ELI
Don’t want to see you.
Don’t want you here with me.
Better off being alone.
I stared at my text messages for the hundredth time in the last hour, and wondered what in the fuck I’d been thinking.
Granted, my brain had been fried from my illness at the time, but could I have done anything more stupid than send Jade asinine messages like the ones I was staring at?
Nope. Probably not.
What I’d thought I’d said, and what I’d really typed couldn’t have been more different. Yeah, I hadn’t wanted her to come to San Diego because I was afraid she’d end up sick, too. Actually, I’d desperately wanted to see her, and I’d wanted her to be with me. But I’d preferred to be alone because of the contagious nature of my initial illness.
I’d been so fucked up that I’d felt like I’d poured my heart out to her. But in reality, I’d pretty much dumped her via text message.
I tossed my phone on my desk with more force than was really necessary because I was disgusted with myself.
I should have looked at what I’d texted to her earlier, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d sent something that idiotic to the woman I couldn’t live without. Besides, I hadn’t wanted to look at the unanswered messages. It would have made me even more miserable than I’d already been when I was really sick.
I was going to do what I absolutely had to do in my office, and then I was driving my Bugatti to Citrus Beach to see Jade in person as fast as I could haul ass to get there.
No more text messages.
No phone calls that she could easily ignore like she had in the past when she’d been angry.
Now that I was finally lucid, I planned on getting it right. And that might involve groveling until I could get Jade to let me explain the jumbled messages I’d just discovered an hour ago.
“And I wondered why she wasn’t calling me?” I said aloud in my empty office.
Hell, she had to think I was even a bigger prick than she’d first thought.
We’d slept together.
And then I’d sent her a rambling message that sounded more like I didn’t want her than its true intention—to tell her how I actually felt.
I would have been better off to leave my phone alone while my mind had been messed up when I was sick. But I was so damn obsessed with Jade that even when I was barely coherent, all I’d thought about was trying to explain everything to her.
I looked at the files and papers that had piled up in my absence.
The only things I planned on taking care of before I left for Citrus Beach were anything urgent or time sensitive. Then I was getting the hell out of the office so I could take all the time I needed to convince Jade that we needed to be together.
Not for ten days.
Not until our passion faded—which was never going to happen.
Not as friends—because I’d never survive just a friendship.
I was getting forever. And I’d camp out in Citrus Beach until she agreed.
“Jade Sinclair to see you, Mr. Stone.” Alice’s voice rang out from the intercom, her tone professional.
Jade?
Damned if my heart didn’t start to accelerate just from knowing she was standing outside my office.
I looked up from the papers I was signing, my mind suddenly on alert. Unfortunately, my dick was suddenly at attention, too. All it took was to hear her name.
Not that I could exactly do anything about that right now. But it was good to know that everything was still functioning after over two weeks of misery.
It had been seventeen days, five hours, and a handful of minutes since I’d seen Jade. I felt every single second of not hearing her voice or seeing her beautiful face.
Today had been the first day I’d felt reasonably human again, and I’d known from the moment I’d gotten out of bed that I couldn’t go another day without talking to Jade.
Yeah, the doctor had told me it would take some time until I felt back up to my normal speed after the drain of having bacterial pneumonia. But I’d been on antibiotics long enough to be certain I wasn’t contagious anymore. It hadn’t mattered that I was still dragging ass. I knew I was going to see Jade or die trying.
But she’s here now.
And holy fuck . . . I needed to see her.
I was irritated as hell about being sick. I hadn’t gotten the flu since I was a kid, and it had been the last thing my relationship with Jade had needed.
I pressed the intercom button. “Give me a minute, Alice,” I instructed my secretary.
“Let me know when you’re ready, Mr. Stone,” she replied.
I stood up and walked to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and then stared at my reflection.
At some point over the last few weeks, I’d finally figured out that I didn’t need to be Austin. My brother would always have a place in my memory, but he died because he had an addiction problem. Nobody could cure him when he hadn’t wanted to be sober himself. We’d all tried. My parents had done everything they could to get him straightened out, and I’d pretty much begged him to stop. But the will had needed to come from him, and he’d never made the effort to stay clean. Not really. He’d gone to rehab to satisfy my parents and not himself.
Only after I’d lost it with Jade had I been able to actually evaluate the emotions that hadn’t seen the light of day in four years.
And I wasn’t very happy with the way I’d handled Austin’s death.
I also wasn’t pleased at the fact that I’d been offered the chance to be with an amazing woman like Jade, and I’d pretty much pissed away the opportunity because I’d been a dick.
I’d known that Jade was special from the moment we met.
I should have been pursuing a real relationship.
Instead, I’d thought that all I needed was sex.
Yeah, maybe I did need it with her pretty damn bad, but I wanted a hell of a lot more than just Jade’s body.
I fucking wanted her heart.
I’d just been too damn slow to realize that.
Now, it was very likely that I’d pay for that stupid mistake.
But I’m not going to lose her. It doesn’t matter what it takes to make sure she ends up with me.
I tossed the towel I’d used to dry my face into the hamper.
Moment of truth, Stone.
It was about damn time that I fought for exactly what I wanted, and the only thing I really needed was the woman who was waiting outside my office.
I sat back down in my chair and took a deep breath before I pressed the intercom. “Send her in, Alice,” I instructed.
“Right away, sir,” she answered immediately.
I shook my head, wondering if the secretary who had been with me for several years now was ever going to call me Eli like I’d asked her to about a million times before.
The errant thought left my mind as Alice appeared, and Jade came strolling through the door.
I knew the moment that she directly met my eyes that something was way different.
It took a couple of seconds for all the changes to completely sink in.
I didn’t notice the soft click of the door closing that signaled Alice had left us alone. I was too busy watching the woman who had walked into my office like she owned it.
There was no hesitation, no nervous new female billionaire like I’d encountered the last time she entered my office.
Her beautiful eyes were wide open and taking my measure as she walked up to the desk.
Jesus Christ! What in the hell happened to the Jade I knew?
Gone were her blue jeans and T-shirt, and in their place was a figure-hugging, black leather pencil skirt that ended above her knees, making her legs seem to go on forever. As far as attire went, she was pretty much dressed for business, but her white blouse was cut just a little too low. And the short cashmere sweater that she was wearing open over the top of the silky creation that had my attention sure as hell wasn’t made to keep her warm.
She moved gracefully in a pair of black heels, and as she arrived in front of my desk, she dropped the stylish black purse into the chair next to the one she sat down in.
“What did you do to your hair?” I rasped.
The locks were pulled to one side with an enormous clip, and cascaded down one shoulder. But it wasn’t the style that had thrown me. It was the color.
Jade was a brunette, but her hair was more of an auburn shade now, the red highlights likely to make any guy do a double take. I didn’t like it, but my eager dick certainly did.
“It’s new,” she said vaguely. “I guess I needed a change.”
A change?
Buying a new pair of shoes was a change.
Everything about Jade seemed entirely different right now, including the makeup she didn’t generally wear.
“You look beautiful,” I said in a husky voice.
There had never been a day when Jade hadn’t been the most attractive woman I’d ever seen, but she looked particularly stunning today.
She shrugged, but kept her eyes locked with mine. “Thank you,” she said breezily. “But I’m not here for compliments. I’m taking you up on the offer to be your intern if it’s still open.”
“Of course it is,” I said eagerly. “But Jade, I wanted to talk about—”
She put her hand up. “You don’t need to explain. I just want a chance to learn. I’m not asking for anything else.”
I wanted her to ask for anything she damn well wanted. I’d find a way to give it to her.
“I’m sorry that I—”
I immediately got another “talk to the hand” motion. “I don’t need an apology for anything. We had a good time, Eli. Now it’s time for me to get down to business.”
She’s not going to accept my apology. She’s not going to listen because she isn’t interested in a prick like me.
Not that I could really blame her. Looking back now, I knew I’d been a complete asshole. She might have been looking for a real relationship had I not told her that basically all I wanted was sex.
“I was just looking at a new potential investment,” I told her. “It’s a pretty big one, so I have a lot of analysis to do.”
In truth, I hadn’t been looking at shit. I’d been scribbling my signature on papers that had to get signed before I left to go track her beautiful ass down. But I did have proposals on my desk, and one in particular that was a big project that needed more research.
There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to at least keep her within my sight. So I’d roll with the intern thing for now. I wanted to understand what was really happening with her, and I was willing to take all the time in the world to figure it out.
“Good,” she said cheerfully as she rose and started to scoot her chair around the desk. “Can I look with you?”
She shoved her chair against mine and sat back down.
Being a red-blooded male who had never been able to keep my eyes off her in the first place, I couldn’t help being fixated on her legs as she crossed them, and that tight skirt that was riding up her thighs.
I caught a whiff of a light, clean, floral scent that made my dick turn into stone.
She’s killing me, but at least I’ll die pretty fucking happy.
I tore my eyes away from her and turned back to the computer screen.
“Show me what you’re doing?” she requested.
I spent the next few hours torn between happiness and agony.
There was nothing I wanted more than just to be next to her.
But every time she got up to get something, go to the restroom, or just to stretch, my eyes and my dick were drawn to that little leather skirt.
And dammit, she seemed so happy and confident. The real bitch in that was the fact that she’d done it all without me.
However, I had to marvel over the quickness of her brain, and how fast she caught on to the concerns that come with any investment. Her questions came like lightning, and she seemed to absorb everything I said and then build on that knowledge.
“So what’s your final decision?” she asked curiously as we finished up reviewing the information.
“I need to order a couple more reports,” I explained. “But it looks good so far. It will be a challenge. But if I can save jobs for the employees, it might be worth it.”
“Do you think you can save the company if you acquire it?”
“I’m reasonably sure I can, but there’s going to have to be changes company-wide. And sometimes people don’t like change. I figured that out a long time ago.”
“It’s not always a bad thing,” she said thoughtfully.
I heard the intercom beep, and Alice’s voice floated into the room. “I’m going for lunch, Mr. Stone. Can I bring you anything?”
“I’m good,” I told her.
“You really should eat something, sir,” Alice said carefully. “Those antibiotics will make you sick if you don’t.”
“I’m fine, Alice. Go to lunch,” I replied firmly.
I had a few more days on my antibiotics, but the course was almost done.
“Back in an hour,” she said.
“Are you sick, Eli?” Jade asked quietly.
I could hear the concern in her voice, and it was the first time I had a glimpse of the Jade I cared about. “It’s nothing. Are you hungry?”
She stood, put her hand on her shapely hip, and drilled me with a no-nonsense look. “Eli Stone, why are you taking antibiotics? Are you ill?”
“I’m not contagious,” I confessed. “But I had a fight with the flu and pneumonia. The viruses and bacteria won.”
She held out her hand, and I took it because she was so damn fierce that I didn’t even consider refusing.
“I’m taking you to lunch,” she informed me as I got to my feet. “And then you’ll explain why you’re even back in the office if you aren’t fully recovered.”
She grabbed her purse on the way to the door, but tightened her hold on my hand. “What sounds good?” she questioned as we left the office together.
“Nothing,” I said honestly.
“Good. Then soup and sandwiches it is,” she decided.
I grinned as we waited for her vehicle to be brought around by the valet. She’d gotten decidedly bossy, but I kind of liked it. Jade had always been meant to lead instead of be hidden away in the woods somewhere. She’d just never realized that she was fully capable of doing more than one thing, or being good at a whole lot of things.
I’d never doubted it.
“This is me,” she said, pointing toward an arriving vehicle.
“Since when are you driving a BMW?” I asked in surprise. “What happened to the Jeep?”
“I still have it,” she answered as she moved to the driver’s side and handed the valet a tip. “I need it for my survival stuff. But I think it was time to buy a new vehicle. It’s not exactly a Bugatti, but I love it.”
I headed for the passenger’s side. It was a 3 series, so it wasn’t an extravagant spend for her, but the classy black exterior suited her.
“And the butterfly finally escapes from the cocoon, stretches her wings, and flies away,” I muttered as I got into the car.
Jade had indeed broken out of the protective shell she’d lived in, but she wasn’t escaping very far.
If I had my way—which I would—she was flying home to me.