Chapter Sixteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I WANT ELOISE
EZRA
For the first time in my life, I’m afraid of a woman.
And not in the “I’m fearing for my life” type of way, although I probably should. But it’s more like, “Shit, she knows just how powerful she is” way.
The kicker is, I like it. I like that shit a lot.
It isn’t that I’ve pursued weak women. Or that weak women have pursued me. It’s just that, for some reason, most women seem to think their good looks and their ability to fuck are their superpowers.
Eloise is smarter than that. She plays my hand in ways she probably hasn’t even realized. I don’t chase women, sending them emails with tickets to the Caribbean attached to them. Hell, I don’t offer to help struggling bookstore owners keep them from going back to the bank, where they’ll probably end up anyway.
I stand up from my office chair, stretching as my eyes skate over the empty room. A large oak desk sits smack in the middle and the large leather chair I’d been sitting in are the only items in the room.
My penthouse in the city doesn’t offer much more in the way of items that I’d personally picked out. The rest was a result of my interior designer who was far too good at her job to keep me living like a bachelor.
I should bring Miley out here to help with this big empty house, but last I heard, she left the firm she was designing out of and was starting her own company. In the mess of it all, we’d lost touch.
On my desk sits the book I’d purchased from Eloise’s bookstore. I’d been reading it any chance I got, trying to find pieces of the woman who made me act in ways I never had before.
I’d used cheap tricks to get her to come to me. Well, not that I would characterize first class tickets to the Cayman Islands as cheap.
Our contract is a joke. It would never legally hold up, its conditions and agreements too vague to not have it fall down the rabbit hole where there is no such thing as legal prostitution. Even though I’m not soliciting her for sex.
I’m just trying to spend time with the woman. To get to know her. To help her.
To keep myself around her because I like how she challenges me.
I’ve had easy.
I want Eloise.
If the damn woman would answer my emails, I’d be able to explore this desire. I’m back for the weekend, and I want to see her.
As if on cue, I hear my front door slam as Eloise bellows my name.
I’m safe upstairs, smiling to myself.
But where’s the fun in that ? I reason, as I walk out of my office to meet her fury.