but her brain still buzzed with Jackson’s invitation. She wanted to ask him a million questions, she needed to know exactly what he was offering.
She remembered the dark tattoos on his shoulder. Wings of some kind. She wanted to see them up close. To touch them. Read the inscription, if there was one. Ask him why he got them.
But he lives next door. This could be a disaster.
She thought about Ryan. He’d be telling her to go for it, no doubt. She almost imagined his hearty congratulations if she told him she’d finally found a rebound from Kevin. Hadn’t Ryan just told her she needed to put Kevin behind her...and be more social?
Still, was she really going to do this?
Chloe hesitated. She still hadn’t decided what to do about his message. Ignore it? Reply?
She glanced out her window, seeing the words there as clear as day, his third floor dark. Was he still sleeping? Had he left for work while she was out running?
She suddenly imagined herself writing a message on her window and then his blinds popping up, and him catching her in the act. The idea was mortifying. She wasn’t even sure she could bear to look him in the eye after last night.
Chloe decided to ignore the message and booted up her computer. Then, after answering a few emails, she glanced once more at her neighbor’s darkened windows. He might be at work. She might be able to send him a message. But what?
No. That was crazy. Why would she write him a message? Just let it go, Chloe, she told herself. Just pretend none of it ever happened.
Except that she couldn’t. Even as she tried to focus on work, her attention kept wandering back to Jackson’s darkened windows, to the message he left for her there. She couldn’t forget his amazingly chiseled body, his blue eyes watching her.
She didn’t have a bar of soap to write on her window, so opted for a pad of sticky notes. Her window was large, and she began laying out her message, using the notes to form letters. Then she stopped and ripped them all down. She glanced at Jackson’s darkened windows. She was crazy for replying to this, wasn’t she? She had to be crazy.
She glanced at the pink sticky notes in her hand. Maybe she was crazy. She started again before she lost her nerve.
Jackson sat at his desk in his office at Drake Properties, flipping a pen around his fingers, thinking about the dream he’d had the night before. He’d dreamed of Chloe, standing on the other side of a full glass window, wearing nothing but cherry-red heels. He hadn’t been able to pay attention to even a single email this morning, as he wondered what Chloe had done when she saw his message that morning.
He knew he’d taken a risk putting the message on his window, but a man like him didn’t build an empire without taking risks. He had seen the want on her face, knew that if he pushed hard—but not too hard—she might just wind up in his bed. How he wanted to know what she was like. Did she just like to watch? Or would she perform, too?
What was she doing right then? He hoped crafting a response. The thought made him smile. He’d never been so aroused by a woman’s eyes before. By her dark, sensual eyes. She’d watched him and Annaliese boldly, almost without fear. He couldn’t wait to see what she’d be like in person, when there wasn’t a window between them. He wanted to explore her darkest places.
“Mr. Drake? Call on line one. A Miss Smith?” his assistant asked through the intercom on his desk.
Jackson felt snapped back into reality. That was Laurie, his ex, on the line.
“Send her to voice mail, please,” Jackson called to the intercom.
Just then, a new message popped up on his phone. From Laurie.
I need to talk to you. Please. Call me.
He hit Delete again, and then he thought about blocking her. She wasn’t taking no for an answer, and it irked him.
There’s nothing to talk about. We’re done.
She quickly wrote back, But I love you.
Please.
She didn’t know what love was. She knew all about betrayal and deception and greed, but nothing about love. Jackson saw the flashing red light on his phone, indicating the voice mail left by Laurie, and quickly hit Delete without bothering to listen to it. He didn’t have time for such nonsense. She was obsessed with his money, nothing more.
He finished the first offer letter to Kent for the 1209 property and sent it off, pretty certain that it would be flat-out rejected. It was below market value of the building, but Jackson had to start somewhere. He figured they’d eventually meet in the middle if Kent really was serious about selling to him and this wasn’t just some elaborate game. It could be. Kent no doubt would love the idea of just toying with Jackson, making him believe he had a chance at a property that Kent had no intention of selling. Kent didn’t care so much about wasting their time as he did about annoying Jackson. Honestly, the man should get a hobby. Or a wife to keep him busy. Something.
Still, he liked the idea of being Chloe’s landlord. He knew he could take better care of her and her building than Kent ever would. He liked the thought of dropping in, asking her if anything in her apartment needed fixing. There were certain things he’d like to fix right now, like the fact that he wanted to see her naked. In his bed.
This made him wonder if she’d responded to his question yet. He glanced at his calendar, which was thin for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe he’d just pop home and see.
He walked out of his office and saw Hailey typing at her desk. Then he remembered Chloe’s smashed phone and the devastated look on her face when he’d returned her mangled device.
“Oh, Hailey, do we have any extra smartphones? I need a backup,” he said.
Hailey didn’t miss a beat as she turned to fetch a key from her drawer to unlock a cabinet near her knees. She pulled out a box and handed it to him.
“And a manila envelope, please?”
She handed it to him, no questions asked.
“Thanks, Hailey. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Let me know if anything urgent comes in.”
“Will do, sir,” she said, and nodded at him, and then turned her attention back to her computer.
Jackson tucked the new phone into the envelope, and thought Chloe would be surprised when he showed up with a replacement for her smashed one. He remembered how absolutely brokenhearted she looked when she saw her phone fall from her window. She wouldn’t have been sitting there if they hadn’t been moving in, and so he figured the least he could do was replace it.
He liked the idea of getting her a gift, and whistled to himself as he took the elevator down to the parking garage. A quick drive home in his Maserati meant that he was pulling into the parking space near his condo a few minutes later. He glanced up, clearly seeing her message to him. It was spelled out in Post-it notes on her window.
Maybe.
He grinned. Maybe she wanted to do more than watch? Well, he’d have to get to work on convincing her he was worth the trouble. He carried the envelope holding the brand-new phone he’d taken from his office as a replacement for her cracked one. He scribbled a quick note there on the porch and slipped the piece of paper into the manila envelope. He took the package and laid it on top of her mailboxes and then rang her buzzer.
Chloe heard the buzzer, but finished the posts she was doing for her client on Instagram. She figured it was just another package delivery, though she couldn’t remember what she’d ordered exactly. She finished up the post and then headed downstairs, swinging open her building’s front door. A manila envelope sat on her mailboxes, addressed to her. Except it had no postage. Or mailing label. Just her name in thick black marker: Chloe Park. There was a small note inside. It read:
Chloe,