1
BENJAMIN
“Good morning, Mr. Johnson.”
I glanced up from the crisp copy of the Times that I was reading and saw a pair of long bronze legs tucked under a white mini skirt, strutting towards my desk. My bear growled in approval of the sight.
“Good morning indeed,” I said back, folding the paper as my eyes moved upwards. “Take a seat, Miss--”
“Owens,” she leaned across my glass desktop to offer me her manicured hand and, in the process, and lingered just long enough to give me a view of the hot pink bra peeking intentionally through the gape in her silk blouse. Damn.
“Julia Owens,” she added, before dropping into the tufted velvet armchair positioned directly across from my desk.
“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Owens,” I nodded, my eyes still sizing her up. Platinum blonde hair, fake-baked bronze skin, pink glossy lips -- hot pink, to match that lacey bra.
If you were to consult the slew of tabloids that report on my dating patterns, they’d inform you that I have a type -- tall, blonde, curves in all the right places and human -- and Miss Julia Owens certainly fit that bill. She knew it, too; I could tell by that coy little smirk she was wearing.
“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Johnson,” she said, folding one bronzed leg over the other and letting her skirt ride up a little too high on her thigh.
“Please,” I said, “Call me Benjamin.”
“Benjamin,” she repeated slowly, pressing her pink glossed pout into a smug little smirk. Then she nodded at the folded newspaper on my desk and asked, “Were you checking out my article in the Times?”
“Not unless you cover the market,” I smiled, but her face stayed blank. “The stock market,” I clarified.
“Oh,” she shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “No, that’s not really my cup of tea.”
“No?” I raised an eyebrow and leaned back in my chair. “What is your cup of tea?”
“Rich, hot men,” she said, raising a defiant eyebrow back at me and pressing her lips into another smug smirk. “Shifters, especially.”
Of course, I thought. I could have told you that the moment she strutted into my office, her fuck-me heels clicking against the tile floor and her lips pressed into that glossy pink pout.
Women like Julia Owens were a dime-a-dozen in Charleston. Aspiring Carrie Bradshaws, lured out of Midwest mediocrity by the glitter and glitz of a big southern city; lured by the false promise of rent-controlled brownstones, well-paying writing jobs, closets full of Manolos, ‘rich, hot men’ lined up on every street corner ready to offer up the kind of dirty, shameless sex you could only have in a city full of strangers.
“Men’s style,” she clarified, still holding my gaze intently. “I profile rich, hot men for the style section. My specialty is shifters. You wouldn’t happen to know any, would you?”
“Interesting,” I said, crossing my legs and folding my hands over the knee of my grey sharkskin suit. “And I meet those requirements, do I?”
“Of course you do, Mr. Johnson,” she cooed, her eyes flashing suggestively.
“Benjamin,” I reminded her.
“Benjamin,” she smiled. Then she bit down on the corner of her plump bottom lip and added, “You’re a bit of a legend.”
“Am I?” I raised an eyebrow, even though I already knew the answer to that.
“I had to fight off the entire style department to get this interview,” she said triumphantly. “We were all jumping at the chance to undress Benjamin Johnson. Or one of your brothers.”
Of course she wanted the dirt on the whole Johnson clan. My parents had be happily married for more than forty years, and the cubs? Well, we were an entirely different story. The last I heard from the twins was that they were building some sort of Shyft fitness center, and Ellis was purchasing some new building to make into lofts. We were well known, but our shifter sides had to remain as under wraps as possible. I couldn’t do this interview, no matter how cute Julia was.
“Undress me?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Figuratively, of course,” she said unconvincingly. “For the profile.”
“For the profile,” I repeated, nodding firmly.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered letting Julia Owens undress me. But I had to protect the clan first. They always came first.
Julia Owens and I both knew she didn’t come here for an ‘interview.’ She didn’t come here to wax poetic about my Tom Ford mohair suit or my suede Burberry Oxford shoes.
And she didn’t come here for sex, either.
She came here for the thrill of fucking someone famous. She wanted a taste of that Charleston fairy tale; a story she could tell her gaggle of girlfriends, giggling gleefully between sips of a six-dollar sweet tea. She didn’t want to fuck me, she wanted to fuck my persona. I was nothing more than a novelty; an item on her bucket list. ‘Rich, hot man. Maybe a shifter.’
And, ironically, when the novelty wore off, she’d be the one running to Page Six to accuse me of being the grade-A asshole; the user, the playboy, the womanizer.
That was the pattern… that was the real Charleston fairy tale, people using each other for fame, pleasure, excitement, thrill… anything and everything but love.
“This profile,” I said, leaning forward and resting my elbows on the glass desktop. “Let me hear what you’ve got so far.”
“You want me to read it to you?” she frowned, confused.
“If you don’t mind, of course.”
“It’s not done yet,” she said. “I’ve just written the introduction…”
“I want to hear it,” I smiled encouragingly. Then I added, jokingly: “It’s not every day I get to hear what people really think of me.”
She shrugged, then she reached into the tote that was resting on the floor by her feet. She pulled out an iPad and brought the screen to life with a swipe of her thumb, then she reclined back in the armchair and began reading aloud:
“Benjamin Johnson is no stranger to mixing business and pleasure; billionaire hotel mogul by day, party-loving playboy by night, Johnson is equally infamous among Charleston’s upper crust elite for his cut-throat business acumen and his insatiable appetite for hot blondes.”
Julia paused, her eyes flicking up at me, almost daring me to respond.
“So far, accurate,” I nodded.
She pursed her lips proudly, taking my remark as a compliment, then continued reading:
“Since inheriting the Shyft empire at the tender age of twenty, the hotel heir has spent the last decade maintaining an impressive collection of international 5-star properties, and an equally impressive private collection of international supermodel girlfriends. The Shyft is world-renowned for style and elegance, and it’s only fitting that the man at its helm would have a wardrobe to match.”
She clicked off the iPad’s screen and glanced up at me expectantly.
“You have something wrong in that section,” I smiled, as I leaned back into my chair.
“Oh?”
“My parents, Lucinda and Kane still own the place. I just manage the assets.”
I was born into the lap of luxury; the heir to a hotel empire that had been meticulously cultivated by five generations of Johnson’s before me. Success was never an option; it was a requirement. It was always assumed that I’d be the next in line… that I’d inherit the throne and take over my father’s empire.
People also assumed they were already retired, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. My parents were going on forty years together, sure, but most people didn’t realize that shifter lived nearly twice as long as their human counterparts. So they would probably continue to run the join for another twenty years before stepping down.
“I can fix that, no problem. But do I have you figured out?” Julia asked coyly. “Or is there more to the man than what meets the eye?”
Don’t pretend you give a shit, I thought cynically. We both know this is just a game.
“What do you want to know?” I asked. “For the profile?”
She was about to answer, but before she could the phone on my desk rattled to life, filling my glass office with the shrill screech of its high-pitched ring.
We were both startled, and I reached for the receiver.
“Hello?” I said into the mouthpiece.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I recognized the voice of Janet, my receptionist, on the other end of the phone. “I wouldn’t interrupt if it wasn’t urgent, but…” her voice trailed off.
“What is it, Janet?” I asked.
I had already forgotten all about Julia Owens, until I glanced up and see her staring at me with wide-eyed excitement plastered on her face.
“There has been a family emergency, Mr. Johnson,” Janet said through the phone.
My heart sunk, because I know that could only mean one thing. My brothers were a pain in the ass, but there was only one Johnson that could make Janet sound like this…
“It’s your sister, sir,” Janet confirmed what I already knew. “It’s Celeste.”