Chapter Three
“I think I should be the one handling this surprise inspection back in Barcelona,” his brother said as he cut into his pork loin. “You’re a big-picture man, Xav. You’re not always great at focusing on the details.”
“Well,” Xavier said, smiling back at him. “I appreciate that. It must make me the Steve Jobs of the company.”
His brother rolled his hazel eyes back at him and set down his utensils. One hand raked through his short, curly black hair. “I don’t know if you want that comparison. First, he almost bankrupted Apple over the Lisa, and then he was kicked out for a while.”
“But he rose like a phoenix from the ashes, and again, I think I’m the aesthetics guy.”
Javier snorted. “You’re something alright. I had a Miss Carrie Connors practically trying to break down the door to the offices looking for you. I had your secretary on that in a hot minute and a nice pair of parting diamond earrings ordered for her to try and calm her temper. I thought you’d have learned after that incident years ago…”
“I am discreet,” he said, clenching his knife handle in his hand until the cool steel dug into his palm. “It was my date who was snooping through my phone. Besides, we’d had about three dates and weren’t an item.”
“Tell that to security,” Javier quipped as he picked up his wineglass. “You might have a discretion problem. I hope that doesn’t bleed over to your newest valet.”
“Juliet Gaines? Why would it?” Xavier asked, although he already knew it could be a problem. He wasn’t a fool and tended not to mix business with pleasure. It always got messy, and it always led to disaster. He’d paid for that once already.
Still, she was a curvy strawberry blonde with creamy skin and big, haunting doe eyes. He had a weakness for women with reddish hair, always had, and Jules hit off every item on his checklist. God, maybe Estelle had sent her to him as a test of his maturity.
I’m going to lose.
Keeping the smile planted on his face, he added, “I don’t fraternize with the help like that.”
“I don’t know, brother. A redhead—”
“Strawberry blonde, actually.”
“I saw her today as she was leaving for home from your apartment. She’s definitely your type, and let’s be honest, you have a tendency sometimes to think with any part of your body that isn’t your big head.”
Xavier set his knife down. His hand throbbed from the grip he’d held it in, and he probably shouldn’t have access to sharp things when his younger brother was needling him so. “Thanks for that vote of confidence.”
“Security, Xav. We had to call security. You’re over thirty, brother. You have to grow up sometime.”
“I work twelve-hour days and have to live out of a suitcase for a month to settle a labor dispute. I’m more than grown. I’m not that guy who fucked up five years ago. You keep seeing him, but I’m not like that. I had one girl who pried into my business this morning. That’s all.”
Javier nodded and stood, letting his linen napkin fall to the tabletop. “Well, if you’re really an adult, you’ll have no trouble making sure you think with the right head while in Spain. Please, hermano, think through this and don’t have sex with the valet. I still wish Estelle had picked Larry instead. He’s fifty and has two grandchildren.”
“I’m not some slobbering caveman. I’ll be fine, Javier. Just see the company’s in one piece when I come back.”
His brother shook his head and shoved his hands in his pockets. Seriously, would it kill him to smile once in a while? “Oh, it will be. Night, brother.”
Xavier sighed and drained his glass of red wine, relishing the way the liquid coated his throat. “Glad we had this talk.”
Standing up, he carried his plates to the sink. Jules would get it in the morning before they headed out for the airport at Dulles and his private jet. The flight would be long, and he had enough paperwork to go over to sink a flotilla. Rest was in order.
If only he could get his mind off a certain redhead.
***
“You seem nervous,” he said, looking up from his papers.
Those soft brown eyes looked back at him through black-framed glasses, something that reminded him a little of the receptionist from Ghostbusters, but Jules was far hotter than Jeanine had ever been.
She rubbed her hands on the fabric of her khakis. He appreciated she was trying to wear something business casual. Well, the businessman in him did. The regular guy wished she’d worn denim. Jeans would hug her ample curves just right. Then again, it was better for their continued professional relationship and his brother’s blood pressure if Xavier never saw Jules in jeans. His newest valet was definitely more of a challenge and temptation than Larry would have been.
A blessing and a curse.
“I don’t like flying. It makes me nervous. I was on a flight once to California for my grandmother’s funeral. I was seventeen and it was struck on the wing by lightning. It still made it to the destination, but I’d never been more scared in my life. I thought I was going to fall out of the sky!”
“But you didn’t,” he countered, setting a hand over hers on the armrest. Her hand was shaking so badly that Xavier wanted to do anything to put her at ease. He’d like to say that he’d do that for any employee, but he couldn’t exactly see himself covering Larry or even Estelle’s hand like this. “You made it, and we only have four more hours to Barcelona. You’re already more than halfway there.”
“And I don’t think I can make it,” she said, turning pale and reaching with her other hand for a bottle of water.
He arched an eyebrow at her wryly. “I’m not a dad driving a minivan on a summer vacation trip. We can’t exactly just turn this plane around. Besides, you’ll get to Barcelona faster than you will to DC.”
She gulped down the water and regarded him with eyes as large as plates. “Then I need something to keep me distracted.”
“I can have a movie put on. I also have an e-book reader if you’d like.”
“No, I don’t think that’s enough. I need to be totally immersed in something to block all the stimuli out.”
Nodding, he used his good hand to pull down the blinds. “What do you have in mind?”
“I…this is going to sound stupid.”
“Try me.”
“I have this YouTube channel.”
“You do?” he asked, quirking his head at her. “That was not at all what I expected you to say.”
“It’s not anything big. I have it under my stage name, Mistress of Schlock. I have this whole riff on Elvira where I wear a fakey vampire costume, but I review the worst movies you’ve ever seen.”
“Why?”
She grinned, the expression lighting up her face like a candle in a jack-o’-lantern. “You don’t watch vids? I’d rather be making movies, but until then I love interacting with my fans.”
“No,” he corrected, still holding her hand, enjoying the warmth of her skin under his palm. “I get why people enjoy YouTube. I’m busy, but I occasionally have something I follow. Just why bad movies?”
She shrugged. “My dad loves horror movies, so I used to watch the cheesy or not really scary ones with him when I was a kid. There was this terrible one with, like, rubber hand puppets called Feeders. I never forgot that movie. So when I started my channel it was an ode to those films. Now I do other stuff, like behind the scenes Q&A or reviews of new movies in theaters.”
“I like that.”
“You don’t even watch cheesy movies,” Jules pointed out.
“No, but I can tell you’re passionate about it. I think that’s what matters. My father started this company forty years ago. Before he died, well, he’d still be at work starting at seven. He lived for this company, and that passion…whatever you do that gives it to you is worth following. Can you make a vid while we fly?”
“Not a great one. I brought my camera for a bit of filming when I’m off the clock.” She blanched. “Unless that’s not okay.”
“You have eight-hour days. Whatever you do around that is on your own time.”
“Cool.”
“So can you film?”
She hesitated and then pulled her hand away. He loathed the loss of contact, but it was for the best. She’s just an employee. You have to remember that. As he watched, she pulled out her phone from her purse and then turned it on.
“I can make a small video on my phone. The quality will be crap, but it’ll be fun for a behind-the-scenes post to get them anticipating all my Spanish sightseeing at night.”
“You’re lucky then. Barcelona has a fabulous nightlife. Nothing even starts there before ten or eleven. It’s a lovely city.”
“I can’t wait to see all the Gaudí structures. Talk about trippy stuff!” she said, futzing with her hair and getting into position.
“I can take you.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized it. Javier had only advised that he didn’t have sex with his nubile redheaded valet. His brother never said that he shouldn’t act as a tour guide.
“You can?”
“If you’d like to see something when I’m not in meetings, then I would feel bad letting you wander around such a large city on your own.”
“I can handle myself,” she said, sitting up higher in her chair and tilting her chin up at him. “Like I said, DC’s a tough city and I’ve had jobs before where I got off at two or three a.m.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“I took one year in high school before switching to German.”
“I can help you there. Seriously, on Friday I’ll be done with my first round of meetings and I’ll be happy to show you around the Sagrada Família and the Park Güell. It’s all Gaudí, all the time.”
“I don’t want to impose,” she said.
“I want you to experience my city, and I’d love for you to see it as I do,” he said.
“You’re from Barcelona? I assumed you were American.”
“I am on my mother’s side. She’s a Clifton, some old New England deal, but she met my father traveling for summer school in college. Javier and I were born here when my family was living in the States, but this is definitely my city. It’d be my honor to introduce an American to everything.”
She frowned. “I don’t want…it’s not inappropriate, is it?”
“Not at all,” he lied. If you wear something less frumpy, though, I’ll probably combust with need, but we’ll worry about that when we get there. “Think of it as me doing my part for tourism.”
Jules nodded. “We’ll see, okay? You might be exhausted by Friday.”
“Trust me. I’d still be up for you.”
She smiled tightly, and he hoped she hadn’t taken it as a double entendre. He really hadn’t meant it that way, but in retrospect, it sounded like a bad come on. “Sounds neat. Now, let me work my magic,” Jules continued, shaking out her thick red hair one more time. “When I nod, I’m recording.”
“I’ll zip it,” he said, mimicking the turning of a lock in front of his lips.
“Thanks!” she said, then gave him a brisk nod. “Hey out there all you Mistress fans! I’m coming to you live from thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean…”
***
He knew it was a mistake when he did it. Well, not a mistake. More like a terrible idea. He had a meeting in eight hours with a foreman who was barely keeping order in the factory as it was. The last thing that Xavier needed was to be looking up one Juliet Gaines, aka Mistress of Schlock, on the Internet. He should be in bed, asleep, and getting primed for his rigorous week. But he’d already gotten a front row seat to the enthusiasm of Jules’s performance and fallen for the way she seemed to transform on camera, the way she shone with an inner light. He needed to see that for himself.
His laptop was set up on his legs while he lounged in his hotel room and booted up her channel. Pressing play on a random recced video, he knew then that he was in big trouble.
Huge, actually.
While Jules might have been forthcoming about her channel, she hadn’t exactly disclosed her dress code, or the lack thereof. His newest valet hadn’t been kidding about the Elvira bit. She had a tight spandex dress on in a deep crimson that hugged every curve and plunged low over her breasts. Her face was coated in pale pancake makeup that made her delicate skin even more creamy and appealing, and the fake fangs drew extra attention to her ruby red lips.
Blood flooded down to his member, and Xavier was rock hard in an instant. His testicles were already drawn up against his body and heavy with need. He barely paid attention to her words as she joked and quipped about I, Frankenstein. He was too mesmerized by the way she flipped her hair in the lights, the teasing hint of her lips as she talked, and the ample curves of her cleavage.
He wanted her.
I can’t have her. Damn it! The last thing I need is to prove Javier right.
But it wouldn’t hurt anything if he fantasized, if he pushed lust-filled thoughts about Jules aside after he indulged just once. It would take the edge off, and then he’d be able to show her around the city on Friday without coming off as over the top. It really was the only sensible thing to do.
Totally.
He set the computer on his bedside table and then slipped out of bed long enough to take off his pants. Then, thinking better of it, he rummaged through the bathroom until he came back with some of the hotel’s lotion.
Leaning back on the mattress, Xavier closed his eyes and let his hand curl around his length. He pumped back and forth, letting the friction build slowly. In his mind’s eye, it wasn’t his hand that was stroking him; it wasn’t his thick fingers over his shaft but Juliet’s delicate and nimble ones, the ones with the polish that was slightly cracked earlier on the plane. It was her sweet scent of jasmine and honey that he smelled, and her soft voice that would call to him as he thrust into her.
Heat spread through his torso, a delicious caress of fire and magma working its way over his body. It encouraged him to intensify his pace, thrusting his length into his hand, pounding into it. If he ever could let himself make love to Jules, he’d go slow and seduce her the way a woman as beautiful and as lively deserved.
But now?
Now he was a prisoner of his own passion. He needed to cool his own burning desire, douse his bubbling veins with ice water and chase the heat raging through him away. He thought of her, of the way her soft red locks would feel strewn across his chest. Xavier fantasized about the softness of her breasts when he’d knead them between his hands. He craved the taste of her tongue on his own.
His testicles tightened and the heat grew into a raging forest fire over his skin. He came then, screaming her name so loud that, for a moment, Xavier feared the hotel staff would send someone to knock on his door and make sure he was okay. But no one came.
Xavier fell back onto the mattress, panting on the bed.
“Damn it. What am I doing?”
That was a fucking good question, because no matter what he’d assumed, the passion for Jules hadn’t gone away. No, it was like throwing gasoline onto a bonfire, and he was roaring for her.
And that could only lead to trouble.