To my shock, Liam O’Grady turned his smile on me but his eyes were …blazing.
I stiffened.
Job? I thought stupidly. What was he talking about?
Had he misunderstood me yesterday?
*
But my stepmother was gabbing away cheerfully, blissfully unaware of the tension in the room. But then, she was nicely drunk, I thought wearily.
Heather, whose hand he had been holding, clasped his with both her hands fervently, as she said, happily,
“Oh, Bianca, it’s your lucky phase now, don’t you think so dear!”
And she turned to O’Grady, still smiling benignly as she said, clucking her tongue at me with a mischievous smile,
“Just yesterday she had a job offer and she turned it down…the naughty little girl!”
I whipped my head around t give her a lethal look. Naughty girl indeed, I thought, fuming, and my anger shot up as I saw Liam O’ Grady smirking at me. Finn St Just gave an audible snort and I wanted to die of humiliation.
Suddenly Heather saw my expression and stopped. She had figured out, a little late in the day, that I was furious.
But Finn sat forward, demanding swiftly, as he assessed her words,
“Another job offer? Who offered you a job?”
His words were clipped and did not have the charm of Liam.
I clenched my fists. He made me sound like a blooming idiot, one who could not be expected to be job-worthy at all.
Heather shook her head and trembled as she saw the dark look I threw at her.
She knew she had put her foot in her big mouth.
***
I glowered at her but Liam turned to me.
“Who offered you a job lassie?’ his voice was like silk but I sensed the steel beneath.
I sat up stiffly and said,
“Nelson. Dean Nelson.”
And after a pause, because I could see that he was rigid and watching, waiting for me to go on, I went on, in a mild tone,
“I refused.”
Liam was watching me like a hawk watching a mouse.
He nodded, letting out a breath and I realized in surprise, that he had been holding his breath in anticipation. I looked at him curiously.
” Good girl,’ he said approvingly and for some obscure reason, I felt a warm glow in me. Like I had done something great.
You’re foolish, I told myself angrily.
Finn cleared his throat and I stiffened.
*
‘We have a job proposal for you,’ he said in his deep baritone. I had realized that Liam O’Grady’s voice was gruffer, a bedroom voice, sexy and low.
But Finn St Just made me weak at the knees with a sharp command.
Now I looked at him in bewilderment.
“A job?” I asked, stupefied.
Liam gently led Heather to the door and said,
“We need to talk to your daughter alone. Terms of office and all that, you know,” he said and Heather, poor guileless Heather nodded her head, beaming.
Liam shut the door and turned to me, his voice suddenly brisk and businesslike.
“Sit down lass,’ he said quietly but the was an air of command in his tone and I sank into the chair silently. Finn glanced at his brother, as though asking for permission and then, he thrust a sheaf of papers he had been carrying, at me.
*
I stared at them stupidly.
“But you said you’d help me with my debt,” I said plaintively, “not offer me a Job! I already have one! I run the bakery! That’s why I came to you for help, remember?”
*
Liam clicked his tongue and I looked at him in surprise but I subsided.
The heated look he gave me made me fall silent.
I picked up the papers and began reading, my forehead crinkling, and my face turning hot. I was aware that Liam O’Grady had come to stand in front of me, his legs apart, in the stance of a man in command.
“What is this?” I cried in astonishment, blinking in disbelief, staring up at him in shock and incredulity” What …who is a submissive?”
And then, even as I said the words out loud, it dawned on me.
I sat, my eyes wide in shock as I understood what the contract was all about.
LIAM O’GRADY AND FINN ST JUST WANTED ME TO BE THEIR SUBMISSIVE FOR A YEAR.!!!
I was sputtering in horror.
Did they think I was a…cheap wh*re? Someone who would be so dazzled by their wealth and handsome looks, to fall flat on her face, worship them?
So okay, I did feel more than a flutter in my belly when Liam O’Grady came close, I felt a tug deep within me when Finn St Just looked at me in that brooding poet’s way of his.
But to think I would sign a document, in such a clinical way, selling my body to them…for a YEAR???
*
Something neither of the men knew, was that I was a virgin.
Of course, one did not shout it out from the rooftops!
Yet one of the things I believed in, call me foolish and romantic if you will, but I was waiting for a man to come into my life, to love me.
Roses and nights of sweet kisses, babies after marriage; a house with a picket fence and a large garden…maybe a dog…and a wicker chair…
All of them were fantasies I wove in my imagination.
I would wait for the man I loved to come into my life, I had told myself happily all these years.
And then, only THEN, would I surrender my body to him.
But this made me livid.
I was not going to sell my body over the counter like a medicine got at a pharmacist’s by waving a prescription! I thought in growing anger.
I rose to my feet slowly, my cheeks hot, my eyes flashing as I looked at the faces of the two most handsome men I had ever met.
And I hated them in that instant. Hated them for thinking I could be bought.
Like some cheap sl*t!