The Billionaire’s Hotline(12)

“Help me here,” she slurred, turning her back so he could unfasten it.

“There’s nothing to unzip. I think you just yank it over your head.”

“Yank is not a word I find arousing.” She giggled, pulling on her dress until it was rucked up to her arms and her head was covered. “I’m STUCK!” She laughed until she snorted.

Jasper dragged the dress off her and she collapsed, laughing onto the bed. He dipped his head toward her to kiss her, but she made a squeaking sound in her throat and giggled. For several minutes, she couldn’t stop laughing. He stood by, horrified.

He kissed her forehead and climbed out of bed.

“What? Is it because I wasn’t qualified to get out of my own dress? ‘Cause that can happen to anyone, no matter how many Lemon Drops she’s had. Those things are gooood,” she said, stifling a giggle.

“Is that what you’ve been drinking?”

“That and some Windex and something that was on fire. Two on-fire things, I think.”

“Take an aspirin, drink a glass of water, and go to sleep,” he said.

“What? I said I was sorry. Now we’re supposed to have make up sex,” she whined. “Take off your pants!”

He was obviously fighting not to laugh. “I will not. Put on some pajamas and I’ll get you the aspirin and water.”

“I try and try with you, and it’s like you’re not even interested. Why won’t you have sex with me? Why won’t you EVER have sex with me?” she demanded. When he returned, she swallowed the aspirin with a mutinous glare and drank the water.

“I’m interested.” His voice was low, the heat of his hands on her arms searing a path of desire as he touched her stomach, pulled her toward him. He lowered his head. When she parted her lips, he flicked his tongue into her mouth. Arching against him, she hoped for an instant that he’d loosen his iron control. Jasper drew back.

“But the first time I make you scream, I want you sober enough to remember it. To your dying day, you’ll look back and think, now THAT was a man.” His filthy grin nearly undid her.

“I—don’t leave.” She choked the words out.

“I’ll sleep over there.” He indicated the chair.

“Sleep here with me.”

“You may be surprised to know this, but I’m not actually a superhero. There are limits to my resolve and I suspect that’s about the outside border we just reached. So I’ll be over there if you need help, uh, vomiting or anything.” He grimaced.

He unwound her arms from his neck and dropped her unceremoniously back on the bed. She fell asleep, snoring instantly.





Chapter 8

Jasper



Jasper sat in the chair, staring into the dark and wondering how the hell he ended up leaving a willing blonde for a drunken sound engineer who snored like a lumberjack. It wasn’t out of the question that she had some form of sleep apnea with a sound like that, he mused. Why hadn’t he had sex with her right then, when she wouldn’t remember a thing? It would have been the perfect solution; he could have slaked his desire without the thorny complications he knew would come of sleeping with such a woman.

To her, it would be a declaration, an entanglement he would be hard-pressed to free himself of. She would want space in his schedule, in his dresser, in his mind. He was smarter than this, he told himself. There was nothing for it but to leave.

He put a glass of water beside her bed, leaned down to brush her tangled hair aside, and press a kiss to her temple, but thought better of it. He left her asleep again, amazed that he’d got himself mixed up with such a ridiculous woman.

He got on with his workout, went to the office and reviewed reports from the legal division, signing off on a few technicalities. By the time Shannon made his protein shake, he’d been at his computer for three hours. She made him sign a congratulatory card for someone he’d never heard of in HR who was getting married or having a child or buying a boat or whatever feminine event demanded a greeting card and flowers this week. He wrote a J and scribbled the rest in irritation.

After a long, productive day, with Miss Hollingford sending Hannah’s embarrassed phone calls directly to voice mail, Jasper dialed up a blonde from his list, a real estate agent who was once a competitive gymnast. She was twenty-six, but the acrobatic background made up for advanced age, he thought democratically.

He met her at seven. She was as lithe as promised, in sequined shorts and a halter top, and within half an hour they were in his room at the Blake. He was very impressed by her flexibility and the fact that she kept her high-heeled boots on, but slightly embarrassed that he was sweating and out of breath from the athletic contortions she required just as a warm-up.

She didn’t chatter, but he felt like he’d signed up for a bizarre exercise class instead of half an hour of no-strings sex. They hadn’t even gotten to the sex part yet and he was already ticking off the warning signs of cardiac arrest in his mind, recalled from a first aid poster at the gym.

When there was a pause in the action—she went to the bathroom, he assumed to do some jumping jacks—he sank onto the bed, rubbing a cramp in his calf and answering his phone. He tried to convince himself not to bolt for the door. The fact was, he didn’t want to be put through the paces by this girl, had no lingering desire for her flawlessly toned body. He just wished he could leave. He had to press the screen three times to get the phone to pick up a call and the muscle in his right calf was cramping up.

“Jasper!” Hannah’s voice came. His eyes flitted left and right in momentary panic, as if she could see him sweating in the altogether and awaiting the next round with Gymnast Barbie.

“What?” he asked irritably.

“Thank you for everything last night. I understand why you’d be disgusted…there’s no telling what I said to you, and I drunk-dialed you. This is humiliating. I’ll make it up to you.”

“There’s no need for that, Hannah,” he said firmly. “You needn’t have called to apologize. I’m sure I have thirty or so voice mails tending to the same sentiment when I have time to listen to them.”

“I must’ve been a mess last night for you to talk to me like this. What’s wrong? You sound awful, huffing and puffing…were you mugged?”

He suppressed a laugh. “No. Have a good evening,” he said dismissively, and was about to hang up when his companion came charging out of the bathroom in some sort of harness.

“Jassy, you hold on to the back of this and I’ll bend over in front of you and touch my toes—” she chirped, breaking off when she saw he was on the phone.

“Jassy?” Hannah hissed. “I—I had no idea you were with someone.”

Hannah’s voice was thick with tears as she hung up. He clenched his fists and felt a flush creep up his neck.

So what if she heard me having a good time? That clingy bitch got what she deserved, he told himself. It didn’t feel right even thinking that about Hannah, disloyal somehow. Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t having a good time so much as feeling like a mutt who was failing an agility test at competition. He shrugged, threw down the phone and decided against the harness. A work emergency, he told Gymnast Barbie, the call had been urgent and he had to leave immediately. Hannah, it turned out, had rescued him.

At home, after he stretched to try to relax his angry calf muscles—a man his age just wasn’t meant to hold a squat for that long. He gulped back a bottle of water like he’d been on an eight mile run. He felt worse. He wanted to forget that he ever saw that blonde, that he’d ever passed out disposable cell phones. The only thing he could imagine bringing him relief was Hannah’s hair tickling his cheek as she nestled her head into his neck. He would not allow himself to think of her—the danger was too great.

At home an hour later, he sat down with his cello to practice, but his fingers kept picking out the opening to the Bach prelude he’d played for her. His cheeks grew hot with regret at the thought of having played Bach for her, and that piece especially, which reminded him of nothing so much as his father slapping his knuckles with a pointer as he played.

For two years of his adolescence, it had been the only piece he was allowed to play because of his intransigence. It was the Bach Prelude on constant repeat. It was in his bones, he thought as he caught himself drumming the fingering patterns on the edge of his desk, his head bowing in time with the music that has never really left him.

She had embraced him, told him he didn’t lack skill, had pressed her lips to his brow like a benediction. He thought, absurdly, that it might have freed him from its grip, but here he sat, sawing out the same sequence of notes, Sisyphus incarnate.

Jasper combed through paperwork from legal, looking for any irregularities because he was in the mood to hand someone their ass. He knew all about displaced anger and it didn’t bother him one bit. He paid these people enough that if one of them had to play the whipping boy on occasion, it was hardly more than they were compensated to do.

Fortunately for his employees, there was not a comma out of place in the documentation, and he signed off on it grouchily. Although he didn’t drink coffee, he found himself absently assembling the French press and making himself a cup. He loaded it with raw sugar and held the steaming mug, inhaling the smell that he knew reminded him of someone he ought not to consider.