The Contract

By Christa Wick and C.M. Wick

I've always thought I was just plain invisible to men—until one unforgettable night makes me discover I'm not. And one equally life-changing contract makes me see how much more I've yet to discover about myself.

My boss Beckett is the quietly deep, devastatingly handsome billionaire I've always wanted from afar, but never once imagined I could have. His friend Jace is the playfully dirty-talking, but no less intense celebrity bachelor I never thought I'd want, with a secret life I'm still wrapping my head around.

They both have dark pasts I want to help heal. 

They both want me to be a part of their future.

All I have to do is…sign the contract.

 

Previously published as Ball Her (c) 2016, revised throughout with newly added content, and a different extended ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christa Wick
• Release date: Jan 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224052189

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Half a minute after I turned off the light and crawled under the covers, my phone signaled an incoming call. The soft trill of the alert evoked the sensation of fingers running down my back, the personalized ringtone announcing it was Beckett Frost, the world's most unobtainable billionaire bachelor.

Otherwise known as my boss.

It was Friday night, just past ten p.m., the timing highly unusual for him to be needing me to do any sort of work, let alone for him to be calling at all. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that from Monday morning until Friday at six, we were practically tethered together in all aspects of his business.

But the weekends were a different matter entirely.

I generally never heard from the man at all. And judging from the media and social coverage that seemed to follow him constantly, his personal time never included anyone less than glamorous, or less than a size four. Neither criteria of which I met.

Now more curious than tired, I smothered back a yawn and reached for the phone on the nightstand to accept the call.

Hello?

I probably should’ve forced a brighter tone. But for the last few months, I’d noticed a distinct change in how Beckett interacted with me. Changes that made me feel like my job might be in jeopardy. I’d thus been busting my butt to work harder, stay later, anticipate more. This week in particular, I’d just plain run myself ragged.

So that was why my big Friday night plans—which this call was now interrupting—was to succumb to the sweet bliss of a deep sleep that lasted straight into Saturday afternoon.

Gabby, he said after a moment’s pause, his already deep baritone unexpectedly husky enough to thicken the Scottish accent he hadn't erased from his speech. I need you. Now.

The smoky quality to his voice, combined with the words he’d just uttered, sent me into a mental tailspin.

Excuse me? I asked, doing my best to clear out the last cobwebs of confusion from my weeklong exhaustion, which were clearly making me hear hidden meanings in perfectly innocuous statements.

A courier is on his way to your home as we speak.

I sat up fully now, my ears instantly alert to any potential street traffic on my quiet cul-de-sac.

A courier? At this hour? Why?

Questioning my boss on anything was another thing I didn’t normally do. But nothing about tonight was normal.

To do what couriers do.

I rolled my eyes at myself, something I'd been doing a lot lately despite having recently celebrated my twenty-ninth birthday. At times, working for Beckett had a way of making me feel youthfully inexperienced and clumsily awkward in life as a whole. The fact that I still felt that way despite having worked for the man for three years was admittedly pretty sad.

Right. Of course, I replied, putting my phone on speaker so I could quickly find some clothes to slip on instead of greeting the courier in my floor-length granny gown.

I still didn’t understand why a courier was coming out this far to my neck of the woods instead of just dropping off whatever it was at Beckett’s Pacific Heights mansion. As far as I knew, Beckett was still in the city; he hadn't asked me to schedule his jet for any trips this weekend, and he never traveled without notifying me first.

What would you like me to do with the delivery?

Bring it to me—immediately.

My hand froze in my bra drawer. That made even less sense. Why would he need me to deliver something if he’d already hired a courier?

Um…why can't the delivery person just go straight to you?

I really didn't ask this many questions, generally speaking. Beckett’s work life was demanding, and his methods for success exacting, as I well knew. But sending something to me just so I could take it to him seemed like a strange request, especially given the late hour.

A long stretch of silence ended with a chuckle from his end of the phone line, a sinfully dangerous sound considering the sexy baritone he was always rocking.

It's complicated, and delicate. Is this a problem? He didn't wait for me to answer. You sound completely sober, and I'm not hearing any club music behind you. Meaning you’re home, correct?

Yeah, like I'd ever be caught dead in any of the San Francisco nightclubs. The doormen would laugh their asses off seeing me in line with women half my size.

Correction—a doorman had laughed at me, after an incredulous head-to-toe scan of me standing in front of him trying to fit in with the beautiful people.

I had zero desire to experience humiliation like that again.

No. No club noises. And yes, I'm at home, I answered dully.

Alone, I hope.

Another long pause hung in the air between us before he added in a strange tone I’d never heard him use before, I wouldn't want to drag you away from any…fun you might be having.

Just give me the address, Beckett. I barely managed not to growl out my response.

I hadn't seen any fun action beyond a vibrator for the last sixteen months. And the fault was entirely his.

After recently finishing my graduate degree in business, I had reached a turning point in life. Job offers were coming in, job offers with far better titles than the amorphous chief of special operations position I filled as Beckett's glorified personal assistant.

When I had stopped to examine why I wasn't moving on professionally, I realized I was in love with a man I was never going to have.

Not that my feelings for Beckett were the only reason I stayed with Marzano Holdings. I already made more than any newly minted MBA without a trust fund could hope to get, especially a very round female in her late twenties. The only other companies that had offered a better package were distributors looking for an inside connection with Marzano or direct competitors. I wasn't so naive as to think they had any interest in my business acumen.

Should I repeat that? Beckett asked, his tone low and amused.

I huffed, hating to admit I had stopped listening to him for a few painful seconds of pointless navel gazing.

Sorry, pen isn't working. Give me a second.

Moving back to the nightstand, I opened the drawer and pulled out pen and paper and had him repeat the address. My nose crinkled at the location. He was a good forty miles north of the city. I would have to use my GPS to figure out exactly where, especially since it was long past sunset.

One more thing. And I can’t express how important it is you follow this rule without question, he said, turning cryptic. Tell them at the gate and again at the house, that you're there to see Prospero. Do not use my real name. Period.

Prospero? I repeated. I could feel my eyebrows and chin trying to meet in the middle as I tried to place the literary use of that name. Wait. Are you seriously saying I need to use a code name to⁠—

Realizing he had already hung up, I looked out my window to see the courier had just pulled up to the house.

That was Beckett. Exacting in every last detail of all his plans.

What part I’d be playing in this particular plan tonight, I had no idea.

CHAPTER TWO

Prospero...

Parking my car near the servants' wing of a sprawling mansion set against Bodega Bay, I whispered the name over and over with growing uncertainty.

Googling it before I left the house, I had found that the most common association was some play by Shakespeare about a sorcerer exiled on an island with his ridiculously innocent and breathlessly sweet daughter. Prospero, the sorcerer, was also the rightful Duke of Milan and was apparently up to all kinds of shenanigans meant to reclaim his birthright from his brother Antonio.

Antonio...Antonia...

Was it any coincidence that one of the villains in the play effectively shared the same name as Beckett's mother who was, in turn, named after her father?

Pocketing my keys, I tried to shut down any speculation.

Tried and failed.

Beckett was a lot of things, but he wasn't an English lit major. He probably hadn't read any fiction since he finished undergrad. Hell, when his nose wasn't buried in the business he ran, it was usually stuck in something decadent—as often as not, according to the gossip mags, between the stick like thighs of whichever supermodel he had warming his bed for the weekend.

So, not a guy to quote Shakespeare or any other dead author.

But I could see why he might jokingly refer to the old wizard.

Despite his surname, the Scottish brogue that occasionally slipped out, and the pale gray eyes that looked like frozen fog, Beckett was part Italian. And I knew there was some kind of triangle of bad blood between him, his mother, and her father, that had meant Beckett didn't grow up surrounded by the vast fortune he eventually inherited.

Oh, and grandpa?

The old man had lived and died in Milan.

The rest of the story was hidden behind a wall of attorneys who kept the press from publishing any gossip about the Marzano family or Beckett's life before he became the sole owner of the family business despite his mother still being alive.

All that secrecy, combined with my needing a password instead of Frost's name, had me nervous as hell as I rang the doorbell to the servants' entrance. I had maybe half a second's wait, the thick envelope the courier had dropped off crushed protectively against my chest, before the door opened to reveal a woman dressed head-to-toe in black leather.

Head-to-toe was misleading. The top half of her body was barely dressed at all, just a thin bandeau that covered B-cup breasts. The pants that covered her bottom half looked like they had been painted on. If I had been willing to lean forward and stare intently at her crotch, I probably could have counted her pubic hairs—assuming she had any, which she probably didn't.

She stared at me, her crimson lips pushed forward into a duck pout of boredom as her light blue eyes openly calculated my value.

I assumed the number she arrived at was zero when she turned and started to walk away before I could even tell her who I was or why I was there.

I expected different.

I stood there, stunned, the words taking a few seconds to sink in as I deciphered her heavy Eastern European accent.

So did I, I shot back, covering my confusion as to why she should expect anything relative to me. I'm supposed to mention 'Prospero.' I’m Gab⁠—

Eyes narrowing as her nostrils flared, she silenced me on the spot. No names! Follow me.

Not even a made up one? I joked as I trailed behind her and shut the door. I was leaning toward 'Alice' for me.

I sure as heck felt like I'd just fallen down a giant rabbit hole.

It didn't help that the woman leading me forward was a platinum blonde. Not what I remembered the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland looking like, but close enough in this oceanside palace to which my boss had summoned me.

In here, the woman said, opening a door onto what appeared to be a makeshift dressing room. Strip while I find something your size.

Passing her, I froze in the middle of the doorway and began to wildly shake my head as I got a good look at some of the outfits littering the room.

Oh, no, I'm here to see Mr. F... I sucked a breath in, just barely remembering Beckett's prohibition before I screwed up. I have papers to deliver to Prospero. That's all I'm here for.

She shook her head briskly, her heavily-painted lips pursed tightly in disapproval. Though her powdered eyelids and false lashes were hiding her eyes from me, I could feel her annoyance with me. No. No papers here, no business. That is the rule.

Then you need to go get Prospero⁠—

Fully opening her eyes, she tucked her chin and glared at me. I don't go. I don’t get. Only participants enter. I am...stylist.

She stepped uncomfortably close,