Page 1 of Off Limits Mogul

Chapter 1

Rhys

Even though it feels like my balls are melting, I’m too starved to bother with a shower before filling my stomach.

What a day.

I enter the hotel’s restaurant.

“Mr. Hartford,” the maître d’hôtel says with a head bow.

“Good evening.”

“Let me show you to your table.”

Dinner service ends at ten p.m. Unfortunately for me, by the time I got back to the hotel it was eleven p.m. This is my third hellish day in a row in Ho Chi Minh City. Thank God for the top-notch service at my usual stomping ground. One phone call, and I was set. No wonder the thirty-nine-story Reverie Saigon Hotel in Vietnam is synonymous with excellence.

I follow the maître d’ through a bustling and animated crowd. Even at this late time, the luxurious restaurant is packed. As we pass a table, two gorgeous blondes rake their eyes up and down the length of my body, eyeing me like I’m a juicy steak.

The one with the blue eyes touches her bare neck.

The other one squints her brown eyes at me, almost as if she’s committing every part of me to memory.

I respond with a polite smile and keep walking.

You’re losing your touch, Hartford.

The blatant desire shining bright in their eyes, is a reminder that I’ve been a little too serious about adulting lately. If my day hadn’t whipped my ass—scratch that—if this week hadn’t been a complete mind fuck, I’d invite them to my table. A red-hot night of raunchiness isn’t on the cards for me. Not when I have more shit to shovel bright and early tomorrow morning.

“Since you pre-ordered your meal, a waiter should be out shortly,” the maître d’ says when we arrive at my table. “Can I get you a drink in the meantime?”

I need at least five drinks to mellow out after the day I’ve had, but let’s start with one. “I’ll have a local beer, please?—”

My phone rings.

I look at my screen and smile wide.

The maître d’hôtel excuses himself with a head nod.

I respond in kind before answering. “Noah.”

“Hey, Rhys,” my best friend says. “Trolling bars for a victim?”

“Don’t ever quit your day job,” I say. “And for your information, I don’t have to go far. I have takers.”

“Plural?”

“Plural.”

“Mr. Player,” he says. “It’s good to be you.”

“Well, we can’t all be Rhys Hartford.”

I slide my weary body onto one of the seats and lean back, biting down a groan.

The blondes are still staring, throwing flirtatious glancesmy way.

Sorry, ladies. I’m jetlagged, bone-tired, and my head is so crammed with stuff, it’s about to explode.