Billionaire's Love Suite (5 page)

Shana had learned her lesson the hard way and fast. She would never
trust her heart again to anyone she worked with or worse, worked for. She
was her own woman building her own reputation.

“Oh, I don’t think…” she started when he put his fingers over her lips
again.

Shana shivered when he touched her. It was a simple enough gesture.
She shouldn’t have responded so vehemently, but there was no question
that his touch shot shards of lightening straight down to the pit of her belly.
If he touched any single part of her body right now, she would climax. She
just knew it.

“I…I could get into trouble for this,” Shana said, looking around the
steam room sheepishly toward the door. For the first time she realized that
they could have been interrupted. What if one of the other employees had
decided to use the off-limits steam room just as she had? What if Justin
himself had walked in? She would have been humiliated.

“Really? How’s that?”

“I, er, work here. This…this is very embarrassing,” she stumbled. “I’ve
never done anything like this before.”

“You what?” Justin felt his blood chill.

“I work here,” she said touching her finger to her lips. “But I won’t tell
if you won’t.”

Justin swallowed. “In what position?” he asked.

“Director of Operations,” Shana said proudly. Then she looked at the
startled expression on Mr. Gorgeous’ face. To reassure him she said, “Look,
“I absolutely promise I won’t say anything to anyone.”

He just stared at her with a hard, but stricken look.

Shana felt the room go cold. The slacking steam down her breasts
and back felt like frigid winter rain. Then it hit her. “You’re…not a guest
here.”

He shook his head.

“Who are you?”

“Justin Yates.”

Shana gaped at him and her eyes bowled wide open. She felt like she
was facing the mongrel hoard. Justin Yates. She forced her mind to register
all pertinent data. This was the playboy who used women as if they were
entertainment. From the staff she’d learned that he had always had streams
of women that he saw once and discarded them. The former Director of
Operations, Felicity Cummings, had kept a log of Justin’s women. Shana
had actually seen the log when she’d taken the job over from Felicity. It had
names, dates and lengths of stays in the penthouse. He was the womanizer
of all womanizers.

And he was her boss.

Worst of all, he had lied to her. He’d pretended to be someone he was
not. He was the very worst of his own wretched reputation. All the things
she’d heard about Justin had to be true.

Shana felt as if the earth had opened up and sucked her into its core. Her
entire life was over. She’d just sabotaged her hard-won and hard-fought for
career all for a kiss.

She could never work for him now. She had embarrassed herself and
now she was just another one of his many female conquests. She had only
one course of action.

“You’ll have my resignation in the morning.”

Justin was stunned. He’d just wanted to have a bit of fun. His emotions
had spiked to the ceiling only moments ago with their torrid kiss, but now,
he felt as if he were crawling under the tile floor, he was so low.

“You can’t quit,” he said firmly.

Shana bolted to her feet nearly losing her towel once again. “You lied
to me!”

“I didn’t lie.”

“Yes, you did. You said you were Justin’s friend.”

“No, I said we were close.”

“Same thing, bastard!” She shook her fist at him, wanting, willing it to
land on his powerful chest, but for some reason her hand would not obey
and it just hung there, riveted in mid-space.

“Miss Jackson!” he shouted hoping to calm her down. “Let’s discuss
this.”

“What? Talk? I told you, I quit!” Shana shouted back with exactly the
same resonance to her voice that he had displayed.

She spun on her heel and trounced out of the steam room and just as she
swung the door open, her towel dropped again.

Justin got a clear view of the most luscious backside he’d ever seen and
groaned.

Shana whipped the towel over her arm, turned toward him and let him
see a full frontal view. Her smirk seared through the steam and mist, challenging
him. Her green eyes were like jade on fire. “I’ll hand in my resignation
tomorrow at our meeting. And don’t forget, it’s at nine o’clock sharp!”

She walked away and the steam room door closed.

Justin stood amidst the whorls of steam, raked his hand through his
thick hair and wondered what had just happened to him…and to his hotel.

T
wisting herself into a cocoon of white sheets, Shana fought the dream
images of Justin Yates as violently as she did in the waking state.
Knowing the sweet pressure of his lips on hers, she dreamed of what his lips
would feel like on every part of her body. When the intensity of the dream
became too unbearable, she forced herself to wake up and end the torture.

Shana looked at the clock. It was two forty-five in the morning and
she’d only fallen asleep less than one hour ago.

“I need sleep. Lots of it. Tomorrow, er, today is probably going to be
the point of no return for me,” she grumbled to herself as she swung her
long legs over the side of the bed. She stared at her bare feet. She needed a
pedicure.

“I need my head examined is what I need,” she berated herself. She
rose and tip toed past the open door to her roommate, Cate Tropez’s, bedroom
where Cate slept in a sprawled position of total surrender to the
netherworld.

Shana exhaled deeply. She would give anything to be like Cate, creative,
artistic and independently wealthy enough to have no worries about her
career or her financial future. Cate was a Boston trust-fund baby who was
stretching her wings by trying to become the world’s next famous artist.

Shana headed straight for the kitchen. She opened the freezer door of
the stainless steel double door refrigerator. “In times of crisis there is only
one solution that has served mankind in the positive. Ice cream. Hmm.
I think…” she pondered gazing at pints of strawberry, peppermint stick,
coconut almond fudge and chubby hubby. “Definitely coconut almond
fudge.”

She took a large spoon from the silverware drawer and stood at the sink,
drowning her sorrows in the dark kitchen.

Shana licked the creamy, thick ice cream from the spoon and then
plunged into the pint again when the kitchen light went on.

“It’s as bad as all that?” Cate asked standing sleepy eyed in the doorway
dressed in white cotton pajamas with tiny Scotty dogs printed on the fabric.
She pointed at the pint of chocolate ice cream. “I’ve never seen you go for
the coconut almond fudge at night. I figured you for the strawberries and
cream after all you told me at dinner.”

Shana looked at Cate sheepishly. “I didn’t tell you all the story about
Justin.”

Cate went to the freezer, pulled out the peppermint stick pint and dug
in. “Okay, Spill.”

“There’s the part about my resignation that I sort of left out,” Shana
said staring down at the hunk of almond surrounded by glistening dark,
dark chocolate. Shana put the lid on the ice cream and placed it back in the
freezer. “When I met Justin…I was naked.”

Cate choked. “What?” Her eyes ballooned into saucers and a very mischievous
smile spread across her lips. She jumped up onto the counter and
dangled her feet, tossing the pint into the sink. Placing her hands on the
counter’s edge she leaned forward. If her ears had pricked, Shana wouldn’t
have been surprised. Cate had always loved a good story and she especially
loved scandalous stories that involved people she actually knew.

“I didn’t know it was him. I went to the steam room after work because
I was so uptight dealing with all his emails and demands. Honestly, he…”

“Get to the naked part,” Cate urged excitedly.

Shana went on to tell Cate everything that happened during her close
encounter of the first kind with Justin.

When she had finished, Cate leaned back and observed Shana with a
look of pure envy. “Why doesn’t this kind of thing ever happen to me?”
Cate whined.

“Excuse me? This is precisely the kind of thing that does happen to you.
It just never happens to me!”

“Right. I meant that…well, it hasn’t happened to me lately.”

“Lately? What about that guy, Ricardo you met only ten days ago. You
two were going at it downstairs on the front steps when I came home from
work.”

Cate threw up her hands. “See? It was ten days ago. What happened to
the time intervening here? I mean, I’m losing time here. Ten days! I’ll be
ancient before you know it and what will I have to show for my life? Ten
days here of wandering in the desert and ten days there. It all adds up, you
know.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Shana groaned.

“I know. But enough about me. You can’t sleep which means you are
still mulling over your loss of temper.”

“I made a decision to quit,” Shana reminded her. “I have always thought
through things and I’ve always come up with the best decision for me.”

“Right, until now,” Cate said. “There’s no question that you’re a genius
at your job. No one in the world can accomplish as much as you do in
a single day. Personally, I believe and have believed for some time now,
at least since we were in college together, that you are an alien. It makes
me crazy to see you work so long and so hard. I’ve searched for some
Kryptonite to slow you down…you know, to make you more human, but
I’ve come up empty.”

Shana’s eyes rolled back in her head. “Be serious.”

“I am,” Cate said and dug out a huge spoonful of ice cream and smiled
broadly as she savored it.

“The thing that bothers me most is that I fell victim to my own sexual
urges. I let my body control my brain! It’s just unheard of!”

“For you maybe,” Cate said under her breath, but Shana didn’t hear
her.

“I have compromised myself personally with Justin and because of that,
I have to quit my job.”

“Uh, huh.” Cate put the ice cream away and dropped her smile. “Shana.
Do you remember after you landed the job with Lux that you went on the
internet and posted your new position out there for the world to see? For
Karl to see?”

Shana crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “I was getting my
revenge. He used me. He hurt me.”

“He wounded your pride. You were never really in love with him. You
told me so yourself. Though, I could understand that completely, he was just too much romantic lines and goofy, gooey love notes and way too many
floral bouquets. I suspected something very smarmy about that guy.”

“You only met him for one weekend when you came to Geneva last
spring.”

“It was a four day weekend, which was seventy-two hours too long to
be around him for me. I told you that.”

“And you were right,” Shana nodded as she sat in the Bentwood kitchen
chair. “Breaking up with Karl taught me never to let my emotions, my urges
rule my better judgment. So what does that say about me that I’ve let it
happen again?”

“That you’re human?” Cate offered.

“It means I have a screw loose!”

“That’s very possible. It could also mean that this Justin guy is one heck
of a great kisser.”

Shana dropped her face into her hands. “He is! He’s like nothing I’ve
ever experienced before. I don’t know what I was thinking. But the worse
thing is that I can’t get him or that kiss out of my mind. I can’t sleep and boy,
do I ever need sleep. I’m having a hard time concentrating on work. All I
think about is him.” Shana turned to face Cate with near horror in her eyes.
“Cate. I was dreaming about him! I’ve never done that.”

“Really? I do it all the time,” Cate bantered good-naturedly.

Shana was on the verge of tears. “Would you please be just a tiny bit
sympathetic here? I’m dying.”

Cate hopped off the counter and put her hands on Shana’s shoulders.
“You aren’t dying. But you are making the wrong decision by quitting. You
can’t quit. News of you leaving Lux Hotels before the job is done will be
all over the internet in minutes. Karl will see to it that everyone in Europe
knows about it. Look, Justin is already a billionaire. He doesn’t need your
genius to shore up his bank account like Karl did. He could care less. Plus
the guy can hire anything he needs both for his hotel and his personal life.
You need this job, Shana. If you make the Lux Hotels a success, the victory
will be yours. Isn’t that why you took the job in the first place? To win?”

“I did,” Shana answered reflecting on the sound points Cate was
making. Thoughtful for a long moment, Shana asked, “But what happened to me? Why this guy? And why at this moment would I make such a fool
of myself?”

“Random chaos. It’s a law of the universe,” Cate said with profound
assurance. “Happens all the time. Things are going along pretty fine, just the
way you like it and boom! The fates blast you with some kind of karmic boomerang.
Car accident. Loss of a job. Illness. Or in your case, Mr. Gorgeous
turns out to be your boss whom you have just brazenly seduced.”