“Mr. Stone,” I said in a modulated tone. “Thank you for seeing me.”
I was pretty sure I’d never seen him in a suit, since he seemed to enjoy flashing his half-naked body in his photos and videos. Personally, I found the gray suit and elegant gray-and-navy tie much more appealing.
Not that he didn’t look good half-naked, too. But it was pretty hard to take somebody doing an insane stunt all that seriously.
But this Eli Stone, the one sitting in front of me, had my complete attention.
He looked aloof, but he was watching me like an eagle eyes potential prey from the air right before it finally strikes. And I really didn’t like being the rabbit that he’d just spied from above.
Starting at the top of my head, he assessed me slowly. “Ms. Sinclair,” he acknowledged in a smooth baritone. “What can I do for you?”
Many things came to mind as I stared back at him, but I answered, “I sent you a proposal on the property I’d like to buy. Have you had a chance to look at it?”
I really had to stop staring into his cool gray eyes, thinking about how well his suit matched his eye color.
I didn’t know why, but I was completely fascinated by this Eli Stone. Unlike his television persona, this man was all too real.
He made me nervous for reasons I couldn’t explain. There was tension in the air between us, even though we had never met. And I wasn’t at all comfortable with the heat that was pooling between my thighs.
I’d never been struck with instant lust. But there was something about Eli Stone that completely captivated me.
Maybe because the guy in front of me isn’t at all what I expected.
He was a clown on television, and he was always smirking arrogantly in his photos. I’d expected to meet a person who took almost nothing seriously. Instead, I’d gotten a man who commanded attention just by being present in the room. And he looked like he had absolutely nothing to smile about.
I could practically smell his earthy scent, although I knew it wasn’t really traveling from his body to my nose all the way across the big desk.
I watched as he casually opened his jacket and leaned back in his chair. I swallowed hard as I waited for his reply, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to give me one.
I knew that he had a droolworthy body. Generally, I wasn’t big on tattoos, but the tribal markings that I’d seen on his arm had always looked good on him.
Funny, but I’d never been hit with the primal urge to screw him when I’d seen his ripped body in magazines or on TV. But being up close and personal was . . . different.
“I didn’t read it,” he said sharply. “I’m not interested in letting go of that piece of property. It’s been in my family for decades. It’s not developable right now, although it could be in the future. My question to you is—why do you want it?”
Shit! Since the land near Lucifer’s Canyon was pretty much useless, I’d been hoping to easily convince him to part with it. Compared to the businesses, vast properties, and the land he owned, that acreage in the backcountry was less than nothing.
“I’m a wildlife genetic conservationist,” I explained. “A portion of the land is an important wildlife corridor. I’d like to make sure it’s always preserved.”
Who knew what Eli Stone would do with the land in the future? For all I knew, he’d turn it into a launching pad for his spaceflights. It was important to me to see that the passage leading from one open space to another was kept intact.
“Ah, yes,” he said in a condescending tone. “The wildlife conservationist and primitive survivalist who suddenly became a Sinclair, right? I had my people check you out before I accepted your appointment. You have an interesting history.”
“I’ve always been a Sinclair,” I said through gritted teeth.
Jerk! Why in the world did he need my life story just to tell me he doesn’t want to sell some property? It has to have been the most boring report he’s ever read.
Maybe I hadn’t always been part of the high-profile Sinclairs, but my siblings and I had faced a lot of challenges, and we’d always gotten through it. I was pretty proud of that.
“Just not one of the wealthy ones until recently,” he pointed out. “The Sinclairs on the East Coast have been a powerful family for generations. How did you say you became part of that family?”
“I didn’t,” I snapped. It was none of Eli Stone’s business how I was related to the Sinclair dynasty. And my father’s bigamist behavior wasn’t something I wanted to talk about, especially not with him.
The West Coast and East Coast Sinclairs shared the same father. That’s all anybody really knew. My brothers here in California had made it a point not to turn the tragic story into a tabloid scandal. My twin sister, Brooke, had been on the East Coast recovering from her own trauma, and none of us wanted her to find out from the gossip papers that she was going to inherit a fortune. She needed time to heal from losing her friends and coworkers in a bank robbery where she’d nearly lost her own life as well. Brooke didn’t even know about the money yet. My siblings and I had all agreed to give her time to deal with the tragedy before throwing anything else on her.
Honestly, I was surprised that Eli had been able to dig up any information about me or my family. My half brother Evan had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure nobody got to the truth until Brooke was emotionally healed and back on the West Coast again.
Evan had obviously been successful, since Eli Stone apparently hadn’t been able to get access to all the details.
“I might be willing to bargain on other properties, but not that one,” he said thoughtfully.
I folded my arms in front of me. “Since that’s the only one I’m interested in, then I guess we’re done here.”
Maybe I was disappointed that I couldn’t secure the wildlife corridor, but I had the sudden need to get out from under the intensity of his gaze. I was pissed off about him digging into my personal life, but I was squirming from his blatant stare. I quickly came to the conclusion that my need to escape was currently more important than my outrage.
Before I could get up, he said casually, “You’re really quite beautiful, Jade.”
That stunned me into silence, and I gaped at him as my palms began to sweat. “I don’t understand.”
His expression had changed mercurially, and so fast it was almost scary.
He smiled, a calculated grin that I was pretty sure he always used to his advantage. I was certain almost any woman would drop her panties the moment she saw his attractive smile.
Fortunately, I’m not almost any woman.
“It’s quite simple, actually. I find you attractive,” he answered.
Nobody had ever said that to me during my twenty-six years on the planet. My twin, Brooke, was the pretty one. I was the other twin, the one who went out in the wilderness and practiced making traps, finding drinkable water, and kept adding to my survival skills.
It was something I usually did alone.
Especially after getting dumped by my one and only boyfriend in college.
I wasn’t the kind of woman that a guy did a double take on when I walked down the street, and I was sort of okay with that. I liked being me, even if I wasn’t the kind of woman who attracted much attention with my physical appearance.