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“You want me to convince Rosie there’s magic in the world by indulging this nonsense and snaring a man?”
“No—the man is just a bonus,” Ivy said with a giggle.
“An uptight CEO?” Jasmine couldn’t believe she was hearing this.
Ivy wasn’t deterred. “The uptight CEO with thick hair, muscular build and a tight a—”
Willow gasped and covered the sleeping baby’s ears. “Ivy!”
Ivy grimaced. “But yes—that is a bonus. You just need to sweeten him up a little.”
“For Rosie?”
“Yes!” her sisters said in unison.
“She needs a man around,” Ivy went on. “After all, we didn’t have one. How can we possibly teach her anything about men?”
They all paused, silently weighing the loss of their father. The only man they could remember being part of their family...and that was a long, long time ago.
Auntie finally weighed in. “She’s already going to hear enough reality when she gets older and learns what happened to her birth mother,” she reminded Jasmine with a sad look.
“Or are you just afraid the ring will actually work?” Willow jumped in.
Was she? Jasmine secretly admitted that all the loss she’d suffered in her young life made her reluctant to let someone else in. Only dire circumstances had brought Rosie to her. Jasmine had adopted her as a newborn at the behest of the little girl’s dying mother. A woman Jasmine had come to know at the City Sanctuary mission where she’d volunteered—and then lost when Rosie’s mother succumbed to the cancer she’d never been able to afford to have treated properly.
“The ring is for all of you girls, but I think Jasmine has a unique opportunity here to prove her point...or ours.” Auntie held out the ring box once more, smiling as if she understood Jasmine’s dilemma all too well. “A little magic never hurt anyone,” she said.
Somehow, Jasmine didn’t believe that.
Three (#u3bd415a3-3928-5f1a-8565-89c262e541af)
So much for that businesslike attitude. Jasmine tapped her stiletto heel as she glanced at her watch once more. He’s twenty minutes late.
She knew traffic hadn’t held him up. The coffee shop she’d chosen for her brainstorming meeting with Royce was right near his office building. As she watched the boats on the river and the tourists wander by on the sidewalk, she struggled with her impatience.
Yes, something probably came up: a business call, papers to sign, something.
But why hadn’t someone called? She’d sent the contract in plenty of time. Her racing thoughts were driving her crazy.
I’ll wait ten more minutes.
Just sitting here was annoying her all the more, so she dumped her coffee and set off toward his office building.
The gorgeous architecture and sweet smell of pralines from a riverside candy shop didn’t calm her agitation as she walked over the stone pathways. Tension built up inside—a problem she’d never had with her clients. What was it about this guy? Usually she could just breathe and reroute her focus to where it needed to go in order to produce forward momentum toward their mutual goals.
Not today.
Days spent wondering what that tattoo was on his neck, whether his hair was mussed when he rolled out of bed in the morning or if he ever did anything but work had taken her to places she hadn’t wanted to go. And the stupid ring wasn’t helping.
She glanced down at the emerald she wasn’t used to having on her right hand. So stupid. But if she backed down now, her sisters would never let her hear the end of it. So she’d prove to them that the legend wasn’t real—and teach Rosie there were plenty of special things in life without magic.
Her phone started vibrating in her hand. Glancing down, Jasmine mumbled under her breath, “Well, it’s about time.”
“Hello, Mr. Brazier,” she said.
His tone was as clipped as hers. “I need to postpone. Please come to my office in an hour.” He was so short, she wondered if he even realized he was talking to an actual person.
“Excuse me?”
“Come here in an hour,” he repeated.
Click.
An hour? Jasmine paused to scroll through the calendar on her phone. Oh, my. Since Royce had only allotted an hour for their meeting, Jasmine hadn’t worried about the tight timeline she had for this morning. An hour would put her right smack in the middle of Auntie’s doctor’s appointment. Willow was in class. Ivy was at work. Which left...well, no one to watch Rosie. Except her.
He probably wasn’t going to like how that went... But then again, he hadn’t really given her much choice in the matter. It was time Mr. Brazier got his first lesson in seeing the person behind the business opportunity.
When Jasmine walked into the outer office a little over an hour later, Matthew’s eyes widened. “Miss Harden, I’m so sorry.” His eyes widened further—if that was even possible—as he glanced down. “I—”
“Just announce me, please, Matthew,” she said with an overly sweet smile.
Her stomach fluttered from the nerves rushing through her in waves, but she reminded herself necessity took this out of her hands. Besides, he’d brought it on himself.
Jasmine went through the door while Royce continued to talk on the phone. His back was to her. Taking advantage of his distraction, she turned and smiled down at her surprise. Then she lifted Rosie from her stroller and turned to find Royce staring at her backside.
Jasmine should have been offended, but his distraction played to her advantage in this instance. When he finally realized where he was staring and looked up, the switch from lust to shock in his normally schooled expression was priceless.
“What’s this?” he sputtered as he jumped to his feet.
Jasmine ignored Rosie’s cooing, because breaking her businesslike facade wouldn’t be to her advantage right now. “You told me to meet you here.”
He frowned, proving himself to be heartless. No one could look at Rosie and refuse to smile. No way could he be human. “My office isn’t a day care,” he insisted.
“And my time is very tightly scheduled today,” she said with an arch of her brows. “I have commitments, just like you.”
“I can’t help that my earlier meeting ran over,” he said defensively, straightening in his seat.
Jasmine took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly, pulling her chaotic thoughts from the last hour together. “Let me ask you a question,” she began.
After Royce nodded, she continued. “Would you have called any of your fellow businessmen and given them commands about when to show up at your office?”
The surprise on his face only confirmed her suspicions.
“If I were one of your managers or the owner of one of your supply companies instead of an event planner, would you have had Matt contact me to reschedule instead of rudely cutting off our conversation earlier?”
“That’s not why—”
“I made arrangements for a sitter as soon as this meeting was scheduled. I don’t like to disrupt my daughter’s schedule by carting her around to my business meetings. But by changing our scheduled time and refusing to discuss it with me or give me any options, I had no other choice...unless I wanted to be a no-show myself.”
He didn’t respond. His narrowed gaze still made her want to squirm, but she refused to back down.
“Now I’m very much looking forward to working with you, but my business is people. Is our phone conversation earlier how you conduct business? How you deal with your fellow business people and the community at large? Because it isn’t how I conduct my business.”
Lesson number one was over. The ball was in Royce’s court now.
Rosie continued to coo, then snuggled against Jasmine as she settled into a chair with her child in her lap. This would never have worked if Rosie had a different temperament, but Jasmine happened to know that her daughter was one of the most easygoing babies in the world. She just hoped this was Royce’s only lesson in seeing the people behind the business.
“If that’s going to be a problem,” she said, “then I release you from your contract right now.”
He glanced back and forth between her and Rosie, as if he still couldn’t catch the connection between his earlier behavior and having a baby in his office. But then he slowly shook his head. “No. I don’t want to cancel our contract.”
She wanted to ask why, but figured she’d pushed her luck enough for today.
“Maybe we should reschedule?” Royce said, staring down at them with a frown.
“Why?” Jasmine asked. “I’m here now. Your schedule appears to be free at the moment, which it hasn’t been for the last two weeks. Let’s talk.”
When he hesitated, she prompted. “If we don’t get started soon, we’ll miss your window of opportunity. I can’t work miracles in two months. And neither can the vendors I hire.”
Royce’s careful expression returned as he took his seat. “I’ve found most people have a price that will motivate them.”
“And that’s the difference between the two of us.”
Surprise momentarily replaced his serious expression. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just that I prefer to endear myself to people,” she said, keeping her tone even and calm, not accusing. “I find they’re much more willing to work hard, which makes life easier and the results quicker, if I’m nice.”
“As opposed to employing coercion?” His smirk reminded her of exactly how they’d gotten into this situation.
“Sometimes other tactics are necessary,” she conceded, “but it definitely makes things messy and uncomfortable for everyone. Confrontation might be a necessity at times, but I don’t like it.”
They shared a look of mutual understanding. Royce agreed with a nod. “But it is interesting.”
Interesting, indeed.
* * *
Royce studied the woman in front of him, carefully avoiding looking at the raven-haired child in her lap. The sight of the little girl in his office brought too many mixed emotions.
He’d never been so far off his game that he wasn’t sure where to begin...until this moment. But he wasn’t about to let Jasmine Harden know that. She was proving her point...he wasn’t about to help her.
For a moment, he second-guessed his decision to continue with this conversation. Heck, this whole project. But it wasn’t just her connection to the Jeffersons that kept him from calling a halt right now.
Deep down, as uncomfortable as this entire incident made him, his instincts told him a woman who was this passionate about people was perfect to create the event that would connect him to others who were just as passionate.
“So, what do you have for me?” he finally asked.
The twitch of her lips suggested she knew exactly how uncomfortable he was. She shifted the baby into the crook of her arm with the ease of an earth mother, despite her power suit, and started her pitch.
“I want to do a masquerade.”
Masquerade? “Like a dance?”
A half smile formed on her elegant red lips. Why did they have to be shaped so perfectly? He’d promised himself he would keep his thoughts on business...not on the woman. And he’d succeeded until the minute he’d seen her in person again.
Then she’d had to insist on him seeing her as a person. This wasn’t helping him with his perspective at all.
“Sort of. A masquerade includes dancing. The key focus is the anonymity. Each participant wears a mask, which lends itself to a mysterious atmosphere.”
“Isn’t the point for people to know me?” He had to admit, he wasn’t an imaginative kind of guy. At least, not in this area. Give him a logistics problem with his shipping company and his brain went into overdrive. Fantasy? Not really.
“Oh, they will,” she assured him. “There will be announcements throughout the evening of the money being raised so everyone will be aware of the sponsor. But for the participants, the atmosphere is key.”
She reached into her oversize bag to pull out a tablet. Flipping the cover open, she deftly pulled up what she was looking for. “As you can see, this gives us a theme to work with—a theme our target audience will find very attractive.”
Without missing a beat, she set the device upright on his desk and flipped through pictures on the screen of lavish decorations and food and costumes. The only thing Royce saw were dollar signs.
“This looks awfully expensive.”
Jasmine raised her brows at him. “Is money a problem?”
How could she make him feel like a schoolboy with a single look? “It isn’t unlimited,” he insisted.
“I wouldn’t think so, but you said you wanted to make an impression.”
Royce studied the last photo. A woman in a fitted dress and feather mask was laughing up at a man in a black tux. The woman’s dark hair reminded him of Jasmine’s... No—she was an employee. An employee with a baby.
Totally off limits.
“Why can’t we just do a dinner?” he asked.
Of course, she had to counter with, “Why would anyone want to come?”
He studied the picture, realizing how totally out of his element he was. Maybe she’d been right to get him more involved. He had no idea how to attract people to anything other than a business deal.
“The draw at a charitable event isn’t even the charity,” she said, “which is a shame, but true.”
A shuffling sound had him looking up. The baby’s chubby cheeks and pale round face surrounded by a halo of inky black hair made her look like a cherub. She stared at him with her eyelids at half mast, thumb firmly held between her lips. When had the cooing stopped?
Jasmine leaned over to reach into the back of the stroller. When she straightened, she held a bottle that the baby eagerly reached for. Royce couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a ring on Jasmine’s ring finger. No wedding band? He should have been even more upset by this situation, given his own childhood. Instead, a relief he was ashamed of snaked through him.
The fact that she was available shouldn’t matter to him.
Settling back into the chair, Jasmine cuddled the sleepy child against her chest. The juxtaposition of working woman and mother unsettled him. His own mother had never seemed that at ease. Royce had always felt like he hindered her work whenever he was around.
“People want to be entertained,” Jasmine said. “You have to sell an experience in order to get people to show up and spend their money. Build something that intrigues them and they’ll tell all their friends and soon you’ll have people begging for tickets.”
The brief flicker of her thick lashes as she looked down at the dozing child in her lap had him holding his breath until she looked back up. But then she narrowed her gaze on him, giving him the uncomfortable feeling that she saw more than he wanted her to. “The more people who talk about wanting to attend, the more likely the buzz will get back to the Jeffersons. The name connected to the event matches the name on the newest bid they received. Mission accomplished—or at least you’ll have made progress.”
