Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75474 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75474 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“No,” I say, horrified.
“Yes. Some of it even landed in my mouth.”
I nearly choke on the Dr Pepper I was sipping. “That’s the most horrible thing I have ever heard in my life.”
“At one point he threw a towel over my face and kept going.”
This is why I don’t date. This is enough to keep me celibate for the rest of my long life.
“What about Jordan?” she says, skipping onto the one topic I’m trying to avoid.
“What about him?”
“What’s his deal?” she continues. “Does he date?”
Good question. It’s been on my mind since I wandered…drifted…with purpose––purposefully actually––into his bedroom a few days ago. It took me a while to drum up the courage. This is after I found a room in his suite which is always locked. Always. I try the handle every time I’m here.
“Did I tell you that I found a locked room? One that’s always locked.”
“Yo, are you teasing me right now?”
“Nope. For real.”
“Based. He’s full-on Christian Grey.”
“Doubt it. It’s Jordan we’re talking about here. It’s probably the closet where he keeps his cape and sickle.”
“You better hope it’s not a closet full of fifty-gallon drums filled with body parts.”
His bedroom, however, was predictable. It looks exactly how you would imagine. Bland and boring. Dark gray linens, honey maple furniture. Style contemporary––like the rest of his home. Free of anything too personal outside of his clothes, of course.
The only items of any interest were the books stacked on his nightstand: a Winston Churchill biography and a book on nutrition––something about eating clean or whatnot. And a black and white photo in a simple silver frame.
The photo? Three people in their twenties on a sailboat. On the right, a tall man, really tall, and built like a Viking with a short beard to match. He’s handsome and smiling broadly, and the feeling I get from him is one of pride. He has his arm around the willowy young woman in the middle. She’s Asian, or maybe half Asian, with long hair whipping in the wind. She’s beautiful, smiling broadly too, and her face is slightly tipped in the direction of the Viking.
On her left, there’s Jordan.
His smile is not as broad. Not as bright. And as handsome as he is, the incandescent light coming from the other two casts a shadow over him.
I’m assuming the woman is Maisie’s mother and maybe the tall guy is Eli. Pure speculation on my part since it’s easier to get a straight answer out of the CIA than one from Jordan.
“He’s my boss. Nothing more. I don’t ask personal questions.”
“Yeah, right, and I’m J-Lo. This is sooo Billionaire and the Nanny.”
I snort. “No, it really isn’t.”
“How old is he anyway? A little old to be singlemaybehe’sgay,” she says in one long run-on sentence.
“I think he’s thirty-five? Thirty-seven maybe?”
“Thirty-three,” comes from behind me in a deep male voice. My stomach drops. Swiveling around, I find him standing in the doorway.
Busted.
My skin feels like I dove headfirst into a volcano. I’m absolutely certain my face is an unnatural shade of neon red.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Since thirty-five.”
He sits next to me on the couch even though this oversized monster could easily sit ten people, the only thing separating us an innocent bowl of popcorn.
Jordan takes a handful and stuffs it in his mouth, watching me closely. There’s a smile in his eyes. It makes me wonder what it would take to make him smile, really smile, to make him drop all that heavy baggage he carries around each day and just be joyful for once. At least for a little while. I’ve seen his anger, indifference, fear…what about the opposite end of the spectrum?
“You think I look thirty-seven?”
I pinch my lips together to stop the smile pushing my cheeks apart. “You act like you’re eighty so let’s split the difference.” He makes a face and turns his attention on the television. “V, I gotta go. The boss is home.” She’s in the middle of firing off another question when I end the call.
“Thirty-seven, really?”
I grab a handful of popcorn and pop one kernel in my mouth at a time to hide my amusement. Jordan is never talkative and never playful. This is new territory for us. “Are you fishing for a compliment?”
He thinks about it. “Yes.”
“Here goes––but only because you pay me. You ready?”
“Hit me.”
“You’re the youngest-looking thirty-three-year-old man in the universe…Does this please you?”
“You could’ve said something about me being extremely handsome.”
“Extremely? That would require a raise. I can throw in a very for free though.”
“I’ll take a very.”
This brings us to a very awkward moment where I’m smiling like I’ve got oatmeal for brains and he’s staring at my lips.
“How was Maisie?”
He asks me that every single night he can’t be with her for dinner. It makes me melt a little, that this man with a shell a thousand miles thick has one weakness, a two-year-old girl with an easy laugh.