We dont talk about last.., p.1
We Don't Talk About Last Night, page 1
We Don’t Talk About Last Night
J. S. Cooper
Copyright © 2022 by J. S. Cooper
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Blurb
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
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Blurb
From New York Times Bestselling Author J. S. COOPER
comes a new hot standalone billionaire romance.
He’s the Smuggest, Sexiest, Most Arrogant Man I’ve Ever Met, and He’s Totally Off-Limits
* * *
An Alpha Male Who Wants His Way
* * *
Jacob Joshua Edwards is my sworn enemy. I’ve hated him for years, even though I’ve always been attracted to him. When my father’s business goes under, he makes a deal with Jacob’s father to save the company. Only the deal is not one that benefits the family in my eyes. My father arranges for my sister to marry Jake so that the deal becomes a merger as opposed to a takeover.
* * *
A Rebel with a Cause
* * *
As far as I’m concerned, the merger is the worst thing that can happen to the family, and I’m determined to find my own way in life. I plan to escape the night after the big celebration, but I allow myself one confrontation with Jacob to let him know what I really think about him. Only nothing goes according to plan. Soon, I’m caught up with him in a way I never expected.
* * *
Secrets, Lies & Even Hotter Nights
* * *
Jacob has a proposal for me that is very tempting. One that could enable me to help my family and stop the merger. However, Jacob is playing a high-stakes game that I’m not quite ready for. As bombshell secrets and lies make their way to the surface, I’m left wondering if I’m a contestant in the game or a pawn that’s being played.
Prologue
“You can call me Jake, you know,” he said, a smirk on his face. His dazzling green eyes seemed to pierce into my soul. As I stared at his too-handsome face, I wondered if he were some sort of fallen angel, sent to earth to annoy the living daylights out of me.
“I’d rather call you by your Christian name, Jacob.” I waited to see if he would burst into flames at my use of the word “Christian.”
No such luck.
“Well, Tiff…” He paused and laughed, a low, rumbling sound that made my stomach flutter. I hated how my body betrayed me when I was around him.
“My name is Tiffany.”
“But I think I prefer Tiff, so I’ll go with that.” Smugness dripped off his tongue.
“I don’t care what you prefer, Jacob Joshua Edwards.”
“Ooh, you’re saying my full name now. I kind of like it.” He took a step closer to me, and my heart started racing as if it were in the rapid-beat Olympics.
“What are you doing?” I said as he leaned down and touched my lips with his thumb. His thumb felt warm and slightly rough as he caressed my lower lip. I swallowed hard.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
I stepped back, swatting his hand away. “You can’t touch me like that.”
“Why? Does it make you scared that the big bad wolf might eat you up?”
“I’m not a little girl. I’m not scared of big bad wolves. I am twenty-five years old. And you can’t touch me like that because it’s not appropriate.”
“Okay,” he said, stepping back, “If that’s what you want.”
“That is what I want.” I glared at him, wondering how he could be so confident and smug when faced with my death stare. Men richer than him had faltered in the face of my stares. Even teachers had stepped back, but he didn’t seem to be bothered at all.
“So, then, I will bid you adieu, Miss Tiffany.”
“You’re leaving?” I looked at him with surprise. The room was packed, and the party had just begun.
“I’m not leaving. But I shall go and talk to other women that do want to get to know me better.”
“Psh, I doubt there’s many of them.” I rolled my eyes. “And also that’s highly inappropriate given that this is your—”
“It’s a pity, you know,” he interrupted.
“What’s a pity?”
“That you’re not interested in calling me Jake. I think I could lighten you up quite a bit. You’re a spitfire, aren’t you?”
“I don’t need to lighten up, thank you very much.”
“Oh, I think you do.” He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” I snapped, wanting to be inside of his head.
“I don’t think you want to know.” He shook his head and licked his lips.
“Tell me.” I knew I should have just let him go. I knew that I shouldn’t engage with him. He was an asshole, a jerk, my sworn enemy. But I just couldn’t stop myself.
“I think there are three things you need in your life right now,” he said, staring at my lips.
I swallowed hard. “Oh yeah, and what are they?”
“I don’t think I should tell you. I think I should show you. Don’t they say that actions speak louder than words?”
I took a slow sip of my vodka martini. “Fine, show me.”
“Really?” His eyes sparkled and widened almost imperceptibly. “You surprise me.”
“Why do I surprise you?”
“I thought you were all talk and no action.”
“I’m not.”
“Then leave with me.”
“We can’t just leave,” I objected. “The party has just begun.”
“Yes, the party has just started, but I can do whatever I want.” He shrugged. “I am Jake Edwards, after all.”
“But the party is for you.”
“No,” he said, “the party is not for me. The party is for your sister.”
“But—”
“Shh.” He pressed a finger against my lips and winked. “Come with me, Tiffany, if you dare.”
He moved his finger from my lips and walked away. I stood there immobile for a couple of seconds. He didn’t even look back to see if I was following as he made his way through the packed room. People tried to talk to him, but he didn’t stop. Finally, he reached the entrance of the hallway and walked out.
I’m not sure what came over me, but I started walking quickly to catch up. I knew it was crazy, I knew I was asking for trouble, but how could I not follow him? He had dared me, after all.
I made my way to the entrance and looked to the left and then to the right. He was gone, and I didn’t know where he was. I took a deep breath and turned to go back into the room.
“I knew you would come.” Suddenly he was next to me, his eyes twinkling with laughter.
“Where did you come from? You weren’t here just now.” I blinked at him in surprise.
“It’s a magic trick,” he replied. “I’m Houdini. In and out, just like that.”
“In and out just like that, huh? Is that your motto in life?” I smirked at him.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He winked again, more seductively this time.
“No.” I shook my head quickly.
“Liar.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I know exactly what you want, Tiffany.”
“Excuse me?”
“And I know exactly what you need as well. Come on.”
And like a fool, I followed him. This was what happened when you drank too many vodka martinis on an empty stomach. I could hear my father’s voice coming from the room that I’d just left, cheering and celebrating. I started to feel a little bit guilty. What the hell was I doing? I knew I was making a huge mistake, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, Jacob.”
“I said to call me Jake.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this, Jake,” I said, even as I continued following him down the hallway.
“There are many things we shouldn’t be doing, Tiffany. But we can’t let that stop us, can we?” He rounded the corner, me still at his heels.
Three things he’d said I needed, three things I’d said I wanted. I had no idea what they were. But I had to find out, no matter what the cost was.
One
Jacob Joshua Edwards is my sworn enemy. He is the eldest son of my father’s biggest rival, and I absolutely detest him. He’s thirty-five years old to my twenty-five, and he thinks that those ten years make him far superior to me. He thinks he’s the most intelligent, powerful, articulate man in the wo
I can’t stand him, and I can’t believe that he’s been invited to my family’s house this weekend.
You see, my father is a businessman, but not a very good one. He inherited his grandfather’s company when he was forty and had absolutely no idea how to run it. He considered himself something of an actor and thought he’d make it big in Hollywood, but when his father told him he had to run the family business, he gave up that dream and married my mom. Unfortunately for him and everyone else in the family, he ran the business into the ground, and now we were almost penniless. We’d have been on the street if not for Jacob Joshua Edwards’s father. At least that was how my father told the story. Then again, according to him, he could have been bigger than Brad Pitt if he’d just gotten the chance.
I have no idea if that’s true or not. Mom died when I was very young, so I can’t ask her, and my sister, Monique, knows nothing. Literally nothing. I was left hating the fact that Brian Edwards was taking over the only home I’d ever known.
Jacob Edwards’s father, Brian, was one of the richest men in New York City. He had wanted to buy my family’s company for years, and now he had the perfect opportunity. My father was going to sell it to him, but only if he agreed to certain stipulations. One, my father had to stay on as CEO, because my father had an ego the size of Africa and didn’t want his friends to know that he’d failed. Two, the rest of the family was to get a small share of the company so that we’d be taken care of. And three, my eldest sister Monique was to be married to Jacob Joshua Edwards.
I felt sorry for her because Jacob was absolutely horrible, but she seemed quite happy about the arrangement. To be fair, Jacob was absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t stand the man, but he was sexy. Tall, dark, and handsome, with vibrant green eyes and dark hair. He had a body that seemed to live at the gym—not that I’d never seen him naked, of course, but you could tell the way that his suits fit his body that he was built.
I didn’t really understand why I had to be at the family dinner that evening formalizing the engagement. I couldn’t stand the man or his family. I’d pleaded and begged my father to let me have a chance to turn the business around. I had some great ideas, and I was confident that I could get us showing a profit within a year, but no, my father didn’t trust me because I was a woman and I was the youngest. All he wanted me to do was to sit at the dining room table and look pretty.
I had other ideas.
I was going to make it so that Jacob and his father wanted nothing to do with our family. Maybe my family couldn’t see beyond the dollar signs, but I could. Aside from his good looks, he was a bastard. The couple of times that he’d been to the house and the main office, he’d looked down on all of us with his superior smile and practically sneered at us. My hand itched to slap him, but I knew if I did, my dad would absolutely kill me. I had other plans, though. I would just have to be very secret about them.
I had grown up confident and self-assured knowing I was Tiffany Newton. Some said that my family was descended from Sir Isaac Newton, though I didn’t know if that was true. History stated that he’d never had any children, but I knew that there were always events that happened behind closed doors that most people never knew about in every family. What I did know, though, was that my family was held in high regard in the community. My great-great-grandfather had come over from England with barely a penny to his name, and he’d made something of himself. And he’d passed his business on to his son, who had grown it and passed it on to his son. With each generation, the fortune grew larger and larger…until it came to my father.
My father had squandered everything. The company was close to collapse, and the family was on the verge of bankruptcy. My father cared only about his image and status, not his family—and certainly not his employees.
He had Bentleys and Rolls Royces, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, several Mercedes, and BMWs. We had so many cars, I had lost count. We had a penthouse in New York, a mansion in LA, a chateau in Paris, a townhome in London, a beach home in Mallorca—he even financed an island in the Caribbean.
And yet none of the properties made any money. He wasn’t business savvy at all. I’d offered to help. I was naturally business savvy. I always had been, since I was a little girl, but my father wasn’t about to take advice from a twenty-five-year-old woman. As the youngest Newton, my job was to look pretty and smile and flirt with whichever men he wanted me to. Not that I obeyed, of course. I wasn’t that sort of woman. And maybe that’s why my father didn’t like me much. I certainly wasn’t the favorite.
“Tiffany, are you not ready yet?” My father’s voice interrupted my thoughts as I sat in the library.
“Ready for what, Dad?”
“I told you, Jacob Joshua Edwards and his father are coming to meet your sister.” He couldn’t hide the anger in his voice. My father had been as bad an actor as he was a businessman.
“Okay, and why do I have to be ready?” I loved being difficult. It gave meaning to my otherwise boring days.
His dark eyebrows drew together. “You will be in the same room as the Edwardses. We have an impression to make. Our whole family will be there to greet them.”
“But I don’t want to greet them. I don’t want to be there while you offload Monique like she’s cattle.” Monique was my older sister. She was beautiful, but she didn’t have much of a brain. All she cared about were designer handbags, shoes, and makeup. If she wasn’t my sister, I’d have absolutely hated her. Instead, I quietly despised her. She was a puppet in my father’s hands. She did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. I thought it was pathetic, and I knew I would never let him manipulate me in that way.
“She’s not cattle.” He gave me his death stare, the death stare that I’d inherited. Frankly, I thought that my death stare was far superior.
“Okay, not cattle then. A pig or a sheep or a horse. Whatever you sell at auction.”
“I am not selling your sister at auction. You should be happy that it wasn’t you.”
“But he wouldn’t want me.” I laughed. “You know that, Dad.”
“I know.” He turned his nose up. “No man would want to have to put up with a—” He paused.
“What were you going to say, Dad?” I smiled at him sweetly. I loved it when he showed me just how much he hated me. Most daughters would cry knowing they were hated by their father, but I actually reveled in it. It was something to be proud of. I didn’t respect the man, so it made me feel good that he didn’t like me. It meant that I was doing something right.
“I just hope that you can find yourself a suitable husband before it’s too late.” He looked me up and down. “You are getting on in years Tiffany. You know that, right?”
“Getting on in years? I’m twenty-five!”
“Exactly. And you’re not married. You have no kids. What use are you to me?”
“So that’s my only worth to you? To get married and to have kids?” I stared at him. “Seriously, Dad? Don’t you wish I was a boy?”
He pressed his lips together. It grated on him that he’d had no sons. And he’d tried. Not just with my mother, but with plenty of other women—we all knew about his affairs. But he’d never sired a boy, just my sister and me. There may have been some other bastard children out there, but none of them were men. If they had been, they’d have been welcomed into the family a long time ago.
“Your sister’s very lucky that Jacob wants to marry her. I worked very hard for this merger.”
“Dad, you sold your soul to the devil, and for what? To keep the family business name? Who even cares? Newton Enterprises has been around for hundreds of years and…”
