“My penis has plenty of attention, thank you.”

“Your hand doesn’t count.”

“I’m sleeping with an anesthetist, actually.”

“Becky, who I met last time I was here?” He’d walked in with her when we last met up and had introduced me before she’d been called away. I hadn’t realized they were sleeping together but she was attractive. She had the same glasses as Madison and the same look of concentration that could be mistaken for a glare.

“Yeah,” he said, knocking me out of my memories of the night of the wedding. “Becky. We found ourselves on the same shift pattern last month and bumped into each other a lot.”

“Sounds romantic.”

He chuckled. “No less romantic than the sport-sex you engage in. Can you remember the last time you saw a woman again after you slept with her?”

The image of Madison, her head tipped back and her throat exposed, waiting for me to trail my tongue over it, flashed in my mind. “More recently than you’d expect, actually.”

Jacob paused, his spoon midway from the bowl to his mouth. “Go on,” he said. “Are you here to tell me you’re getting married?”

I rolled my eyes. “No. Anyway, it wasn’t through choice, just coincidence.”

“You know what they say about coincidence?” He paused waiting for me to guess. He should know me better. “It’s just another name for fate. Who is it?”

“Just some girl I met at Noah and Truly’s wedding. Turns out she—” Shit. I didn’t want to confess that I’d actually already slept with Madison. He’d never let me live it down. “She came for an interview the next day.” Not quite a lie. But not the truth either.

“Did she get the job?” he asked.

I chuckled but didn’t respond.

“Have you slept with her again?” he asked, his eyes narrowed as if he were trying to read my mind.

I shook my head. When we’d first made our pact to keep things strictly business, I thought it would be no big deal. I didn’t believe in going backward and had always felt that variety was the spice of life. But the more time I spent with Madison, the more I liked her. Somehow, she’d become more and more attractive with every passing day. “No, I mean. That would be awkward, right?”

He held my stare, then went back to his soup. “I don’t know, mate. I guess you have to decide how much you want to sleep with her versus how much you need to be professional.”

“I’m not saying I want to sleep with her.” Thinking it? Absolutely. Saying it? Not a chance.

“My advice is that if you just want a roll in the hay, an employee isn’t the way to go.”

I nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. And I need to focus on keeping the board on my side, making sure this article is right. I have a thousand lunches organized for the next six months.” I mentally ran through the list Gretel had given me of all the journalists, fund managers, and analysts I’d be wining and dining over the next few months. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit in the running of the company with all the time it was going to take up.

“Presumably no one cares so long as you’re doing the job.”

“In a perfect world, that would be the logical conclusion. Who in the hell does everyone think built Astro in the first place?”

“You’ve always plowed your own path. Why are you trying to clean up your image? Do what you’ve always done.”

Jacob wouldn’t understand. Doctors were gods. Businessmen were mere mortals. “Easier said than done. The shareholders hold the power now. And the board members are so scared, they do whatever the pension funds tell them. If they demand my head, they’ll serve it to them on a silver platter.”

Jacob put down his spoon and leaned back. “That’s ridiculous. Why do you put up with it?”

“That’s the way corporations work. I don’t have a choice.”

“Of course you do. Fuck them. Resign. Let them kick the next guy in the head.”

Typical. He would assume I’d just give up. “I’m not going to let them win.” I wasn’t about to walk away from what was mine.

“You’ve got to ask yourself if it’s worth it.”

This was the same old conversation in my family. Anything outside medicine was pretty much worthless—easy come, easy go. I might not be a surgeon like my mother had been, or a cardiologist like Jacob, but it didn’t mean what I’d done building Astro had been easy. And I wasn’t going to walk away. “I can handle it. I think this journalist’s profile will be okay. And that should keep them quiet for a bit. As long as the Audrey thing doesn’t blow up.”

“If you’re not sleeping with Audrey, what’s going to blow up?”

I sighed and dabbed the corners of my mouth with a paper napkin. “Nothing . . .” Not only had I promised Audrey complete confidentiality, but I wasn’t about to potentially implicate my brother by telling him that Audrey suspected her husband’s business of being a glorified Ponzi scheme. “She’s just got some things going on that she’s not told Mark about, so don’t go telling anyone.” My parents saw Audrey and Mark from time to time when they dropped by. I didn’t want anyone saying anything to anyone. In a family like mine, the most innocuous statement could lead to China declaring war on Barbados by the time the message had been passed among different members of the family.

Tags: Louise Bay Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net