Page 3 of Perfect Satisfaction

On StellaNova’s main banner is a statement that she reads aloud, “‘Why do people do funerals anyway? They’re not to honor the dead, they’re so the living can see who cries the prettiest.’ He is a parasite.”

“On that we completely agree.” I catch my phone as it’s chucked back in my direction with a bit of force.

“I didn’t see him.”

“Of course you didn’t. He never showed.” Black eyes widen at my words before narrowing into slits.

“He did not come to his own mother’s funeral.”

“No.”

“He wrote something so... offensive?”

“Yep.”

“What are you going to do?” is shouted so loudly, it reverberates off the walls of my childhood bedroom.

I stroke my jaw. “I’ve been giving it some thought.”

“And?”

“I’m going to take over StellaNova.”

She stumbles backward and fortunately lands on my bed. With a smirk, I ask, “Surprised you with that one?”

“When?”

My face hardens. “Soon.”

CHAPTERONE

What’s the best gift you’ve ever been given? For me it was a second chance.

—StellaNova

December—One Year Ago

“No!” The word escapes my lips unbidden.

The stone of the ring my mother left me upon her death must have caught on the edge of the tray table. The glimmer of the center diamond barely snagged the light before it soared airborne, landing on the carpet in the first-class cabin.

I curse profusely.

“That doesn’t sound good,” drawls a laconic male voice from the chair across the aisle.

Without glancing in his direction, I slam my laptop shut and place it on the empty seat next to me. Immediately I slide out of my chair and drop onto all fours, scanning the carpet for the microscopic gem.I have to find it, repeats in my mind.

The click of a seatbelt barely registers before a light begins sweeping the carpet back and forth in front of where I’m crawling. I flip my hair away from my eyes and find myself confronted with a face custom-made for the city we’re hurling toward across the dusky sky—pure devastating sin. For just a second, my heart flips over in my chest before I recall my reason for being on my hands and knees in front of this magnificent specimen of man—my diamond. I quickly explain, “My ring. A diamond from it got loose.”

Without hesitation, he slides off the plush leather seat and edges next to me. He lifts my hand and studies the remains of the ring on my finger. I can feel him forming a judgment against the ring, me, before he remarks, “Looks like the prong broke.”

I jerk my hand back as much from the charge of this stranger’s touch as the driving necessity to find that diamond—quickly. Haughtily, I inform him, “It was my mother’s.”

Something shifts in his eyes. It’s as if he’s assessing me in a single glance, delving into my soul without asking a single question. His countenance shifts, softens. “I wouldn’t have pegged family being important to a woman like you.”

“What do you mean, ‘a woman like me?’ For all that’s holy, it’s Christmas,” I snap. Sitting on this plane is the last place I want to be, but I was ordered from the bosom of my family’s celebration to be airborne as quickly as possible with as little bitching as I could manage.

I’m already in a piss poor mood due to my father’s edict and now this?