Page 70 of Hired Husband

“You really are trying to kill me, aren’t you?” I finally picked my jaw up off the floor and shook my head, then pushed a cup of coffee across the counter toward her. “It looks much better on you, though. You should keep it.”

“I was already going to,” she said sweetly, flashing me a smile. She walked over to me instead of the coffee. Her arms slid around my neck as if they belonged there, her soft, warm body pressing against mine. “You look pretty good yourself, Thayer. Freshly fucked is a great look on you.”

I winked and wrapped an arm around her hips, pulling her closer before pressing another searing kiss to her lips. “I don’t know. I feel like it could be fresher. It’s been a couple hours. What do you say we⁠—”

A knock on my door interrupted the sentence and I groaned, fully planning on ignoring it until Joseph’s voice filtered through the wood. “I know you’re still here, Isaac. Hassan told me you haven’t left yet.”

Jasmine smiled playfully. Those dark eyes twinkled with a weird sort of delight as she cocked her head at me. “Well, are you going to let your friend in or do you need me to hide first?”

“Fuck that.” I let go of her and strode to the door, turning to look at her over my shoulder as I pulled it open. “Don’t you dare hide. Ever.”

Joseph gave me a puzzled look when I stepped aside to let him in. “Who’s not hiding?”

“Jasmine,” I said, loudly enough that I knew she would be able to hear me. I shut the door behind him and frowned at the model building he held in his hands. It was of the industrial compound we weren’t going to be building. “What is that doing here?”

“I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet,” he said absently, glancing between Jasmine and me with confusion clouding his eyes. “Am I interrupting something?”

Jasmine smiled and waved a dismissive hand. “You’ve already interrupted. The moment has passed. Is that the complex the board passed on?”

Joseph set it down on my dining-room table.

She strode closer immediately, leaning over to inspect it “So this is what you’ve been doing all this time you spent in Egypt, huh? Other than hanging out with me, that is.”

“Yeah.” I slid my hands into the pockets of my sweats. Without really meaning to, I drifted closer to her, hating having to look at that thing now but still wanting to show her what she’d inspired. “It’s green energy focused, walkable, and we think it looks more like a historical site than warehouses and production plants.”

“We even designed a walkable neighborhood around it for the workers,” Joseph added quietly. “Plus, it’s all solar powered and it blends in with the architecture of the city as a whole.”

“It’s beautiful,” Jasmine whispered, but oddly, she grew really quiet then. Just as I was about to ask if she was okay, she pulled out her phone, snapped a picture, and then pressed a lingering kiss to my cheek right in front of Joseph. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

I frowned. “Okay?”

She pointed a finger at me even as she started backing toward the door. “Do not dare set foot anywhere near the airport, do you hear me?”

I dropped my chin in a nod, then exhaled a heavy breath through my nose when she hurried away and slammed the door. Before I could even begin to wonder what the hell she was up to this time, Joseph turned to me with his eyes as wide as saucers.

“Dude, did I just see Basel Saad’s daughter kiss you?” he asked incredulously. “What the hell, man? I thought you said she was just your tour guide.”

CHAPTER 28

JASMINE

In a blind rage, I stormed into my parents house in search of my father. There was a possibility he’d taken lunch at the office, but I doubted it. Dad liked to eat with my mother, so I had at least a fifty percent shot he’d be here.

Not the most ideal odds, but they were better than nothing.

“Miss Saad,” a housekeeper said when I burst in, blinking in a few times at the sudden interruption. “Can I⁠—”

“Where’s my dad?”

She pointed at the hallway leading to his home office. “He’s just about to leave for⁠—”

“Thank you.” I marched down the corridor with the intensity of an approaching sandstorm, determined to make him see reason.

When I reached his study, the door was already open. His briefcase was in his hand where he stood in front of his desk while two assistants talked him through his schedule for the afternoon. I didn’t knock or wait for them to take a breath, simply folding my arms and clearing my throat.

“We need to talk.”

Dad looked over and started to smile, but it instantly melted into a frown when he saw my face. “This can’t be good.”