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Jillian
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
I could not wrap my brain around it. How the hell was I supposed to even prepare for a day like this? For a scene like that? When I woke up this morning, I had no idea what kind of blast from the past I was about to walk straight into. How was I supposed to plan for this? I never expected for a single second that I might run into someone I knew, much less someone I knew from way back then. Someone I hadn’t thought about in years, except as a passing image in some of my deepest, darkest fantasies.
I blushed as I walked down the hallway, away from the master stateroom that contained Bruin and his newest conquest. I felt a little dizzy, and I reached out to steady myself against the wall. I closed my eyes and took a deep, slow breath. I couldn’t decide how to feel about all this. Shocked? Definitely. Embarrassed? You bet. Angry? Betrayed? Yeah, kind of. There was no way my brother Jeff wasn’t somehow in on this whole deal. He had to have known that the owner of Mirabella was his old college buddy. I thought about how the owner’s name had been left blank by the broker I was working with on this transaction. How Jeff had asked me, oh so innocently, on the phone earlier if I knew who the owner was.
“Asshole,” I swore under my breath.
Of course, Jeff knew. He had probably planned the whole damn thing as a prank or something. Which, at our ages, was just plain humiliating for everyone involved.
What a massive waste of time and money. I took days out of my frighteningly hectic schedule just to fly down here to this swampy Florida playground for the rich and sweaty because I thought I was doing my brother a favor. Family first, always. That was what my parents taught us. No, not just taught. They drilled it into us. That family came before anything else. That even when everything and everybody in the world turned on you, it was always your family you could count on, through thick and thin.
My parents were no longer around, but if anything, that had only made the bond between my brother and me even stronger. We were all we had in the world. Jeff was my protector and I was his rock. He could be a little idealistic at times, getting in over his head and working too hard. I was always there to smooth him out and calm him down, untangle the mess of scheduling flights, meetings, and tours that he constantly worked into knots. And when anyone, anyone at all, messed with me, Jeff rushed to my side to defend me and set the record straight.
It was hard sometimes being a young woman in a field dominated overwhelmingly by middle-aged men. Especially since I was petite and, not to toot my own horn, but relatively attractive. I was barely five-foot-two, but I was curvy, with a full chest and hips. I had naturally pouty lips and long eyelashes. I had a nice smile, compliments of three long, painful, awkward years of braces in high school. I took care of myself, taking time out of my busy schedule for facials, waxing, and routine hair trimmings to keep my ends neat. I was a sharp dresser. Sure, sometimes this stuff got really tedious, but it was all necessary to maintain my professional image.
The clients I worked with all relied on me to help them look good. I was selling not only a yacht, but what the yacht represented: a lifestyle full of luxury and leisure. If I looked like I was living that kind of life myself, they would trust me to show them how to do it, too. It was all a game of acting. I was playing the role of an elite, high-class woman who had it all and knew the secrets of getting into the most secret clubs, the most expensive hotels. The finest restaurants.
Keeping up these appearances was certainly not cheap. Which was partly why it mattered so much that I made regular sales. To make big money, I had to spend big money. But to keep making big money, I had to keep spending it once I got it in the first place. It was a vicious cycle, and I worried sometimes that eventually I would burn out and drop out of the rat race. Go back to some quieter, calmer, more comfortable job in a city I felt safe in. Somewhere that made coming home feel less like a pit stop and more like a genuine place to rest my tired bones.
But for now, I was deep, deep in the rat race. I was double-booked and overwhelmed all the time. So for me to fly all the way down here to Fort Lauderdale to help my brother buy a yacht, supposedly, was a big deal. I was losing out on precious time. Time I could have been spending on wining and dining some other client, a real client who would pay my rent.
I gritted my teeth and took out my cell phone as I made my way down the hall. I stopped into a few other rooms as I moved along, toying with the phone in my hand. I was torn. On the one hand, I really wanted to call Jeff and yell at him for dragging me out here for what had to be just some dumb sibling joke. But on the other hand, I couldn’t exactly rip into him over the phone while I was on this boat. I needed to remain professional, even if all I really wanted to do was scream and curse. This yacht was surrounded by other yachts. Other yacht owners. Potential clients. People I could work with in the future if I kept my cool here and didn’t make a complete fool out of myself. Well, a bigger fool than Jeff had made of me, at least.
I walked into one of the smaller bedrooms and shut the door behind me. I slumped against the door, shaking my head. I bit my lip, trying not to cry. I was not a big crier. I never had been. My father had instilled in me a strong sense of composure, to show grace under pressure. But I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. It wasn’t just the annoyance of Jeff tricking me. It was the visceral humiliation at walking in on Bruin in that state.
He was even hotter than I remembered, which was certainly saying something. It was one of my deepest, darkest secrets, something I hid from everyone. Even my best friend Anna Kate, who had been my college roommate and thus knew all kinds of things about me I never shared with anyone else, was not privy to this. Every time I read one of my beloved romance novels, no matter how the hot guy was described, I always pictured Bruin. He was the fantasy guy of my dreams. There were times when I tried on purpose to imagine literally anyone else. Any other man. But it failed every time. I always went back to the image of Bruin in my mind. It was like he was branded on my heart, etched into my every secret desire.
It was stupid, and I knew it.
But I couldn’t help it. Ever since he entered my life as my big brother’s best friend years ago, he had always been there in my mind. Handsome. Tall. Smiling that devilish smile, those smoldering blue eyes captivating me even in my dreams. And oh yes, there were dreams. To be brutally honest, I had not had much time for dating since I graduated college and started working as a yacht broker. There simply was not time enough in the day for me to meet up with anyone. I had dated one guy for a few months off and on, but never seriously. Occasionally there were little flings. Sparks that flew at a lonely hotel bar in the wee hours of the morning, when I was exhausted from a full day of impressing rich people and running around in stilettos. Some guy in a suit would sidle up next to me, buy me a martini, strike up a flirtatious conversation. Most of the time, he would tell me his room number, offer me a night of reckless abandon with no strings
attached. And every single time, I would consider the notion for a while, toy with the prospect in my head. Play it out step by step as he droned on and on about his business dealings, his marketing skills, his private golf course. His daddy’s money. And by the time the bar was closing, I was already over it. Too tired to entertain some random guy’s fantasy of taking me to bed. Too bored with his banter to be sexually interested anymore.
Every single time, I would tell him goodnight and head back up to my own room, lock the door, get in the bath, and think about the man I really wanted to run into at a bar somewhere: Bruin. I would slip down under the hot, bubbly water and run my hands down my body, caress myself the way I wished he would. I would picture him walking slowly toward me with those blue eyes sizzling, burning into my soul as he stripped me with a single gaze. I would fantasize about him until I was finished or falling asleep or both. And then I’d slide into bed and dream of him some more until morning, when I would get dressed like the professional modern woman I was, and pretend none of it ever happened.
It was a routine. A dumb one, but it was comfortable. Sure, I couldn’t take much with me as I bounced around from town to town, but I could always carry my fantasies with me.
And so, in a way, I had been seeing Bruin all this time. But not in the flesh. Certainly not naked and steamy and totally unabashed as he looked me up and down in a stateroom of a yacht in Fort Lauderdale, of all places. I mean, of course I had fantasized about running into him one day, but this was definitely not the meet-cute I had ever imagined.
I quickly ran through the rest of the tour, just in case, so I wouldn’t be seen bolting red-faced off the yacht with my tail between my legs. And when I was finished, I found a quiet corner of the top deck to call Jeff, preparing to lay into him.
This time I didn’t use FaceTime. I didn’t want to see his stupid, smug face.
“Jilly,” he answered. I could hear the familiar commotion of an airport in the background. “How’d it go? Is the ship any good? What did you think of her?”
“You absolute bastard,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Whoa, what? What happened? Are you okay?” he asked quickly, changing tone. “What’s wrong?”
“You think this is funny?” I asked.
“Think what is funny? What’s going on?”
“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know. Sending me on some wild goose chase to check out a yacht only to find out, surprise! The owner of the yacht is Bruin freakin’ Kincaid,” I hissed.
