical or completely immoral and totally inappropriate.
Not only had he slept with that assistant, he took his merger team and a few from Hyport Asia to a brothel in Thailand. The place had specialized in barely legal women. Yeah, that kind of not-safe-for-work shenanigans.
The deal hadn’t gone through, obviously, and the Hyport team had wanted nothing to do with James Corp. Until me. Until I’d buried my father’s antics right along with him.
“How long are you there?”
“Meetings are done for today. I have things in the morning, then I’m headed back to Denver. For a day. Then I go to Singapore to meet the Hyport Asia division.”
It was tempting for me to head up to Hunter Valley when I got to Denver. A quick flight to Montana and I could see Eve again. Pick up where we left off.
“Why not go the other way straight to Singapore? It’d be a lot faster.”
“Taking up geography in your free time?” I stood and went to the tray of coffee and spandauer that had been brought to me when I returned to my room. I grabbed one of the pastries laced with cinnamon–my favorite one and always asked for it when I stayed here–and took a bite.
Fuck, they were good. Even if it was late at night.
He laughed. “I’m spending all my free time balls deep in my woman trying to knock her up.”
I didn’t really need to picture Dex and Lindy going at it, but Dex had always been an oversharer.
Now that he was getting some on the regular, and with the woman he was keeping…
hell, he’d married her, he was being an asshole about it.
Or he didn’t really think about the fact that I was the only brother left who wasn’t having sex.
Okay, once and in the back room of a bar. A spectacular, desk-sex quickie.
Dex wanted babies and a picket fence with Lindy and they weren’t wasting any time making that happen. I figured he had a few years left with the Silvermines, then he’d settle down in Hunter Valley and be a peewee hockey coach for the rest of his life.
“You need to find yourself one.”
I frowned. “I hope you only mean sex because I have no intention of knocking any woman up,” I said, my mouth full. No way. I was all for kids, but I didn’t want a Baby Mama. But sex? Oh, I’d go back for round two with Eve. My dick twitched at the thought.
“What the hell are you eating?”
“A Danish.” I stared at the sugary snack.
I skipped the coffee because caffeine was the last thing I needed.
Although I probably didn’t need a sugar rush either.
I’d sleep on the plane. After I went through the latest itinerary, agenda, contract, or whatever else Bradley sent to me to review.
“Although in Denmark they’re not called Danishes. Go figure.”
“I thought it was night there.”
“It is.”
“Back to making babies. You don’t have to pull the goalie. Just show up for practice.”
I rolled my eyes. “You and your hockey analogies.”
“Your dick isn’t meant for just procreating. You can whip it out and fuck with it every once in a while.”
“I did.” I said, shoving the last piece of spandauer in my mouth.
“This year?”
I sighed, flopped down on a reading chair by the window that overlooked Copenhagen. With sugary fingers I worked open the top button on my shirt and loosened my tie. I didn’t want to wonder why my brother thought I hadn’t had sex at any time this year.
“Before I left.”
“You were in Hunter Valley then.” He paused, clearly processing. “Wait. Wait… who the hell did you sleep with in Hunter Valley?”
“One-night stand.” I pictured Eve, bent over that desk with her dress flipped up, cowboy boots on, and that peach of an ass all perfect and…
fuck. Now I was hard. And getting harder as I thought of how her pussy felt clamping down on my dick as she came.
How she’d tasted when I’d eaten her out mid-fuck.
The sound of her whimpers and moans of pleasure… she was a fucking siren.
He whistled. “So you’re not going to see her again.”
I ran my hand down my face, felt a few crumbs fall. “We fucked. She thanked me. She walked out practically before I got the condom off.”
“That’s it?”
“Are you expecting me to send you an engraved invitation to our wedding? We had a few drinks and things got… hot.”
Hot? She’d been scorching. Right there with me.
Bold. Kinky, or at least a little bit. She had a touch of voyeur in her.
Someone had opened the door and caught us.
I’d had my mouth on her slick pussy, feeling her orgasm on my tongue.
The entire pro ski team could have come in and supervised and I wouldn’t have cared.
She’d liked being beneath me. Really liked my dick. She’d gotten off on the possibility of being caught. Twice.
Then she thanked me and left.
Wham, bam, thank you, sir.
“Yeah, but you could have coaxed her back into your bed. You’re CEO. Use your negotiation skills.”
I frowned. “You want me to negotiate sex? Takes the fun out of it doesn’t it?”
“You’re good at mergers, so I’d think you’d be good at this kind of merger.”
“Jesus, Dex. Are you drunk?”
“No. Merge in bed. Best merger you’ll get these days.”
“No bed. We did it in the back of the bar,” I clarified.
“You… um… wow.” I hadn’t heard him sputter in a while.
“Right. Fine, it wasn’t a one-night stand. It was a quickie.”
“Yeah, gotcha. What’s her name? Maybe we all know her.”
“I’m not telling you her name. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m in fucking Denmark and then I’ll be in Asia. It’s not like her pussy’s anywhere near here for round two.”
“But it could be.”
I flopped my head back against the chair. “It was a quickie. I know barely anything about her.”
“But do you want to know more?”
Yes. Yes, I did. I absolutely, one hundred percent, wanted more. Not just sex. I wanted to know about her family that drove her to drink wine alone. Wanted to fuck her while we were face-to-face so I could watch her when she came. I wanted to do–
A fuck ton.
The connection. The chemistry. Off. The. Charts.
Was I like Dex getting one look at Lindy and buying her a ring? No. But I was all in for more. Except–
“Doesn’t matter, Dex. I’m based in Denver, not in Hunter Valley, and I’m all over the world from one day to the next.”
“This Hyport sale doesn’t have to happen. I think James Corp’s five hundred hotels, you’d think–”
“Five hundred and sixty-three.”
He scoffed. “Right, more to my point. You’d think we had enough money.”
“It’s not about the money,” I countered immediately. I was insistent on this deal and for reasons completely opposite of why any other CEO would want to take over another billion-dollar company. To give my father the fucking middle finger.
Now he sighed. “I know you’re trying to clean up Dad’s mess, but does it really matter?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “It’s important to me that this deal with Hyport goes through. I want to right the wrong that Dad made. It’s all about integrity. Honor.”
“Not fucking the assistant,” he added.
“Exactly. I’m cleaning up the image. Everything Rated G. No sex parties. Nothing inappropriate. No talk of two-person showers in the suites,” I added so he’d know how tame and buttoned-up this all had to be.
“Shit, dude. Don’t go there.”
“Robert Hyport knows Dad as the fuck up that fucked everything. He knows me as the CEO who gets shit done. Who makes money. No kinky shit. No mixing sex and business.”
“Okay, so don’t mix them. You can still have the woman from Hunter Valley.”
“Not when my dick and her pussy aren’t in the same time zone.” Unfortunately.
He laughed, but I didn’t think he found me funny. “You don’t think I know about long distance relationships? The only thing that doesn’t work from far away is making a baby. Otherwise, it’s all possible. I have two words for you: Video call sex.”
“Great,” I muttered. “Now I have an image of you jacking off to a computer camera.”
“That’s not all we do,” he said, his usual mischief lacing his words.
I rubbed my eyes and wished sleep would come soon. “Fucker.”
“All I’m saying is if you want her, you’ll make it happen.”
“I met a woman in a bar. In. A. Bar.”
“Was she a hooker?”
I pulled my cell from my ear, stared at it for a second. “What? No.”
“Then there’s a chance.”
“You’re saying I can’t have a relationship with a hooker?”
“Do you want a relationship with a hooker?”
I had to laugh. “Where the hell is this conversation going?”
“You said it wasn’t going to work.”
“How many one-night stands have you had? Wait… how many quickies have you had?”
He grunted. Yeah, that was what I thought. His rookie days in pro hockey had to have been filled with puck bunnies and quick fucks.
“How many of them did you think of after you zipped up and walked away?”
He still didn’t say anything, so I pushed on.
“Then why are you all up in my business?”
“Because you’re you, not a pro athlete with women offering their panties and BJs.”
“Well, no puck bunnies around here. I’m CEO of James Corp. A relationship isn’t happening. I have a to-do list a mile long. Hotels to run. I sign the paychecks for tens of thousands of people so they can buy groceries. I have a shit ton of responsibility.”
My job was my life. My life was in Denmark. Singapore. Wherever. Definitely not in Eve’s perfect, tight, wet, amazing pussy.
“You took a break from that responsibility, from the Hyport deal, long enough to fuck in a bar once, you can do it again.”
“I don’t want to have a string of quickies. I’m too old for that shit.”
I had no idea why I was arguing with him about this. Maybe it was because I really wanted Eve, wanted more of her and not just face down over a desk, but was cranky because I couldn’t have her and he was rubbing my face in it.
“Whatever, dude. You, your right hand and your dick, have fun tonight. Whisper sexy words in Danish to yourself as you jack off.”
I hung up to him laughing. The asshole.