Page 9

9

Dakota

J ust a few minutes after Jax left me on my own—a short enough time for me to still have a ridiculous, goofy smile on my face—Jillian came into my office with a stack of papers.

She paused in the doorway, her nostrils flaring, and sighed, her eyes slipping shut for a moment.

“I don’t want to know,” she said, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. “But two things. First of all, this is a dangerous game, so be careful. Second, he may be an alpha asshole, but he’s my brother, so he’s my alpha asshole. Don’t mess with him. You have the power in this situation. Please don’t abuse it.”

For a moment, all I could do was sit there and blink at her.

I had the power? But he way outranked me; he could fire me if I pissed him off. Except, of course, that had the potential to be a PR nightmare, both within the company and then in the press, if it came out that the CEO had slept with an employee and then fired them. I still thought she was exaggerating my power in this a little, but that did bring things into sharper focus. I wasn’t some innocent little red riding hood being pursued through the woods by the big bad wolf.

We were both adults, and this was a dangerous thing to do.

But Jax was... He was big and gorgeous and rich, yes. All the things Donnie said one should look for in a boyfriend. But what was really sitting in my head rent-free was how he’d come to me, head bowed, and apologized. He’d been sorry for reacting before thinking, and believing ill of me without proof. More importantly, he’d said it. He’d put himself in that position.

Somehow, that was the sexiest thing of all.

Okay, no, the sexiest thing of all had been when he’d called me a good boy in that gruff post-sex growly voice of his. I shivered, then remembered I was in the room with his sister. Oops.

“I like him,” I told her earnestly. “He asked me to have dinner with him, and I... your brother is a good guy, and I want to get to know him better.”

For a second, she looked at me, the folders in her hands hanging limp and her eyes wide, as though I’d said I planned on taking her brother out for a motor-oil smoothie and garbage burgers, rather than saying that I liked him and wanted to date him. Was it really such an impossible thought?

Surely, she’d dated before, and knew what a catch her brother was.

She finally shook off her surprise and came to sit in the chair in front of my desk, laying out the folders in front of me. “I... I’m going to trust you on this. Both of you. Him because I don’t have a choice and you... I like you, Dakota. I want to keep liking you. It’s good to have someone else in the company who isn’t willing to sacrifice their dignity for a business deal. Jax is... when we left Idaho, he promised he’d take care of us. He still takes full personal responsibility for that promise, so even when it puts him in a bad position, he’ll do whatever he has to, to make sure the company thrives.”

That fit with what I’d seen, and with his acceptance of the attitude of the Igarashi employees, but it also seemed strange. Why would such a powerful man accept that kind of situation? Yes, she was explaining it with a promise he’d made, but it was still odd. Most people would have still put their egos... somewhere on the list of importance. Jax seemed to have deleted his from the equation entirely.

“I’m not here to take advantage of him or this situation,” I promised her. “I like him. He seems to be a good guy, and you might be his sister, but you can see. You know he’s objectively gorgeous.”

She scrunched her nose up at me, as if they didn’t share the same classically straight bone structure, deep brown hair so thick you had to sink your hands into it, or glistening green eyes. “I guess.”

We both laughed, and the tension in the room broke. I could finally take a real breath.

“Okay,” she said with a sigh, then waved a hand like she could dispel the previous conversation altogether. “So these are printed copies of the Igarashi documents, along with our translations of them. After this morning, I think you’ll understand why I’m a little dubious about their good intentions. I’d like you to go through them and note anywhere you think the translations are off.”

“Sure, no problem at all.” A sensible choice, too, after the way they had acted. She didn’t need me to tell her that, though. Jillian Fyse clearly knew just what she was doing. I flipped through the pages, taking them all in, frowning. “It’s going to take me a few days to get through it all. Do you have a time frame in mind?”

“A few days is just fine, Dakota. We’re not signing anything this week. We’re supposed to be hammering out details with them now, so this is perfect timing for a thorough review. And thank you. I know Jax isn’t taking your input into account like we both think he should, but there’s still time. You and I have seen the issues. So you and I need to keep an eye on Igarashi, and see if they try to pull any slick moves with the contracts.” She pushed herself out of the chair with a deep, meaningful sigh, shaking her head. “I’m not going to let them take advantage of my brother’s need to care for us.”

I gave her a decisive nod. “We won’t let that happen. I won’t let anything slide. Be prepared for pages of notes.”

She grinned at me, nodding. When she got to the door, she paused, leaning in the frame. “When, um. When we get to the signing. Maybe you’d consider being on the lookout for any... you know.” She wiggled her fingers in what looked like an approximation of stealthy jazz hands.

I had no idea what the hell stealth jazz hands meant, but before I could ask, she ducked her head, not meeting my eye, and practically ran away.

What the heck?

I shook off the confusion, making up my mind to ask her what she’d been talking about next time I saw her, but for now, I had work to do. Lots and lots of work. Which, it turned out, was a good thing, because whomever they had gotten to translate the contracts had done a poor job of it. They weren’t outright wrong that I saw, but a lot of the subtleties of the language had been lost in the translation.

Also, I’d never in my life seen anything like them.

Instant delivery systems? What was that?

In part, this was an issue because I still had no idea what the hell Crescent did. The contracts implied that they were sort of like that company named for a river in South America that everyone used. But I’d never even heard of them and couldn’t find a website. If they were so diversified, how was that possible? Because the contracts had sections involving every aspect of a business like that. Acquisitions, warehousing and storage, sales, taxes and tariffs of all kinds in various countries, shipping... and the shipping was the weirdest. They named companies I’d never heard of doing deliveries. What the heck was UFD? I even tried to Google it, but found nothing useful.

Still, the work took all my concentration, and I was madly scribbling notes on my tenth sheet of paper when motion in the corner of my eye caught my attention. The door hadn’t opened. How had...

I blinked in shock, staring at... at the stapler on my desk.

Okay, no, at the stapler that should be on my desk, but which was instead hovering three inches above my desk.

I snatched it out of the air, opening it up, looking it over, trying to find whatever mechanism had allowed that to happen, but there was nothing. It was just a stapler. I was still staring at it when on the desk, the pen I’d dropped slowly lifted into the air.

I dropped the stapler and shoved the pen onto the desk.

There was no way. That wasn’t...

It was just a pen. It was my pen, one I’d brought with me, because I was picky about pens. It wasn’t able to hover on its own.

Wildly, I looked around for a fan, or maybe an air vent, that could explain this. Could a fan or an air vent explain it? Almost certainly not, especially since I couldn’t feel any movement in the air around me.

As I sat there holding my pen against the desk, the damned stapler started to hover again. And then the papers. Not like they were being blown upward, but more like they were being lifted on strings. No blowing. No bending. Just lifting.

What in the actual fuck?

I wasn’t breathing, couldn’t drag air into my lungs.

What was happening?

A voice sounded right outside the door—Jax’s voice, talking to someone about... about quitting time. I looked down at my watch, which did indeed say it was a minute to five. As the doorknob of my office started to turn, I grabbed the stapler out of the air, and then shoved at the papers wildly with both hands, trying to force them back onto the desk.

And then Jax walked in.