Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Binx was purring the moment she opened the door.

“Hey, boy,” she said, her voice tired. Slipping off the cheap ballet flats Shawna had picked up for her after this morning’s shoe emergency, she dropped everything on the entryway floor and stooped down to pick up the only man in her life who wasn’t a raging manwhore.

And that was all thanks to Doctor Kale who chopped off his little pom-poms when Binx was just a kitten.

“How was your day?” she asked him as she scratched behind his ears while carrying him back to the bedroom.

“Meow.”

“Sounds like it was better than mine.”

“Meow.”

“Oh, you don’t want to know all the gory details. I just want to put this awful Monday behind me and sleep.”

“Meow.”

“No, I’m not hungry…unless you’re offering?”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She plopped him on the foot of the bed where he liked to curl up and started searching dresser drawers for something more comfortable to wear. “You know, Binx, you’re lucky you’re just a cat, or you’d be a shitty roommate and I’d have evicted you a long time ago.”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, I know. You do give some nice massages, even if they are focused mostly on my boobs.” Giving him a little pat on the butt, she headed for the bathroom for a little self-pampering session.

After securing the Hargreaves account after reluctantly agreeing to keep the three men who turned out to, in fact, be his sons in her employ, and then meeting another pretentious client who she declined to continue working with primarily due to his flagrant use of the word irregardless, she was running on mental fumes. Made even worse was her lack of anyone to vent her frustrations to. Her parents were out of town, her friends were busy with their own lives, and she was completely alone.

Binx was her only reliable confidant, and they didn’t even speak the same language.

Filling the bathtub with hot water and dumping lavender scented Epsom salts in, Sabrina slid into the bath with a sigh and put her head back to relax away the tension.

As tough as she carried herself and as hard as her thoughts toward the opposite sex were, she needed a man in her life. Someone to listen to her complaints and offer advice and massage her breasts—the good way—and to give her amazing orgasms and just be there for her. Good God, she wanted someone to come home to, eat dinner with, and fall asleep next to. At twenty-eight, it shouldn’t feel as if she’d missed the boat on her life, but that’s exactly how she felt.

And she had one person she could track all of her life’s misgivings back to: Lance Carter.

Unlike how most sob stories went, Lance hadn’t been a playboy or a jock who moved away and left her behind. He hadn’t broken her heart. On the contrary, she had broken his.

Yes, all the blame for her current dissatisfaction sat directly on her shoulders. At the ripe age of eighteen, just graduating high school and with a full scholarship to Princeton, she simply hadn’t appreciated the riches right in front of her.

When Sabrina let Lance go, she hadn’t realized it was going to be a pivotal moment in her life. She’d just thought she was making the best choice for both of them. Love in person was hard enough to maintain, let alone across states. She’d even told him that they should use the time to explore other options and focus on their studies, and if they were meant to be, then they would find their way back to each other. It was her way of letting him down easy. It’s not you; it’s me.

Lance had begged and pleaded with her not to do it. He’d told her they could make it work, that he loved her to the moon and back and so many other clichés that she couldn’t remember now, and she’d rolled her eyes at all of them, thinking he’d been acting ridiculous. Her impatience had ended in an argument that resulted in her walking away on not-so-good terms, and she’d always kind of regretted it.

Especially now, when she was alone in a bathtub with no one to share her day with. At times like this, she missed Lance like crazy. Walking down memory lane was a torture she couldn’t resist, not that she ever tried. The saddest part of all was that life hadn’t brought them back together. If anything, it just pushed them farther apart, which was probably for the best. They were two very different people and they never would have worked, but he was the only man she’d ever been serious enough about to look back on when she had a bad case of the mopes.

Lance was probably married now, highly successful and happy. Maybe he even had kids. And here she was with only an overly expensive condo, a fat bank account, and a sleek feline to show for all her hard work.

Maybe Sabrina took life too seriously. She often wondered about that, but at this point, where was the incentive to change? If she slowed down even for a moment, she’d just have more time to hate her life than she already was beginning to.

What she needed was a night out with a couple of girlfriends. None of them were the partying type, but they still knew how to have a good time. She’d call them, she decided as she soaped up her purple loofah. Janet always had some fun idea up her sleeve that she wanted to try out, and Sabrina was in the mood to be her guinea pig.

As soon as she finished her bath, she found her phone and dialed, eager to find out what kind of mischief she had to look forward to.

***

Drake played over the sound system that was bumping against Sabrina’s ears. She wasn’t old, but damn, she wished they’d turn it down a notch. She couldn’t think with all this noise. But that was a club for you. They specialized in loud music and booze, and this place that Janet had dragged her to was definitely an expert in all of that.

Of her many options, Sabrina had chosen to stick with screwdrivers for the night, figuring the shot of juice would supply her with a bit of energy for the night and the morning ahead. She didn’t give a lick that it was Monday night because her first meeting wasn’t until eleven the next morning, which meant she could sleep in and be fully refreshed when she walked into the office tomorrow.

“Hot guy, three o’clock,” Janet shouted in her ear.

Sabrina casually turned her head and searched the throng, until she caught the eye of the sexy stranger across the bar. Except he wasn’t a stranger at all. “Ugh.” Her lip curled involuntarily at the sight of one of the Hargreaves sons, despite how good he looked in the open white dress shirt and black slacks. She found the semi-casual outfit hotter than hell on a man, and with his dark hair and features, he was delicious. Or, she’d bet he was.

“Ugh?”

Sabrina leaned into her friend so she could hear her better. “Not interested. He’s all yours.”

Janet appeared startled for a moment before recovering with a sly smile. “In that case, I’ll be right back.”

Sabrina watched her friend slip into the crowd and make her way around to the other side of the bar, and then she looked away before her friend reached him, not interested in seeing the man accept her friend’s indecent proposal.

Forcing herself to get lost in the music, she sipped her drink, and when it was gone, ordered another.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you shouldn’t drink alone?”

The male voice was deep, dark, and smooth like honey, and it sent an involuntary shiver down Sabrina’s spine and ignited a flame between her legs that shocked her. Turning on her barstool, she looked up at the man hovering over her right shoulder…and curled her lip again.

Another one. “Mr. Hargreaves. I just spotted your brother. I assume that means you’re all here tonight.”

He nodded as he claimed Janet’s empty seat. “We’re like wolves. We travel in a pack.” Those dark eyes that he shared with his brothers captured hers, and she recognized the hunger in them. It was the same look they’d given her in the office, but this time it was amplified.

“Do you hunt in a pack too?” she asked somewhat snarkily. Their confidence could easily be mistaken for arrogance, except it wouldn’t be a mistake. The Hargreaves men had been bred for dominance. It was etched into their every look and move, an unmistakable power.

Except that power had been transferred to her today when they’d come to her for help with their business, so Sabrina wasn’t dumb enough to think that this guy was interested in her for her brains or beauty. More like they wanted revenge of some kind for their inability to succeed in the business world without help from a woman.

“Only when we see something we like and have to have,” he answered, his gaze openly roaming over her body.

She rolled her eyes. “What do you want, Mr. Hargreaves?”

“Mr. Hargreaves is my father. Please, call me Conner. And my brother over there”—he pointed to where Janet was standing, trying to hold the other man’s attention—“is William, and Oliver is floating around here somewhere…” He cast a glance around the room, but came up empty and smiled down at her instead.

“Funny how you three just happen to be in the same club at the same time as me,” she mused.

“You think we followed you?” She cocked an eyebrow, indicating that’s exactly what she was implying. “Actually, it was purely coincidence. But what isn’t coincidence is that my brothers and I have the same taste in women.” Again, his eyes scanned her form, and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip.

Sabrina laughed and held up a hand. “If you say that taste happens to be me, I may have to actually kick you in the balls.” She was not a woman prone to flattery. In her position, she was met with daily male advances and the only thing they did for her was harden that shell she kept around herself to protect her from men who would only do her harm.

“You were great in the boardroom today. We were impressed with how well you handled our father. He’s known to be a real bastard.”

Sabrina had been taking a drink and choked at his declaration. He patted her on the back as she doubled over and hacked out a lung. With tears in her eyes and burning in her throat, she said, “You can’t talk about your father that way.”

“Why not? It’s the truth,” he said with an expression as straight as a ruler. “My father is rigid and cutthroat. The only weakness he has is to my mother. Anything beyond that, he’d never admit to.”

Sobering, she gave him a speculative look. “Oh? Then why did he humble himself to me today?”

Backing off, Conner took a drink of the dark amber liquid in the glass he’d brought with him. “You’re wondering what the catch is,” he guessed. “Well, you’d be right to ask questions. My father has never sold out, never given up on anything in his life. But this… Well, let’s just say he’s turned his attention to a more lucrative project.”

All of Sabrina’s internal alarms started ringing. “Let’s not say anything but exactly what’s going on here,” she countered. “What exactly is up your father’s sleeve? Or should I ask what’s up yours and your brothers’?” Because they were the ones who’d been negotiated into the deal and would be sticking around. Like watchdogs, she thought darkly…or spies.

“If you think we’re inside traders or we’re staying on in order to fuck with you or your business, you’d be wrong,” Conner said, again holding nothing back. He was a straight shooter, and Sabrina didn’t know whether to trust it or not. Her gut was saying one thing, while her head was saying another.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Right now?” He grinned, and his smile did funny things to her, things she didn’t want to admit to but could get her into trouble. So she polished off her drink and held up her hand to the bartender to order another. “I’m enjoying drinks with a beautiful woman and hoping she’ll give me just one…tiny…smile.”

Sabrina tried not to. She really did. But the longer he stared at her with that goofy yet sexy grin on his face, the harder it was not to give in. When her next drink was set in front of her, she picked it up and brought it to her mouth. Just before she took a sip, her lips grew a mind of their own and parted into a bashful smile that was so unbecoming of her usual pout.

But boy did it make him happy. As if he’d just finished first place in the Boston Marathon, Conner shouted to the bartender to bring him another whiskey and to keep his tab open.

And when Sabrina didn’t immediately vacate her stool to find her friend and go home, but instead moved a hair closer to her newest client and employee, she knew she was in trouble.