The Millionaire And The Glass Slipper. Christine FlynnЧитать онлайн книгу.
he agreed with what Justin proposed. Even though there were serious doubts about finding marriageable women who didn’t know who they were, and about how each man could get that woman to stay married after the deception was revealed, they would meet Harry’s terms. But only if he signed an agreement preventing him from ever blackmailing them again.
Gray wanted the agreement to be ironclad, signed, witnessed and notarized so Harry couldn’t throw out any new conditions.
What J.T. wanted as he hung up the phone and headed into his bathroom in search of an antacid tablet was to know how Harry thought something that had never worked for him should work any better for any of his sons. As far as he was concerned, no matter what happened, he’d just kissed his life as he knew it goodbye.
Chapter One
J.T. rubbed the back of his neck as he watched the numbers of the downtown office building’s elevator ascend. A run was definitely in order. Or a workout in the hotel’s gym. There was nothing like working up a sweat to lessen tension—with the possible exception of sex. Since he didn’t know any women in Portland, Oregon, and since he wasn’t into one-night stands, a workout seemed his best option for loosening the knots and easing the restiveness he could never quite shake.
His broad shoulders lowered with a long expulsion of breath.
He didn’t want to think about women just then. Aside from making him aware of a different sort of frustration, since it had been a while since he’d had the pleasure of intimate female company, thinking about women reminded him that he was supposed to be looking for one.
He still couldn’t believe the ultimatum his father had delivered two months ago. Two and a half, he mentally grumbled, reminding himself that the clock continued to tick.
His jaw worked in a slow grind as the numbers continued to climb. Justin had discovered he was a father not long after that meeting, but no one knew if he was making any progress with his little girl’s mom. As far as J.T. knew, the guy still didn’t want a wife. He knew for a fact he didn’t want one himself.
He wanted nothing to do with the whole home-and-family thing. He knew firsthand that commitment on that level simply didn’t work. He couldn’t even remember his own mother, his father’s second wife. She had bailed when J.T. was two, leaving him to a series of nannies, au pairs and the two succeeding stepmothers who’d pretty much ignored him before they’d abandoned him and their sons, too. They’d literally taken the money and run, which had pretty much proved to him long before he graduated from high school that women could be bought.
He’d learned a couple more valuable lessons back then, too. He’d learned that women pretended to care only when they wanted something in return. And that the best way to get any attention from anyone was to get into trouble. A visit from a truant officer was usually good for at least a ten-minute audience with his father. That was often the most time the man spent with him all week.
The elevator slowed. Over the quiet drone of the Muzak, a refined ding announced his floor.
He didn’t cause problems now. At least, not the kind that involved threats of expulsion or fines for speeding tickets. He’d refined his talent for trouble into a tendency to merely break or bend any rule that didn’t suit his purpose. His opinion of women, however, hadn’t changed much. His father’s rules for the Bride Hunt were that the women not know who they were or anything about the family wealth. When he got around to looking for a woman, which he was still in no rush to do, his personal requirements would be more specific.
The woman would have to have good genes. Preferably, in a tall, leggy blonde sort of way. She couldn’t come with any emotional or familial baggage. And she needed to have a career she wanted to keep so she’d have interests of her own. His father had said that the woman had to fall in love with him—not that he had to fall in love with her. Not that he believed for an instant that his father’s demands could be met—which was why he was about to implement Plan B.
The elevator doors slid open. Stepping into a wide hall, vaguely aware of the sounds of construction coming from a floor below, he noted the plaque on the wall indicating the direction of the suite he was looking for.
Plan B was to have everything in place to open his own architectural firm so he’d have something to fall back on when his father sold out. He figured that would happen in nine and a half months, when the time for the hunt expired. The logistics of that new venture became the sole thoughts on his mind as he opened the door marked Kelton & Associates.
A spacious reception area of white walls, gray industrial carpet and a wide mobile of what looked like stainless steel boomerangs greeted him. Beneath the slowly moving mobile sat a large amoeba-shaped Lucite secretarial desk. A state-of-the-art computer monitor and telephone system, lines ringing, occupied the short side of the curved L.
He’d chosen to interview this particular marketing firm because of its reputation for being cutting edge, and its relatively small size. Small meant fewer people who might recognize him. It was also half an hour away by air and two and a half to three hours by car from Seattle, which meant that it operated outside the sphere of core support businesses HuntCom used in the Seattle area. To avoid the publicity that would come if news of his endeavor got out, he wanted to keep everything under wraps until implementing it became absolutely necessary.
His first impression of the ultramodern decor was that it echoed the firm’s cutting-edge hype. His second was that there was no one manning the reception desk. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
Or so he was thinking when a totally preoccupied young woman in a gray sweater and skirt barreled around the corner from a hallway. Her dark head was down, her arms loaded with files. Judging from her direction and her speed, her destination was the ringing telephone on the desk. Before he could do anything more than think about stepping from her path, she walked right into him.
Her startled gasp met the rustle of papers and the soft plop of files hitting the carpet. Of the dozen thick folders she carried, half of them hit the floor. The other half she clutched to her chest as she dropped to her knees.
“Ohmygosh. I’m so sorry.” Flushing to the roots of her barely chin-length, chopped brown hair, she grabbed a file. “Our receptionist isn’t in today, so I thought I’d work out here so I could get the phone…” She shook her head, flushed. “Never mind. Please,” she murmured, clearly embarrassed as he crouched beside her and picked up a file. “I’ll get these. You don’t have to help.”
Ignoring her insistence, he reached past her for another file. Closer to her now, her scent drifted toward him. Something fresh, faintly herbal and unexpectedly, inexplicably erotic. Caught off guard by the quick tightening low in his gut, he jerked his focus to the delicate lines of her profile. As he did, she looked up—and went still the instant her dark eyes met his. A quick, deep breath, a quicker blink, and her glance fell away.
Young, he thought. That was how she looked to him as he scanned the fine lines of her profile once more. Pretty. A little self-conscious. And impossibly…innocent. As edgy as he’d felt lately, he figured her to be about a lifetime shy of his own admittedly jaded thirty-eight years. The thought made him feel older, and edgier still.
Her focus remained on her task. “Please tell me you’re not Jared Taylor.”
The name caught him momentarily off guard. To protect his plans, he’d made the appointment using his full first name and his mother’s maiden name. He needed to remember that. “Sorry,” he replied, “but that’s me.” He handed her another file as his eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be Candace Chapman, would you?”
Still looking a little flustered, she took the file, reached for another. She had a beautiful mouth. Full. Unadorned. Kissable.
With a frown, he reminded himself that she also didn’t look a day over twenty-two. Not exactly jailbait, but not fair game for a man who preferred women who held as few illusions as he did when it came to the opposite sex.
“No. I’m…no,” she repeated. “I know you have a one-o’clock with her, though. I can get these. Really,” she insisted, her