I stood up and found one of Jack’s shirts on the floor, slipped it on. As I did up the buttons, I worried that my body already knew what my head did not.
I’m in too deep.
My dreams were too important, too big, to be derailed by a guy who wanted to hide away in the Alaska wilderness. No matter how much Jack meant to me, I was leaving Alaska. It was that simple and that difficult all at once.
I peeked into the living room and wondered where Jack was. I heard a small noise from the study, nestled down another hall. Jack sat leisurely at his computer, sweatpants hung low on his waist and no shirt to be seen.
Probably because I ripped it.
He hadn’t seen me from the angle he faced his computer screen from, so I stealthily tiptoed around to his back, prepared to scare the daylights out of him.
“You’re incredibly un-sneaky, princess,” Jack declared as he spun his chair to face me. Apparently, “Sneaky” was not my middle name. Jack pulled me to him, situated me on his lap, and spun the chair back to his computer. He buried his face in my hair and breathed deeply.
“You smell like me. I like that,” he whispered in my ear.
I pretended to not like his words and instead glanced at his computer screen.
What did the serious Mr. Simms look at while I was sleeping? Porn?
“What’s this?” I asked him and reached for the mouse. I straightened as I recognized the logo of a company based out of Seattle: Buchanan Industries.
“A tech company with a hot new startup I’m interested in investing in. Nothing important,” Jack mused as he reached to close out of the window.
“A startup?” I chuckled, but then continued. “Are you going to do it? Invest in them? Get back on the horse?”
I looked at his bare chest and dragged my thoughts back to the conversation with difficulty. Our eyes met and he smirked knowingly, but said, “Yeah, I think they might be the ones. Solid portfolio, tons of success thus far, a steady team, a great business model… They have all the right parts.” He punctuated this last statement when he stroked my “right part,” which jerked me upright. “But there are other projects I’m involved in that are keeping my attention at the moment.”
Jack leaned in to kiss me as he reached up beneath my shirt to cup my breast gently. My nails slid down his arms to his elbows, then to the waist of his sweatpants.
“Yes, Mr. Simms.” I nodded against his lips. “I think I’d like to explore this opportunity myself.”
I giggled as he lifted me off his lap, placed me on his hard desk. Nudging my knees wide, he settled himself between them. When his fingers coasted up my inner thighs, I fell back.
“When I give a project my attention—” His lips followed the same path until his hot breath fanned over my pussy. “I give it all my attention.”
I awoke to the sound of a prop plane engine just overhead and then I heard the unmistakable sound of floats as they cut through the water.
The plane! My replacement float is here.
I sat up bolt upright but forgot that Jack laid next to me on the floor of his study. We’d settled there after revisiting his desk.
I smacked him in the face in my rush to peek out the window and he groaned, rolling over. “What the hell, Princess?”
I ignored him and made it to the window just in time; the pilot had turned toward the dock and I heard the lack of noise that indicated his engine was turned off.
“My float is here. I need to go out and meet the pilot!”
I sprinted towards my clothes, finding one of the shirts I’d borrowed by the fireplace, my pants in the kitchen. Spinning about, naked, I looked for my panties.
“Looking for these?” Jack stood there, my panties dangling from his finger.
Grabbing them from him, I threw everything on haphazardly, and ran to the door. The pilot, Joe, was on the dock, tugging his anchor loose. He was an old friend of my dad’s and I was happy to see him. We talked about the damage to my float, the storm I nearly crash landed in, and Dad’s place.
“I heard someone put in an offer?” Joe asked and my heart stilled.
“What? Really? I haven’t heard anything, I’ve been here for almost three days, no contact,” I stuttered out.
Sold? The house sold?
“Well, from the sounds of it, you got yourself a deal. You moving to Seattle with the money?” Joe asked as he pulled my spare float from his cargo hold.
I tried, and failed, to ignore the stinging image of Jack that came to mind when I said, “Yep, ready to rock as soon as the papers are signed.”
Joe and I worked diligently for the next hour as we turned my plane to face the dry shore. We pulled the dented float off and screwed the new one on, a feat that would have been unmanageable if Jack hadn’t come out to help.