Chapter 25
JACK
I want to devour her in an all-consuming kiss, and give her what she asked for, but she breaks the kiss, moving away from my hold and says, “As hot and passionate as it would be, I can’t do this.”
“Excuse me?” I ask trying to restart my foggy brain.
“I just explained to you why we aren’t compatible. I wasn’t feeding you a line to get laid.”
I close my eyes for a second, taking my time to think about her words and focus on her. Either she’s not ready, or she’s dumping me even after I said let’s move past what happened at the restaurant.
“We had a fight,” I explain.
“You want to call it a fight?”
I nod. “You can’t just disregard a relationship because there’s a miscommunication. You talk about it and work through it.”
“Even if I’m a mess and you’re—” she shrugs, “working through your own shit.”
I smile at her and nod. “We had a bad night.” I rise from my seat walking around the apartment.
I finally stop right in front of the double glass doors that guard a home office.
“Is this your office?” I ask, pointing at the large room.
She nods.
“You’re a psychiatrist?” I try to fish for information. Tell me who you are, Amy. “A life coach,” I fake guessing. “One of those personal shoppers.”
“Neither one of those.” She licks her lips. “Maybe I’m a stripper.”
She begins to take off her jacket slowly. “You caught me. I usually charge five hundred an hour.” She draws quotation marks up in the air. “You owe me a lot of money just for the couple of dates we’ve had. Add in the text messaging and I think you owe me your car.”
“But you haven’t even taken off your clothes yet,” I protest, trying to play along with her.
“What can I say, I was never good at the stripping shit. That’s why I didn’t take the job,” she says thoughtfully.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
She shakes her head. “I did try it once, once upon a time.”
“Stripping?” I repeat, choking on my own saliva.
I can’t imagine this innocent woman undressing for a living, although, I can picture her being wild in bed.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, or something like that,” she says.
“My parents disowned me when I transferred to another college. I just couldn’t continue where I was, but they cut me off financially.
My options were limited. But, I’d practiced ballet for years.
My legs were strong, and I am flexible.”
Strong, flexible, and with that fucking body.
“I got the job, but they wanted more than just dancing.” She swallows hard and gives me a knowing smile.
“They didn’t!” I roared.
“It was part of the job,” they claimed. “If I wanted in, I had to be all in. That’s when I decided to work full time even if I couldn’t study full time. I got a job as an assistant.”
“An assistant?” I ask confused about the shift from stripper to office employee.
“Yes, and it changed my life,” she says excitedly. “The company that hired me was very high-tech. They needed several assistants, but didn’t have the money to pay more than one.”
She smiles. “I offered to do it all if they let me multitask and organize my own workflow. What I did was work my class schedule around their schedules. Once I had everything in a blueprint, I was able to handle it all. My grades weren’t straight A’s anymore but who, cared.
“By the second semester, I had free time to add another client. It was a temporary job, but he recommended me to a friend. By the end of college, I had five clients. Laura, my best friend Alistair and I, all shared an apartment. I had enough money to do an MBA. My roster was growing, and I wanted to know how to manage my own business. During my second year, I established VAES, and a couple of years ago I went global.”
“Do you still work as an assistant?”
She smiles and rolls her eyes.
I look at her and cross my heart. “Nothing you say will leave this room, I swear.”
“Only for special people,” she says.
“What does a client have to do to get you?
“You’re trying to hire me?” she gives me a challenging glare.
“No, I have the best assistant in the world, but thank you for the offer.”
She looks around her office, sighs and says, “Only my oldest client knows who I am. The rest think they’ve hired someone else. They would demand more from me if they knew I was the owner.”
“So, your oldest client is your favorite?”
“Actually,” she says, “I’m more attached to my newest. He’s not my favorite per say, but we have a bond.”
She puts a finger to her lips and says, “that’s between us. It’s one of my biggest secrets.”
She gives me a suspicious glare. “We’re not discussing my company.”
Amy fucking Walker doesn’t exist. My mind spins with conflicting thoughts.
I want to ask her who she really is and, understand why she uses a pseudonym.
Does she know who I am? I realize that I’m not ready for those answers because I’m not sure if I can handle the truth.
There are too many emotions swirling inside me.
Before I can decide to end this or move forward, I need to figure out what I want.
“I have to go,” I say hesitantly.