I stood in front of the floor to ceiling window of my beachfront home at the northern end of St. Petersburg, gazing into the placid waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When I'd first decided to settle in St. Petersburg, I'd been torn between a property overlooking old Tampa Bay or the Gulf side. My property on Brightwaters Boulevard was located in a quiet, rich neighborhood, my backyard graced with a custom-designed pool, lawn, and beyond that, a dock where my yacht was moored. I could look out my window and watch movement in the channel, where just beyond stretched the shoreline of Shell Key and then the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Tampa Bay and the Bridge Highway connecting St. Petersburg to the mainland to the east. Shell Key curved southward to the bay and beyond toward the endless blue of the ocean. Except in bad weather, the drive into St. Pete was a calm, peaceful drive, and when I had time, I enjoyed driving up along the beach, past Treasure Island, along Madeira Beach to the north, and then across the key into Bay Pines, and then east into downtown.

But it wasn't the view, the sailboats casting with the wind, nor the vague outline of the tanker out in the Gulf to the west that prompted my brow to furrow this evening. It wasn't the brilliant and always spectacular sunset casting the day's end into varying shades of orange that captured my attention. No, it was the memory of a young woman who had come into the bank two days ago, looking for all the world like a lamb offering itself to a lion. Reluctantly yet bravely. Despite the words the woman had spoken to me, I sensed her struggle to maintain her dignity. Taking a sip of my scotch, I couldn't help but smile at her feigned bravado. She had guts.

Riley Hunt.

I recalled my impressions of the young, petite blonde woman who strode into my office, her pale features broken only by a spot of color high on her cheeks. Before she had said a word, I had felt the jolt in my gut at her appearance. I knew women, and I knew instinctively this was a woman such as I hadn't run into in a long time. She had blinked nervously as she sat, then nervously swept long, feathered bangs from her face, tucking a strand of hair behind a small, perfectly shaped ear. Believe me, I noticed that delicate ear lobe, the gentle brush of her slender fingers there, and for some bizarre reason, wondered what it would feel like to suck on that earlobe.

The thought gave me pause. The woman was young, in her early twenties I guessed. At twenty-eight years old, I was pushing thirty. Even as the desire registered in my brain, I had brushed the thought away with an inward grumble. I was no pervert, no child molester. She was a baby in my world.

And then had come her proposition… it was no stretch to say that while I had been propositioned before, many times, I had never been propositioned like this. Not in my office at the bank. Not for such reasons. Mostly, those propositions came from my visits to gentlemen's lounges, clubbing, and the occasional cocktail bar when I entertained friends, clients, or hosted business associates. I rarely hosted guests at my four-million-dollar estate, preferring the quiet solitude provided by my Spanish Mediterranean two-story residence, surrounded by a variety of palms and deciduous Florida shrubs, flowers, and trees.

I'd fallen in love with my place on Shell Isle, within close proximity yet secluded from downtown St. Petersburg, the yacht club, and a myriad of galleries and restaurants. The moment I'd walked in the front door, I'd been captivated by the wraparound Spanish style, oak staircase that curved upward from the foyer, past a beautiful wrought-iron chandelier and transported him to another time, another era, with a modern twist. The flooring, the walls, and the baseboards painted varying shades of white, egg shell, and taupe perfectly accented the black wrought iron and dark oak wood accents of the staircase and the upstairs balcony. The ceilings, also painted white, were set off by light oak beams and more wrought-iron chandeliers, evoking a sense of old Spain though with every modern accessory, amenity, and comfort one could desire. It was a masculine property, the spacious and modern kitchen decorated in black counters and cabinets and black marble floors in the kitchen and attached dining space, with the latest in stainless steel appliances, more wrought-iron lighting fixtures descending from the ceiling, the black marble countertop of the island in the middle of the kitchen offering a view out over the channel.

The seven-thousand-square-foot Windstar home mansion boasted five bedrooms and six bathrooms, each exquisitely and painstakingly decorated by my personal decorator who was familiar with my desire for a sleek, non-cluttered, yet comfortable and homey environment.

Outside, the canal, also known as protected sailable water, offered close access to the open bay beyond, and the dock comfortably housed my seventy-two-foot yacht. What was not to love about the separate guest house, the in-home elevator – I had bought the home from an older couple - plus a heated pool and spa, the spacious, three car garage, and of course the dock and associated boatlift. In addition to the spacious bedrooms, my home also boasted two offices, one which I used frequently, the other transformed into a den of sorts, a nod to the past. I had converted the basement into a media center.

I'd had the home upgraded with Smart House technology, and though I rarely needed them, several gas fireplaces, and a generator for emergencies. Downstairs, beside the media room, was my wine room. Because of the location, I'd been careful to have the archways and the clay tile roof, and especially the basement structure carefully inspected, had installed impact resistant windows for those bad weather days that this area of Florida often experienced - even though I had yet to experience a hurricane and hoped I never would – and installed an automatic water pump, just in case.

I stared out my bedroom window in the luxury master suite, beyond which stood a balcony, wrought-iron of course. My room was outfitted with a huge master bath with a sunken tub and a fireplace, though again, I had yet to use it. A fireplace in Florida just didn't mesh with my idea of a tropical atmosphere but…

Despite the gorgeous view and my efforts not to think about it, my mind kept going back to the proposition. A proposition that had, surprisingly enough, shocked even me. I knew what people thought of me, that I was a playboy, a habitual flirt, a smooth talker who would take whatever he could from a woman that tickled my fancy and then some. But I wasn't nearly as self-absorbed and egotistical, or even as arrogant as people thought I was. I could be ruthless, no doubt about it. You couldn't make money without being ruthless. And, if I were to admit to my faults – and I had many - I would admit that I was often prone to harsh criticisms and outbursts, and at times, when I got really pissed off, I could be quite disrespectful. In essence, I was a risk taker. Often compulsive, often impulsive, but that's how you got ahead in this world, wasn't it? I'd taken over running the bank my dad had built from scratch after he'd suffered his first, but not his last heart attack. It'd taken three of them to take the old man down. My father had taught me everything I knew about finance, and in a way, I was my father's son, especially when it came to my focus on success.

Which brought me to thoughts of my mother, Iva, who had reverted to her maiden name of Masterson after my father's death. She didn't much care for me, I knew that. I reminded her too much of her late husband, my father, an overbearing, intensely critical, never-happy woman who always wanted more, bigger, better. I frowned and took another sip of scotch, not wanting to think about my mother because every time I did, she reminded me of my negative feelings toward her. You see, I blamed her for my father's death following his third heart attack. She lived down in Miami now, and I rarely spoke to her, hadn't seen her in about a year, not since the first anniversary of my father's death. Fine with me. Even so, she wasn't completely out of my life, and annoyingly enough, she did have somewhat of a say-so as a member of the bank's board of directors, although any votes she made were generally achieved via proxy because, apparently, she didn't want to be around me any more than I wanted to be around her.

I pushed thoughts of my mother back into the recesses of my brain and smiled into the sunset, pleased with the way things were going with my business endeavors. I'd just read the reports showing profits that had grown exponentially since I'd taken control, providing me with not only access to more money, but more power. I was considering options of opening two more branches in southern Florida, and if things went well, several more in central and north Florida. I felt unstoppable, on fire, and yet…

Riley Hunt. The proposition of hers. It was stuck in my mind and wouldn't go away, continually niggling at my brain. I should be shocked. Appalled, really, but I wasn't. For some strange reason, I felt the opposite. But not for the reasons I would have thought. I felt unfamiliar with such feelings, as I rarely thought of anything beyond my immediate environment. I couldn't imagine the desperation that would prompt a vibrant and lovely young woman such as Riley Hunt to make such an offer – to me of all people. Her virginity in exchange for a boon… a loan extension, a zero-interest loan, some kind of relief, any kind of relief, from her financial pressures. It'd been obvious to me after reading the file that she had not come so much for herself as for her parents. I had read the file after she left. Her mother couldn't work anymore, some sort of medical condition that relegated her to a wheelchair. Her father worked as a shift manager at a local food processing company, but had recently been arrested, had been sitting in jail for a week, charged with suspected fraud and embezzlement or some such. Riley herself held down a job as a waitress, still living at home and turning over her meager earnings to her father, and yet they had fallen behind on their mortgage.

At first, I'd been annoyed. Why was she making it my problem because they had overextended themselves? But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that they weren't living beyond their means. They had one fifteen-year old car. They lived in a modest, two-bedroom ranch style home on the south side of St. Petersburg in a working-class neighborhood.

I sighed, took another sip of my scotch, and shook my head. I shouldn't even be considering it. What kind of person would that make me, if I traded financial gain for her with the deflowering of a virgin for me? I'd slept with plenty of women, so the thought of being the first to enter into unknown territory with her wasn't a big deal. It was her proposition. Obviously, she valued her virginity, and here she was, willing to throw it away, to give it away, for a zero-interest loan. In any other situation, I would have believed her nothing more than a skank, but one look at her had told me she was quite the opposite. She was an enigma, a girl of Catholic background offering her body to me on one hand, while lifting her chin and looking me straight in the eye when she made me the offer, giving me a glimpse into her personality. She didn't want to do this, probably felt ashamed to even make such a proposition, but her loyalty and dedication to her family had made an impression on me.

Maybe that was because I didn't have a relationship with my mother, and my father, while he'd always been an unemotional sort, was gone. Would I have made such a sacrifice for my parents? As much as I'd loved my dad, I doubted it. Then again, I had been considering her offer on and off for the past couple of days. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that I just might take her up on her offer. I still couldn't figure out why. Of course, she was attractive, but it was more than that. Or was it?

I hadn't gotten into contact with her, thinking that in a day or two, she would return to the bank, rescind her offer, apologize profusely, and then run from the bank, her tail tucked between her legs. But she hadn't. She was serious. Her offer of such a sacrifice intrigued me. Not really on an emotional level, because I'd never considered myself an emotional person, but almost on a business level. She had made an offer, perhaps something that she felt I wanted, or would consider wanting, in exchange for something else. A simple bargain. A business deal. Emotions aside, we would be making a deal. A pact.

First, if I decided to go through with it, I needed to make sure that I would maintain control of our arrangement. We had to have terms and agree to those terms. Only after that would I be willing to offer a portion, an advanced payment, if you will, of an interest-free loan to her. I would offer her enough for her to post her father's bail as well as pay off her mother's overdue medical bills. After we had slept together, I would release the rest of the loan to cover family expenses and get them caught up on their mortgage, plus take care of their mortgage for six months into the future.

Shaking my head at even considering such an agreement, I downed the rest of my scotch in one gulp, watched as the orange of sunset faded into dusky twilight, and then chuckled, low in my throat. I knew what I was getting into, and the amount of money I offered to Riley wouldn't even come close to making a dent in my profits. But did she know what she was getting into?

I doubted it, but then again, it wasn't my problem, was it?