Until I'm Yours (5 page)

I shove those weak-minded thoughts aside when I enter my tiny, luxurious space at Bennett Enterprises. It’s only mine for the next two weeks, but it’s chic and gorgeous, decorated in icy blues and misty grays, glass desktops and delicate furniture populating the two rooms I’ve been temporarily assigned. As soon as I cross the threshold, a slim hand with rings on every finger except the thumb proffers a cup of steaming coffee.

“Ah, Stil, you’re worth your weight in chocolate.” I grab the coffee and slurp greedily. “I thought I was going to have to set up a caffeine IV. Thank you.”

My assistant, formerly my makeup artist, is also formerly Stella Miller. Early on she was obsessed with all things Stila. All of us models teased her about buying Stila eyeliner when she didn’t even have money for food. So over time, Stella became Stila, and Stila became Stil, and Stil has become one of my few true friends. In this transition from model to mogul, she’s my right hand. She’s helping me keep life on kilter.

She always had the most organized station at the shows, all her pots and potions and liners and lipsticks almost OCD level neat. She brings that same obsessive attention to detail to my life. Thank God someone can.

“The rest land in half.” Stil follows me into the larger office, where we’ve placed my desk.

We have our own verbal shorthand, Stil and I. We can conduct entire conversations in a roomful of people and no one be the wiser of what we are actually saying.

“Oh, good.” I settle behind my desk and into the lumbar-loving leather seat molding the line of my body. “Thirty minutes to do a few things. I’m ready when they get here.”

“How was last night?” Stil leans her too-slim petite frame against the doorjamb. Pink strikes like lightning through her onyx hair, short and pixied. She’s not too slim because she doesn’t eat. The girl has a “man meets food” appetite. She just also happens to have the metabolism of a hamster on Ritalin.

“It was okay.” I keep my face neutral. I really don’t feel like rehashing being at the table with Walsh and Kerris, or seeing Kyle Manchester again, or why that’s a bad thing. And I certainly don’t want to talk about Trevor Bishop.

“Did you do it?”

“Do what?” I raise cautious eyes to Stil. We’ve been through some wild times together. There’s no telling what she thought I was going to do last night.

“Break it off with Rip last night.” Stil rests her fist on one bony hip. “Or was it an ‘o’ for the road?”

“Neither. I didn’t break it off, and no orgasm as a parting gift. So the night was truly a bust.”

“Tonight then?”

“Maybe after the party.” I grimace, taking a sip of my caffeinated lifeblood. “The break, I mean. I think I’m done with the sex. It has to be soon. If he used his tongue only to service me, we could probably stretch this out, but he keeps…”

“Talking?”

“Yes!” I slap my forehead. “He keeps
talking
, and it’s driving me batty.”

“He could use that tongue for so much good.” Stil shakes her head and sighs. “I’m sorry he doesn’t know when to shut up.”

“
C’est la vie
, yeah?”

“Yep. Just be gentle. He seems kind of fragile to me.”

“Fragile?” I scoff. “Rip’s tough as nails. We both knew this was no grand love affair. Just fuck and fun.”

“Okay, well, you know what you’re doing. I’m gonna get ready for the meeting.”

“Me, too.”

I pull out my iPad, and instead of pulling up the figures for my meeting, seemingly without my permission, my fingers type “Trevor Bishop” in the search bar. He has a TED talk? Who has TED talks? The word “incite” snares my attention, and I click on the video link. He’s addressing a group of college students at a university, dressed more casually than I’ve seen him so far. He wears a Kelly green T-shirt and dark wash jeans, his ruggedness more pronounced in the less formal clothing. He turns to a whiteboard to write, and my jaw almost hits the desk.

That ass. Tight and round and muscular, I want to take a bite. To pluck it like I’m testing ripe fruit. I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, imagining what he must look like without the wrapping. I need to know how a Princeton dropout turned businessman gets this body. I’m so caught up in how good he looks, I almost miss what he’s saying, but the urgency of his tone arrests my attention.

“It was my junior year at Princeton.” He faces the lecture hall packed with students. “As part of a course study on international business, my then-roommate Harold Smith and I spent the summer visiting Southeast Asian and African countries. I was struck by how lands so rich in natural resources had such poverty. We were just a few days away from returning to the States when I experienced an inciting incident that would change the course of my life.”

He props himself on the desk, connecting his dark eyes with as many of the students as he can from his spot at the front of the room. He folds his arms, biceps straining in the short sleeves, across his chest before continuing.

“We were in Indonesia. I’d never seen such hunger and poverty, unlike what we call poverty here.” Trevor’s whole expression hardens, so far from the teasing lighthearted man I’ve seen over the last two days, I barely recognize him. “Our global economic system had failed the people there so badly. I’m not one who believes we can take responsibility for everything that goes on everywhere in the world, but dropping food in a place like this was like spitting on a forest fire.”

Trevor pauses, swallows, stands, and shoves his hands in his pockets.

“A little boy died right in my arms that day. Just breathing one minute and not breathing the next because of hunger. Because of malnutrition. Harold and I just…well, we just cried that night.”

A bomb could go off downstairs and I probably wouldn’t move. I’m as silent as the students listening whenever this was recorded, with bated breath waiting for his next words. I’m rapt, and it has nothing to do with how good he looks, or his tight ass, or those broad shoulders. His words are like a fist reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart, massaging the muscle until it beats, maybe for the first time in years.

“And that’s when we started envisioning Deutimus Corp,” Trevor says on the video. “We derived it from the Greek word
dunamis
, which means an act of power. Natural power and capability. We didn’t just want to drop aid or food or resources onto people in developing nations, but we wanted to
restore
power to them, to economically and intellectually empower them so they could generate their own resources. Indigenous people generating indigenous solutions. We used our business understanding to establish these profit-bearing ventures in developing nations all over the world, run and managed by the people in those contexts.”

“Everyone’s here,” Stil says from the door.

I fumble to stop the video, but Trevor’s deep voice continues for a few seconds, electrifying the air around us.

“Who’s that?” Stil steps deeper into the office, leaning over my desk to see Trevor on my iPad screen. “Shit, I’d climb that mountain.”

I take the screen dark, irrationally irritated by her comment. I needed a bib for my drool at the dinner table last night when I saw Trevor for the first time, but hearing him discussed that way after what I just heard feels wrong.

“You said they’re here?” I put on my business face. “Bring them in. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

I grab the iPad, stand, and cross over to the glass-and-steel conference room table on the other side of the room, surrounded by chairs just as delicate and tensile as the one at my desk. Soon every seat is filled with the people I’ve handpicked to help me with what Stil and I call my passion venture. It’s hard to think of something that’s this much fun as business.

“So Haven, as you all know,” I say, leaning back and crossing my legs at the head of the table, “is a lifestyle website along the lines of Goop or Preserve, but with an edgier, more fashion-insider angle. Me, of course, being the fashion insider.”

Everyone at the table grins or chuckles. Some of them are interns or come-uppers I plucked from fashion houses, but most of them are what I like to call texperts—the technical experts who will be the engine behind the glamour. One of them, Marlee, interned with the Walsh Foundation last summer. A Columbia graduate, she’ll help build the charitable arm of the website.

“We have all of our artisan partnerships nailed down.” Stil levels a hesitant glance across the table at me. “All except one.”

“Which one?” I tip my coffee cup all the way back, begging gravity to release one more drop, but nada. “Who haven’t we secured?”

“Well, we all love this one jewelry line,” Sera, a girl I snatched from Calvin Klein, says. “So unique.”

“Show me.” I stretch my hand out for the iPad Sera slides across the conference table. I swipe through the pictures, loving each one more than the last. The use of crude stones in classic settings is especially clever. And oddly familiar.

“I’ve seen these.” I squish my brows together. “Where have I seen these?”

“It’s the Riverstone Collection.” Stil clears her throat and brushes nonexistent stray hairs back. “By Kerris Bennett.”

Dammit.

Everyone at this table, everyone in this building, everyone in New York, hell, everybody who is anybody, knows my history with Walsh Bennett. To think I want to work with his wife; the woman who essentially usurped the place I always thought would be mine…

I glance at the iPad again and remember the piece Kerris was wearing last night at the charity dinner. Remember, too, her concern in the bathroom. Whatever I felt for Walsh wasn’t much more than an heirloom my parents passed down to me. The sex was great, but I saw them together last night. What Walsh and I had is on a different planet from his connection, his commitment, to Kerris. They have a family, and I’ve moved on. I have…well, I don’t actually have very much besides my work with the Walsh Foundation and this site I’m starting.

“Put that on my list.” I don’t look up from the iPad. “I’ll talk to Kerris myself about partnering with us. Anything else we need to discuss?”

“I’m in communication with Jo Walsh Mitchell about the partnership with the Walsh Foundation,” Marlee says. “We’re discussing co-promotion opportunities, brand placement, and other ways we can link the two entities.”

“Sounds great.” I scribble my name in one of the Moleskine journals I keep handy all the time lately.

“And that illustrator you were interested in using for the site will be at the party tonight.” Stil takes a sip of her chai tea latte. “Maybe try to cozy up to her at some point.”

“Oh!” I look up from my scribblings, a smile taking over. “She does those Megan Hess kind of drawings, right? Yeah. I’ll meet her tonight.”

I stand, signaling the team that our meeting is over.

“Let me know if you need anything from me. Good meeting, guys. You’re doing an amazing job.”

I take the seat behind my desk, not looking up from the profit projection spreadsheet we distributed during the meeting as they all drift out of the office. Stil pauses at the door, resting her shoulder there.

“François Gerrard sent over some things for you to consider wearing to the party tonight,” she says.

“Oh?” I slide my spreadsheets to the side. “Lemme see.”

Stil steps back into the lobby and rolls a garment rack back in. I count six options. Two immediately stand out—a black strapless jumpsuit with dipping cleavage and narrow legs, and a caramel-hued long-sleeve minidress that would probably mold every curve I’ve got.

“I’ll probably get ready here, so his timing couldn’t be better.” I run my hands over my sleek ponytail. “What do you think for my hair and makeup?”

Stil tilts her head, squeezing on eye closed. She’ll always be a makeup artist at heart, and I trust her opinion completely.

“You’re doing it yourself?”

I nod. After fifteen years in the hands of the world’s greatest makeup artists and stylists, I know all their tricks and can achieve the same effects when I have to. We talk through a few options until a clear vision for the night emerges.

“I guess François wants you in his stuff as much as possible now that the Goddess deal has been inked.” Stil grins, the stud in her left nostril glinting. “Can you believe you’re gonna have your own perfume, Sof?”

I hold my chin in the palm of my hand and tap my fingers against my face. François was one of the first designers to give me a chance when I was eighteen and had never even walked a runway.

“Well, it’s
his
perfume. He’s just using my face to sell it.” I circle my index finger around the lip of my empty coffee cup, setting aside my cynicism long enough to smile about something I never would have seen coming. “It is pretty cool, though. We should see if he’s willing to sell it on Haven.”

“Oh, connect the dots.” Stil turns toward the outer office. “I’ll call his people and set up a convo. Want a salad from the bistro downstairs?”

“Yes, please.” I pick up my iPad to review the items we discussed at the meeting. “I’m starving already.”

Stil’s Loubs echo across the floor as she leaves the suite. Down the passageway, I hear the elevator ding for the doors to open. As soon as I know she’s safely descending toward the bistro, I flip back to my Google search of Trevor Bishop. I watch three more videos, all of them captivating. It isn’t the hint of stubble coating his square chin, or the dimples hole-punching his lean cheeks. Nor is it the intimidating breadth of his shoulders. It’s not even that ass that has me watching video after video, reading post after post, article after article about him.

Trevor Bishop tempts me, intrigues me, even inspires me. Few men have managed to do that all at once. He’s a species I’ve rarely encountered in my years of hurried hookups, illicit affairs, and dead-end flirtations.

He’s a good man. I have no use for good men, and despite what they may think when they look at me, they have no use for me. A good man should have a good girl.

And that I’ve never been.

I
’m not sure this will work.

Walsh Bennett is sharp, brilliant, resourceful, and, from what I can tell, a man of integrity. He lives up to and even exceeds his reputation. Unfortunately, so does Ernest Baston. I’m not sure I can do business with that man. He’s ruthless, heartless, and I’m pretty sure underwent a conscience lobotomy decades ago. After spending the morning meeting with him, I could use a full-body soak in hand sanitizer.

“So what’d you think?” Harold asks as we wait for the elevator.

I know Harold wants this deal to happen, but we’ve worked too hard to get Deutimus where it is, achieving what it’s doing for the people it’s helping, to take the first offer that comes our way. We’re not desperate. We’re in pole position. We’ve made the smart moves to put us there, and Ernest Baston won’t fool me into thinking differently.

“I didn’t like Baston’s body language when I mentioned keeping indigenous workers,” I say. “Even when it might be more cost effective to use workers from other nations like India or China.”

“He didn’t
say
it would be a problem, Bishop.” Harold gives me that long-suffering look he reserves for my “gut” reactions.

“You know as well as I do that most of communication is nonverbal.” I lean against the elevator wall while we wait for the elevator car to come. “He isn’t saying what he’s thinking because he knows we’ll walk away.”

He knows
I
will walk away. There is already a conflict brewing between the inner warriors tucked neatly away behind our suits. He doesn’t like me, and I don’t like him, and we both know it. But we’ll just keep grinning until we can put the pretenses aside and bare our teeth at each other.

My guess, based on Baston’s pattern, is that he’s digging around for something he can hold over us to force us into his way of thinking before he shows his hand. I don’t operate that way, and I’d rather get out before he starts tampering with the people and things that mean something to me. That wouldn’t end well.

For him.

The elevator dings, the doors open, and Harold steps in. It takes him a second to realize that I’m still out.

“What are you—” Understanding dawns on his face. “Aw damn, Bishop. Leave that woman alone. She’s not your type.”

“I’ll catch a cab home.” I grin at him and turn to the right, the direction I saw Sofie go this morning. “You take the car.”

“You’ll take a cab all the way to Brooklyn?” Harold says as the doors are closing. “That’ll cost a fortune.”

“Didn’t you hear?” I say over my shoulder. “We’re rich now.”

I can only hope there aren’t many options down this hall. I could end up looking ridiculous poking my head in every door until I find Sofie. It’s a cause I’m willing to look the fool for, though. Even though Harold’s right. She’s not my type. The last woman I dated…hell, I almost married, graduated from Oxford and leads a global clean water campaign. Half Kenyan, half British, she speaks four languages and will probably be an ambassador before she’s forty.

And the whole time we dated, the whole time we were engaged, never did I feel what I felt in the sliver of time I’ve spent with Sofie. Like she’s an impossible table puzzle with a million pieces I could spend all afternoon assembling, and never get quite right. Like I’d get to the end, and still have these tiny empty spaces where pieces hiding under the couch or lost in the attic should be.

I know people instinctively. Call it a curse or a gift, but I see things they try to hide from me. My dad is just in touch enough with his Native American forefathers to believe the Great Spirit guides us in these things. I have no explanation for how or why I can cut through what people present to who they really are, but I always can. I never fall for bullshit.

And though Harold’s right about Sofie not fitting the usual profile of women I’d be interested in, my feet still follow the path I saw her take. That path ends at an open space with a glass reception desk of sorts. No one is seated there, but a clear carry-out container rests on the large, wide marble lip above the desk. It’s a grilled chicken salad, and on the container there’s a note.

“Sorry, Sofie,” I read aloud. “No artichoke hearts today.”

I look around the small, neat lobby. I’m in the right place.

“Stil, food!” a disembodied voice booms from the adjacent room. The door is slightly ajar, and through the crack, I see Sofie’s gilded head bent over a stack of papers on her desk. Without a second thought, I grab the container and walk into the office.

“It’s about damn time.” Sofie doesn’t lift her head, but jots down a note in a Moleskine notebook. “Now I’m hangry.”

“Well, they’re out of artichoke hearts.” I set the container on the desk in front of her. “Hope that doesn’t make it worse.”

Her eyes fly up from her work, meeting mine and widening.

When they say this woman is beautiful, they’re not telling the half of it. Or maybe they just leave out the most important part. It’s not the perfection of her features that captivates me. It’s all the things hidden behind those green eyes. Like water so vibrant and clear you can see all the way down to the ocean floor, but somehow as you dive deeper, there’s all this life teeming beneath the surface that managed to remain undetected until it brushes up against you.

That brief surprised widening of her eyes is the only moment she yields to me, my last advantage. She recovers quickly, leaning back in her seat and crossing one long leg over the other, clearly a move that usually distracts horny men long enough for her to manipulate them. If she were wearing a skirt, I might have even fallen for it.

“Are you lost?” She raises one dark blond brow.

“No more than everyone else.” I settle one butt cheek on the edge of her desk, mostly for show because I’m afraid my full weight would topple the little glass table.

“Oh, is this a philosophical discussion then?” Her full lips bend almost undetectably.

“If you’d like, I’m down for that.”

“Men don’t usually want to have philosophical discussions with me.”

“I bet they’re missing out.”

“No, they’re not.” She uncrosses one leg, scoots them both under the desk, and rests her chin on folded hands. “What can I do for you, Mr. Bishop?”

“First, you can call me Trevor, or just Bishop.” I give her a grin. “All my friends do.”

She doesn’t bounce a grin back to me.

“How nice for your friends. And you’re here because?”

“I was wondering if you’re coming to the rooftop party tonight.”

She tilts her head, giving me an unblinking stare.

“And that matters to you why?”

“I’m leaving for Cambodia tomorrow, and I wanted to see you again.”

A small frown knits her eyebrows together, and her lashes drop to hide her eyes.

“I thought you and Harold were staying in New York for a while.”

“We are when we come back, but have some business there first.” I reach out to lift her chin, forcing her to look at me again. “So will you be there tonight?”

She turns her head, subtly freeing herself from my grasp.

“You know I’m dating Rip.” She lifts her lashes, giving me the full impact of those green eyes. “Are you in the habit of pursuing another man’s girl?”

“No, I have a definite rule about that. I never go after another guy’s girl.” I shake my head. “This isn’t pursuit. This is early level mild interest.”

“
This
is early level mild interest?” She leans forward a little, extending her neck for the question. “Following me to the bathroom? Staring at me rudely in elevators? Asking me probing questions in front of strangers? Tracking down my office and arriving unannounced? I’d hate to see pursuit.”

“I actually think you’d like to see pursuit, but we won’t know until you kick the quarterback. When’s that happening, by the way?”

“I told you he’s still fucking me out of my mind. Why stop now?”

She watches my face closely for the response she wanted from her words. Little does she know it’s not my face that’s responding. Every time she says the word “fuck” my dick goes hard as granite, even though she’s talking about it with someone else.

“I think the only way a guy like Rip can hold on to a woman like you is to keep her fucked out of her mind, so that’s probably his best strategy. If you stop fucking him long enough to come to your senses, I’d like to take you to dinner.”

“Dinner?” Her laugh is like cream, rich and decadent. “Why don’t you say what you really want?”

“I just did. I always do.”

“Well, it’s a moot point since I’m with Rip and you’re off to Cambodia and I doubt we’ll cross paths again.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Will you be at the rooftop party tonight or not?”

Her smile fades to nothing and she blinks several times.

“I’ll be there with my boyfriend.”

“I’ll respect that, of course.” I straighten from the little glass structure I almost crushed. “But once he’s out of the picture, which we both know he will be soon, all bets are off, and I’m formally warning you that we go from early level mild interest to full-on pursuit.”

“You can pursue all you want, but that doesn’t mean you’ll succeed.”

“That’s like pouring gasoline on a kitchen fire with somebody like me. My high school guidance counselor told me that about going to Princeton, but I got in on a football scholarship. My own parents warned me about leaving college to start Deutimus, and it’s turned out pretty well for me.”

“Is that what I am to you, then?” She looks at me unsmilingly. “A challenge? Something to be achieved?”

“I think you’re a woman who hasn’t even begun to show the world who she is.” I consider her for an extra second. “I think in some ways that’s something you’re still trying to figure out yourself, and people engaged in that process fascinate me.”

“
I
think the world and I both already know who I am.” The look she gives me is supposed to be a dismissal, but I’m too much of a stubborn goat to read it as one. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

So I’ll see her once more before we fly out tomorrow. Another chance to chip away at that sparkling armor. I walk back toward the door, pausing by the garment rack. My imagination puts her in the dark brown minidress, and I practically drool.

“I like the brown dress, by the way.”

I shouldn’t have said it. She’ll wear something else just to spite me. That’s okay, though. With this woman, even spite is an aphrodisiac.