Raw Talent |16| A Single Rose
Read Chapter Fifteen Here or start from the beginning Here
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jackman DuVall was in a quandry. He had a conference deal with Tokyo and Wall Street was on the other line, asking him for urgent advice. He wrote “SELL” on a post it and held it up to the window. His assistant, Deborah passed the message on. She mouthed “Thank You” to him, and a glimmer of satisfaction passed over his chiselled features as he completed the transaction in flawless Japanese.
If only that had been his only quandry.
Fox Maison was a comet in his skies. A palomino kicking magnificently in a field of shetland ponies.
A thoroughbred.
Jackman DuVall hated Shetland ponies. As a child one had tried to bite him and he had never forgotten it. His first business transaction had been a particular sort of glue factory. In business, it paid to be cut throat. And the throats of your enemies were that much more deserving of the chop. He gazed out the window, at the bustling traffic. A single rose, abandoned, no doubt, by an errant lover rested on the pavement. The lush scarlet of its petals was in stark contrast to the concrete, and the surrounding capitalist monuments. Fox was beautiful like that rose, mused Jackman. But she was also good at business. Her company had turned an impressive profit. Even in it’s first year. And he should know.
She’d let him see her books.
He had thought of her every day since last they’d met. But something had prevented him from picking up the phone and buying her presents until she slept with him. Jackman DuVall was not known for his reserve, but he knew how to approach a woman, all the ways. From the front, from behind, from the side. Diagonally. On the phone. On a plane. In a boat. There were so many ways you could make a woman want you. And he was well-versed in all of them.
So why was this one different?
He found himself, for the ninth time that day, on LinkedIn, scrolling through her skills and endorsements. He knew what skill he would like to endorse her in.
Love-Making.
Pretty-Face Having.
Friendship?
Jackman DuVall had vowed once, as a boy, never to let a woman make him weak. And he wasn’t about to start now. Fox Maison was a beautiful puzzle. But until he could take possession of her, body and soul, without giving anything in return, his granite cliff-face would eschew her alabaster curves.
He would protect his heart. For though he was a businessman, he was secretly quite tender, and he feared discovery.
