SIX

Lisa

I rolled over, grabbing my phone from thebedside tableand muting the alarm with a swipe of my thumb. I was exhausted, having fallen asleep only two hours before. I'd worked until almost two and then tried to slip into bed without waking Jennie, but she'd stirred and climbed on top of me before I could say anything.

As if I would have stopped her.

I couldn't really complain that it meant another hour of sleep lost, but now, when her hand reached blindly beneath the blankets, sweeping down my stomach to curl around my cock, I knew I had to stop her. I had a flight to catch, alone.

She was coming to France, but she was leaving a day after me, insisting with a stubbornness all her own that she needed the rest of Friday to get the last few things sorted. I would have waited for her, but because the flights were all last minute there weren't anydirect flights, nor were there any seats together anyway. Deciding to keep my flight, I figured I'd get there early and get us situated at Bambam's place.

"I don't think we have time," I mumbled into her hair.

"Not buying it," she said, voice croaky with sleep. "This guy," she said, squeezing my erection in her grip, "thinks we have plenty of time."

"The car is picking me up in fifteen minutes, and thanks to your appetite last night, I need another shower."

"There was that one time you only needed two minutes to come. You're telling me you don't have two minutes?"

"Morning sex is never only two minutes," I reminded her. "Not when you're all sleepy and rumpled and warm." I rolled out of bed and walked into my bathroom to the sound of her groan muffled by my stolen pillow.

When I emerged, clean and dressed, she sat up in bed, still hugging my pillow and sort-of-pretending she wasn't upset that we had to fly separately to France.

"Don't pout," I murmured, bending to kiss the corner of her mouth. "You'll just confirm what I've always suspected: you can't function without me."

I expected her torollher eyes or pinch me playfully but she blinked down to my tie and reached to needlessly adjust it. "I can function without you. But I don't like being away from you. It feels like you take my home with you when you go."

Well, fuck.

I laid my garment bag across the bed and took her face in my hands until she looked up, and could see the effect her words had on me. She smiled, tongue slipping out to wet her lips.

With one final kiss, I whispered, "I'll see you in France."

I would lose a day in transit, arriving on Saturday. Jennie's flight was only twelve hours after mine, but because she couldn't go direct she had to red-eye it to New York and then leave for Paris the following day, getting into Marseille on Monday. It would give me time to prepare for her arrival, but, knowing Bambam, the house would be spotless and stocked with food and drink and I would have nothing to do.

An idle Lisa . . . and all that.

I settled into thefirst classcabin, declining the champagne, and pulled out my phone to text Jennie.

Boarded. See you across the pond.

My phone buzzed several seconds later. Rethinking this whole trip. There's a shoe sale atHansensthis weekend.

I laughed, choosing to ignore this one and slipping my phone back into my jacket pocket. Closing my eyes as the other passengers filed in past me, I remembered our past trips. We'd only traveled together a handful of times, but nothing ever went according to plan. Had I incurred some sort of vacation voodoo I wasn't aware of? It seemed we were destined to be plagued by trips that went terribly off course, were taken separately, were colored by miserable arguments . . . or werecanceledaltogether.

My stomach turned when I remembered our attempt at a vacation last Thanksgiving. On impulse one weekend we'd purchasedtickets to St. Bart's and rented a house on the water. It was meant to be perfect but instead it led to the first time Jennie stopped speaking to me since our reconciliation.

"Motherfucking cocksucking son of a whore."

I looked up from my desk, my eyebrows inching to my hairline as Jennie slammed my door and stormed to my desk.

"Did the gimp escape the dungeon again, Miss Kim?"

"Close enough. Papadakis is pushing up launch."

I stood so abruptly my chair skidded back and banged into the wall. "What?"

"January is the new March, apparently. The first press blast is set to go out January seventh."

"That's a horrible time to pitch something like this! Everyone is still drunk or cleaning up the holiday mess. No one is buying fancy apartments."

"That's what I told Big George."

"Did you also tell him he needs to stick to counting hisBenjaminsand leave the marketing to us?"

She laughed, crossing her arms across her chest. "I may have actually used those words. With a few other gangster terms thrown in."

I sat back down, rubbing my hands over my face. Our flight was scheduled to leave in the morning, on Thanksgiving Day, and there was no way we could leave work now. "You told him this was okay?"

Across the desk, I could sense that she grew completely still. "What was my option?"

"To tell him we're not going to be ready!"

"But that's a lie. We can be ready."

I dropped my hands, gaping at her. "Yes, but only if we work fifteen-hour days through the holidays—and all to accommodate his shitty timing for a launch."

She threw her hands up, eyes on fire. "He's paying us a million dollars for basic marketing and we're inking a deal for another ten-million-dollar media campaign. You think fifteen-hour days are unreasonable to keep our biggest client?"

"Of course not! But he's also not your only client! Rule number one in business is to not ever let thebig dogknow how small the other dogs are."

"Damnit, Lisa. I'm not going to tell him we can't deliver."

"Sometimes a little pushback is a good thing. You're being green, Kim. If you weren't sure, you should have sent the call to me."

I immediately wanted to pull the words back into my mouth. Her eyes went wide, her mouth dropped, and fuck, her hands curled into fists at her sides. I reached down to cover my balls.

"Are you fucking serious right now? Are you going to cut my fucking steak at dinner, too, you egomaniacal asshat?"

I couldn't help myself. "Only if I can feed it to you and help you chew."

Her face smoothed and I could see her calculate how much effort she wanted to put into kicking my ass. "We're skipping St. Bart's," she said, flatly.

"Obviously. Why do you think I'm pissed?"

"Well, even if we did still go at this point, you'd be sleeping alone with your hand and a tube of lube."

"I could work with that. These two hands provide some variety."

She blinked away, jaw clenched. "Are you trying to make me more angry?"

"Sure, why not."

Dark eyes turned back on me, narrowed. Her voice shook a little with one word: "Why?"

"So you can feel the pain more. Because you should have told George that these kinds of decisions have to be cleared with the entire team and we'd have an answer for him after the holiday."

"How do you know I didn't say that?"

"Because you came in here and delivered news. You didn't act like it was a suggestion."

She stared at me, eyes flashing through a hundred responses. I waited to see how many curse words she could string together but she surprised me instead, and turned to leave my office.

Jennie didn't stay over that night. It was only the second night we'd spent apart after her presentation at J. T. Miller last June, and I didn't even try to sleep. Instead, I watched Mad Men on Netflix and wondered which of us would apologize first.

The problem was I was right, and I knew it.

Thanksgiving morning arrived with snow flurries and a wind so strong it pushed me forward into the building as I walked, alone, from the parking garage to my office.

It had never occurred to me that she would leave me again after our fight. I suspected Jennie and I were in it for the long haul, whether the long haul officially began tomorrow or ten years in the future. There wasn't anything she could do to scare me off.

And while I felt the same was true for her, she rarely walked away from a fight. She either battled with me until I was figuratively on my knees or she ended up on her knees in an entirely different way.

Only a few MMG employees were at work on Thanksgiving—the members of the Papadakis team. And every one of them glared at Jennie as she walked down the hall to get some coffee. Knowing her, she had probably worked late last night and slept under her desk.

She didn't even glance over to where I stood in the doorway to the conference room. Still, I could almost hear her thinking as she passed every disgruntled team member: "You can suck my dick. And you, too, can suck my dick. And you? The slacker with the pathetic pout? You can really suck my dick."

She headed to her office, settled in, and left her door open.

Come and get me, she was saying. Come on in and let's have it out.

But for as much as everyone probably wanted to give her an earful for making us cancel our holiday plans, no one did. Each of us had been raised in the business world under the same ethos: work trumps all. The last person to leave work is the hero. The first person in has bragging rights. Working over holidays gets you into heaven.

And while a more experienced executive would have told Papadakis that what he'd asked wasn't possible, as always I admired Jennie's determination. This wasn't just about meeting a new milestone for her. This was her launching her career. This was her foundation. Jennie was me a few years ago.

After everyone else had left for the evening, I knocked on her open door, gently alerting her to my presence.

"Ms. Manoban," she said, pulling off her glasses and looking up at me. The city skyline winked behind her, speckled lights covering her entire wall of windows. "Here to show me how to grow a penis so I can get the job done?"

"Jennie, I'm pretty sure if you wanted to grow one, you could do it by will alone."

She let a half smile form, pushing back from her desk and crossing her legs. "I'd grow one just so I could ask you to suck on it."

I couldn't contain my laughter, bending over and collapsing into the chair across the desk from her. "I knew you were going to say that."

Her eyebrows pulled together a little. "Well, before you say anything else, yes, I know this sucks. And . . . I think you were right. We could be in St. Bart's right now, on the beach."

I started to speak, but she held up her hand to urge me to wait.

"But the thing is, Lisa, no matter how much I should have, I didn't want to tell Papadakis no. I wanted to deliver, because we can, and we should. It's down to the wire anyway and we've had a lot of time to work on this. It felt disingenuous to say we couldn't make it happen."

"True," I conceded, "but by letting him push a milestone ahead to the beginning of thequarter, you've set a precedent."

"I know," she said, rubbing her temples with her fingertips.

"But actually, I wasn't coming in here to tell you what you'd done was wrong. I was coming in here to tell you I understand why you did it. I can't really fault you."

She dropped her hands, eyeing me cautiously.

"At this point in your career, I can't be surprised you said yes to Papadakis."

Her mouth opened and I could see a litany of curse words form on her tongue.

"Easy, firecracker," I said, leaning forward and holding up my hands. "I don't mean you're naïve; I'm not pulling the 'seasoning' card again—though it's true no matterhow muchyou hate to hear it. I mean you're still building. You want toshowthe world that you're Atlas—and to a Titan, that fucking celestial sphere weighs nothing. It's just that it's impacted the entire team, and over a holiday. I get why you did it, and I also get why you're conflicted. I'm sorry this is hard for you, because I've been there." I lowered my voice, moved a little closer. "It sucks."

The room seemed to grow darker, the sun dipping behind the horizon just as I'd finished my sentence. Jennie watched me, face smooth and practically unreadable.

Well, unreadable to anyone else. Anyone who hadn't seen that face a thousand times, the one that told me she wanted to smack me, kiss me, scratch me, and then fuck me.

"Don't smirk," she said, eyes narrowing. "I see what you're doing."

"What am I doing?"

"Trying to build me up. Being a hardass, yet also my lover. Damnit, Lisa."

"You're going to fuck me in your office!" I crowed, my words colored with surprise and glee. "God, you're easy."

She stood quickly, walking around the desk and reaching immediately for my tie. "Damnit." She unknotted it, wrapping it around my eyes and tying it behind my head. "Stop studying me," she hissed into my ear. "Stop seeing everything."

"Never." I closed my eyes behind the silk fabric and let my other senses take over, inhaling the delicate citrus scent of her perfume, reaching to feel the soft skin of her forearms. I moved my hands slowly down her body and turned her around, pulling her back to my chest. "This better?"

Her quiet huff wasn't for my benefit; it was a sound of genuine frustration. "Lisa," she murmured, leaning back. "You're making me crazy."

I gripped her hips, pulling her to me so she could feel the hard line of my cock against her ass. "At least some things never change."

I blinked up to the flight attendant, who bent low to catch my eye and had obviously just said something.

"I'm sorry?" I asked.

"Would you like a beverage with your meal?"

"Ah, yes," I said, pulling mybrainfrom the memory of Jennie's body, tight and coiled around me as I'd fucked her over her desk. "Just some Grey Goose and a cup of ice, please."

"And for lunch? We have filet mignon or a cheese and olive plate."

I ordered the latter and glanced out the window. From thirty thousand feet up, I could be anywhere. But I had the distinct feeling I was headed back in time.

I hadn't been back to France since my return to the States, when I met Jennie in person. For what felt like the hundredth time, Iregisteredhow that old Lisa didn't feel familiar in the slightest.

Thanksgiving had been a revelation in part because, before Jennie, I would have also said yes to George's demand without even a thought. Jennie was so similar to me in so many ways, it was actually a little frightening.

I smiled as I thought back to my mother's advice:

"Find a woman who will be your equal in every way. Don't let yourself fall for someone who'll put your world before theirs. Fall for the powerhouse who lives as fearlessly as you do. Find the woman who makes you want to be a better man."

Well, I had found her. Now all I had to do was wait for her to get here, so I could make sure she knew.

The path leading to ourborrowedvilla was covered in small, smooth stones. They were brown and uniform in size, and although they were clearly selected for their appearance and how well they fit the landscaping, it was refreshingly obvious that the grounds were meant to be enjoyed, not treated as a precious museum piece. Flower beds and urns lined both sides of the path, each spilling over with bright, colorfulblossoms. There were trees everywhere, and off in the distance was a little seating area, screened from the rest of the yard by a wall of blooming vines.

Truly, I had never seen a more beautiful country home. The house was a soft red, the color of faded clay, and weathered to anabsolutely gorgeouseffect. White shutters framed the tall windows on the first and second floors, and more vibrant flowers lined beds against the doors. The perfume in the air was a mixture of ocean and peony.

Bougainvilleacrawled up a trellis and framed the French provincial-inspired narrow double doorway. The top step was cracked, but swept clean, and a simple, soft green mat lay atop the sun-bleached concrete.

I turned, looking behind me at the yard. In the far corner and beneath several fig trees, a long table was covered in a brilliant orange tablecloth, the tabletop decorated simply with a narrow line of tiny blue bottles of different shapes and sizes. Clean white plates were spaced at even intervals, waiting for a dinner party to appear. A green lawn stretched to where I stood on the narrow porch, broken only by the occasional in ground planter bursting with purple, yellow, and pink flowers.

I pulled the key from my pocket and entered the house. From the outside, it was clearly large, but it almost seemed to expand like an optical illusion inside.

Christ, Bambam, this seems a little excessive. I knew his house in the Provence region was large, but I didn't realize there were so many fucking rooms. Just from the front door, I could see at least a dozen doorways connecting off the main hall, and doubtless there were countless other rooms upstairs and out of sight.

I paused in the entryway, staring at the enormous urn that looked like the larger cousin to a small vase my mother had in her dining room hutch; the cerulean blue base glaze was identical, and the same beautiful yellow lines bled down its curved sides. I remembered the gift from when Bambam brought it for my mother the first time he'd come home with me, over the winter holidays. I hadn't realized at the time how personal the hostess gift had been to him, but now, looking around his vacation home, I could see the same artist's work everywhere: in plates mounted above the mantel, in a handmade teapot and a set of simple cups on a tray in the parlor.

I smiled, reaching out to touch the urn. Jennie would completely lose it when she saw it; it was her favorite thing in my mother's house. A feeling overcame me that we were almost fated to have come here.

After herbirthday dinnerin January, Jennie hesitated in the dining room, glancing at Mom's impressiveart collectionin the hutch. But instead of going for the obvious gleam of the Tiffany vases or the intricate detail of the carved woodenbowls, she went straight for a tiny blue vase in the corner.

"I don't think I've ever seen this color before," she said, awestruck. "I didn't think this color existed outside of the imagination."

Mom walked over, pulled it from the shelf. Under the soft light of the chandelier, the color seemed to almost wink and change even as Jennie held it still in her hand. I'd never noticed before how pretty the piece was.

"It's one of my favorites," Mom admitted, smiling. "I've never seen anything this color anywhere else either."

But that wasn't entirely true, I thought, as I stepped away from the urn and walked to the mantel. The ocean here was that color, when the sun was high over the horizon and the sky was clear. Only then did it hit that exact same blue, like the heart of the deepest sapphire. An artist who lived here would know that.

On the shelf were three handmade santons, the small nativity figurines traditionally made by artists in Provence. All were obviously made by the same artist who made Mom's vase, the giant urn, and the rest of the art here. He or she must have been local, whether still alive or not, but perhaps Jennie would have the opportunity to see some other pieces while visiting. The coincidence, the perfection of it, felt almost surreal.

The blues and greens of the platter mounted over the mantel caught the late afternoon sun and redirected the light, casting the wall behind it in a soft blue glow. With the wind blowing through the trees outside and the sunlight winking in and out of shadows, the effect was a bit like watching the surface of the ocean move in the wind. Combined with the crisp white furniture and otherwise simple decorating in the sitting room, it immediately made me feel calmer. The world of MMG and Papadakis, of work and stress and the constant buzzing of my phone, felt a million miles away.

Unfortunately, so did Jennie.

As if she could hear my thoughts from where she sat on a plane headed over the Atlantic, my phone buzzed in my pocket and her unique text chime rang out in the silent room.

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I glanced down and read the message: Mechanic strike. All flights canceled. I'm stuck in New York.