Sheri WhiteFeather
Carol Lawrence stood in her boss’s luxurious high-rise office, with a zillion things running through her mind. Being Jake Waters’s personal assistant was a demanding job, with most of her duties centered on organizing his social life. No doubt about it, the jet-setting real estate mogul kept her on her toes. Not only did he travel for work, purchasing properties all over the globe, he was the consummate party boy, dashing off to exotic locations with models and actresses and whoever else struck his rich-guy fancy.
Jake sat on the corner of his desk and flung his jacket over his unused chair. As always, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, exposing the colorful tattoos on his arms, and his dark brown hair was in sexy disarray. With his disheveled good looks and need for speed, he reminded her of James Dean, except that Jake was half-Choctaw, his mixed-blood heritage lending his features an uncommon beauty.
He certainly wasn’t the type of man she should be attracted to. He was too wild for a practical girl like her. Carol spent her free time on a nice, quiet quilting hobby, whereas Jake raced sports cars as his outlet. To her that seemed like an especially reckless thing for him to do, given that his entire family had been killed in a car crash, sending him into foster care as a child. Carol had also lost her family and become a foster kid, as well. But they didn’t know each other back then, and the tragedies they’d both suffered didn’t make for good bedfellows.
Still, she often wondered what taming a man like Jake would involve. Yeah, right. If the glamorous beauties he dated couldn’t pin him down, then a simple gal with tidy blond hair and a sensible nature would never fit the bill. Jake was a thirty-one-year-old billionaire who’d even made some crazy internet “Beefcake Bachelor” list as one of the sexiest single men in Southern California. Women chased him with a vengeance. Of course, some of them kept trying to fix him, with the assumption that he was damaged from the loss of his family, using his free-spirited lifestyle to hide the pain. Carol didn’t doubt that was true. She knew the anguish that being orphaned could cause. But her coping mechanism was much gentler than his. Someday she longed to get married and have children of her own, recapturing the home and hearth she’d lost.
Jake glanced up and caught her gaze, and a fluttery sensation erupted in her stomach, something that happened far too often when she was in his presence.
Determined to maintain her composure, Carol focused on her job. “So,” she said, “are you going to attend Lena’s birthday celebration?” Lena was a pop star with a penchant for partying who ran in the same live-for-the-moment circle as Jake.
“Damn straight I’m going to go. She’s my bud. I wouldn’t miss her thirtieth bash.” He laughed a little. “She’ll probably be half-naked and dancing on tabletops.”
“No doubt.” Lena was known for her antics. Carol was the same age as Lena, but she couldn’t imagine behaving that way. “Who will be attending the party with you?”
“Now that’s where I’m having a bit of a problem. I don’t have a date.”
“I thought you were seeing Susanne Monroe.” A long, leggy brunette who was recently divorced from a famous baseball player. Carol had seen her strutting around the office a few times in her tight-as-sin dresses, her stilettos clicking as she walked.
“We’re not together anymore.”
It was over already? “Who ended it?”
“She did.” He shrugged off the breakup. “But I was just a rebound for her, anyway.”
Carol shook her head, then glanced out the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, where a view of Wilshire Boulevard, with its busy Los Angeles cityscape, was spread out before them. She’d worked for Jake for two years, but she still hadn’t gotten used to the parade of women who came in and out of his life.
She turned back to face him. “I’m sure you’ll find a date for Lena’s soiree. But for now, do you want me to RSVP for you and a plus-one? And notify your pilot to be on standby for that weekend?” The party was being held on a private island in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. Lena was pulling out all the stops, away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi.
“Yeah. Thanks. It’s a couples-only theme, so I’m going to have to bring someone. Lena’s latest song is called ‘Couples Only,’ and she always creates parties around her songs.” Jake paused, then looked at Carol as if he’d just solved a strange little puzzle. “Here’s an idea. You can be my plus-one. That would save me the trouble of finding another companion, and it would give you a great getaway.”
Oh, my God. Carol white-knuckled her iPad, holding it against her chest. He was suggesting that she fly off to a tropical island to drink and dance and be merry with him? Sure, she traveled with him when it was necessary, but she’d never been expected to fill in as one of his dates. “You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I am. Or I wouldn’t have said it.”
“But I’m not part of your crowd. I wouldn’t fit in.”
“Yes, you would. You already know a lot of them.”
“I know them in a professional sense.”
“So now you can socialize with them, too.”
The nervous sensation in her stomach swirled. “I can’t.” There was no way she could spend a weekend with Jake and his friends. “And with you being my employer, it wouldn’t be proper.”
“Really, Carol? You’re going to use that as an excuse? I’m not proposing that we have a mad, passionate affair. The couples-only theme doesn’t mean that we have to be a real couple. It’s just a party.”
“On a private island,” she defended herself. “And I didn’t think you were proposing anything.”