The Pleasure Contract by Caitlin Crews (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

of it. Grabbed the phone, then started ordering Bristol around about what she should wear and what she should do.

“I’m not even going to go,” Bristol assured herself, out loud.

But the following morning, she couldn’t deny that she took a little extra time and care with her appearance. Just in case.

Nothing crazy, but instead of piling her hair on the back of her head, she blew it out. Instead of the usual carelessly tossed-on clothes from the part of her closet she considered professional, she chose a business-casual dress she had last worn to a department cocktail party. The time before that, she’d worn it out to dinner with a colleague when she hadn’t been sure if it was a date or not, so had decided to shoot straight up the middle.

Not that she was going to keep her appointment, because of course she wasn’t going to keep her appointment, but it seemed like the appropriate garment to wear for a panel meeting to decide whether or not she planned to hire herself out for billionaire sex.

A notion that made her actually giggle to herself as she caught the uptown bus to work. She usually preferred to walk, but all the extra fussing had eaten into her walking time. A dour-faced older woman stared at her and she coughed, then assumed her usual blank stare.

Bristol lost herself in her usual routine. Teaching, meetings, and attempts to avoid conversations about who was on which interview circuit with her fellow PhDs. She told herself she wasn’t thinking about the silly appointment, but when her phone chimed at her to remind her, it was a relief to get away from the university.

Because everyone else was so sure about what they wanted and how to go about getting it, and Bristol wasn’t. She still wasn’t.

Her goal had been getting her PhD. And now that was done, she just couldn’t seem to settle on a direction. The truth was, what she liked was being a student. A little bit of teaching. A lot of research. But no expectations or faculty meetings.

On the other hand, there was also no tenure or job security.

That postdoc was looking better and better, though Bristol was well aware that if she took it she would only be postponing this very same crisis for a year.

She followed the instructions she had gotten by text both the night before and this morning. The interviews were taking place in a studiously discreet brownstone on a leafy, quiet street in Murray Hill. No doubt one of the Drummond family’s numerous properties, and, if she had to guess, nowhere near where Lachlan Drummond himself might be today.

Or what would be the purpose of this exercise?

She presented herself at the door, was buzzed in, and found herself in a hushed, offhandedly opulent front hall. A polite staff member ushered her into what looked to her eyes as a perfectly preserved drawing room from another time. She half expected characters from BBC costume dramas to sweep in behind her, but before she could register that she was on her own, she noticed the three immaculately dressed and obviously fashionable people in corporate business attire along one wall, studying her as she came in.

The reality of what she was doing walloped Bristol then.

She stopped dead, looking from one person to the next, waiting for...something. Any hint that they understood the magnitude of what it was they were doing.

Which was, unless she was mistaken, soliciting women for their boss.

She couldn’t seem to move.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” one of the assistants said, in a voice of studied blandness that she recognized from her phone call.

“You can start us off by telling us why you think Mr. Drummond should consider you,” the woman next to him chimed in.

The third assistant only stared at her, stone-faced.

And it all seemed to coalesce inside her then. It rolled over her like a terrible heat. A great big flash. She thought of the pictures she’d seen of Lachlan Drummond. Of her brisk march across the stage to grab the diploma that declared her a doctor, and also that she’d done the thing she’d spent her entire adult life working toward.

She thought of her sister, draping herself across the furniture and acting as if what Bristol really needed, after all her years of study and hard work, was this.

And she couldn’t help herself. She laughed.

“I’m sorry,” she said when she was done, pleased despite herself that her outburst had elicited some kind of response in the wall of assistants in front of her. Even if it was clearly a negative response. “My sister signed me up for this and I don’t know why I’m here. But I’m a PhD, not a prostitute, so I’ll find my own way out. And I look forward to seeing who wins the opportunity to trail about after Mr. Drummond. At least until her contract runs out.”

Bristol laughed again, though no one in front of her seemed to think it was amusing, and she figured that was as good a time as any to remove herself.

She started for the front door, waving off the butler who loomed there, and gulped in deep breaths when she hit the street.

One way or another, she would figure out what to do. One way or another, she would find herself and her new direction. She would. But surely selling herself was the nuclear option. There had to be a middle ground, surely.

She just had to find it.

Bristol debated whether to flag a cab—a luxury she rarely allowed herself—or let herself wander until she figured out where to go. Preferably to one of her preferred bookstores, like the Strand.

When her phone rang, she glared at it, not recognizing the number.

“This is Lachlan Drummond,” came the rich, dark voice when she answered. “I’d like to meet you for dinner.”

Bristol didn’t ask him to prove who he was. She knew.

She could feel all that power, all that inarguable magnetism, pouring over the phone line. It rooted