Sweat Equity: Stewart Realty, Book Two Read online

  Sweat Equity

  Stewart Realty, Book Two

  Liz Crowe

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Liz Crowe

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Sweat Equity

  Copyright © 2019 Liz Crowe

  Buoni Amici Press, LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: [email protected].

  Published by Buoni Amici Press, LLC www.buoniamicipress.com

  Book and Cover design by Buoni Amici Press, LLC

  Disclaimer:

  Material in this work of fiction is of a graphic sexual nature and is not intended for audiences under 18 years of age.

  To Drue Hoffman.

  My amateur therapist, advisor, talker-off-of-walls, listener, calming influence, and friend.

  Prologue

  New Year’s Day

  Sara sat, blanket clutched to her breasts, breathing heavy as sweat trickled down her neck. Shocked that the entire resort didn’t awake from her scream, she glanced over at the sleeping man next to her, and tried to let his presence soothe as it normally did. He snored and rolled over onto his side, flinging an arm across her lap.

  She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes, but the woman from her dream would not fade. Her scarily familiar voice rattled around in Sara’s brain, annoying and ominous.

  “You can’t trust him, Sara. Believe me. He only gave you that ring because he couldn’t have you any other way. He’ll be up to his old tricks soon.”

  Dreams were supposed to fade once you woke, but this one had her in its clutches and would not let go. Especially the final image, the one seared right into her eyeballs somehow, stayed with her—the woman turning to a tall, dark-haired man and wrapping her lean body against his. Sara clenched her eyes shut.

  She crawled out from under Jack’s arm and the tangle of sheets and sat on the edge of the bed, letting soft ocean air rustling through the sheer window coverings cool her overheated skin.

  The moonlight caught the diamond she wore, making her wince when it hit her square in the eye with its brilliance. Swallowing hard, she padded over to the enormous bathroom, shut the door, and slid to the floor, letting tears roll down her face. Evidence of the intense session they’d shared last night lay all around her: an empty bottle of expensive Champagne, a vibrator, a bottle of lubricant, a velvet blindfold and a matching set of soft handcuffs. She squirmed on the floor, sore in places she didn’t know she had.

  Jack certainly knew how to throw a party-for-two. She brushed the tears away, berating herself.

  Don’t be such a hypocrite. You love what he does for you and to you.

  The fact that he’d whisked her away on a surprise New Year’s Eve junket to St. Bart’s, to this remote, secluded, and ultra-exclusive resort had shocked the shit out of her at first. But by the time he’d worked her into a frenzy on the private jet and they’d emerged in the paradise of seventy-degree weather, ocean breezes, and more of his direct attention to her needs, she gave into it, adoring every breathless minute.

  “Hey.” A soft knock and the sound of his deep, morning gravelly voice startled her. “What’s going on in there?”

  She stood, splashed water on her face, and opened the door, smile fixed on her face. He frowned and pulled her into his arms, calming her instantly. This new life, from the moment of the abrupt, public marriage proposal through the fall and semi-fraught holiday season as she tried to adjust to her new status as “Jack Gordon’s fiancée,” to now, was all so strange, amazingly erotic, highly charged, and seemingly perfect – but for the damn dreams.

  “I have an idea,” he said into her hair.

  “Huh, if it involves my ass again, we’d better wait twenty-four hours.” She giggled at his groan, and suppressed a surge of sudden horniness. “Seriously, I may not sit for a week. Not that I’m complaining.”

  “I am serious.” He stepped back, took her face between his hands. His deep blue gaze did its usual song and dance on her nerves. “Marry me.”

  “I already said yes to that, remember?” She flashed the giant ring on her finger. “Under duress I might add.”

  He smiled and ran a finger over her lips. “No. I mean today. Here.”

  She frowned at him, her brain skipping ahead to what exactly that meant. No big wedding. No parental or brotherly stress. Tying herself to this man, forever, without friends or family to witness.

  Tempting.

  “I can’t.” She shrugged his hands off her and walked over to the window, pulling a soft robe around her body.

  “Why not?” His hands on her shoulders encouraged her to lean back against him. “Why go through the torture of planning an event we know will be stressful as hell for everybody involved? Besides, I’m gonna be so busy with this new building thing, I won’t really be much help. And I just think…” He leaned down to brush a kiss against her cheek, making her shiver. “I’m afraid we aren’t cut out for the whole big wedding thing. You know? Given our—and by that I mean your—family’s seeming displeasure with the whole concept?”

  “No, we’ll be fine. I’ll plan. You nod your head at the appropriate moments. I don’t need you to do much more than that, other than show up at the right hour in the right suit.”

  He snorted and flopped down in a large leather chair. “Yeah, that and write checks.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I told you my dad would pay…”

  “We discussed this already.” He shook his head, then smiled up at her. “See? Look at us, fighting over the damn thing already. C’mere, you sexy beast,” he yanked her down onto his lap, covered her protests with his lips, while he pulled the robe off her shoulders.

  “Jack,” she whispered, threading her hands in his thick hair, letting him guide her artfully away from a potential conflict. “You may be right, but I can’t do that to my mom. She wants me to have this moment, the walk-down-the-aisle moment, and I think I do, too, okay?”

  “Baby, I want whatever you want, as long as it makes you happy.” She pushed his face up off its current mission toward her breasts, forcing him to look at her.

  “Do you really mean that?”

  He sighed, and wrapped his arms tight around her, holding her so close she heard his beating heart. “I do. There. See? I even know the right words to say when the time comes.”

  “But…” She rose from his lap, unwilling to let this go yet. “I’m still worried. I mean, you sprung this on me and I need to know.”

  He stood in front of her and took both her hands. “You can trust me. I promise, even if you’re denying me the simple joy of a quickie wedding in paradise.” His grin was contagious. She shoved the misgivings that cropped up and haunted her for hours every time she had that same dream into a small corner of her mind and wrapped her arms around his neck, sucke
d in a deep breath of his now familiar scent, and kissed him, long and deep.

  He gripped her ass, pulled her legs up around his body, and dove in, no preamble, as he dropped her onto the bed. She gasped. “Wait! No condom.” He sighed and eased in further, silencing her with his lips. Oh well, it wasn’t a dangerous week for that and damn did it feel good. She cried out his name repeatedly, logic lost once in the swirl of physical satisfaction that only Jack could provide.

  Chapter One

  Four Months Later

  Jack woke and sat up, then immediately regretted it. The hangover that had been lying in wait pounced hard, landing somewhere between his eyes before spreading down into his gut. Groaning, he rolled over and found himself on the floor, trying not to puke all over his expensive Turkish rug. He sat back against the couch and attempted to get his bearings.

  When the room cooperated by holding still, he ran a shaking hand over his eyes and stood. Leaving explanations for why in the hell he woke up on the couch, still half-dressed in pants and an unbuttoned blue shirt, for a time when he gave a shit, he stumbled into the kitchen. The sun streaming through the large window smacked him upside the head, bringing fresh life to the agony.

  “Fuck.” After consuming, roughly, a gallon of water, he leaned against the cold granite counter top. “No, seriously. Fuck.”

  He yanked his phone out of his pocket and squinted at the missed calls from nearly an hour before. It was Saturday but he didn’t have any serious work to do until nearly four. A few fumbling minutes later the comforting sounds and aroma of a coffee-fix floated around him. He looked up when the shower noises from the master bathroom stopped.

  Oh hell.

  It came rushing back in bursts of idiocy and epic drunkenness. He’d been tired, and didn’t want to go out after a week of unbelievable frustration at City Hall. They’d both been irritable but had subjected themselves to a pre-arranged dinner party.

  Once home from that particular corner of hell, Sara had started in on the wedding plans again, and he’d lost it. He stared at his blood-red eyes in the downstairs bathroom mirror. In the way of most disagreements fueled by stress and alcohol, he barely remembered how it started. But he had full memory of how it ended.

  Oh boy did he.

  The fact that he had been a colossal prick, he recalled with crystal clarity. But he also had an inkling that his lovely bride-to-be didn’t exactly put her best argumentative foot forward either.

  Damn that last glass of wine.

  Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this total commitment thing. He’d started zoning out every time she brought up any detail of the classy event she wanted to pull off in about six months. “Classy” seemed to translate into “horrifically expensive” if his newly minted Wedding Decoder Ring worked correctly.

  Not that they weren’t more than capable of paying for all the white lily-strewn tables at the country club and top-of-the-line videographer themselves, but last night she’d informed Jack that her father, the estimable Doctor Matthew Clay Thornton, wanted to pay for his only daughter’s nuptial ceremony. And that he was flying in from Florida with Sara’s mother and had invited them to a nice, intimate dinner to discuss the matter.

  After the week he’d spent in the city planning offices trying to convince a bunch of pinheaded politicians that the massive renovation of a long-abandoned office building on a busy downtown corner would actually be good for their city, he had not a single ounce of patience left. Those assholes had hemmed and hawed him into nearly fifty grand more in architect’s fees. Yet, he still had no approval. Plus—bonus— he’d agreed to walk down the aisle a mere week after the scheduled building opening and gala party he wanted to throw. An opening that now looked jeopardized if not decimated by short-sighted bureaucrats.

  The “daddy’s coming to dinner and bringing his checkbook” bomb Sara had dropped in his lap had exploded, leaving him furious and unable to watch his stupid mouth.

  “Ah, hell.” He pushed himself away from the sink, the need to hurl the three bottles of red wine and two ill-considered bourbons from last night out of his system.

  He had to face this. He’d said some colossally stupid things. While he’d managed to avoid the wedding talk like a trooper, saying stupid shit like, “Just tell me when and where and I’ll be there in the dark suit,” he knew that wouldn’t cut it much longer. He’d sprung the proposal on her. It had been, no, it was, what he wanted: Sara, in his life, forever and ever, until death, or whatever.

  If only she’d agreed to marry him at the resort, these arguments would be a nonissue. They could be here, at home, married, and moving on with their lives together. They’d had such a great time with some of the kink he’d once been into while they were there. It had been perfect. Eloping would have kept all this stress out realized that it was tough for her, ceding control to him on any level, and he admired her for it. But he sensed things slipping and that pissed him off in ways he couldn’t express.

  Jack squinted at himself once more. His face bore lines from lying pressed against the couch arm all night. His jaw was covered in rough stubble, his hair tousled. He ran a hand over his dry lips and squared his shoulders. Apologies for bullshit behavior ought to come easy. He’d been wrong, and he knew it. Still, something kept him downstairs, unable to form the right words. He made his way back to the kitchen, poured some coffee into a heavy stoneware mug, and sighed.

  * * *

  Sara toweled off, her mind focusing on the long list of houses she had to show a new client in a couple of hours, her heart still clenched in anger. She’d passed out, alone, in Jack’s huge bed the night before after the sort-of argument that she only half remembered thanks to the booze and stress of the previous day.

  The sunlight caught the diamond on her left hand, throwing prisms of light around the large bathroom. She’d never put much stock in jewelry, or flowers, or any of the usual shit women seemed to get off on. So when Jack Gordon, the man she’d been literally fucking around with for months, had sprung a marriage proposal on her in front of their entire real estate company last fall she’d been shocked, to say the least. She stared at the four-carat rock on her finger. It was a work of art-deco beauty. The best that money could buy.

  Typical Jack.

  Jack’s handsome face, strong body, snapping blue eyes, incredible sales skills—and masterful talent with his lips, hands, tongue—everything about him had compelled her for months; driving her, making her work harder, turning into a newer, better version of herself. But lately, every day brought more doubt about her decision to marry him.

  She wrapped her body in the large white towel and brushed her teeth, listening for sounds of life downstairs. As she wiped down the glass shower door, she admitted to herself that he’d even made her more organized, tidier. Something about him pushed her to be better. But the last few weeks he’d been so prickly, antsy, quick-tempered. She knew the building renovation stress was most of it, and her need for him to approve and help her pay for a crap load of wedding details wasn’t helping.

  They’d definitely said some nasty things to each other last night. She shuddered, remembering calling him “no better than a man-shaped dildo” at one point. Accusing him of things just short of the Kennedy assassination and global warming. But damn it, he’d spent the evening sulky and uncommunicative with their friends. She’d exploded when they got home. He had met her halfway, no doubt about it. And what had made her think telling him that her father was coming to town and wanted to pay for “his share” of the wedding was a good idea in the middle of all of that, she had no idea.

  He’d made it clear “all the wedding crap” was hers to manage. That between them they would pay for whatever she wanted. But when it came time to start doing so he’d balked, questioning everything she’d arranged, demanding estimates from florists, photographers, bakeries, generally making her second guess herself. The doubt about her ability to plan a simple wedding had leached over into a lot of worry about the whole situation. She sighed,
listening again for noise from downstairs.

  When her mother called last week and informed her that they wanted to spend the weekend in Ann Arbor so her father could give her the money for the wedding, she’d been relieved. No more answering to Jack. Something in her knew that wasn’t right. They were supposed to be husband and wife and learning to communicate about shit like this.

  Sara took another sip from her water bottle, wincing at the queasy feeling in her gut from the previous night’s overindulgence. The whole damn thing felt impossible now—the magic date they’d set, November eighth, was one week after Jack’s new downtown renovation opened. The project she’d gotten as deeply into as he had, with many late nights spent poring over drawings, contemplating possibilities of retail versus residential versus rentals.

  Maybe her brother was right. Blake had given a whole new meaning to “vitriol,” specifically as it related to Jack Gordon. Claimed Jack would be nothing but a serial cheater, couldn’t resist women, and would never settle for just one.

  Once they’d been together six whole months, Blake had backed off some, but had more than once suggested that two people as alike as she and Jack would have nothing but misery ahead of them. That comment stuck in her psyche for weeks. The very concept seemed ludicrous, even insulting. She was not like Jack. No way. But the more they clashed, the more she wondered.

  Tears threatened at the thought of calling it off, but the last week or so she’d been questioning her sanity. The fact that office gossip about Jack had ramped up and even taken on a bitter tone—as all the women who’d hoped to be in her four-carat-diamond-wearing shoes started griping—had not helped one bit. The man obviously had not been able to keep that impressive cock in his pants much; that had become crystal clear. And the skeletons were marching themselves out of the closet in sky-high heels, forcing her to face the facts of his past behavior.