𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓐𝓼 𝓘𝓬𝓮 [𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖊𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖊]

3

Kim Jongin's Mansion of a yacht was large enough that Jennie could almost forget she was surrounded by water. The smell of the sea was still there, but she loved the ocean if she wasn't on a boat, and she could easily pretend she was on some nice safe cliff overlooking the surf, rather than bobbing around in the middle of it.

Kim Jongin was both quirky and charming, there was no denying it, and he was focusing all that charm on her. His megawatt smile, his piercing eyes, his lazy voice, and rapt attention to her every word should have made her melt. Except that Jennie didn't melt easily, even beneath the warm Caribbean sun with a billionaire doing his best to seduce her.

The Tab had appeared, of course, cold with a glass of ice as well. She knew she ought to have insisted on Pellegrino or something equally upscale—the firm would never approve of something as mundane as soda pop—but she should have been on vacation, and for now, she could let things drop. She'd even kicked off her shoes as she stretched out on the white Lester chaise, wiggling her silk-covered toes in the sunlight.

She knew how to make the most self-effacing man become expansive, and Kai was hardly a wallflower. The Kim Foundation had never been under her particular purview—she'd been kept busy with the relatively simple concerns of several smaller foundations—but she found his worldview fascinating. It was no wonder he collected humanitarian awards by the bucketload—he'd even been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, though she thought it would be a cold day in hell before he got one. The profits from his overseas production companies were cut in half because he refused to let them employ child labor, and the workers received enough of a living wage that they didn't have to send their children into factories and brothels. He still made a profit, Jennie thought cynically, and his generous salaries were still only a fraction of what he used to pay the workers in the American factories that now lay closed and abandoned in the dying cities in the Midwest, but the humanitarian organizations ignored that part. Either ignored it or knew that giving a billionaire an award was likely to make him charitable foundation feel even more charitable toward them.

His money came from everywhere—oil fields in the Middle East, diamond mines in Africa, investments so complicated she doubted even he understood them. All she knew was he made money faster than he could spend it, and his tastes were lavish.

But she had become used to billionaires in the past few years, and in the end, there were all the same, even someone like Kai with his little eccentricities. She listens to him ramble on his lazy Brit-Kor accent,

(Lmao, is there even such a thing? Back with the story.)

Telling herself she should relax, that by tomorrow she'd be stripped of these clothes and her professional armor and be hiking through the jungles of Costa Rica, fending off mosquitoes and blisters. Compared to this plush cocoon it sounded like heaven.

She awoke with a start. Kai was still talking—apparently, he'd never even noticed that she'd drifted off for a moment. She could thank her mirrored sunglasses for that—if Walter Fredericks ever knew his protégée had fallen asleep in front of a client she'd be out on her ass in a matter of hours. Though there was always the good possibility that that was exactly what she wanted.

And then she realized what had woken her. Not Kai's lazy ramblings, but the feel of the boat beneath her. The unmistakable rumble of an engine, when this damn hung should be floating and silent.

"Why did they turn on the engines?" She broke through Kai's discourse on tarot cards.

"Did they? I didn't notice. I think they do that every now and then to check the engines. Make sure she's in good running order. Sort of like a fire drill. They don't usually do it until a few hours before we"re supposed to set sail, but I have no plans to go anywhere right now. Must be some set of a maintenance thing."
She'd sat bolt upright. They'd been under the shelter if an overhanging deck when Kai had ensconced her on the chaise, but now the sun had advanced enough that it was halfway up her legs. It was a reasonable explanation, but she wants buying it.