Page 17 of The Enemies With Benefits Deal

Get ready, pretty boy. You’re going down.

CHAPTER 6

JADE

After another long day at work, all I want to do is climb into bed and spend the rest of the night watching rom-coms and eating popcorn.

As much as I want to go full hermit mode, though, I have a meeting with Paloma later this evening, and I wanted to head over to Queens and check in on my mom first.

She’s sitting on the porch of her house when my cab pulls up, her gray hair pulled back into a messy bun and a book in her hand. She looks up and waves, beaming at me.

I lean over the front seat and hand the driver double the fare before getting out of the car and staring at the little brown house. The bricks are crumbling at the corners, and a couple of the shutters are missing pieces of wood.

Mom is getting older, and it looks like in the time I’ve been traveling, the house is starting to fall apart.

“I’m going to have to stay in town for more than a few months with the looks of the house,” I say, tone bright as I walk throughthe little white picket fence and up the cobblestone path. “I miss you when I’m traveling.”

“You’re back in the city now.” She pulls me into a tight hug, her arms wrapping around my shoulders like a vise. “I can’t wait to spend some more time with you. You’ve spent too long jetting off all over the world.”

I hug her back, the scent of home clinging to her. “I know, I know. While I’m here, we should look at getting some maintenance done.”

She snorts and pulls back, keeping one arm around my waist as she leads me into the house. “There’s no need. I have someone coming to look at the brick next week, and another man is going to fix the shutters the week after.”

My cheeks warm as we head into the living room and sit down on the pastel floral couch. “Mom, are you sure that you don’t want me to just pay someone to start coming around and taking care of things?”

She arches an eyebrow, giving me the stern look that used to send me running for the hills when I was a kid. “Jade, are you implying that I can’t take care of myself anymore?”

I shake my head. “Not at all. I’m just saying I don’t think it’s out of the question to start letting me handle some things for you. I have the money to do it, Mom.”

She tucks one leg beneath her, the leg of her linen trouser flaring wide. “You don’t need to take care of me. I’m still young enough to take care of myself.”

“I know you are, but I worry. I’m out of town or stuck in the city a lot. I can’t just run home whenever I need to like I did in college.”

“We’ve been having this same conversation for years.” Mom pulls the emerald-green throw pillow from behind her back, launching it at me. “One of these days, you have to stop worrying about me and go out to live your own life.”

“I’m always going to worry about you.” My throat gets a little thick just thinking about her growing older.

After everything Mom did for me over the years, I don’t know how to live a life without her. She’s my best friend and I want to make her life easier, but every time I try to give her any of the money I’ve earned over the years, she makes a big show of either giving it back or donating it.

She seems to think that letting me help her would be a bad thing.

Mom puts her hand on my knee. “Tell me what’s been going on at work. You sounded pretty tired of it all when you called the other night.”

I groan and clutch the pillow close to my chest, curling into the corner of the couch like I used to when I was a child. “I’ve spent two weeks working with Grayson, and I feel like my head is going to explode.”

“Grayson, huh?” She wiggles her eyebrows, pulling the blanket from the back of the couch and draping it over both of our laps. “You’re going to have to tell me about him. What’s he like? Is he cute?”

“He’s infuriating, and he has to be the most stubborn person I’ve met in my entire life.” I groan and shove the pillow to the side. “He questions me at every turn, but it’s not because he actually has questions. It’s because he thinks that if he does that, I’ll quit, and his daddy will hand him the job he’s been lusting after his entire life.”

It feels like I can’t get a deep enough breath as I look at Mom, trying to find peace in the way she smiles at me and shakes her head.

“You know, it sounds like he’s a lot like you in some regards.”

Wrinkling my nose, I bury myself deeper into the blanket. “That’s not true at all. We’re entirely different people. And he takes every opportunity he can to get under my skin.”

She gives me a knowing look, the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes softening. “You also happen to be one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met. And when you set your mind to something, you are impossible to get to bend.”

“It’s not my job to bend here.” I wrap one of the tassels at the end of the blanket around my finger. “I was hired to revive the company, and Grayson keeps standing in the way of me doing that.”

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