Business or Pleasure?: He's Too Hard To Resist! Read online

  Contents

  Business or Pleasure?

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  The Proposal: A Business or Pleasure Novella

  An excerpt from “A Ruthless Lust”

  A Ruthless Lust

  Follow Me On Amazon

  Business or Pleasure?

  Have you ever had your heart broken?

  Seriously, take a few seconds and REALLY think about it…and if the answer is a resounding YES, (and it’s hard to believe you’d say NO, because everybody has had at least ONE heartbreak) try to bring those feelings back while reading Evie’s story.

  Trust me, it’s the only way you will TRULY appreciate and understand Evelyn’s life…but ESPECIALLY her “relationship” with Jared.

  You see…

  Jared Hawthorne is the type of guy who has an aversion to love and everything that comes with it. His TWO main goals in life include adding to his billions - and having as much fun with as many women as he possibly can. He’ll never be trapped and he’ll never commit.

  He was doing just fine with his jaded views and his playboy ways until he met his match. A woman who tempts him and then eludes him to the point of madness. A woman who serves him with a dose of his own medicine.

  Yes, Evie Davis!

  She wants nothing to do with relationships. One heartbreak is more than enough to last her a lifetime. (Can you relate?) So back to the question: Have you ever had your heart broken?

  And if the answer is yes…do you remember that feeling of “hey, let’s try this one more time,” because you say to yourself, “screw it, this guy is cute!!!”

  Of course you do! Now maybe you’ll understand Evie when she throws caution to the wind and reverses a pickup from a gorgeous stranger at a bar.

  Yeah, he hits her with a line and she just cuts to the chase! She doesn’t do flings, yet she finds herself in bed with the charismatic stranger for one night. And THAT’S when the story begins…

  They really weren’t supposed to see each other again but fate is a one hell of a twisted joker. Soon Jared and Evie’s worlds are thrown into chaos when they discover they’ll be working together. But is it possible to remain professional with their heated encounter always at the forefront of their memories?

  It’s hard to go back once you’ve seen each other naked…and have done what they did with each other. They have to try to keep it professional!

  But trying might not be enough - will they succumb to the undeniable chemistry and mounting desire threatening to consume them both? After all, blurring the line between business and pleasure could be disastrous!

  Find out what happens in this latest steam filled novel from Raquel Belle!

  Business or Pleasure?

  Raquel Belle

  Copyright © 2019 by Raquel Belle. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations or excerpts for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Belle, Raquel. Business or pleasure?

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to everyone who makes it so easy to do the thing that I love to do the most. My wonderful family, friends, editors and my amazing partners at Naughty Bird Publishing.

  Prologue

  He’d never met anyone like her. She stood at the bar exuding confidence like a regal queen. Only her profile was visible—enough to show her beauty. She turned, her gaze jumping over him to glance at the entrance. A slight frown marred her face, and she glanced at her watch and exhaled. He watched her for a few more seconds, as she turned around to speak to the bartender. No one joined her, so he did. Even if she was with someone, he had to get a closer look at her.

  With a quick inspection, he took in her bare shoulders, and his eyes moved directly to her left hand. No ring. That didn’t have to mean she wasn’t taken, but he didn’t particularly care if she was. He stopped beside her, noting how her sun-kissed skin glowed even under the dim lighting of the room. Sensing his presence, she turned to look at him. Slanted, sapphire eyes peered at him with interest—with a hint of hope and underlying sadness.

  “Please, tell me I’m the one you’ve been waiting for ...” His pickup line was mediocre at best, but he’d had a rough day and he was just looking to blow off steam. A body to warm his bed was all he needed, and the woman beside him was exquisite—a pretty face and a killer body, if the back view was anything to go by. Allowing his eyes to subtly graze her chest, indented waist, and provocatively flared hips, he gave a mental nod of satisfaction. Killer body, indeed. She had curves he could get lost in for the night.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, and you’re almost an hour late. I was just about to finish my drink and leave.”

  Taken aback, he watched emotions flicker across her face. Anger, annoyance, and there was that sadness again. “Excuse me?” he asked. He wasn’t expecting that response to his cheesy pickup line.

  She paused, swirled her glass in her hand, and glanced over her shoulder toward the door then back at him. “Aren’t you David Blake?”

  “No.” But he was willing to be anyone she wanted, if she let him into her panties for the night.

  Her lovely eyes widened, and her lips parted on a gasp. Pink stained her cheeks. “Oh my God. This is embarrassing. I’m so sorry. I thought you were ... my blind date.” She huffed and hissed under her breath, “Last time I let her hook me up on one of these ...”

  His lips curled with amusement. It was hard to imagine that a woman exuding such confidence needed to be set up on a blind date. It was his lucky night. “You’ve been waiting an hour, huh? Looks like you’ve been stood up.”

  “Looks like it,” she said.

  He couldn’t get enough of her velvety, throaty voice. He decided then that he needed to hear her moaning in his ear. “How about I turn your night around? I’ll be your date.”

  Her indifference, as she gave him a fleeting glance, made her all the more intriguing. “I’m good. Like I said, I was on my way out. David Blake’s loss, huh?” She threw back the rest of her drink and grabbed her purse.

  David’s loss, indeed, and he intended for it to be his gain. Her rejection both shocked and turned him on. No one said no to him, especially women. “Ouch, who are you, killer of the male ego?”

  Her intelligent eyes shone with humor. “Something tells me your ego will survive.”

  He should let her go. It wouldn’t be that much of a challenge finding another, but for some reason, his interest piqued. If he bedded her, his interest would vanish as it always did. “One drink to let me convince you that you should stay with me.” She could stay with him for a few more drinks or the entire night in his bed. She could take it any way she wanted because he was positive he could charm her panties right off.

  She huffed, flipped her curtain
of silky, umber hair, and stared off into space. He expected another rejection, but she completely bowled him over.

  “Tell you what, I’m staying upstairs. Let’s skip the drinks. You follow me to my room, and let's have one hell of a one-night stand. You don’t even have to tell me your name. I hope to hell you’re not a serial killer, though.”

  He was rarely rendered speechless. His lips parted but no words emerged.

  She winced. “Too bold? Or are you a serial killer?”

  After he recovered, he chuckled. “Are you kidding? I’m game. One-night stands are my specialty, sweetheart. And I assure you I’m no serial killer, but I will have you screaming all night.”

  Her eyes lit up with amusement and desire.

  He held out a hand, but she hesitated momentarily before accepting. He didn’t know her story and, at that moment, he didn’t care. No names, no strings, just one hell of a one-night stand. Just the way he preferred.

  Chapter One

  Evie

  The worst thing Evie could have done was tell her best friend about her crazy weekend. Now, she refused to drop the subject until she got all the dirty deets. She held her phone to her ear, as she slid out of her car and grabbed her handbag. She let out a frustrated sigh, closed the door, and leaned against her sleek, white vehicle.

  “For Christ's sake, Karen, I’ve evaded your incessant questioning for a week. I hoped you would have lost interest by now.”

  Karen Taylor, more of a sister to her, let out a long whine. “Of course, I’m still interested, Evie. This is about sex, which I don’t have time to get much of right now. I need to live vicariously and sexually through someone, and I would prefer it be someone I’ve been friends with forever, otherwise it would just be really weird.”

  Evie chuckled. “Fine, I get that your sex life is on hold because you’re busy saving lives and all, but I really don’t want to talk about my one-night-stand.” I sighed. Not ever. “I’d like to forget it ever happened actually.”

  “Why the hell would you want to do that? You said it was the ‘best sex’ you ever had.”

  Even though Karen couldn’t see her, and no one could have possibly heard her friend’s comment, Evie still felt heat creeping up her neck. True, sex had always been lackluster for her to the point where she thought she was the problem. She’d had all of two steady boyfriends—one she was engaged to for two years, and she had never been blown away in the sack. Until last weekend, anyway. Some gorgeous man who looked like he stepped off the cover of GQ magazine just came up to her and started flirting. Next thing she knew, she was inviting him up to her room for hot, no-strings-attached sex.

  She still couldn’t believe it—Evelyn Davis, a bona-fide prude, did something so wild, so risqué. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe she'd taken a temporary leave of her senses. She didn’t know. She’d always been bold but never when it came to sex. Whenever any activity regarding sex came up, the confident and courageous woman she was wilted like a flower in the cold dead of winter. But with Mr. GQ, she had bloomed into a bright, exotic, sexual flower. She had no idea a person could have so many orgasms in one night. She was still exhausted a week later. The things that man could do with his tongue, his fingers, his … and there she was straying back to that night. So much for forgetting it ever happened.

  “I won’t ever deny that the sex was incredible, but there’s no point in talking about it, thinking about it, him, any of it because I’ll never see him again.” Thank goodness. That sex god had player written all over him, and she vowed to avoid his type until her dying day. Finding out that her ex-fiancé was Hugh Hefner incarnate, two years into their relationship did major damage to her psyche. So much so, that she’d packed up and left Los Angeles to return home to Seattle. She was rebuilding her life and her trust in men, slowly, so Mr. GQ who did miraculous things with his tongue and did, indeed, make her scream all night, as he’d promised, needed to stay in the past never to surface again.

  “Fine, if you won’t talk about it then at least thank me for setting it up.”

  “All you did was set me up on a blind date that probably would have been an epic fail, and the ass didn’t even show. All the thanks you get is for making me look like a complete fool sitting at a bar by myself for an hour. I’m pretty sure I looked as pathetic as I felt.”

  Evie arrived in Seattle a week earlier with a broken heart and a plan to get her shit together before starting her new job, and Karen had the brilliant idea of setting her up on a blind date with a surgeon from the hospital where she worked. The best way to get over a man is to get under a new one, she’d said. Well, David was a no-show. But, in a way, she guessed Karen had been right because Evie had zero thoughts of her ex while she was under Mr. GQ or on top of him for that matter.

  “Whatever. I still helped to make your night of wild sex happen,” Karen said. “Don’t be ungrateful, and I gave David an earful for standing you up. You’re welcome. He got called in for emergency surgery, but he could have at least given you a call.”

  Wow, emergency surgery. She felt like a jerk for cursing the man for the filth, when he had been busy saving a life. “Mhmm .... Do me a favor, no more setting me up. The last thing I need to worry about is a man anyway. I’ve just thrown myself into my own worst nightmare— working for dad. I must be a masochist.”

  “I’m sure it won’t be so bad, Evie. You’ve spent years away, so he’s probably mellowed out by now.”

  “I’ll see.”

  “Have I told you how glad I am that you’re home?”

  “Several times.”

  “Visiting you in Los Angeles was getting to be too much for my schedule, girl. I’ll talk to you later, okay? My damn pager has been going off like crazy. It’s about to explode.”

  “Go ahead and do your thing, doc,” Karen said. “I’ll see you when you’re done saving the world.”

  “Ha! I’ll be the one who will need saving after this shift.”

  Evie’s smile remained in place, as she dropped her phone into her bag and walked toward the huge building where her father and new boss [along with one of his clients], were waiting for her. The closer she got, the more her panic mounted. What had she been thinking, accepting a job from her father? The man who pushed her so hard her entire life, that he practically pushed her out of his life. It was a wonder she turned out as normal as she did, but there were a few hidden scars, ones she tried her hardest not to let show.

  It took sheer desperation to get away from her dog of a fiancé that made her move back to Seattle. Her dad just so happened to need a corporate lawyer for his firm, and she’d taken the job. It had all seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe the amazing paychecks would lessen her misery. She loved her job, and she was good at it, but working for Garrison Davis might turn out to be a disaster. He would push her harder than everyone because she was his daughter—if he even remembered that she was his blood. Evie could hardly remember a time in her life when that man showed her any affection or even offered her a smile.

  She worked her ass off in college, in law school, and followed in his footsteps—as she did everything to make him proud, and she still didn’t know if he was.

  “Well, he hired me. That’s a good sign, right?” Knowing her dad and how he felt about giving her handouts, her resume had to be damn impressive for him to take her on. She held on to that encouraging thought as she made her way through the lobby. She nodded to the receptionist and continued to the elevator.

  Thankfully, she was alone in the lift, so she had a few seconds to freak out and then compose herself. Taking several deep breaths as if she were in labor, she fanned her face and paced a little. By the time the elevator doors slid open on the sixth floor, she was calm, cool Evie again. Chin held high and shoulders back, she strutted to the glass door that read Davis and Associates Law.

  The secretary, April, who Evie met weeks before, grinned broadly, when she walked through the door. “Ms. Davis, good morning. What a relief t
o have a little more estrogen in this place,” she said. She was a young bubbly woman, with a disposition as bright as her auburn hair, who Evie had taken a liking to upon first meeting.

  Evie laughed. “Call me ‘Evie’ when we’re alone, April. We’ve talked about this. Is he in his office?”

  “He is. Go right in. He’s expecting you.”

  “Great.” Evie continued on, going through another set of doors where there were several other offices. There was a door with her name already on it, as she passed it, heading to the big man’s door. Garrison Davis, Attorney at Law, was engraved in bold, fancy letters.

  “Well, here goes.” With a loud, sharp knock, she waited.

  “Come on in, Ms. Davis.”

  Ms. Davis. Karen was so wrong—the old man hadn’t mellowed out one bit. She appreciated the professionalism being that a client was probably in his office, but she could hear the steel in his tone. He was still as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass bra. Evie snickered, remembering her late grandmother’s saying. Wiping away all trace of her amusement she stepped into her father’s office, her unflappable demeanor in place, and then she nearly lost her shit. Evie barely stopped herself from stumbling on her ridiculously high heels and landing on her face.

  The two men in the room started and moved to get up but settled back in their chairs when she caught her balance and righted herself. Her face was on fire, and her mouth went dry. This couldn’t be happening. She had to be caught up in a first-day-of-work nightmare. Sitting in a chair beside her father’s desk was someone she thought she wouldn’t lay eyes on again. Seattle was a big enough city. Why was he in her father’s office?

  Mr. GQ, apparently nowhere near as rattled as Evie was, regarded her with slight shock but recovered quickly. Deep set jade, green eyes, eyes she’d stared into as she’d shattered to pieces—multiple times—flashed with amusement. There was no denying the interest that gleamed in his orbs, as they swept her from head to toe. He wore another immaculately tailored suit, like the night she’d met him, but he looked a bit different. The low cut hair that had lined his perfectly chiseled jaw was gone. He was clean-shaven, and his thick, raven hair, in a longer tapered cut, had appeared windblown and oh, so sexy before. Now, he hadn’t a hair out of place and was still as sexy as ever. Not that she should be noticing how good he looked when all she wanted was for the floor to open up and take her in. How could this happen? The one time she’d let loose and had a one-night stand, the guy ended up being her father’s client. Her streak of luck with men hadn’t been great lately.