Chapter 15
LOCKE
When I finally woke up, the sun was high over the house, and I felt much better. Jett was long gone, thank fuck. I wasn’t interested in morning-after awkwardness, and right now, I needed caffeine more than an orgasm.
“Good morning, Concetta,” I said, strolling into the dining room and heading for the table out on the balcony. “I would kill for a coffee and breakfast, please.”
She flashed me a smile. “I heard about your late night. We will have something right out for you.”
I held back from asking where Jett was, but a few minutes later, he was the one who appeared with my coffee.
“For shame, Locke,” he said with a grin. “Don’t you know American coffee preferences kill an Italian’s soul? Your chef is back there sobbing into your omelette.”
I shrugged and reached for it. “He hates me anyway, so my coffee order can’t make it worse.” I took a sip and groaned. “Thank you.”
He propped his ass against the balcony railing.
This time, he wore white linen pants and a navy tank top, fitted enough to show off the outline of every single muscle in his chest and abdomen.
“I checked in with Minnie at the office to see if there was anything urgent, and there isn’t.
She did say you have a call at five this afternoon—Italy time—but that she will try to handle anything else that comes your way. ”
I blinked at him in surprise, replaying the words in my head since I hadn’t been focused on what he was saying. “Uh, thank you. That… wasn’t necessary.”
Jett tilted his head in mock confusion. “Isn’t that what your assistant is supposed to do?”
I shot him a look and took another sip of coffee, keeping my eyes firmly away from his body. “I need to talk to Concetta about the room assignments for our guests.”
“Already done,” he said. “Only, she wanted to warn you that Emil Sorenson and his wife are very loud in bed and—”
“Jett, you are telling tales!” Concetta said with a laugh, arriving through the open doors and setting my omelette down on the table.
“I said he and his wife are not quiet guests. They sometimes argue and stay up late with requests for additional drinks. We used to put them near your grandfather’s suite so they wouldn’t bother the other guests, but remember, your grandfather was hard of hearing. ”
Jett met my eyes. “Anyway, since the room they’ll be in is closest to mine, not yours, I think it’ll be fine. But Concetta wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”
I nodded, wondering if anyone would end up sleeping in Jett’s bedroom at all. At this rate, the man seemed to have staked his territory in the center of my personal space.
Surprisingly, I hadn’t minded sharing a bed with him, even though I usually preferred sleeping alone.
“I live in the city. Noise isn’t a problem. Besides, Jett’s right. It probably won’t be heard in my bedroom. If he wants to be the one to suffer their marital spats, so be it.”
She nodded and turned away but stopped before disappearing back through the doors. She returned and reached into the pocket of her skirt to hand something to Jett. “I almost forgot. Put this on the burns. It will help.”
He took the small piece of aloe plant from her hands and beamed at her. “This is from Roberto, isn’t it?”
She nodded, waved her hand over her shoulder, and disappeared into the house.
I watched in shock as Jett casually swiped the cut end of the aloe leaf over the tips of his finger. As the caffeine finally hit my brain, I realized what must have happened.
I shoved my chair back and stepped close to take his hand. “You burned yourself? How the fuck did he let you close enough to the stove for that? I told you not to go in there. He’s a menace. You know what? He’s fired. We’ll have to find someone else for the tournament.”
The tips of three of his fingers were redder than the others. I took the aloe from him and held his hand, palm up, smoothing the slick gel over the reddened fingers so he didn’t have to try and use his nondominant hand to apply it.
He smiled at me. “Stand down. Do you think I’m stupid enough to get close to Roberto’s stove? I accidentally touched a piece of metal that had been baking in the sun. It’s fine. No big deal. It’s my own fault for snooping.”
I glanced up at him. “What do you mean, snooping?”
He turned slightly to point down by the pool, where there was a small flower garden.
“Ah. The little plaques by the roses,” I said with a sigh. Each metal sign was engraved with the varietal and name and date of its acquisition. “I burned my leg on one when I was five. I would replace them, but my grandmother loved them.”
“One of the rosebushes is from the Queen of England,” he said, a tinge of awe in his voice. “Another is from Vraj Nanda. Do you know who that is?”
I nodded, returning my attention to his hurt fingers. “You’ll meet him in a few days. He’s one of the Paxis players.”
When he didn’t respond, I looked up at him. “What?”
“Vraj Nanda, the guy who wrote Stillness is a River? He’s part of your nerd herd?”
Jett had refused to conform to my expectations at every turn during our short acquaintance, so maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that he was familiar with Stillness is a River.
But the way he spoke the title with a hushed reverence, like he’d not only heard of the book but read it and been impressed by it, hit me hard.
It made me wonder if Jett was a reader, and if so, what books he liked to read, and whether we’d read any of the same things and could discuss them. It made me wonder what other hobbies and interests Jett had, and how much there was to him that I didn’t know—
Alarm bells clanged in my mind.
The reason I’d brought Jett—a sex worker, a former go-go dancer, a man—to Italy was so I wouldn’t have to divide my attention between my sex partner and the Paxis tournament.
The whole point was to bring someone who knew the score and was being well compensated, so there’d be no expectations on either side.
And now here I was, distracted and intrigued when I most needed to get my head in the game.
I released Jett’s hand and tossed the remains of the aloe leaf on the table before returning to my meal. “I’m really hoping you don’t refer to them that way when they arrive,” I said stiffly.
He took the seat next to mine. “Who else is coming? Besides the ones you already mentioned on the way here.”
I swallowed a bite of omelette before answering. “I thought you went over the room assignments with Concetta.”
“I did. And she said things like, ‘The Hartmanns are in the yellow suite,’ and, ‘Saleem and his wife prefer a view of the garden.’” Jett rolled his eyes. “I guess I didn’t catch on to the fact that ‘the Nandas’ referred to a famous spiritual leader.”
I shrugged. “I told you it was a gathering of powerful people.”
He waited for me to say more, but I didn’t. He’d see soon enough who else was coming.
And now that I thought about it, it was probably for the best that he didn’t know too much in advance.
While I didn’t think Jett would betray the NDA he’d signed with me, I’d be stupid not to remember that he was a player who’d probably learned to manipulate others for his own survival.
His entire career was about making men like me feel wanted. Feel seen and understood. That was how he got paid.
This was a job to him.
I was a job to him.
The reminder soured my mood, but it was necessary.
“I have a lot of calls today,” I said, shoving another bite of food in my mouth. “You’ll need to find a way to entertain yourself.”
Jett frowned. “I can help with your calls, if you want. Just put me to work.”
I shook my head once. “These are private calls. If you can’t amuse yourself, ask Concetta what help she needs for the house party.”
As I took a sip of coffee and gazed out at the water in the distance, I felt his eyes on me. I knew he was trying to figure out the reason for my abrupt mood change.
No explanations necessary, I reminded myself.
“Sure,” Jett finally said, a sliver of annoyance clear in his sticky-sweet tone. “I mean, of course, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”
I continued to eat for another minute, the silence uncomfortable as fuck. My skin prickled with awareness. Of how he sat, how he moved. Every small sound of his breathing.
He leaned forward, and it took all my self-control not to tilt in his direction. Instead, I looked out at the water again. The endless stretch of impossible blue, several shades darker than Jett’s eyes.
My skin felt like it was hooked up to an electric wire, the current so low I could barely tell it was there without stretching the limits of hyperawareness.
Jett stood abruptly and turned to push in his chair. I snuck a look at him, wondering what kind of underwear he could possibly be wearing with those pants. They were virtually transparent. The shape of his legs could be seen through the airy material.
His feet were surprisingly bare. The linen pooled around them and dragged on the floor a little. When he turned back to me, my eyes went to the loose drawstring at his waist.
He stepped closer and studied me for a moment. Maybe I’d been wrong about his eyes. They seemed the exact color of the Mediterranean at the moment.
Anger suited him.
“Come find me if you have need of me, Mr. Maris.”
And then he turned and walked away, his lazy gait doing criminal things to his ass in those pants.
It was clear he wasn’t happy.
But he was here on my terms. And he was an employee.
Anything else would be impossible.