Irresistible Billionaires by Summer Brooks
Rhett
“I’m sorry, let me just get this straight,” Jessica said, folding her red nail covered hands and leaning forward in her chair in a move that was both powerful and calculated all at once.
It was tiny movements like those that had made me hire Jessica in the first place. She hadn’t even had to say a word to prove to me that she was an absolute beast.
Jessica paused, running a tongue across her perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth as she decided on how best to continue.
“Do I need to repeat it again?” I prompted.
“No, no.” She shook her head and then looked up at me with narrowed hazel eyes. “You trusted an assistant, a new assistant with absolutely no experience in the field of either sleuthing or law, to find damning information on the man who is currently in court suing you for millions and your reputation?”
“Come on, Jessica, he can’t actually sue me for my reputation,” I quipped, toying with the stress ball I always kept on my desk but never used.
Jessica was not nearly so amused. She raised a single eyebrow, staring me down with that perfectly still look I’d seen her give others a million times.
Yet another reason why I’d hired her. And now, being on the receiving end of such a look, I knew for a fact that I’d made the right decision.
“Look, I don’t know what it is about Sarah, but I trust her,” I shrugged. “She’s a genius. I mean, probably not in the literal sense, I’d assume, but she’s extremely intelligent.”
“What, exactly, has proven this to you?” She sighed.
“Um, well, she, uh,” I stumbled over my words, something I hated to do, as I tried to figure out exactly what had given me the impression that Sarah was, in fact, smart enough to handle this.
The truth was that there wasn’t a single moment I could point a finger to, a place in time where she’d seemed to light up with all of the knowledge in the world.
She just was.
Thankfully at that moment, in true genius fashion, Sarah burst through the door of my office, her blonde hair a little haywire, slightly bent at the waist, and very clearly out of breath.
“Sorry… I’m… late,” she huffed. “It was like the moment I got started. I just couldn’t stop.”
Jessica didn’t quite know what to do with the frazzled yet absolutely stunning blonde that was in front of her, carrying a tray of coffee, a laptop, and a massive book that looked like it had never even been opened.
“I’m Jessica,” the attorney said, standing and offering her hand.
Sarah looked her up and down, blue eyes wide, and I could practically hear the self-deprecating thoughts running through her head. I desperately wanted to interrupt and tell her that Jessica couldn’t even hold a candle to her, but I knew that wouldn’t at all be well received. Sarah didn’t need a single soul to be standing up for her.
“Sarah,” she replied, attempting to return the handshake and nearly dropping the coffee, laptop, and books in the process.
“Here, let me help,” I offered, rushing to her aid.
Both women gave me the strangest look like I was an alien who’d just arrived next to them via a teleportation system.
But, for the first time since I’d met her, Sarah gave in and accepted assistance.
“Thanks,” she muttered, handing me the tray of coffees so she could put her supplies down. “So, you’re the lawyer, huh?”
She spun to face Jessica again, more comfortable this time, giving her a once over that looked strangely protective.
But I forced myself not to think too much of it. If there was one thing I’d managed to prove over the last few days, it was that I had a terrible tendency of screwing up when it came to Sarah.
“Yes,” Jessica nodded. “And you’re the new assistant. I’m hoping you’ve got something good for me.”
Suddenly, Sarah’s blue eyes lit up with a mischievous sparkle I’d never seen before.
“Oh, do I ever,” she grinned and pointed to the book. “I did a bit of light reading into the rules around libel, and it turns out that as long as you don’t outright claim you’re stating facts, you’re good. And in that video, Rhett, you said the word “allegedly” about a million and one times.”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I was trying to get the audience to draw their own conclusions.”
It had been a tactic I was using to attempt to shrug off the inevitable audience's anger.
“Right,” Sarah nodded. “Well, I don’t pretend to know a thing about how social media works, but I know that would have been enough to get this case off your back if you’d left it there. Which—”
“He didn’t,” Jessica interrupted, slightly annoyed. “I watched the video. The moment Rhett starts to talk about the loan that Tony was given by Mommy and Daddy, that lovely little word you kept mentioning disappears.”
Jessica glanced over to me with a brow raised, and I couldn’t do anything but mouth my apologies.
How was I supposed to know the man would be psycho enough to try and sue me?
“Right, which is why I had to do a little more digging,” Sarah nodded quickly. “And it turns out that there’s no record of a loan for Tony Gibbons because Tony Gibbons doesn’t actually exist.”
That got both Jessica’s and my attention.
“What?” She demanded in such a tone that I was sure she would have done a spit take if she’d been drinking anything.
“Yep,” Sarah grinned, opening up a laptop and pulling up a folder. “I have it all right here. His true birth certificate, all the documentation about his stage name, even the contract he signed with Bravo for his T.V. show, which, of course, has his legal name. The true one. Tony Fitzgerald.”
“Fitzgerald?” I demanded. “As in one of the biggest families in real estate for the last hundred and fifty years? That crew owned half of the west when it was first, you know, the west.”
“That’s the exact one,” Sarah replied. “Which means you didn’t lie in the slightest. Tony Gibbons may not have any familial connections to the world of real estate and development, but his alter ego sure as hell does.”
“This is brilliant!” Jessica exclaimed, leaping from her seat and zipping over to grab her bag. “I could kiss you right now!”
“Please don’t,” Sarah grimaced like she thought Jessica actually meant it.
“Of course not.” The lawyer rolled her eyes and hurried toward the door. “I’m getting to work on this right away!”
Sarah watched as Jessica flung open the door, zipping out at the speed of light. Unbeknownst even to myself, I started to creep forward, entranced by Sarah’s out and out brilliance. I’d hardly expected a thing when I’d handed her this task, figuring it was more akin to busywork than to something that would actually work.
“So, I guess you’re off the hook.” Sarah spun around toward me, freezing with her mouth partially open when she saw just how close I was.
I froze, too. Her lips had formed a perfect “o” in a way that I was sure could have only happened in cartoons.
Until I met her, that is. Those big, beautiful blue eyes were like giant globes staring back at me.
I knew even as I thought it that the analogy would make sense to no one but me, but I really felt like I could see the world within her blue gaze.
It wasn’t until my nose picked up on the scent of her perfume- light and floral, just barely there- that I realized how close we were standing. If I wanted to, I could just lean in and kiss her.
I kept waiting for her to back down, to push me away and remind me that this was her job, that she wasn’t interested in me like that, that I’d promised her an absolutely absurd amount of money for the work that I was asking her to do, without thinking of how insane it was.
But she didn’t say a word. She just stood there, eyes wide, and the rest of her expression absolutely unreadable.
“Well?” She finally said, but the sound was choked, forced like she had to literally push the words up from her vocal cords and shove them through her lips.
“Well, what?” I murmured, so lost in the sea of her gaze that the events of the last hour were nothing but a distant memory.
“Well, you’re getting off,” she replied, her tone still unusually weak. “Doesn’t that make you happy?”
“I like getting off,” I muttered. It only took a split second for the dirty second meaning of the words to register with my brain, and I snapped my mouth shut, slightly shocked I’d been so daring as to say that to her.
“As you should. I mean, getting off when you haven’t done anything. I mean, you didn’t lie. I mean, you shouldn’t be getting sued. You did nothing. That’s what I mean.”
“Uh-huh.” A cocky grin slipped over my lips, the product of a decade spent portraying an image of myself. That was just the sort of sentence that would have made the old Rhett grin like a madman and become fraught with the desire to bend her over a table.
Sarah wasn’t that kind of woman, though. I had deep desires to do all sorts of unspeakable things to her, of course, things I could have never talked about in mixed company, but I didn’t want to just hit it and quit it, as the kids liked to say.
I wanted to hit it over and over again for as long as she decided that I was worthy of her presence.
“Yes.” Sarah nodded.
“You did admirably,” I replied, letting the cocky grin slip into one of true gratitude. I would have never been able to find out all of those details about the life Tony used to live, and Jessica clearly hadn’t dug deep enough to discover them. For all I knew, this would have gone to court, and I could have lost completely had it not been for Sarah’s sleuthing skills.
“I did my job,” she shrugged. For the first time, the words seemed to have lost all of their vigor, like she wasn’t trying to use them as a shield anymore. It was merely a statement of fact.
“And you did it so well. I knew it was a good choice to hire you.”
“Why did you hire me?” The question took me by surprise, seemingly coming out of nowhere. She’d been working for me for the better part of a week now. I had figured that if she was going to start asking things like that, then she would have done it days ago.
“Because you’re smart,” I shrugged. “And competent. Clearly. I just knew you were the right choice.”
“You created a position for me.”
I didn’t even need to ask how she knew that. If she hadn’t figured it out on her own, I was sure that Francesca would have told her by now.
My mouth flapped open and closed like a fish out of the water while I attempted to come up with an answer that didn’t make me seem like an insane stalker. I wasn’t one, of course. I was just a man who was intrigued by a woman and wanted to help.
I’d just gone about it in a way that not many would quite understand.
Before I could properly give myself time to think of a plausible answer, the smell of her perfume overtook me once again, and I could think of nothing but what it would be like to nuzzle into her soft collarbone and drink in that smell, losing myself in Sarah until I forgot that the rest of the world even existed.
That was the moment I lost control of my sanity and faculties. Instead of pulling myself back, reminding myself that now was not the time to fling my affection at her like a sack of potatoes, I found myself leaning down, latching on to her lips in a kiss that was completely unexpected- for both of us.
There was a moment of panic the second our lips touched, a long, drawn-out feeling pause where I was terrified that she was going to reject me, to push me away and shriek at me about how inappropriate this was, how it couldn’t happen a second time.
Well, knowing Sarah, she wouldn’t shriek. She’d probably holler and punch.
But she didn’t do that. Instead, she kissed me back. She pressed her lips to mine and pulled me close, wrapping an arm around my neck like she needed every single centimeter of our bodies to be touching, to feel each other all around, and be completely consumed by the other one.
I’d never been kissed like that. Not so needy and passionate, where I felt I was once in complete control and totally out of my mind.
Her tongue flicked forward, running against my lips, asking for entrance but making it clear she was going ahead anyway.
I obliged, of course, opening my mouth just the slightest bit, so I could still feel her all around me and yet lose myself in the sensations.
Slowly, I pulled her bottom lip into my mouth, biting down just a little bit, testing the waters as I went.
She groaned a noise that was so sensual and arousing I felt myself harden, a sensation I was used to.
But not like this. This felt like a different sort of arousal- a full-body one. It consumed every bit of me, setting my insides on fire and making my brain melt. I could feel myself disappearing into that feeling, losing all sense of normal control.
All there was Sarah.
I slipped a hand down her side, playing along the soft silk of her shirt as I went, riling her up and asking permission all at once.
Suddenly, she pushed back, pulling me with her as she nearly fell into the little white chair in the corner. My weight came down on top of her smaller form, and I elevated myself just the slightest bit with my free hand, trying not to crush her under my much larger frame.
Sarah didn’t even seem to mind. Her lips were all over me, traveling up and down my neck, sucking and biting just the tiniest bit.
She was wild. I freaking loved that.
“I want this off,” I muttered, tugging at the hem of her shirt to indicate what I meant.
Sarah pulled back for a split second, hesitating, biting her lip a bit before she obliged.
God, I was about to be a lucky man.