with the very basics.
To outsiders, she had it all. And yet the planning alone for tonight’s show—the lists, the running order, the spreadsheets of which model would wear what for which designer—was enough to make her head explode.
Jack was right. She alone had responsibility for sabotaging the Morris deal. She’d failed. Again. Shot herself in the foot.
She leaned back against the wall, maintaining a low profile. She rarely lauded her own shows. Her fashion label, the only aspect of her life that offered her contentment, meant everything, but she’d decided from the beginning she wouldn’t use the Jacob name to garner publicity, make connections or grease the ladder rungs. If she made it in what was a competitive, often fickle and rapidly shifting industry, she’d make it on merit alone.
And it was the creative process—from sketching a new design, to sewing a sample garment and then styling an entire outfit—that allowed her a brief glimpse of chest-tingling pride. At least she was good at one thing.
But she wasn’t here to see her own designs paraded.
Harley snagged a glass of champagne from a table laden with exquisite crystal and located a quiet, dark corner to watch the show. She’d missed most of the first half, staying backstage to help the other designers dress their models.
The collective of young, emerging fashionistas she mentored had worked tirelessly for months putting this show together and she was here to support them, knowing first hand the importance of a leg up onto the bottom rung. The fashion industry, as cut-throat as any deal Hal Jacob peddled.
She released a small snort—she’d learned from the master. Not that Hal had ever dedicated any time to her education, preferring to hurl money at the situation, his ‘problem daughter’.
She’d known from an early age she was different. But her difficulties had gone undiagnosed through elementary school, until the age of twelve, when she’d been no longer able to hide her challenges and one particularly insightful teacher had suggested to her parents she might benefit from formal testing. Hal had struggled with her diagnosis, denying the label and preferring instead to employ a series of tutors to put his unmotivated daughter through the wringer.
Dyslexia affected sufferers differently. Harley struggled with the full gamut of challenges. The fact she’d learned strategies to mask her shortcomings had delayed confirmation of her diagnosis until well into sixth grade. By which time she’d become a bullied, socially isolated black sheep of her over-achieving family and a constant disappointment to Hal.
Harley gulped a mouthful of champagne, forcing down the shame and humiliation. She scuffed the toe of her shoe on the parquet flooring, cursing her stupidity with the Morris paperwork.
She’d checked and double checked until her eyes watered and her temples screamed. Then she’d run everything past her assistant. Not that she blamed Alice. The mistake was all Harley’s. And she was used to making the most simple of errors. But why did it have to be on that deal? With him?
Perhaps that explained her uncharacteristic rudeness. Heat crept up her neck as she recalled the shutters covering Jack’s heated stare earlier when she’d questioned his integrity. She’d obviously inherited her vicious tongue from Hal, too.
She smoothed her damp palm down the length of her form-fitting dress—a simple bias-cut sheath in black silk. Elegant, timeless, modest. Or as her twin sister, Hannah, would say, boring. But Harley preferred fading into the background over standing out.
She scanned the two-hundred-strong audience, sipping her champagne to chase away the demons that lurked beneath her polished exterior. Although her eyes focussed on the show, her mind wandered.
Back to Jack.
Her initial shock at seeing him again had faded quickly. Her annoyance at him holding the sale of Morris Building to ransom simmered. But the few stolen moments in his apartment this afternoon...? They played in a continuous looped film reel behind her eyes, every intensely erotic, libidinous moment relived over and over.
Surely she’d exhausted her supply of female hormones? She shifted, pressing her thighs together and leaning back against the wall in case she slid to the hardwood floor in a puddle of lust.
Just like the first time he’d touched her so intimately, he’d commanded her body, turned her inside out, thrust her so hard into an intense orgasm she’d literally seen stars.
She’d never known anything like it, not even with her ex-fiancé, not since the first one, also at Jack’s hands. And what talented hands they were.
She swallowed, face flushed with heat. Of course, there’d been one or two others since Jack. Not many, her troubled teens merging with her underwhelming early twenties—a time when most girls spread their sexual wings. But Harley had been too preoccupied with overcoming her dyslexia enough to prove her father wrong and get her college degree, albeit in a subject Hal considered more of a hobby—fashion design.
She’d even come close to marrying, again in an attempt to improve her standing in her father’s eyes. If she couldn’t be a Jacob Holdings’ executive, she could marry one... But she’d quickly realised her error—she and Phil, although he was Hal-approved, were ultimately too different. And she had no intention of becoming a Hal Jacob puppet by proxy. Hal and Phil, cut from similar cloth, shared too many opinions about Harley’s career, or, as they saw it and frequently commented, her lack of one.
The hairs on the back of her neck lifted seconds before the warm breath whispered across her skin. She froze, either instinct or her body’s imprinting onto the only man with whom she’d discovered such overwhelming pleasure warning her it was Jack.
‘Still stalking me, I see.’ His low voice vibrated against the sensitive skin of her neck, tingles spreading to her toes via her in-sync-with-Jack clit. It seemed she possessed an inexhaustible supply of hormones where this man was concerned.
She spun so quickly, she sloshed champagne from her glass over the back of her hand, a few spots landing on the front of her dress. Jack gripped her elbows, steadying her, his eyes amused in the red and green lighting bouncing off the loft’s every, whitewashed surface.
Jack’s stare pinned her and his lips twitched; he was clearly enjoying her rattled composure. He reached inside his breast pocket and withdrew a crisp white handkerchief. He pressed the square into her free hand, and she wiped the spill from her dress.
‘What are you doing here?’ She scanned the crowds behind him. Had he come here with a date? There were plenty of stunning women in the audience and Jack was by far the most handsome, put-together man present—not a bad accolade considering the number of male models present.
Harley’s pulse thrummed in her throat and between her legs as she flustered around with the handkerchief, avoiding his stare.
She’d come propped against the wall in his well-appointed living room this afternoon, writhed and bucked against his hand, getting herself off like a sex-starved nympho. Trouble was, she was sex-starved, at least starved of the high-calibre variety of sex she was sure came as this man’s standard. Not that her and Jack had ever hit a home run. Not nine years ago, and certainly not now.
‘I have a ticket.’ He tapped his breast pocket and her fashion-tuned eye took a few indulgent seconds to admire the cut of his suit—this one steel blue. His tailor really was excellent, but then Jack was every designer’s dream model. Tall, athletic, muscular but not buff—every inch of him expertly and
