Private Arrangements. Brenda Jackson

what do you think?” Nicole Cartwright asked as she handed the man standing in front of her desk another photograph she’d taken a few days before.

       She watched as Jonas Steele studied the photograph and then his green eyes found hers. The smile that touched his lips made her heart pound like crazy in her chest. His company, Ideas of Steele, was on the upward move, getting a lot of attention, and she felt fortunate to be a freelance photographer working with him on this particular project.

       “These are great, Nikki, and just the shots I wanted,” he said, handing the stack of photographs back to her. “I’m glad you agreed to help me out on such short notice. Three weeks wasn’t a lot of time,” he added.

       “Thanks, and like I told you, I work better under pressure.”

       He opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment his cell phone rang.

       She inhaled deeply as he shifted his gaze from her to focus on his telephone call. She wondered why on earth she was drawn to him so much. She certainly wasn’t his type. Just last Sunday his face was plastered across the gossip pages; his name was linked to some former fashion model. And the week before, the papers had connected him to some senator’s daughter. It was obvious he much preferred the Barbie-doll type—sleek and sophisticated, without a strand of hair out of place.

       She pushed an errant curl back from her face and thought that certainly wasn’t her. And there definitely wasn’t anything sleek and sophisticated about her. Jeesh. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d worn a dress.

       She tried not to listen but couldn’t help overhearing his conversation. He was confirming a date for tonight. She tried to not let it bother her that the man she’d had a secret crush on for close to a year was making plans to spend his evening with someone else. Story of her life.

       For the past twenty-seven years she had been living in a dreamworld and it was time for her to wake up and realize she’d been living a friggin’ fantasy. As much as she wanted to believe otherwise, she didn’t have a soul mate out there after all. There was no knight in shining armor who would come charging in and whisk her away to a place where the two of them would live happily ever after. It was time for her to accept that marriages like her parents’ and grandparents’ happened just once—maybe twice—in a lifetime. They weren’t the norm.

       And, she thought as she glanced over at Jonas, a leopard couldn’t change his spots. So why had she fallen for a man who didn’t know the meaning of an exclusive affair with a woman? She looked down at her computer keyboard, trying to ignore the pain that sliced through her chest.

       “Oh yeah, now where were we, Nikki?”

       She glanced up, tempted to say, Nowhere. Instead she said, “I believe you needed me to print out more photos.”

       “Yes, that’s right,” he said, smiling.

       She wondered if his smile was for the photos or the phone call he’d just ended. Deciding it wasn’t any of her business, she stood and crossed the room to the printer. Her office was small but efficient. The one huge window had a beautiful view of Camelback Mountain.

       At that moment he took another call and she figured it was probably another woman. But when he let out a loud whoop, she glanced over at him and saw the huge smile on his face.

       When he hung up the phone, he was smiling from ear to ear. “That was my secretary. Gilbert Young’s assistant called. We got the Thompson account! They were impressed with those brochures we gave them last week and don’t need to see any more!”

       She clapped her hands while grinning, not able to contain her own excitement. “That’s wonderful, Jonas.”

       “Wonderful? That’s fantastic. Simply amazing. Do you know how many other marketing outfits wanted that account?” he asked, crossing the room to her.

       Before she knew what he was about to do, he reached out and pulled her into his arms for a hug. “And I owe it all to you, Nikki.”

       It was meant to be just a hug. She didn’t know what happened, but the next thing she knew Jonas Steele was lowering his head and slanting his mouth over hers in one hell of a kiss.

      Chapter 1

      Eighteen months later

      Jonas Steele felt an argument coming on.

       “I hear you, Mom, but I just don’t feel what you’re saying,” he spoke into his iPhone.

       His lips tightened to a frown as he alighted from the shiny black BMW two-seater Roadster and glanced around while sliding his aviator-style sunglasses into the pocket of his jacket. Whoa! But I’d love to feel all over on those, he quickly thought when his gaze landed on the legs of a woman who was getting out of her car. And they were definitely a gorgeous pair. Long, smooth and shapely.

       “You and I need to do lunch to discuss this further, Jonas.”

       His attention was immediately pulled back to the conversation with his mother. He rolled his eyes heavenward. “I’d love to, Mom. Anytime. Any place. You are my number-one girl. But certain topics are off-limits.”

       He glanced back to where he’d seen the pair of sexy legs just seconds earlier only to find the owner gone. Crap! Frustration seeped into his pores. He would have loved seeing the rest of her; certainly he would not have been disappointed.

       His frown deepened when his mother said, “That’s utter nonsense, Jonas. You can’t restrict me from certain topics. I’m your mother.”

       He shook his head as he made his way across the parking lot. He loved his mother to death, but lately, talking to the beautiful Eden Steele, former international fashion model and the woman who had captured his father’s heart close to forty years ago, was draining on his senses. “True. However, you leave me no choice. With Galen and Eli married off, now you want to give your remaining four single sons grief, but we won’t let you.”

       “You won’t?”

       “No. Although I can’t speak for the others, I can speak for myself, and like I’ve told you numerous times before, I intend to be a bachelor for life.”

       Her soft chuckle flitted across the phone. “You sound so confident about that. Do I need to remind you that Galen and Eli used to tell me the same thing? And quite often, I might add. Now look what happened to them. Both got married in the last year.”

       Jonas didn’t want to look. In fact, he didn’t want to spend a single moment analyzing what could have possibly made two intelligent, fun-loving, die-hard womanizers like his brothers Galen and Eli fall in love. Galen had gotten married ten months ago, and Eli had tied the knot on Christmas Day. Granted, Jonas would be the first to admit they had married gorgeous women, but still, look how many women they’d given up to be committed for the rest of their lives to just one. It made no sense. Bottom line, Galen and Eli were whipped and the sad thing about it was it didn’t seem to bother them.

       And he was sure his mother had heard by now that another bachelor friend of theirs by the name of York Ellis, who lived in New York, was taking the plunge this weekend in time for Valentine’s Day. Again, Jonas was convinced that like Galen and Eli, York needed to have his head examined for giving up his bachelor status.

       “You will be here for dinner Thursday night, right?”

       Her words intruded on his thoughts. “Do I have a choice?”

       “There are always choices, Jonas.”

       Just like there are always consequences, he thought, remembering what had happened to his brother Mercury when he’d decided to skip one of their mother’s weekly Thursday-night dinners. Before Mercury could get out of bed the next morning, Eden Steele had arrived on his doorstep. She had informed her AWOL son that since he had missed such an important family function, she was duty-bound to spend the entire day with him. And then she had the nerve to invite the woman Mercury had spent the night with to tag along. Their mother had deliberately overlooked