Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
The valet barely had time to reach for the door before I stepped out. As I buttoned my suit jacket, I took in the scene—cameras flashing, red carpet rolled out, wealth on full display. Completely predictable.
My gaze swept over the entrance of the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills like I was assessing a battlefield. Because that’s exactly what it was and why I was here, attending yet another event hosted by Jameston.
Two this month already. Not even I hosted that many fucking events back-to-back. And this one? A celebration for the opening of the building he’d just purchased next to mine.
I exhaled slowly. Give me a fucking break. I knew the man was a jackass in business, but this? This was him, blatantly announcing it to all of us himself.
So no, I wasn’t buying into any of this bullshit. And the only reason I was here—at yet another one of his galas—was because men like him didn’t throw events like this to celebrate. They hosted them to position, to show, and to signal.
This wasn’t about a building, it was about presence, and the guest list confirmed it. This wasn’t a welcome party… it was a message.
He wasn’t visiting the West Coast. The dumb bastard was planting himself here. Permanently.
“Colton,” I greeted as I stepped inside.
My brother stood just beyond the entrance, surrounded by a group of young, polished heiresses.
“Titus,” he returned easily. “Jim and Spence insisted we sit at their table.”
I glanced at the women, offering a brief, polite nod before pulling him away.
“Tonight isn’t the night we take someone home,” I said under my breath.
Colton smirked. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
My gaze moved across the room again, taking in the players.
“Why the hell are Jim and Spence here if this bastard is positioning himself against their firm?” I muttered.
“Same reason we are,” Colton said.
I nodded once.
“Wyatt should be here,” I added. “If he wasn’t closing that Madrid deal, I’d have dragged him out just to read this room.”
My attention shifted, locking briefly on a Saudi prince across the floor. Even that was telling.
“Titus.”
I turned slightly.
“Jim,” I acknowledged. “One would imagine we were at one of your events to fund—”
“Bullshit,” Jim said after a sip of his bourbon. “Everyone knows the man seems to be putting on a show of wealth like you would, my good man.”
I grinned, taking a sip of the bourbon set in front of me. “This is true; however, I don’t host events to celebrate the grand opening of a building complex for my tenants.”
“Maybe he’s just appreciative,” Jim’s wife, Avery, said, sitting next to him.
I glanced up to see Natalia following closely behind—with a very familiar face at her side. One I was not expecting to see again.
She wore a strapless dress that didn’t compete with her beauty—it enhanced it. Not that I needed the reminder. I already knew exactly how stunning she was, considering my team—the one I’d nearly fired last week—had hired her for my event in Monaco.
That wasn’t what caught me off guard. It was seeing her here.
Her eyes locked with mine as I took in the way her hair fell in loose waves down her back, and then she moved with composed grace as she took the seat across from me.
I was well aware that my gaze affected people—men in business and women in general—especially when I didn’t bother to look away. Whether I was assessing a deal or deciding if I wanted someone in my bed that night, the intensity tended to do its job.
The interesting thing about her was that her chocolate eyes never wavered under it.
“So, are we just going to stare at each other all night and pretend we haven’t already met?” she asked with a smile, fully aware that our little stare-off had somehow drawn the attention of everyone at the table.
“Forgive me,” I said, highly irritated that I was somehow falling into a trance. I’d been caught between her beauty and her ability to challenge me in a way no one ever had the audacity to.
“Something wrong with my dress?” she continued, catching my gaze as it drifted down her delicate neck, to the curve of her cleavage, and the way the fabric was tailored to accentuate every flawless line beneath it.
In an attempt to recover from how foolish I must’ve looked to the grinning audience at the table, I took a slow sip of my bourbon and nodded toward Jim and Spencer, who were off to the side whispering something to my brother.
Probably some business I needed to be paying attention to—but at the moment, the only woman who had ever managed to disarm me had my full attention.
I had no idea what it was about her. Maybe it was the challenge or the fact that she didn’t flirt or cower to me. Most women were more than happy to have my attention, but this one seemed to meet it head-on in a way I had no business liking.
It made her just as dangerous as she’d been to me on my yacht. I needed to end this now.
So I would end it the only way I knew how—brutally.
“I find nothing wrong with the dress, hermosa,” I grinned, feeling myself return to normal, “I just presumed you were the type of event planner who dressed more…” I searched for the right words, “appropriately for the event you’re hosting.”
“Ah, you presumed that, did you?” she smiled back as I spied Avery and Nat, both to her right, covering their smiles.
I waved my hand out toward her, “Unless Jameston insisted you dress this way for an event that is entirely unwarranted.”
“I can assure you, Mr. Hawk,” she countered back, “no one tells me how to dress for any event I plan.”
“Well—”
“And,” she cut me off, after a sip of her champagne, “definitely not a man—any man—for that matter. And this event—”
“Let me guess, you charged the bastard five hundred thousand dollars to orchestrate it for him?” I said, cutting her off.
She smiled, and the way her bright red lips sipped her champagne left me struggling to keep my composure. How the fuck was this woman daring to confront me?
“Before you two eat each other alive and waste your energy sparring,” Jim interrupted, “I think I’ll have the men join me at the bar so we can discuss where our focus truly needs to be.”
I rose, welcoming the break from the woman who was irritating me almost as much as she intrigued me.
Spencer clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve never seen a woman throw you off your game quite like that.”
“She charged me half a million dollars to run one event,” I muttered. “I’d call that throwing anyone off.”
Colton laughed. “She also saved your ass in Monaco.”
“I’ve already acknowledged that.”
“No,” Colton corrected. “You acknowledged the event succeeded. That’s not the same thing.”
Jim took a slow sip of his bourbon. “Whether you like it or not, Cat has a reputation that commands those fees.”
I looked at him. “She’s not here because she’s working tonight,” he continued. “She’s here because she’s one of Jameston’s tenants. This welcome gala is for the businesses leasing in the building.”
Jim set his bourbon on the bar.
“Cat isn’t what concerns me tonight,” he said, eyes shifting toward the opposite side of the ballroom.
“Christian Jameston,” I said when I followed Jim’s line of sight.
His father, Lowell Jameston, stood near the ballroom entrance, shaking hands and smiling for photographers.
Christian lingered a few feet behind him.
“What about his old man Lowell?” I asked. “Should he be a concern as well?”
Jim barely glanced over. “Lowell?” He almost smiled. “My father buried Lowell thirty years ago.”
“I don’t think Jim’s lost a minute of sleep over that man since,” Spencer confirmed.
Jim took another sip of bourbon. “Howard Mitchell and Collin’s father made sure Lowell learned exactly what happens when you try to muscle into Southern California.”
“So he’s not a threat?” Colton asked.
Jim shook his head. “No.” His gaze settled on Christian instead. “The father’s trying to relive the past. The son’s trying to rewrite it.”
That made me look at Christian differently.
“He’s the one rebuilding the brokerage,” Jim continued, “and he’s young enough to convince himself he can succeed where his father couldn’t.”
Spencer folded his arms. “Overconfidence usually makes people careless.”
Jim nodded once. “Exactly.”
I studied Christian as he laughed with a group of investors. “Have we looked into him?”
“Not enough,” Jim admitted. “But we will.”
Christian looked across the ballroom as though he already knew we were talking about him. Our eyes met, and he smiled. Not politely. Deliberately.
“Well…” Jim said as he finished his bourbon. “I suppose our evening just became more interesting.”
“Indeed,” Spencer said as Christian approached.
The kid had grown up to be good-looking, despite the braces and the acne that I was sure would scar him for life.
“Hawk,” he said, approaching me as if he and I had history.
“And you are?” I answered, not giving the man the satisfaction.
“Oh, forgive me,” he practically mocked, and extended his hand. “Christian Jameston, you were my idol growing up as a kid.”
In this business, if you were good—and I fucking was—you could read an enemy before they even became one. That’s why I chose to stare at his hand rather than shake it.
“Interesting,” I answered. “I’m sure I was only in college when you were a boy, so how you’d find a way to idolize me is beyond me.”
“Well, you know,” he said, eyes flicking briefly over the men in my company, though it was clear he wasn’t here for them.
“You slept with any and every heiress you wanted,” he added, but his smile didn’t quite reach his dull blue eyes.
“So, I studied everything you did. I wanted that life. And that’s why my father’s giving me the keys to rebuild our family name out here. ”
Jim stayed quiet, simply studying the man, as did the rest of the group.
“Then I presume Mr. Mitchell should be worried that someone who’s modeled himself after my brother is now out here trying to rebuild his family name?” Colton said evenly.
Jim and Spence both chuckled while I watched the man’s expression harden.
“I wish you the best of luck,” I said, already knowing I’d need to dig into how this family clawed its way back to the top and why this kid was staring at me as if I’d personally insulted his bloodline.
“Oh,” he said, stopping me just as I started to turn back to my drink, “and keep Presley out of your bed, or this gets a lot more personal than it already is.”
I smiled faintly and turned back to him. “You might want to put a leash on your lady if you’re worried about that, and reconsider making threats toward me, or this will be the last opening event I allow you to host on the West Coast.”
“You Spanish assholes think you own the world, don’t you?” he snarled, eyes flicking between my brother and me.
“Think?” I let out a quiet chuckle, looking at Colton’s amused expression. “Colton, do you think we own the world?”
“I don’t think we own the world,” Colton replied smugly, shaking his head.
“I also don’t think anything of the sort,” I agreed before turning my attention to Christian again. “I know we do.”
“That’s all about to change,” he said.
My eyes narrowed. “You’d best walk away right now before you foolishly ignore my warning and issue another careless threat. If you’re angry that I gave your woman a night she will never forget, you might want to reconsider whether she was ever really yours. Now, get the hell out of my face.”
I turned my back to him, daring him to do something stupid, but kept my attention on Jim, understanding we now had a fucking enemy and a potential problem to contain.
A jealous, reckless man like Christian wasn’t a threat now, but he was the kind that could become one if left unchecked.
That was why his father had never thrived in this world.
They were foolish to provoke those they considered enemies.
Christian’s first mistake was showing his cards…
to me. All because he was jealous that his girlfriend was a woman who’d proved her worth to me by sleeping with me after I fed her a handful of pretty words over cocktails.
It’s also why I wasn’t concerned any longer about the Jamestons being on the West Coast. You didn’t go into business with vendettas against men like Jim and me and survive to tell the tale.
So, I could say with ease that, just from this confrontation alone, any concern we had about this family was no longer valid.
My only concern now was Cat. She stood across the room in easy conversation with the women, that same self-assured smile on her face, the same reason she was here likely tied to my financial team paying her five hundred thousand to run an event.
That’s where I was going to start.
I would acquire the building she was leasing under a different name and make sure she knew she was renting from me. So, in the end, all the money I’d paid her would come back to me anyway.
Was that petty? Yes. Did it irritate me to see her so self-assured, like we needed her more than she needed us?
Absolutely. And that was exactly why I was doing it.
That, and because when Christian inevitably found out, he’d realize he’d just turned a quick profit off a man who ran him out of Newport Beach.
It was an ideal two-birds-one-stone situation. And once they learned not to fuck with me or my empire, I could get back to what mattered—expanding the luxury villas Jim had confirmed he’d be joining me on yesterday.
Life was always good, especially when people were reminded exactly who they were dealing with.