No Strings Attached

Chapter Seven

He'd underestimated her stubbornness. He'd given her three days and yet here he was at work on day 6, staring at the phone and sitting on the edge of his seat so that when she did call - if she called-, he would be ready. "Mr Arden," his assistant Raymond's voice came through and Jason stopped typing up his evaluation report. "You have a call on line 1." He grinned to himself, he knew she'd give in sooner or later.

"Thanks, Raymond, I got it." He cleared his throat and switched over, making sure his voice was velvety smooth and as rich as the finest dark chocolate on Earth. The art of seduction. "Took you long enough to call, Miss Armstrong." He was met with a short silence before he heard a manly guffaw.

"Jason, did I just hear you say Miss Armstrong?"

"Chris, what's up? You know I'm at work man." He sucked his teeth; annoyed that it wasn't Alex and leaned back to take the call.

"Boy please, you're your own boss, you can take a damn break anytime you please." Chris was right on that one. When their parents had died, their father had passed his beloved company down to his eldest son, not wanting to hand it over to his wild youngest. However, he hadn't anticipated Chris declining the offer, instead opting to continue his law degree to become an attorney and forcing LeRoy Arden to give their family company to the one person he didn't want to give it to. Jason. To everyone's surprise, Jason was doing an amazing job so far. Their sales had been increasing at an average of 6.3% each year and they'd been pulling in more investors than they had before. What was their business? They owned a small branch of restaurants around America that sold Caribbean food and over the span of 5 years they'd spread their business and developed more ideas and products.

"Yeah, yeah whatever. How you been doing though, I aint seen you in a while?" He began absentmindedly playing with the pen on his desk.

He heard Chris sigh on the other line. "Yeah man, I'm good. Just this new case I'm taking on and its taking its toll on me. I'm burning out. I go to work at 8 and work for the next 12 hours, then I go home and have to act like I still have enough energy for Mya even though all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep." Jason chuckled as he finally stopped scribbling. His smile quickly faded when he realised he'd scribbled the letters 'AA' all over his notepad. He began to furiously mark over it.

"Take a day off!"

"A day off? I can't take a day off! I've got deadlines to meet, clients to please, court-."

"Chris! Breathe! Damn." He listened as his brother groaned and took a deep breath. His brother's complaining reminded him of how Mya had described Alexandra. He really had to change his whole plan for her because now this thing wasn't just about Mya and his' original deal, now this was just something he wanted to do for himself. For fun. Seducing Alexandra Armstrong was a complicated challenge that he planned on doing. "Hey, I was meaning to ask, has Mya said anything about-."

"Alex saying anything about you? Nah, bro."

"Why didn't you even tell me that she was Mya's best friend? Or that her and Alexis lived right here?" He questioned.

"I didn't exactly think you needed to know that. I mean you made it very clear in your last year of high school that you didn't care about either ladies." He spoke and Jason rolled his eyes.

"And why the hell didn't you tell me that she looked like that now? She's beautiful, man! And her ass... Chris, you know how I've always told you-."

"'You'd take ass and thighs over chest and breast anyday'. Yes, I've heard you say that shit too many times actually." It was true, Jason had always preferred women with curves at the back than at the front, claiming that he liked having something to hold onto during sex. "So you're interested in Alex now?"

"Interested? Oh hell nah. Didn't Mya tell you? She hired me to sleep with Alex because she's stressed. Her ex musta left her for Alexis so she's gone into working overtime and stressing herself out to the max."

"And you're going along with this?"

"Its just one night, Chris. Worst case scenario is that she falls in love with me and you and I both know that that is a mess I want no part in." Chris agreed with him. "So I heard you want a rematch at pool? You free on Saturday?"

"Ah, I wish I could, man, but Saturday is Alex's moms' birthday party so we're gonna go. What about next Tuesday?" Jason's mind was already spinning with the oppurtunities he would now have.