Crave (His Second Chance with Heiress Bryn Christmas Duet #1) - Z.L. Arkadie Page 0,26

put me down while he built himself up in front of our staff. On the drive home, I thought of ways of talking my father into finally retiring and leaving the business to me. Ever since the Spencer Christmas situation, we’d lost multiple accounts. Our candidate lost big in that race, and everyone knew why. We’d fucked with the Christmases, and no one wanted Jasper Christmas on their bad side if they could help it. We could have helped it. I knew better. Jada Christmas had requested my services. I told Boomer about it, and despite everything we knew about starting trouble with one of the most powerful families in the world, he saw an opportunity to play Patricia Forte against her son-in-law so our candidate could have a better shot at winning. I was never going to accept Jada’s job offer. When I arrived at our meeting, my goal was to persuade her to convince her husband to drop out of the race. I had no doubt Spencer Christmas was going to win—every poll showed it. I also knew, by chronicling every statement Spencer made publicly, that he didn’t give two shits about politics and was only in the race to beat his mother-in-law.

Then Bryn appeared at our table. She was a game changer. Boomer’s plan remained the same, though—I was supposed to destroy Spencer’s campaign from the inside. I was sort of okay with it because I knew he didn’t want to win. If we’d left it at that, there never would have been any bad blood between the Coxes and the Christmases. But losing to Michael Black angered Boomer. My dad was from a different generation. He’d learned that powerful meant being a mean asshole who had the right to bring a bazooka to a stick fight. Without my knowledge, Boomer had fired not one but two rockets at the Christmases. Jasper had been making us pay for it ever since.

So the Christmases, especially Bryn, had been on my mind that evening when I returned home, frustrated about my father’s inability to learn a lesson about messing with the wrong people. I believed I’d lost Bryn for good, and soon I would be hearing about her marriage to some other lucky guy. My housekeeper had set the package containing the Christmas family biography on top of a pile of mail on the desk in my home office. I ripped the package because I knew what was inside. Still standing, I read the first page. The language immediately sucked me in.

Unable to stop reading, I sat on the sofa, and hours later, near sunup, I was fighting sleep and upset with myself for not getting the rest I needed to get through a full day of work—I had to convince a handful of prospective clients to let me run their campaigns. But I couldn’t put the book down.

At six o’clock in the morning, I called my secretary and asked her to reschedule my appointments for that day. I told her I was under the weather. I wasn’t. Then I took the book to my bedroom. Lying on my bed, I read Holly Henderson Christmas’s depiction of Bryn twice. The book described how they met initially during college orientation and how Holly thought it was strange that Bryn whispered when she spoke. Then Holly went into an account of a bored heiress who was always up to no good. After the third time I read it, I seized my dick and fantasized about pounding the hell out of that fucking bad girl as I masturbated.

After I came, I’d been embarrassed and thought, What the hell was that? I wasn’t the sort of guy who used sex as power. I was still confused by why that had turned me on. I could still remember my favorite passage from the book.

I heard a finger snap. “Earth to Jamison.”

I blinked myself back to the moment. She was smiling at me. Her face was angelic, but more importantly, so was her heart.

“I was just remembering my favorite part of the biography,” I said.

Turning her head slightly, she narrowed an eye. “Oh yeah?”

I trailed a finger down the side of her soft face. “‘Her hair was short, curly, and as soft as her practiced whispery tone. She reminded me of a blond flapper girl from the 1920s. Her skin was like delicate porcelain and her smirk as sensual as a red-lace bow. She was the embodiment of American perfection down to its mythical construction.