The Billion Dollar Contract: The Executive Collection (35 page)

After another ten seconds of arguing about it, Ethan conceded and told Carl to pull over. It was another block before he found a space big enough to accommodate the length of the limo. The moment Jasmine stepped out she discovered two young men sitting on a bench smoking and carrying on, both of them stopping their conversations to gape at her and the limo she was leaving behind.

“See you tomorrow.” Jasmine shut the door behind her, and the limo pulled away, leaving her to fuss with her mittens and the scarf around her neck.

One man looked at the other. “How much he paying you for that?”

Of course they thought she was a prostitute. Especially with the fancier clothes she was wearing lately, even the police officers she saw on a daily basis for over a year would look at her twice whenever she stood on a street corner. Why else would a fancy woman be seen standing around there?

“Not enough,” she mumbled.

The men shook their heads as she walked on toward her building. “Man, even a pretty lady like that can’t get paid right.”

“I hear ya.”

The worst part was that Jasmine didn’t have the energy to refute the idea that she was a prostitute.
Because I am.
Prostitute, lady of the night, hooker, escort, sugar baby… as long as Ethan didn’t call her a whore, she could live with it.

24

“Of course I would like to say that I told the guy to shove the hell off, but after five minutes of his shit I finally got a cop to come scare him senseless.”

Nadia dropped her arms in disgust as she retold her harrowing tale to one of her male coworkers. He took a sip of water from the Evian cooler and nodded as if he understood the perils a woman went through walking past a construction site.

It was difficult getting work done that morning. Nadia came in late after having dealt with a catcaller and an intervention from a police officer on her way in, meaning visitors were irate and the other workers left to fill in her gap. When she finally made it in, everyone wanted to hear the story, and those only just now coming in needed it to start over again. Even Ethan remained nearby enough to eavesdrop, his hands flipping through a stack of mail left on Nadia’s desk while she was gone.

“Rough,” Jasmine said, checking Ethan’s Wikipedia page for the first time that day. “I’m glad you were able to get it sorted out though.”

Nadia glanced at her but refused to hold eye contact. “Thanks.”

Jasmine didn’t know what else to say. Ever since Nadia guessed that hanky-panky was going on in the office, she and Jasmine were no longer besties. Nadia would blush every time she saw Jasmine, stutter around Ethan, and then scowl at the both of them when she thought they weren’t looking.
Be more judgmental. Like I care now.
Jasmine was long past the point of caring about what these people thought of her. She would be leaving in three months anyway.

Three million dollars richer.

A lump formed in her throat as Ethan came over, still looking through the envelopes in his hand. He passed one to her, held a finger to his lips, and retreated to his office, giving Nadia his support on the way by.

Jasmine snatched the letter off the desk, tore it open, and looked at it beneath her desk.

It was a doctor’s report. Addressed to Ethan but passed to Jasmine. He must have ordered it from his doctor after that one night, for in it his personal physician confirmed that Ethan Cole was infertile by way of vasectomy. Jasmine read through it one more time before taking it to the paper shredder and doing away with it.

Okay, so the man hadn’t been lying about the vasectomy. Unless he paid his doctor off to say that, in which case Jasmine would never know.
Unless I get pregnant.
She had to trust him. Trust that had dissipated after a woman named Samantha tore through the office weeks ago.

Whatever.
If Jasmine were fertile enough or if Ethan had superhuman sperm, she definitely would have known by now. Three months of screwing him on a fairly regular basis would have pitched in at some point. She was young. He was young. As far as she knew, all of those parts were working fine. Bareback sex like they were having for a while would have caught up to her.

The whole vasectomy thing didn’t bother her nearly as much as what her heart kept screaming at her.

At no point had her feelings for him subsided. She knew it was irrational – as love often was. Although she had come to terms with their relationship ending in three months, and possibly never seeing him again, Jasmine still harbored those terrible feelings that made her weak whenever he said the right thing or touched the right spot. She knew that she shouldn’t beat herself up over it, but how could she not? If she couldn’t contain her emotions, she would only be setting herself up for heartbreak.

So what if she had alienated her only friend in the office? So what if she was debasing herself… Jasmine had to stop. She sat down at her desk, stared at the Wikipedia page, and considered editing it herself.
Ethan Adam Cole: billionaire, big dick, big head. Buys women because why the hell not.

After a deep breath to ground herself again, Jasmine went back to work.

25

“Don’t you have any friends?” Jasmine stood beside Ethan’s desk, stapling papers he needed put together for an upcoming meeting. “Besides Mr. Creepy. He doesn’t count because you need better friends than that.”

Ethan slowly turned from his computer and gave her a strange stare. “I have friends.”

“Who? Work people? Bah. That doesn’t count.”

He tapped on his keyboard. “People I went to college with. People I have worked with in the past. Some people in this very building.”

“Oh yeah? What are their names? Give me one.”

“Mark Gillian.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Of course you haven’t. He was one of my roommates in undergrad. I went to his wedding last year.”

“Have you talked to him since?”

Ethan snorted as if she insulted him. “We talk about once a month on the phone. Going to be at a similar conference this year too. Do you want to know what we have for dinner the first night we meet up again?”

Jasmine picked up her stack of papers and shuffled them until they were all in alignment. “Point taken.”

“Why do you care about that anyway?” Ethan went back to staring at his monitor, clicking through emails and searching for attachments.
So many spreadsheets.
Jasmine put together most of them. “Should I be asking about the state of your friendships?”

“My best friends are named Juan and Selena. They’re siblings.”

“I see.”

Papers stapled and organized, Jasmine pushed them in front of Ethan and then leaned on his desk. “I ask because you seem so introverted. Not that it’s a bad thing. But you spend so much of your time either working or hanging out by yourself, as far as I know. What in the world do you do for
fun?
Besides sex.”

“There are other things?”

“Ethan.”

He waited until he sent off another email before answering. “Reading. Chess. Study languages. Staying up way too late on my phone and reading drama on the internet. Living the American life.”

This time it was Jasmine’s turn to stare incredulously at him. “You troll on the internet?”

“I didn’t say that. I just read the drama that stirs up every time someone sneezes near their keyboard.”

“What about video games?”

“Unless it’s a card game, no. I like movies. But doesn’t everyone?” He leaned back in his chair. “I go for drives to clear my head. Change my scenery when I’m in a funk. When you work as much as I do, one of the last things you want to do is something taxing afterward.”

“Except sex.”

Ethan smiled. “Who said that was taxing?”

Finished with her work, Jasmine stood and prepared to go back to her desk. For the meeting, she needed to make a million copies of everything. The stupid copy machine had been moved to the supply closet due to its original electrical outlet dying and the maintenance people taking their time to get to it.
I love that sweatbox of a supply closet.
With the copy machine going as much as it was now, the damned room turned into a veritable furnace.

“Jasmine.”

She turned to face him. “Yeah?”

That look in his eye was unmistakable. “Make sure you get as much work done as you can now. After lunch I intend to… well, you know.”

“Uh huh.” Arms laden with folders and books ready to be copied, Jasmine shuffled out of his office and back to her desk in the executive suite.

Even with that hanging over her head, Jasmine still knew that it would be a while before it happened. There were folders to be stuffed full of copied files, and with the copy machine squared away in some small closet, Jasmine had to get to work now so she could still make lunch.

Half the office was already at lunch, meaning the copy machine was open for her to use. The only person who hadn’t left yet was Nadia, stuck on the phone with one of Ethan’s investors in some foreign country like Chile or Indonesia. Normally Jasmine enjoyed the quiet that fell over the office when she and Nadia were the only ones there. But that day she had to fire up the copying machine, the piece of shit machine that growled, whined, and sounded like pure death whenever someone tried to copy something.

For a billionaire, he’s sure stingy about the equipment.
Jasmine had complained about it to Ethan more than once, but all the pleas to replace it fell on deaf ears.

While she was turning a piece of paper over, she caught a glance of Nadia getting up and heading toward the bathroom. The rich investor must have gotten what he wanted.

He wasn’t the only man about to get what he wanted.

The door to the supply closet swung open, and there stood Ethan, dressed to the nines in his dark pinstriped business suit, smelling of the aftershave that could soothe Jasmine’s nerves on a good day. Right now she was dealing with the beast of the copy machine, and nothing in the world could soothe her.

“I’ll have these done in another ten minutes.” She didn’t bother to look at him. “By the way, when you getting this thing replaced?”

Ethan stepped into the closet and shut the door behind him. Crammed in together like that, Jasmine barely had room to open the lid on the copying machine and flip the paper over again. Yet that meant there was plenty of room for a little white flower to appear beneath her nose.

“Really? What has gotten into you?”

The flower disappeared. Instead it was replaced with Ethan’s left hand, placed beneath her chin and turning her head toward him. “Changed my mind. Don't want to wait 'til after lunch.”

Jasmine stared at the wall in front of her as the copying machine whrred beneath her hands.
Oh hell no.
When Ethan’s hand caressed her shoulder and his lips met the back of her neck, she nearly shivered out of his arms – if it weren’t for the damned machine.

The room was populated with shelves of papers, inks, toners, and other office tidbits; spools of computer wires and retired appliances; and a broom and a mop for emergency spills. It was so provincial that Ethan Cole must have been getting hard just from the novelty of the idea.

“Are you kidding me?” Jasmine lowered her voice and could barely hear herself over the copying machine. “In the
supply closet
?”

Damn him. And damn
her
for feeling tingly when he squeezed her arms and kissed her ear. “Just a quick one.”

He pressed against her, and wouldn’t Jasmine know it, he was hard enough to get going at any moment. Jasmine, on the other hand, was not as prepared. “A quick one? What? Do you think I can get ready in fewer than thirty seconds?”

The door locked from the inside. Ethan wrapped both arms around Jasmine, keeping her from finishing her administrative duties. When he kissed her skin this time, it was with a passion Jasmine was not expecting. “Yes,” he whispered into her ear. “I’ll make sure.”

Before Jasmine could ask how he planned to accomplish the impossible, Ethan tugged on her dress straps and pulled up on her knee-length skirt. Soon enough the chiffon flipped up past her ass and wadded between her and Ethan’s bodies. His erection pushed against her.
About two seconds away from bursting through his zipper.
Jasmine had to admit it – pretty hot.