The Billion Dollar Contract: Proposals by Cynthia Dane

 
     
     
     
     
    Letter From Celeste
     
    My Dearest Ethan,
     
    As much as it pains me to do this, I’m afraid that I have no choice but to leave you. I don’t want to admit it, but I love you. I fell in love with you quite a while ago. In truth, I never thought it would be possible. You were too standoffish, too proud, too involved in your own life to spend much time with me outside from what you needed. And yet I stubbornly fell in love with you. It was both the greatest thing and the worst thing to ever happen to me.
    But I can’t spend my life with a man who barely knows I’m there. I don’t want to take this further and end up alone every day anyway. Even when we were together, I felt like there’s this huge divide between us. I realize now that it’s because you don’t love me like I love you. I honestly wonder if you’re even capable of such a thing. I don’t mean this to offend you, but you just don’t seem like the kind of man who will ever be able to give his heart away.
    You and I, we will never have the type of relationship that I need. It will only be about what you need. I thought that I could be happy with everything else you had to offer. But then I had to stop and wonder if this was the kind of life I have in mind for me. No, no it’s not.
    I wish I could say that I’m sorry that I have to do this. But I know that you will bounce back soon enough. Another woman will catch your eye, and you will go on as you always have. You have this way with people that just brings them into your world. My only wish is that one day you will be able to meet someone halfway. To follow love where it wants to lead you.
    Goodbye, Ethan. I would ask you to never forget me, but I don’t hold onto any hope that such a thing as possible.
     
    Celeste
     
    Some of her clothes remained in the penthouse. Ethan stared at them, wondering what he should do with a woman’s clothes. He could donate them. He could ask his receptionist if she wanted them. Or he could stare at them forever, reminded of the woman who got away.
    Instead he folded them up and put them in the dresser. A few of Celeste’s other clothes remained there. He wondered if she left them there on purpose, just so he would never forget her.
    How could he forget her? How could he forget any of the women he had loved?

 
     
     
     
     
    1
     
     
     
    Police sirens jerked Jasmine awake. The cold in her unheated apartment kept her awake. The beast at the end of her bed had been awake all along.
    Those cold, piercing green eyes were the only things Jasmine could see in her bedroom. The sun was barely up, but by God she saw Prince Blackbeard Esq. II staring at her as if she were about to be marched off to the chopping block.
    Jasmine whined as she burrowed beneath her covers and tried to go back to sleep. She had dreamed of a handsome man talking to her in a restaurant. There was so little to live for these days. Handsome strangers of her subconscious would have to be it.
    Two sharp claws dug through Jasmine’s thin blanket and pierced her leg.
    “Holy-!” She shot up, the comforter on her bed tumbling to the floor while Blackbeard hissed and grumbled his pithy cat crap. “All right! I’ll feed you!”
    Cats were supposed to be warm and cuddly. Jasmine had never bought into the thinking that they supposed themselves rulers of humans and used them as slaves. People who thought that had never met the kitties of her youth, each one more adorable than the last and more often than not purring in her lap.
    Blackbeard was different. That asshole was a psychopath.
    Tufts of fluff left hairball trails down the hallway until Blackbeard came to a complete stop in front of the living room. Jasmine, who stuck a toothbrush in her mouth on her way to the kitchen, tripped over her little darling and stumbled against the rancid carpet. Blackbeard huffed before waddling toward his empty food bowl. He was most displeased at its lack of contents.
    “You’re already a huge