Tell me your price

Chance. 

     

“Lilly Walker.”

Her resume didn’t do her justice. As she rambled about her hobbies and desperately grasping for straws to prove she wasn’t a loner, I got my fill of her.

She intrigued me. Every single thing about this petite brunette tugged on strings I long thought dead.

Her soft voice. That pouty mouth. Caramel-colored eyes. Her beautiful face.

Her crimson cheeks made my dick twitch. She appeared younger than her age. Much younger. Until you looked into her eyes. Those were ancient. I couldn’t help but wonder why. I wanted to know her story. It was a novelty to me.

Her face barely held any makeup, and she didn’t need any. Her beauty was more the fresh, natural kind. Dangerously beautiful. The kind of beauty that could make men like me do stupid things.

Because I wanted to fuck her.

My mind already contemplated ways to get her into bed. Except she was all wrong for this position.

Regardless of what her friend told Byron, I’d bet my fortune she wasn’t the type to have sex without an emotional attachment. It was my number one hard rule. Then why in the fuck was I still thinking about her? I should pick up the phone and tell Kimberly, my secretary, to send her a denial letter before I did something stupid.

Except I didn’t want to turn her away.

She’d be competent. At everything. If only I could somehow keep the emotional detachment part of our agreement. I was used to women falling to their knees to please me, but somehow my sixth sense was warning me that Lilly Walker would refuse to please me unless she wanted to.

Not because she was a defiant woman, but because she only pleased people she loved and cared about. I didn’t bother with background checks until the second round of interviews and right now, I fucking regretted it because I wanted to know everything about her. And when I said everything, I meant from the type of coffee she drank in the morning to her favorite color and what got her going. Things I wasn’t likely to find in a background check.

How long was she married? Did she love her husband? I found the possibility of her being married unpleasant. Very fucking unpleasant. But at least she wasn’t a cheater, since she was a widow.

A bitter thought slithered through my mind.

I couldn’t stand women that cheated. They stabbed you in the back and smiled while doing it, all the while trying to take it all from you. My ex attempted that and failed, although she succeeded in dragging my family name through the mud. It certainly wasn’t the first time the Macklemore family was dragged through the mud. My own father managed it quite well himself, and after he destroyed our family reputation and company, it was on me to rebuild it from the ground up.

Lilly Walker would be a distraction. I didn’t need those.

Yet as I strode back to my desk and sat in my chair, I was fully aware I didn’t make the decision to flat out reject her application.