Pulling her gaze away from him, she scanned the document again. She’d had the contract looked over by a paralegal friend, but there was no discounting the hollow fear in her gut.
She would be in his personal employ for two months and would be paid fifty thousand dollars for it, half now, and half when he deemed her job done, subject to his sole discretion.
She was being paid an exorbitant amount of money to spend time with Tyler on a Greek island, the likes of which she had no other hope of seeing in this lifetime.
Yet as the limo came to a stop on her street in the cheap neighborhood of her apartment complex, she couldn’t shake off a feeling that there was an unwritten price that she would have to pay.
And she had no idea what that was.
CHAPTER FOUR
NIKOS CLOSED HIS laptop, and refused the stewardess’s offer of a drink. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in four days now. He had finalized the deal with Nathan Ramirez; he finally had a solution for Venetia’s problem. And yet he was restless with a weird kind of pent-up energy simmering just below his skin.
He itched to get back to his garage and get his hands dirty. He had been pushing himself this past month and he needed a break. Once everything was settled with Venetia, he would take her on a vacation. She had always wanted to see more of New York.
The passing mention of New York and his thoughts immediately shifted to Ms. Nelson. Not a peep sounded from the rear cabin. There was something about the woman that always left him on edge. Stepping into the cabin, he froze.
She lay on the very edge of the bed, half out, half in. Her knees tucked tight into her legs, her hands wrapped tight around herself, she slept hunched tight into a ball.
Her honey-gold hair glinted in the low lights, her wide mouth open like a fish.
Her white T-shirt couldn’t hide the outline of her small breasts. A plastic watch with a big dial in the shape of a skull covered most of her wrist. A thoroughly distracting strip of her back was exposed by the scrunched-up top, above denim shorts. Delicate calves and even more delicate feet topped with toes painted black completed the picture.
Even while telling himself that he should just walk away, he stood rooted to the spot.
He usually paid very little attention to the women he slept with. What he wanted, he took and got the distraction out of the way. Because that’s all anything a woman ever had been to him. Something to take the edge off the grueling hours, or the pace he had set himself to succeed.
Ms. Nelson, on the other hand, perplexed, irritated and downright annoyed him with her mere existence. There was such a mix of innocence and calculation about her that he found mesmerizing. He smiled, remembering her confusion, her beautiful blue eyes widened, her breath hitching in and out uncomfortably, when he had leaned toward her in the car.
Noticing a page peeking from under her arms, he leaned over her and pulled the rolled-up magazine.
His blood slowed in his veins to a sluggish pace as he breathed in that scent of her. Vanilla, that’s what she smelled of. Simple yet fascinating, like her.
He straightened the magazine and looked at the article she had been reading. How To Use Sex to Get Your Man Back.
So the little minx did want that parasite back. Apparently, being called a selfish bitch wasn’t enough of a deterrent for her. Displeasure and a relentless curiosity vied within him. What kind of a woman worried about an ex who turned his back on her, a friend who manipulated her and yet faced Nikos down when he had cornered her?