Chapter 1
“Here comes Mr. Anaconda.”
Alyssa Channing turned away from the bar and glanced toward the door to see who her best friend Carly meant. She spun back around fast when she spotted Mason Harwick gliding through the door. Alyssa rolled her eyes disapprovingly. “Let’s get out of here. We can go to the Fishbowl instead.”
Carly watched over Alyssa’s shoulder with wide eyes. “I don’t want to leave. Oh, my God! He’s headed straight for us,” she said excitedly.
Alyssa lowered her voice to a menacing growl. “What’s he doing here, anyway?”
Carly grinned at something behind Alyssa. “Maybe he’s looking for new blood.”
Alyssa faced forward. She picked up the Bloody Mary the bartender had set on the bar for her and sipped from her straw.
Carly didn’t turn. She called over Alyssa’s shoulder in a flirtatious, sing-song voice. “Hi, Mason.”
Alyssa couldn’t help but see him out of the corner of her eye.
He shouldered up to the bar and looked over at Alyssa’s profile.
Carly leaned forward and bumped into Alyssa. “How ya doing tonight, Mason? What brings you downtown?”
“It’s good to see you ladies here.” His deep voice struck Alyssa’s ear.
“I come here every Tuesday. My shooting club meets here for drinks after our target practice. See? They’re right over there in that booth.”
Alyssa didn’t look at him. “You better go join them then,” she said sharply.
“I’m still ordering.” He moved forward, too. He and Carly sandwiched Alyssa between them. “Besides, I’d much rather be talking to you ladies up here. I guess the company’s a little better, and the view is astounding.”
Alyssa shot him a glance to see what he meant. She caught him inclining his head behind her. He was checking out her ass. She whipped around to face the bar again, but she couldn’t help seeing him in the mirror behind the racks of bottles.
A slight smile touched his lips. He covered it up by sipping the straw in a Pina Colada.
“You can stay here with us anytime,” Carly purred. “I’m sure talking about all that shooting and blasting gets boring after a while.”
“Maybe your friend doesn’t want me to stick around,” he remarked. “Maybe she’d like you all to herself.”
Alyssa couldn’t stand still any longer. She rounded on him and bared her teeth. “We all know who and what you are. You don’t have to do us any favors bestowing the blessing of the great Mason Harwick’s presence on the women of the world. We didn’t come here to get picked up by players like you.”
Now, he really did smile.
She’d seen him dozens of times when she visited bars with her girlfriends. Sure, he was super handsome, with coal-black hair swooping over his forehead and penetrating brown eyes. His glowing olive skin would make any woman’s mouth water.
His womanizing reputation disgusted Alyssa, though. He cruised the bars for any hapless woman he could find. He charmed them off their feet, had his way with them, and left them high and dry. Everybody knew all about Mason Harwick’s exploits.
Alyssa wouldn’t be his next target, even if he did admire her ass. Some women in this town still had enough self-respect to ignore his magnetism. He had tried more than once to pick her up in the past. She learned to shut him down fast before he got any ideas.
She turned her back on him to face Carly, but Carly was no help at all. She still leered at Mason over Alyssa’s shoulder intently, following his every move with her eyes. She would love nothing better than to get picked up by him, even if it were just for the night. The girl saw dollar signs every time Mason Millionaire waltzed into a room and would twist herself into a pretzel to get a chance with him.
“Just ignore him,” Alyssa told her friend. “Then maybe he’ll go back to the Green Room instead of slumming it downtown.”
The bartender came along and handed Carly her Fuzzy Navel. She faced front long enough to pay for it.
While her back was turned, Mason oiled up behind Alyssa and murmured in her ear, “I would come here every night if I thought I would bump into you.”
She started to look over her shoulder, but she caught herself in time and kept her head turned away from him. “I would ignore you every night then. I’m not one of your floozies. Like you can just snap your fingers and get me to go home with you.”
Mason smirked, “No,” he whispered. “That’s your friend. That’s why I want you and not her.”
“You only want me because you know you can’t have me. You don’t want me. You want a cheap hooker.” Alyssa chuckled.
He laughed and studied Alyssa’s body with his eyes. His deft hand appeared on her waist and glided down to just below her hip. “No cheap hooker could give me this. Christ, you don’t know how hard you’re making me right now,” he murmured.
She refused to turn around to face him and slapped his hand away. “Get your hands off me, you man whore. Don’t you ever touch me again.”
He inched back. “Okay. If that’s the way you want it.”
Carly turned around again.
Alyssa thought fast and changed the subject. “When did you say the application deadline was?”
“Monday,” Carly answered, “but you’re sure to get it. You might even be overqualified.”
“I better get it,” Alyssa replied. “I’m coming to the end of my savings, and I still haven’t found a job.”
Mason called over Alyssa’s shoulder. “I’ll give you a job. You come and see me Monday morning, instead of applying somewhere else. You can start right away.”
Alyssa whirled around to confront him one more time. “Will you leave us alone? I don’t want to work for you. I don’t even want to look at you. You can’t keep your hands to yourself in a bar. You’ve probably got every woman in your company bending over for you. That would be just like you.”
He didn’t smile. “I don’t lay a finger on any woman who works for me. I have a strict policy never to date inside the company. I keep that for outside. You would be perfectly safe working in my company.”
She harrumphed, but she couldn’t think of one decent answer to that. She'd been so busy hating him she didn’t want to listen to a word he said.
Carly chirped in her other ear, “Go for it, Alyssa. You need a job soon, and you’ve had no bites. Just do it until you find something better.”
“Yes, Alyssa, go for it,” Mason added. “I know you’d do a good job.”
Alyssa narrowed her eyes at him. “How would you know that? You don’t know anything about me.”
“Sure, I do,” he replied. “I looked you up when I first met you. I know you did good work for Andersons’, and I’ve seen your LinkedIn profile.
I’ve got the perfect position for you.”
Alyssa turned away. She couldn’t continue this conversation without caving to temptation. Work for him in his company? If she didn’t hate him as the lowest worm on the bar scene floor, she would jump at the chance. He ran the most influential contract brokerage in the country.
His company did tens of millions in revenue every month. She couldn’t deny that Mason earned the right to throw his weight around the place.
So he looked her up on LinkedIn, and he still wanted to hire her. She pushed that thought out of her head. She wouldn’t work for him. She wouldn’t look sideways at him. She would take her chances in this crappy job market.
She turned away. “Forget it.”
He said nothing more. Alyssa went back to chatting to Carly about some guy in Carly’s office who said something to somebody else. A few minutes later, Alyssa sighed with relief when Mason went back to his shooting buddies in the booth across the room.
Alyssa saw herself in the mirror. Her straight brown hair parted on the side and tucked behind one ear. Her low-cut top showed off her cleavage, and patterned velvet tights showed off her voluptuous form. Her glowing red lipstick made her mouth look full and inviting.
Alyssa didn’t say anything, but after another half hour of schmoozing, Carly herself suggested moving on to the Fishbowl. They left Mason Harwick and all his looney suggestions behind.
Carly drank too much as usual, and Alyssa once again found herself in the regrettable position of dragging her friend home. She dumped Carly’s sloppy frame into bed. Most nights, Alyssa would have taken off Carly’s shoes and jeans, but after a couple dozen evenings doing the same thing, Alyssa made up her mind to skip it.
She took a cab back to her own apartment. She turned her key in the outer door. She’d be happy to slouch into bed herself, only to face another glorious day on the job hunt tomorrow. She slid her key out of the lock when she caught sight of something white in her mailbox. She took the envelope upstairs and sat down before she opened it.
Dear Ms. Channing
This is your four weeks’ notice that we will end your tenancy at this address. We will use the last month’s rent you already paid to cover these four weeks, so you need not pay rent on the 1st of the month. Please contact your rental manager to arrange final inspection and the return of your deposit…
The letter went on, but Alyssa didn’t read anymore. She let the envelope fall to the floor and went to her bed. She wanted nothing more than to fall asleep, but she couldn’t sleep now. She didn’t have enough money to pay first and last month’s rent on another apartment. She had no income to cover another month of rent anyway. What was she going to do?
She needed a job, and she needed it now. Dammit, she had no choice but to take Mason Harwick up on his offer. He told her to come in first thing Monday morning. She could start right away.
At least, there were laws in place to protect her if he tried anything funny. If he so much as laid a finger on her, she could sue him for all his stinking billionaire dollars. Like Carly said, she could do whatever job he had in mind until she found something better. After all, most companies hired people who already had jobs. She had found that out for herself.
She changed into her pajamas and climbed into bed, but she could only lie there and stare at the ceiling. A thousand possibilities whirled through her head. She could go home to her parents in Wisconsin. No. She could move to California and surf all day. No. She could get a job at the diner on the corner and spend the rest of her life pouring coffee for truck drivers. No.
The bottom line stared her in the face. She had never dreamed of a job offer as good as working for Harwick & Co. Most people in her field lusted after those jobs and never got them. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to take a job with a firm like that? An offer like this wouldn't going to stay on the table for too long. Mason wanted her to work for him, and he promised to keep his hands to himself.
So he kept business and pleasure separate. That just went to show what a consummate businessman he was. He valued his company and his success far above any piece of ass he could pick up in a bar. Heaven knows he could get any piece of ass he wanted.
Just for a second, she couldn’t help but let herself fantasize about what it would be like to do it with him. What it would be like to break the air of tension between them and submit to his expert touch. His broad shoulders and rock-hard abs no longer hidden underneath his business suit. His muscled arms wrapped around her waist pulling her up against him. His hands gripped firmly on her ass. That penetrating gaze sending her deeper and deeper into…
Stop it! She would never do it with him. Never!