Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance by Hazel Parker (fun to read txt) 📗

Later today, I think, and that makes me angry all over again.

The thing is, White had been well on her way to a glowing review from me. It didn’t matter that the dinner with Jamie was fizzling when all hell had broken loose. That hadn’t been her fault. That had been my own fault entirely, unless you want to count that of meddling matchmakers.

What had been hers had been the quality of the meal, which had been fantastic. For a moment, in the kitchen, I had thought that her using the gold leaf had been a crack about how much of my money she was spending on the evening. That suspicion had disappeared when I had first seen, then tasted, the final product.

In the kitchen. That’s where I remember her the most vividly. Not out on the sidewalk, watching as the firemen went about their business of dousing White’s accidental handiwork.

While her feet had remained planted, from the waist up, she had reminded me of a dancer. She had reached out with ease for everything she needed, using it, then returning it back to its proper place, just so. Confident. Wholly concentrating on what she was doing.

Again, it had given me time to study her in motion. Her skin was pale—she must spend a lot of time indoors because of her work—but not unhealthy-looking. Quite the opposite, it looked like powdered marble. It was the kind of beautiful, ivory-white flesh that made you long to touch it. Her neck was graceful, her hands long-fingered and agile. If not for the curves that were visible and those that were hinted at, she could have passed for a Renaissance maiden.

I find myself comparing her with Jamie. Jamie Wells, the supermodel. Jamie, who had graced the covers of the best fashion magazines in the world. Jamie, whose comings and goings were the bread and butter of the worst tabloids in the world.

Jamie, whom I had found as interesting as watching paint dry. Had she been beautiful? Gorgeous, even by what must be industry standards. Had she been attractive? That was trickier. She had been, but in the way that a beautiful vase was attractive—wonderful to look at, but with nothing inside, really.

I haven’t dated much since my divorce last year. I hadn’t planned on getting back into the dating game in my mid-thirties, but I hadn’t been planning on the divorce, either. Melanie, my now long-departed ex, had made that surprise decision for me.

I don’t want to say that I’m a king who’s looking for a queen, but I want someone who understands what it means to be committed to one’s work. The only reason I had pursued things with Jamie had been because she is famous in a profession where beautiful women are a dime a dozen. She worked hard to reach the top of a very glitzy mountain.

Unfortunately, by our third date, I had come to the realization that drive didn’t matter so much when you aren’t that interested in the driver.

It wasn’t that she was stupid. Rather, she gave an impression of emptiness, like when she wasn’t on a modeling job, she was only waiting for another one.

Going from one work opportunity to another? my internal critic asked playfully. That sounds familiar.

“It’s not the same thing,” I tell the weights, who clack their agreement. I let them fall back into place, hard. The sound is very loud in the otherwise still, quiet gym. I wince a little. That had been careless. Bad form.

No, I think, bad form is burning down your employer’s house!

I shake my head. I have to stop thinking about this, or I’ll be sore in addition to still being furious.

I throw my towel around my neck and head back up to my suite. I stay in the shower a long time, letting the hot water do its work on my back. By the time I emerge, I feel moderately better. Maybe I can even catch a few hours of sleep before I have to be dressed and ready to head to the office.

Sleep has a way of springing surprise home movies on you, though. I had thought that I was going to sleep the sleep of the dead after the trials of my evening and early morning hours, but I was wrong.

I’m back in my dining room. Jamie is there. Her evening dress, on the other hand, is not. She sits at the table, naked down to her bare feet. Her hair, which had been done up in a fashionably messy bun, is now down around her shoulders and upper back. A single rogue lock has drifted across one delicate collarbone and curls towards her small, high breast.

“You have a call coming in,” she declares, looking sidelong at me.

“I don’t have my phone,” I tell her. I don’t seem to have anything, including clothes of my own.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, rising from her chair. “You’ll always have a call coming in.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know me.”

“I don’t have to. That’s all right. You don’t have to know me. We’re a great match, you and me.”

She crosses the room. Her skin looks bronzed in the warm glow of the candles in the middle of the table. No, that’s not right. That’s not where the light is coming from. Where—

She kneels in front of me, placing her hands on my thighs and looking up into my eyes. The tips of her breasts brush against my knees, and I feel myself responding. The room is getting brighter as she dips her head towards me, taking me into her mouth.

It should be an indescribable sensation, but I can describe it anyway—it’s like being taken in by smoke. There’s no substance to the experience. If I were to close my eyes, it would