“Good morning indeed,” I said back, folding the paper as my eyes moved upwards. “Take a seat, Miss--”
“Jeffries,” she leaned across my glass desktop to offer me her manicured hand and, in the process, and lingered just long enough to give me a view of the hot pink bra peeking intentionally through the gape in her silk blouse.
“Jade Jeffries,” she added, before dropping into the tufted velvet armchair positioned directly across from my desk.
“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Jeffries,” I nodded, my eyes still sizing her up. Platinum blonde hair, fake-baked bronze skin, pink glossy lips -- hot pink, to match that lacey bra.
If you were to consult the slew of tabloids that report on my dating patterns, they’d inform you that I have a type -- tall, blonde, curves in all the right places -- and Miss Jade Jeffries certainly fit that bill. She knew it, too; I could tell by that coy little smirk she’s wearing.
“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Preston,” she said, folding one bronzed leg over the other and letting her skirt ride up a little too high on her thigh.
“Please,” I say, “Call me Caleb.”
“Caleb,” she repeated slowly, pressing her pink glossed pout into a smug little smirk. Then she nodded at the folded newspaper on my desk and asked, “Were you checking out my article in the Times?”
“Not unless you cover the market,” I smiled, but her face stays blank. ?
??The stock market,” I clarified.
“Oh,” she shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “No, that’s not really my cup of tea.”
“No?” I raised an eyebrow and leaned back in my chair. “What is your cup of tea?”
“Rich, hot men,” she said, raising a defiant eyebrow back at me and pressing her lips into another smug smirk.
Of course, I thought. I could have told you that the moment she strutted into my office, her fuck-me heels clicking against the tile floor and her lips pressed into that glossy pink pout.
Women like Jade Jeffries were a dime-a-dozen in Manhattan. Aspiring Carrie Bradshaws, lured out of Midwest mediocrity by the glitter and glitz of New York City; lured by the false promise of rent-controlled brownstones, well-paying writing jobs, bottomless Cosmopolitans, closets full of Manolos, ‘rich, hot men’ lined up on every street corner ready to offer up the kind of dirty, shameless sex you could only have in a city full of strangers.
“Men’s style,” she clarified, still holding my gaze intently. “I profile rich, hot men for the style section.”
“I see,” I say, crossing my legs and folding my hands over the knee of my grey sharkskin suit. “And I meet those requirements, do I?”
“Of course you do, Mr. Preston,” she cooed, her eyes flashing suggestively.
“Caleb,” I reminded her.
“Caleb,” she smiled. Then she bit down on the corner of her plump bottom lip and added, “You’re a bit of a legend.”
“Am I?” I raised an eyebrow, even though I already knew the answer to that.
“I had to fight off the entire style department to get this interview,” she said triumphantly. “We were all jumping at the chance to undress Caleb Preston.”
“Undress me?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Figuratively, of course,” she said unconvincingly. “For the profile.”
“For the profile,” I repeated, nodding firmly.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered letting Jade Jeffries undress me. I’d be lying if I said my cock didn’t twitch in my pants when she walked in, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about bending her over the desk, pressing her tits against the glass and yanking her skirt up around her waist…
Jade Jeffries and I both knew she didn’t come here for an ‘interview.’ She didn’t come here to wax poetic about my Tom Ford mohair suit or my suede Burberry Oxford shoes.
And she didn’t come here for sex, either.
She came here for the thrill of fucking someone famous. She wanted a taste of that Manhattan fairy tale; a story she could tell her gaggle of girlfriends, giggling gleefully between sips of a six-dollar Cosmopolitan. She didn’t want to fuck me, she wanted to fuck my persona. I was nothing more than a novelty; an item on her bucket list. ‘Rich, hot man.’
And, ironically, when the novelty wore off, she’d be the one running to Page Six to accuse me of being the grade-A asshole; the user, the playboy, the womanizer.