I headed to my office and stopped cold in the doorway.
The folder sat in the middle of my desk. Opened.
“Shit.” I crossed the room in three strides, heart pounding. “Did Jessa see this?”
I expected Sabine’s signature to be on the contract.
Instead, I found a note scrawled in sharp, angry pen across the first page:
What woman in her right mind would agree to this?
I grabbed my phone and called Sam. He answered on the first ring.
“Sabine turned it down,” I said flatly.
A string of curses exploded through the line. “I thought for sure she’d take it. The money alone?—”
“Now we have a liability running around knowing what we’re looking for.” My voice was ice. “You’re always on my case about protecting the company image, Sam? This one’s on you. You’d better get ahold of her and pay her off to keep quiet—with YOUR money.”
I hung up before he could argue.
Leaning back, I closed my eyes. The tabloids. The playboy rumors.Griffin West, the eccentric billionaire who never dates a woman more than once. The man with “certain tastes” and no staying power.
Next week, the biggest investors were flying in for the West Games Benefit. My IPO hung by a thread of public perception. When had being a solid single father stopped counting for anything? Now I needed a woman by my side to be seen as reliable, loyal, worthy of investment.
The whole thing was absurd. I started tossing the papers into the trash, stopping cold on the last page in the folder.
Sam’s idiotic typed list of rules had been vandalized. I’d never agreed to them in the first place, but now every line was crossed out, replaced in handwriting I knew better than my own signature.
Jessa’s.
I’d watched her write drink specials on the chalkboard at the Holly Creek Hops enough times to recognize her loopy capital letters, the sharp tails on her y’s.
**Rule #7** The woman shall not wear panties in my presence.
**Her rewrite:** *Griffin shall not wear boxers—or hideous white underwear—and shall make his cock available at all times.*
A sound tore from my throat—half growl, half laugh.
I skimmed through the rest. Each rule more defiant, more Jessa, more impossible than the last.
Where the hell was she?
I searched every room again, adrenaline, anticipation and hunger building with each step. Then I heard water sloshing from my master suite.
I shoved the bathroom door open.
Steam curled through the air, thick and warm. She reclined in my tub—my extra-large, never-shared-with-anyone-else bathtub—in a thick sea of bubbles. Her blonde hair was twisted up in a messy knot, tendrils clinging to her neck. She didn’t look remotely surprised to see me.
“Did you give Theo game time just so you could lounge in my bathtub?” I asked, voice rougher than I had intended.
“No.” She met my gaze without flinching. “Your somewhat entitled son earned game time because he did a list of chores after school. The bath was a bonus.”
Entitled. The word landed like a punch, but she wasn’t wrong. Theo had a good life—the kind most kids only dreamed about. Other than taking care of his hockey gear, I had asked very little of him.
Chores were... genius of her. But I couldn’t let her distract me. Not yet.
“I know what you did.” I tossed the contract onto the counter hard enough to make it slap. “You think this is funny? This is my life you’re playing around with. I have the biggest deal of my career on the line. Once this IPO goes through, I’ll be one of the richest men on the planet. And you’re mocking it.”
