Page 27 of The Plus One Contract

“I told you. Finance.”

“Yeah, but that could be anything.”

“I acquire and restructure companies in high-growth industries.”

She squints. “Okay, but like, in English?”

“I buy struggling businesses, fix them, and sell them at a profit.”

She nods slowly. “So like flipping houses, but for businesses?”

“Sure.”

“Still sounds like a fancy way of saying finance guy.”

I smirk. “And you? What exactly do you market?”

She waves a hand vaguely. “Big companies. Corporate stuff. Products people use every day without thinking about how they got there. The fun, soulless grind of capitalism.”

I huff out a laugh. “Sounds thrilling.”

Sienna rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling.

“So, you live in California?”

She shakes her head. “New York. The wedding’s in California.”

She shifts beside me, stretching her legs again like she still can’t get over the sheer amount of space she has.

“You live in New York too, right?” she asks, tilting her head. “Your apartment is beautiful, by the way. Well, the little I saw of it.”

I should spank her for that.

The thought comes instantly, along with a sharp twitch in my pants, as my mind flashes back to exactly how she left this morning. My bed empty, my penthouse silent, a lingering scent of her on my sheets and the faintest trace of her perfume in the hallway.

At some stage in the early hours of the morning, she had slipped out without a word.

Not that she owed me one.

I clear my throat as I try to shove down the unexpected sting of irritation. “It’s mine, but it’s hardly been lived in.”

“How come?”

“I travel a lot.”

She purses her lips before pressing her tongue to the inside of her cheek, thinking. Like she’s afraid silence will swallow her whole. “How long are you staying in California?”

“Just a week.”

“Huh, me too. California is just business then?”

I nod. “Just business.”

She taps her fingers on the armrest, mulling something over. “Don’t you have people who do that for you? Business things, I mean.”

“Yes. My business partner is in California. We recently opened there, but sometimes, they like to see both our faces.”

She blinks. “Who’s they?”

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