Seducing Abby Rhodes Read online

  * * *

  The six-foot-three-inch gorgeous man stood up as she was escorted to the best table in the house, in the back of the restaurant next to the window overlooking the city. His strength, his power resonated throughout this crowded room, and every eye traveled back and forth between the two of them, transfixed and watching in fascination the union between these two flawless people. A slight smile curled the corners of his mouth as he locked onto her. God! He was everything.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said warmly in that rich and deep voice of his, leaning in slightly to kiss her cheek.

  Jordan didn’t kiss on the lips. He had a thing about it, he’d told her once, but never elaborated. She could live without his kisses, but she couldn’t live without him.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Robin smiled.

  “No worries,” he said, waiting for her to be seated before he sat down.

  He wore a simple black blazer, a crisp white shirt, and slate-gray slacks. His dark, penetrating gaze raked over her, and Jordan subconsciously licked his lips. “You look gorgeous, as usual.”

  “Thank you,” she said humbly. “So do you.”

  He was an anomaly. Jordan had been through so much in recent years that he’d retreated inside himself and left everyone else cold and wondering and hovering around him, desperate to be let in.

  Distant. Preoccupied. Distracted. He’d been all these things for the last few months, and she longed to awaken him.

  “How was your day?” she asked engagingly.

  The server abruptly appeared at their table. “Good evening. Would you like something to drink?” he asked Robin.

  She ordered a glass of wine. Jordan had his signature lager already on the table. The server left to get her drink. Don’t let him slip away, she thought, looking at Jordan. Touch him. She reached across the table and intertwined her fingers in his. “I’m listening,” she said gently.

  She studied him each and every time she saw him. Jordan’s close-cut hair and beard only highlighted his perfect features.

  “Interesting,” he said simply.

  She listened patiently as he spoke, mesmerized by the movement of his lips, wanting like hell to tug on them with hers, to mate her tongue to his. She listened, or rather, she heard him, but he might as well have been speaking Greek. The two of them ate dinner, finished, and later that evening in her apartment, she got her wish.

  Jordan stood naked over her, at the foot of her bed, with his hands on her knees.

  “Jordan,” she whispered weakly, helplessly, as he trailed his hands from her knees to her shins, then wrapped those long fingers of his around her ankles and slowly straightened her legs, pushing them back toward her head until he’d folded her into the position he wanted her in.

  Robin was always so pliable for him, so accommodating and weak. Her mouth watered at the sight and anticipation of his thick and rigid cock, tickling her labia. “Don’t tease me,” she begged.

  Robin was one of Gatewood Industries’ top corporate attorneys. She negotiated multimillion-dollar contracts on a daily basis and had the reputation of being a beast of a lawyer. She was a powerful woman in her own right, except when it came to him. She was his toy, his slave, his whatever he wanted her to be.

  “Make me believe you want it, sweetheart.” Jordan’s piercing, dark eyes bore down to her soul.

  He inched the tip of his dick in between the folds of her pussy.

  “I’m convinced,” he whispered. “You are so fucking wet, Robin.” Jordan moaned.

  She hated the thin wall of latex between the two of them. Robin wanted all of him buried deep inside her. She wanted his seed, his babies, his hopes and dreams. She wanted to be his refuge, the place where he could let down his guard and feel safe. He pushed into her so slowly, so completely, that she couldn’t help but to cry out and came, the first time, almost immediately.

  Hours later, Robin lay quietly in his arms, with her head on his chest, the deep, methodic beating of his heart lulling her into fantasies so lovely that she never wanted them to end. And they all centered around him. He was her man, her husband. He couldn’t keep his hands off her, couldn’t stop kissing her. “I should’ve married you first,” he would tell her over and over again. In her dreams, it was all he said.

  Eventually she dozed off, and he was gone when she woke up. The text on her phone said what it always said when he left in the middle of the night.

  Have an early day tomorrow. I’ll see you at the office. Had a lovely time as usual.

  She rolled over to his side of the bed, buried her face in the pillow, and inhaled the scent of his cologne.

  “Just be patient, Robin,” she said out loud.

  A man like him couldn’t be rushed. He couldn’t be tricked or fooled into doing something he wasn’t ready to do. He had to want to marry her. Robin needed to be the woman who saved his life and his soul. He had to know, without a doubt, that he loved her more than he loved himself and to wonder how he had possibly lived without her his whole life. But for these things to happen, she needed to stay the course.

  Ringing My House

  SOOTHING LIGHTING ILLUMINATED THE SPACE inside his penthouse as soon as he stepped off the private elevator. It wasn’t yet dawn. He’d drifted off to sleep at Robin’s, but it was a restless sleep, one that he couldn’t let himself sink too deeply into, because he knew that he didn’t want to spend the night.

  Jordan was becoming more peculiar with age, or maybe just more particular. He was a man with more money than he could spend in his lifetime. Gatewood was more of a status symbol than a last name these days, and there were plenty of women standing in line to have it wrapped around their ring finger on their left hand. Jordan was a commodity. A year ago, he relished the position, but damn near dying had a way of putting things in perspective.

  Robin was gorgeous, the sex was amazing, and still, those things weren’t enough for him. She had worked hard to satisfy Jordan, making herself available whenever and however he needed her. She was making it crystal clear that she wanted to become a permanent fixture in his life, and all the while Jordan pushed back, reminding her that he wasn’t ready to make a commitment to her or anyone else. Still, the accommodating nature of a beautiful, intelligent woman like her would’ve been more than enough for any man, just not him.

  Jordan was forty-nine. A widower. His wife, Claire, had committed suicide more than a year ago because of him. Claire, like Robin, wanted more than anything for Jordan to love her. Not an unreasonable expectation for a wife of her husband. In the nearly six years that they were married, Jordan cheated, lied, dismissed, ignored, and cheated some more on Claire, and still she stayed. Begging. Pleading. Crying for him to be the man that she needed him to be. He excused his behavior by justifying it and by using the excuse that he didn’t know how to be any other kind of way. The bigger truth was that he purposefully chose not to be that man.

  Claire had been a trophy. Beautiful, compliant, pliable. She made it too damn easy for him to be an asshole. So yes. He used her as an excuse and blamed her every chance he got for his indiscretions. And every now and then, that beautiful face of hers flashed in his mind and tortured him, reminding him of how cruel he was capable of being, so it was a fair trade as far as he was concerned, a lifetime of guilt for him over her death in exchange for six long, painful years of marriage to him for her.

  Jordan walked upstairs to his bedroom, undressed, and took a shower. Women were never an issue for men like Jordan. He’d been through more than his fair share, and each and every time, thinking back, he’d been left completely and utterly empty inside. He’d come close to loving one woman, or perhaps it had just been a dangerous obsession that, in the end, got her killed. Not a suicide like Claire. It was an age-old story of love, lust, betrayal, and a gun.

  Scalding water washed over him until he could shake loose that memory. Self, and the preservation of such, were everything to him. Self-centeredness. Self-absorbtion. Self-loathing? No. Not quite. He was a m
ogul. A big, black, dangerous motha fucka of a mogul who had had plenty of cringeworthy and self-loathing moments, but that’s all they were—moments. Besides, ego wouldn’t allow him to loathe himself. He had plenty of that from outsiders.

  He was an oilman, born and raised in Texas, and his so-called counterparts, his peers, despised him. Arrogant, they called him. A black man wasn’t allowed to think too highly of himself, unless he could catch a football or rap, and even then, he was frowned upon unless he came heavy with humility. To his peers, Jordan was void of humility. It was a dirty word and an even dirtier feeling. Humility was a silent and embarrassing plea for acceptance and approval. He didn’t want or need their fuckin’ approval. That’s why they hated him. Arrogant black bastard without a hint of humility, a privileged niggah with no soul. And they were right. If he had a conscience, then he kept it hidden from them, but more importantly, from himself. A conscience was a liability in this business. Fuck every last one of them.

  Half an hour later, Jordan was down in his living room, sipping on a cup of coffee, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, and watching the sun begin to rise over the city. His penthouse was conveniently located in his corporate building. Jordan’s office was on the floor beneath him. He’d owned other houses all over the world, but after Claire died, he’d sold just about all of them and called this place home. It was the only place that felt like it. Gatewood Industries Inc. was a multimillion-dollar corporation because of him. He lived and breathed this place.

  Jordan’s net worth was hundreds of millions of dollars, but being the CEO over GII was never about the money. It was his birthright, thanks to some creative marrying done by his mother. Jordan’s biological father was a man named Joel Tunson, and he was Olivia’s first husband. She left him, though, when Jordan was two years old. That’s when Julian Gatewood caught sight of her somewhere and started sniffing around. He married her, but it didn’t take him long to regret it. Still, he stayed married to her until his death. Jordan was twenty, a junior in college, when suddenly, he was snatched up by his jockstrap and planted behind Julian’s desk in that leather chair of his adoptive father. Back then, it was too damn big for him. It took years, a whole lot of mistakes, and some hard lessons before Jordan finally began to fit the mold of CEO, and he eventually tossed his father’s seat out and bought his own gotdamn chair.

  It had been weeks since Jordan’s trek to Ida Green’s old house in Blink, Texas, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the trip. That house, there was something about it. Jordan left there with the residue of old memories on him. Julian had lived a completely separate life in that place. As a kid, he grew up being told that his father was away on business, but now, he couldn’t help but wonder how much of his business had taken him to Blink.

  He wanted to go back. But what the hell was he looking for? What did he expect to find in Blink that could possibly have anything to do with the man that Jordan was now? This nagging curiosity was becoming irrational. He was chasing ghosts and whims, and for what? Julian didn’t have any answers for him when he was alive; he surely couldn’t have any for him now that he was gone. Thirty years. The man had been dead for nearly thirty years, and only recently had Jordan become curious about the meaning of his death, and more importantly, his life. He was losing his mind. That had to have been it. Jordan was going fuckin’ crazy, and he needed to hurry up and snap out of it before someone noticed and had him committed.

  Abby. Was it just the house? Or was it her? Not a day since he’d first seen her had his curiosity about her not stabbed at him. He held an odd fascination for that woman, an unyielding anticipation of seeing her again, and he had no idea why. He felt like he was on the brink of something, a breakthrough, an answer to some question that he didn’t even know to ask. Every time he recalled her face, her pretty, animated, un-made-up face, it felt as if she held the secret to something he’d been searching for all his life, and it bothered him because he had no idea who she was or why she should compel him so. There had been an energy between them. And it had flowed solely and powerfully between the two of them. She’d felt it too, and it made her uneasy. He’d seen it in her eyes. It was an odd revelation, but true. Jordan was changing, evolving. Into what or who, he had no idea.

  Fifteen minutes later Jordan finished his coffee and then went upstairs to get dressed. When the call came in, he knew instinctively who it was. Jordan had his phone system wired throughout the house.

  “This is Jordan,” he said, triggering the answering capability.

  “What time did you leave?” Robin asked, sounding as if she were still half-asleep.

  “Early or late, depending on your perspective,” he said, walking into his closet.

  “Why?” she asked, almost pleading.

  “Early morning meeting, Robin,” he lied.

  “Another one.” She sounded disappointed but like she knew that it was just an excuse that he’d used to leave.

  “Yes.” He sighed. “You know how it is.”

  She paused and then sighed. “Yeah. I know.”

  The Moon in Her Eye

  HAVING A MASTER’S DEGREE in structural engineering with an emphasis on architecture was wasted in a small town like Blink, Texas. Abby was basically a construction worker. But she owned her own contracting business, and she was the boss. At the end of the day, that’s all that mattered.

  She’d been in this house for almost two months, tackling renovations in between building decks, renovating bathrooms and kitchens, and laying new floors for clients. Abby had gutted the kitchen and had single-handedly built her own custom cabinets and stained them with a warm, off-white hue, and dark brown glazing details. She’d replaced all the old countertops with a light gray soapstone instead of your typical granite. She was still waiting for her appliances to be delivered, though, but in the meantime, she had a microwave that she’d get more use out of than a stove anyway.

  “Careful with my walls, Doug,” she said, helping PacMan carry out that old, musty, stained carpet and stepping over Doug kneeling on the floor, removing baseboards. “I don’t want to replace ’em if I don’t have to.”

  Doug grunted.

  Abby held up one end of the roll of carpet and followed PacMan outside to the huge Dumpster that had been sitting in front of her new house for months. Without bothering to be asked, Doug magically appeared at her side, took hold of her end, and helped PacMan get that thing inside the Dumpster.

  “Thank you,” she said, dusting her hands off on her jeans. “If I were taller, you know I could’ve handled it.”

  Doug brushed past her and grunted again. He was a man of few words. Always had been, but he was one of her best workers. He and PacMan had offered to help renovate her new place without being paid. Abby did agree to pay for pizza and beers the next time they met up at Charlie’s Bar. Abby had practically finished the kitchen in just under two months, doing most of the work herself. New hardwood would be arriving for the floors in three days, and Doug and PacMan had replaced every window in the house in a week. Other than laying hardwood throughout, the only other major project was the bathroom. It was tiny, much too small for the tub, which she’d had the fellas take out as soon as they started demoing the place. Abby was erecting a standalone shower and replacing the sink to allow for more storage.

  “No wonder I haven’t heard from you,” Skye said, standing in the doorway of the small bedroom. “Dang! You took down the wall?”

  Abby grinned and planted her hands on her hips. “Looks good, doesn’t it? It’s gonna be my office.”

  “So, it’s a one-bedroom house now,” Skye said skeptically. “You sure you want that? It’s gonna be hard to sell a one-bedroom, Abby.”

  “I’m not sure I’m gonna sell it,” she said, shrugging.

  “I thought that was the plan.”

  It had been the plan, especially when she found out that the place was haunted, but these ghosts hadn’t given her a lick of trouble since she’d been here. Abby had been sleeping here for t
he last few days, and not one bump, boo, or creak had disturbed or scared her.

  “I mean, if I do decide to sell it, I can always put the wall back up,” she said matter-of-factly. “No big deal.”

  Skye laughed. “To you it’s no big deal. Knocking down and putting up walls scares the mess outta people like me.”

  Skye was a paralegal, so yeah, Abby could see how construction work might bother her. Plus, Skye insisted on wearing unnaturally long nails. How that woman wiped her ass without cutting herself was miraculous to Abby. So yes, construction work for a woman like Skye was out of the question.

  “Abby,” Doug said, reaching over Skye’s head to hand something to Abby. “Found it between the wall and the baseboard.”

  It was a picture of a woman, smiling, dark skin, with long, thick hair with long spiral curls cascading down her shoulders. She had on a floral dress and was sitting behind a small table with a votive in the center of it, burning a small candle. Several glasses sat on the table in front of her.

  Skye leaned in and looked at it, too. “She’s pretty. Who’s that?”

  Abby shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  The picture had been torn in two. The woman in the photograph looked like she was being held by someone.

  “It looks old, like maybe from the seventies.”

  “Maybe she lived here,” Abby suggested.

  “You should get one of those rain showerheads,” Skye said, changing the subject. “You know the kind I’m talking about?”

  Yeah. Abby knew.

  * * *

  A few hours later, Abby stepped out of the shower in a room at the Barton; it was the fanciest hotel downtown Blink had to offer. After buying the house, Abby had rented her other house to Lewis and Donna Franklin. While Donna was busy getting ready to give birth to twins, Lewis worked here, at the Barton, and had graciously offered to let Abby use one of the rooms until her new place was livable. She’d been staying at the house as often as she could, but until the bathroom was finished, she had to split her time between the two.