What in the Tommy Bahama was he doing? Suddenly the brusque businessman was tripping over his tongue like a nervous ninny.
He looked like he was going to vomit.
I tilted my head at him. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’ve never done this before.”
I looked around as the flight attendant busied himself closing the large door.
“Flown on a private jet?” I asked.
His brows furrowed. “What? No. Of course not. I’ve had this plane for several years.”
“Gone to Vegas on business?” I tried.
He shifted in his seat again. “Hasn’t everyone been to Vegas on business at some point?”
I shrugged. Oh. He must have meant he’d never had a temporary PA before. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you,” I said with a reassuring grin. “Jillian says you need someone a little dominant and bossy, in which case you couldn’t have picked a better man. I love an excuse to get a little bitchy.”
As I spoke, Mr. Bernardi’s eyes widened until his pupils were surrounded by the whites of his eyes. He looked downright terrified.
“Or… not,” I amended. “I can also be gentle as a kitten. It’s your call.”
He swallowed and looked everywhere but at me as the plane began to move. What an odd duck.
I tried to break the ice another way. “I’m also known as a bit of a style influencer, so if you’d like me to help with…” I waved at his offensive shirt. “Any of that, I’m happy to. No extra charge.” I gave him my friendliest smile. “Frankly, I’d love to get you out of those clothes.”
“I don’t think,” he said after a minute. “I don’t think I need your… ah… particular talents in the one… erm… area. But I really could use a personal assistant to help me with this business situation.”
So much for visiting the shops on the strip. I sighed and decided to focus on the job I’d been sent here to do.
“Jillian emailed me several files pertaining to the business proposal. I’ll take a look at them tonight to prepare myself for tomorrow’s meetings, but feel free to let me know if there are specific areas of concern you’d like me to focus on, Mr. Bernardi.”
“Luca,” he corrected absently. “And I mostly need you to keep me from signing anything or verbally agreeing to a deal. When I get on-site to a proposed resort concept, I tend to get wrapped up in the excitement and say yes to things I should take longer to consider. Jillian has helped me institute a ‘no decisions in person’ rule, but enforcing it is still a big struggle for me.”
This big, muscular guy who had to be on the far side of forty didn’t look at all like a pushover. “I have a hard time picturing you agreeing to an ill-considered project simply because it looks shiny and exciting.”
He nodded seriously. “Believe me, I know. I don’t look like a massive doormat, but I really, really am. I don’t like hurting people’s feelings, and they just… they look so hopeful when I’m there.”
This… was surprising. My first impression upon entering the plane had been one of an uptight corporate jerk. Not this man who’d rather lose a fortune than hurt someone’s feelings.
I gave him a begrudging smile. Okay, the big man was kinda cute. “They look hopeful because they know you have 2.4 billion in liquid investment capital,” I corrected. “They aren’t putting their hopes and dreams for world peace out there, Luca. They want to throw their naked bodies into piles and piles of cold, hard cash. Earned with someone else’s investment if possible.”
A slight pink tinge crept up his cheeks. Was this older man prudish? Was it the word “naked” that had caused him to blush?
I made a note to text Jillian for the deets as soon as she was out of her surgery in the morning. I needed to know the story on this guy. All I’d been able to discover in a quick Google search was his business accomplishments and his status as a single gay man. There’d been several photos of him with a beautiful silver-haired man on his arm, but they’d been several years old.
Not that it mattered. It definitely did not.
But I considered myself meticulous when it came to researching the people I worked for and with, and this was simply a niggling loose end that needed tying up.
“How do you know how much liquid capital I have?” he asked. “Jillian must really trust you if she shared that level of—”
I leaned toward him and patted his arm. And if my fingers were able to fondle a little of his firm forearm muscles in the process, it was no one’s business but mine. “Jillian knows I’m very good at what I do,” I said before cracking open my water bottle and taking a quick gulp. When I was done, I met his eyes again. “And I’m very thorough.”
Luca’s swallowed hard, and for some reason, he blushed even deeper.
3
Luca
I was going to have to fuck my… sex worker slash personal assistant.
As one did.
At least as they did when the sexytimes personal assistant was as beautiful and compelling as this man and said things like I’m very good at what I do in that raspy-sexy voice of his.
“Oh,” I said, except it came out super high-pitched like a mouse jacked up on laughing gas at the dentist. “That’s… reassuring?”
“Mmhmm. So just relax,” Marcel continued, leaning back in his seat. “You’re in good hands.”
I glanced at the hands in question as he gripped the water bottle. His fingers were long and slender. Maybe he’d been a famous pianist in a previous life.
I opened my mouth to say something dashing and clever about long fingers, but suddenly my brain began silently barking prostate, prostate, prostate, so I clamped my jaws shut instead.
Okay, so possibly Jill had a point about me being sexually frustrated.
Marcel side-eyed me as he took another sip of his water. “I think you’re not all that great at the relaxing thing, are you?”
I plucked at my shirt. “I have hibiscus.”
We stared at each other while my stupid comment clunked around the interior of the luxury airplane cabin.
“You certainly do,” he said as if to a wayward child. “And I would urge you with the power of a thousand hypnotic suggestions to allow me to take care of that little problem for you.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But first, we have to go out to the site and let my cousin Curtis give us the tour of the resort concept. That might be relaxing on its own.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s called Sunnies. The entire thing is fashioned after a resort in the Caribbean. There’s sand beaches, steel drum bands playing, tropical drinks on demand, and even ocean waves. Well… one of those pools that mimics ocean waves. But with the sound of the ocean piped in too.”
Marcel didn’t look impressed. “Mm-hm.”
“Won’t it feel good to put our toes in the sand?” I offered.
“It’s a hundred and fifty degrees in Vegas this week. Pretty sure I’m going to need a skin graft after stepping in any sand.”
Huh. He wasn’t wrong. I wondered what they did about that. “Maybe it’s air-conditioned somehow,” I said lamely.