11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
My second errand of the day was anticlimactic compared to the first.
None of Victoria’s goons tried to run us off the road. There were no spies lurking about the hotel lobby with bad intentions on their mind. Tasha Davis met us in the parking lot, followed us in the elevator, waited outside of the door to Jessamyn’s suite “just in case.”
She needn’t have bothered.
Once she found out our decision, Jessamyn was almost absurdly eager to sign her soul away. With Saskia Klein on speaker and Mona with a handful of pre-filled documents, we got the deal done in record time. Jessamyn only asked for a few clarifications, which Saskia was more than happy to give her.
She got paid. She got her protection against legal ramifications. And in exchange, we got a woman willing to say, do and retract anything we wanted on pretty much any platform that would have her.
Jessamyn signed every page Mona put in front of her without reading any of them. More than anything else, that told me how frightened she was of Victoria Ruocchio. How eager she was to be under our umbrella, if only the furthest and least friendly corner of it.
Once Jessamyn finished the last page, Mona placed everything in her briefcase. “You are now an asset of the Avery Company,” she explained. “Congratulations.”
Jessamyn practically slumped over with relief.
“If you tell anyone about this arrangement, the indemnification disappears. And I will personally ensure that Miss Ruocchio has your most up to date contact information by the end of the current business day. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Jessamyn whispered.
“Good.” Mona snapped the briefcase closed.
“I’ll be in touch shortly with your new schedule.
You’ll be doing a few interviews, nothing major.
And nothing Miss Ruocchio will find out about ahead of time.
” She straightened up. “Miss Davis is just outside. She’ll be happy to drive you back to your car, or wherever it is you might like to go. ”
“Good,” Jessamyn said. “Thank you.”
Mona made a face. “Do not attempt to enter the Avery residence again.”
That should have been it, but I paused at the door of the suite. “Jessamyn?”
The blonde looked startled that I’d addressed her directly. “Yes, Jack?”
I weighed my words carefully.
“I don’t know if there’s any path to redemption for you,” I said, not wanting to lie to her directly. “But if there was, it would start with you finding out what Victoria’s planning to blow up in all our faces that has to do with Daniel Ramsey. Understood?”
She didn’t salute like Heather or Eva would, but only just. “Y-yes,” she insisted. “I will.”
Good.
We left the hotel room and let Tasha handle the whole “ferrying Jessamyn out” bit.
Mona was silent for most of the walk back to the car. She didn’t speak until we were out of the lobby proper, stepping into the chilly evening. “That woman’s our asset now,” she said.
“For better or worse.”
“For the foreseeable future,” Mona corrected. “Did you mean what you said in there about redemption?”
I thought it over for a long moment, picturing Samantha’s face.
“I meant the exact words I said,” I told Mona. “But as for forgiveness? No. Maybe that girl can turn it around and do good things some day. But if she does, she can do them far away from me and mine.”
“Well, she knows what’ll happen if she tries to play us,” Mona said. “Let’s hope she doesn’t try.”
I couldn’t help but agree.
Mona had a couple of surprises for me. First she tossed the keys to me when we reached the car, claiming she’d ‘done enough’ driving for the day. Maybe she just wanted me to get a taste of the excitement I got from being behind the wheel of my McLaren, even if her car wasn’t in the same league.
The second surprise came just as we’d just gotten into the BMW and buckled our seatbelts when she said, casually and without looking at me: “I hired that girl, by the way.”
I knew instantly what girl she meant, but I pretended not to. “We both just hired Jessamyn, Mona.”
Now she did look at me, her expression telling me she knew I was joking. “Not her. Caroline. From Morning Harbor.”
“The makeup girl?” The one who was so good with Kiki.
I pulled out of the parking lot, hitting the gas hard. The BMW wasn’t quite the sports car I was used to, but the roar of the engine beneath me still felt familiar and comforting. I was looking forward to getting this beast out on the highway.
“We exchanged information on the way out. She called me an hour after the broadcast. Said that what had happened today convinced her her time would be better spent elsewhere.”
I thought about the way Caroline had ripped the lead out of Yukiko’s battery pack to keep the Morning Harbor people from picking up any unfortunate ‘hot mic’ incidents.
Even then, I’d noted the casual, almost angry way she destroyed the studio’s property in order to protect my princess.
I wasn’t all that surprised she’d gotten second thoughts about her employer.
“I tripled her salary,” Mona said with a smirk. “Not that it was hard to do—you’d be shocked what that TV show pays their production assistants, or maybe you wouldn’t. Either way, she’s on board. She starts Monday.”
I took the next turn past a strip mall. “Doing what, exactly?”
Mona laughed. “She’s smart, she’s loyal, she knows how to calm at least one of your wives down and oh, right, she also does hair and makeup.
I’m going to have her at all the future interviews, making sure your wives’ appearance is completely on point.
We can figure out the official title later.
The important part is that she’s an Avery Company employee. ”
I nodded. “Funny, though.”
Mona stared at me, confused. “What’s funny?”
I let out a laugh before realizing Mona might not find it funny at all. “She’s an attractive woman and she seemed very interested in my wives and I. I kind of figured you wouldn’t want to add yet another potential girl to the harem.”
I meant it as a joke. I swear.
But I don’t think Mona took it that way.
She stared out the windshield for half a block, her expression unreadable.
Later on, I’d realize what was really going on behind that forcibly-calm, businesslike gaze, but in the moment I just thought she was choosing the right words to use to take me to the cleaners.
The last thing she needed today was for me to needle her about how close the two of us were getting, and now I’d really stepped in it—
“Pull over,” Mona said.
It caught me off-guard. “What?”
She gestured at the next intersection. “Turn right there,” she said, like doing so was every bit as important to her as acing the Morning Harbor interview. “There should be street parking.”
There was. Half a block past the intersection we found ourselves moving down a quiet residential street, the kind that always seemed to be a half-block or so away from the hustle and bustle of the city.
Two-story brownstones, streetlights, a dog park and an artisanal coffeeshop jockeying for space on the corner.
I found a wide space between two late-model SUVs and pulled the BMW into the spot, noting clinically that it was late enough that we didn’t need to put a quarter in the meter—
As soon as the car was no longer in motion, Mona unbuckled her seatbelt. She was across the center console and in my arms in a single heartbeat.
It wasn’t the first time one of my women made out with me in the front seat in the middle of a neighborhood, but it was the first time I hadn’t seen it coming.
I froze up for a fraction of a second in surprise, then biology took over.
The instincts I’d honed through courting and marrying three different women snapped into place and I was holding Mona against me, one hand clutching her dirty blonde locks close to the roots and the other on the small of her back.
She moaned against me, something inside of her cracking in two, literally shuddering from how turned on she was—
Mona pulled back. Just a bit, just enough to look me in the eyes. Hers were dazed.
“You have three wives,” she whispered, like she was trying to admonish herself. “You have a half-dozen women half my age fighting over your next threesome. And I just jumped into your arms like a fucking coed and started making out with you in the passenger seat of my own car.”
I let out a little chuckle. “Yes. You did.”
Mona closed her eyes. “I’ve been telling myself this was just professional pride.
That I’m far from the first operator to fall for a client.
That I was just spending too much time around all that sex, and that if I’m being completely honest it’s been a very long time since I got properly laid, and that it was a stupid little crush… ”
“It’s not stupid,” I told her. “Both of us know that.”
The shark peered through Mona’s eyes. “I am too old for those girls. I have a decade plus on every woman in your harem. I have buried bodies for your mentor.” She paused, swallowing hard.
“I’ve watched you build a family I wouldn’t ever be part of, and I thought I’d made my peace with being on the outside looking in. ”
“You’re already part of this family.”
Mona blinked, her professional composure dissolving.
“Then I elbowed you in the ribs and told you to go out on that stage, and you did it. I thought we were done for, Jack. I was already thinking about which conglomerates would pay the most for the Avery Company’s office space.
And then I saw you sit down next to Yukiko.
And then you did what you did, and I thought my heart was going come right out of my chest.”
“Mona.”
She looked at me and sighed. “Good grief…”
And then we were kissing again.
It lasted longer this time. We were nearing second base when Mona finally pulled back, gasping and flushed. This time she scooted back from the center console, returning to her seat.
“We shouldn’t,” she said, reasserting herself.
My erection pulsed against my thigh. “We absolutely should,” I told her.
She smiled. “I don’t mean we shouldn’t at all,” she said. “But not today.”
“Why not today?”
“Because Daniel Ramsey is in a hospital bed. Because you’ve got one wife sitting on the couch right now pouring her heart out to her mother and another probably eating ice cream directly out of the carton from the stress and the angel of your house is in the hospital with her mother praying over Zoom with Reverend Kate McCleary. ”
It was an exhaustive list. I had to hand it to her.
“Today is for them. Not me.”
“It’s not about numbers,” I told Mona. “You know that, right? It never has been.”
A smile peeked through Mona’s expression.
“I think I know that better than just about anyone else, Mr. Avery.”
I couldn’t help but grin back. “So, you and me…”
Mona’s hands went to her lap. For a moment, she looked no older than any of the coeds waiting for me back at home. Funny how the excitement of new romance had the power to do that to a girl. To a woman.
“Yes,” Mona whispered. “I want to be part of it. I very much do, Jack.”
I let that hang in the air for a few moments. Then I nodded.
“Good,” I said, my hands going back to the wheel. “In that case, I’m more than willing to let you set the pace, Mona. But I am going to say one thing.”
She waited, about as nervous as I’d ever seen her.
“If you keep teasing me like you just did right now,” I said, nodding at the center console she’d been splayed over a few moments ago, “I might not be able to take it.”
Mona laughed. Loud and long. By the time she finished, she was leaning in my direction and had her hand on top of mine. It wasn’t quite a marriage proposal—hell, it wasn’t even really a one-night stand.
But whatever had been melting between us ever since I’d hired her as my PR person had finally dissolved.
She looked comfortable with me in a way I’d only seen in flashes—with her hand on my knee on the living room couch, teasing me in the middle of negotiations. It was new. It was a little exciting.
I liked it.
“Don’t you dare pout,” Mona told me, sounding more than a little like her old self. “There are seven women at the Avery residence right now chomping at the bit to bang you. Something tells me you’ll survive a night or two of having to pine for me from afar.”
I laughed. “Alright, you’ve got me there.”
“I do.”
I paused, my hand on the ignition button. “So what happens with you and me?” I asked, doing my best confused bachelor routine. “Do I book a hotel room and tell my wives I’m away on business? Do we actually go on a date?”
At the word date, Mona’s face did something I wanted to make it do as often as humanly possible.
“I’ll put my head together with your CEO wife,” Mona said wryly. “Something tells me she won’t have any trouble moving your busy schedule around a bit to accommodate me.”
I knew she wouldn’t. Nothing made Kiki happier than getting a new woman into bed with me—especially if she got to participate. It was half the reason this whole arrangement functioned in the first place.
I started the engine and we made our way back to the Avery residence, Mona’s hand in mine the whole way home. The warmth of what had just happened filled me like a strong drink, making me smile as the headlights of the BMW cut through the night.
Seven women waiting for me, chomping at the bit to hop into bed.
It would take me quite a while to realize what that really meant.
Because even if I’d run the numbers in my head, I would’ve gotten it wrong. Tasha was still escorting Jessamyn Fawkes, which meant there were only six women at home I considered eligible to 'bang': Yukiko, Samantha, Maria, Lakshmi, Heather and Eva.
At the time, I thought she'd just added Marcie to the list without thinking.
But Marcie wasn’t at the house. She was at the hospital.
Mona wouldn't make that mistake.
She'd quietly added someone else to the count. Deliberately.
And of course it flew right over my head.