Suddenly His - Jessa Kane Page 0,16
it’s my mother, I almost hit the ceiling, but of course it’s not her. She wouldn’t be knocking. After a deep breath to calm my nerves, I log out of her online bank accounts, erase the browsing history and get up to go answer the door. Halfway there, though, I start to wonder if it could be Lincoln on the other side. I’m still not sure how he plans on finding me, since I never told him my last name, thus he never made the connection between me and his cleaning lady. But he seemed so confident he’d locate me.
Slowly, I rise up on my toes and look through the peephole.
It’s not Lincoln. It’s an older man in a smart, navy suit, wearing an earpiece.
I drop back down to flat feet and try to convince myself I’m not disappointed.
“Who is it?”
“Your driver, Miss Whitaker,” he responds, tone official. “I’m here to bring you to Lincoln Management for your appointment with Mr. Lincoln.”
A fluttering kicks up in my belly. “Right.” Why am I shaking? I knew this was coming. “I’ll just grab my purse and be right out.”
“Excellent, miss.”
I jog to my room and throw my small, heart-shaped satchel across my body, preparing to slide my feet into sandals. At the last second, I switch them for a pair of naughty red heels instead, wondering for the hundredth time this morning who I am anymore. And a minute later, I’m speeding down the parkway toward the city in the back of a sleek black limousine.
When I follow my driver—and apparent bodyguard—into the black marble elevator and see that Lincoln Management takes up the top five floors of the skyscraper, I start to get nervous. Suddenly I feel naked in my daisy-patterned dress and cheap red heels. Naked and defenseless. Once the silver doors slide open, however, I realize there is nothing in my closet that would have prepared me for this place. It’s a palace of glass and chrome and white.
I’m a garish splash of red paint across the pristine canvas of Lincoln Headquarters, but I hold tight to my heart satchel and follow the driver across the floor, my chin up. After all, the man who owns this company owes me two million dollars, not the other way around.
We reach the back of the buzzing, expansive floor full of men in suits and the driver stops in front of a glass door. I’m trying to figure out how the door is made of glass if I can’t see through it, when the driver opens it, gesturing for me to go inside.
And there’s Jack, in a charcoal-gray suit, leaning on the corner of his desk with a phone pressed to his ear. Sexy in a way that halts me in my tracks and whips my temperature higher by several degrees. He was sinfully hot at the Creed estate Friday night, but this is another level of attractive. Whereas his dark hair was kind of damp and tousled last time I saw him, it’s perfectly styled now, his mouth in a sensual smirk, his tongue tucked into the corner of his lips.
Behind him, the jagged city skyline rises and drops on the other side of the floor to ceiling window. Although somehow it’s not as impressive as Jack himself.
Was I really intimate with this young, cocky man-god? Just standing there, he is almost rife with sexuality. Confidence. Power. His glacial blue eyes cut through the room and fixate on me, sweeping me head to toe and immediately bogging me down with yearning.
“I’m late for a meeting,” Jack says into the phone. “Email me the details.”
He hangs up and pushes off the desk. Without looking, he reaches down and hits a switch on the expensive furniture, bringing a shade down over the window, a low mechanical sound filing the room as it darkens, leaving only the lamplight and the illumination of the office behind me. For a moment, we just stare at each other across the office, though I jump when the glass door bumps closed behind me. I expect to find us in total privacy, but I can see through the glass now to the bustling office, where I couldn’t before.
“I can see out,” Jack says in a gruff voice. “They can’t see in.”
“Oh.” God, his voice alone is like warm fingertips stroking down my belly. “What is the purpose of that?”
“If there’s always a chance I’m watching, they’ll work harder.” He winks at me. “But they won’t know if I’m slacking