An Irresistible Bachelor by J. R. Ward

phone rang and he answered it. Grayson Bennett, his college roommate, was on the line.
    â€œI’ve cleared my calendar,” Gray said. “I’m ready to spend the next month or so assessing your candidacy in Boston.”
    â€œExcellent. What’s the first order of business?”
    â€œWe’re going to set up your exploratory committee. We’ll pull together ten or twelve people from different sectors in the state and do a quiet assessment of the landscape. We need to know who will back you and who’s going to be trouble, what kind of money we can raise, how you’re perceived. Should take four or five weeks.”
    â€œWhen are you coming in?”
    â€œTomorrow night. I’m staying at the Four Seasons.”
    â€œYou bringing female company?” As a resounding no came over the line, Jack laughed. “No more—what was her name? Sarah?”
    â€œSophia. No, she’s gone. She was starting to talk rings, and as you know, I’m allergic to diamonds. She’s a good woman—for someone else.”
    After they hung up, Jack headed for the bedroom to finish getting dressed. For a long time, he and Gray had shared the same view of marriage, namely that it was right for other people. But hell, if he could change his mind, so could Gray.
    Just not when it came to Sophia, evidently.
    The grandfather clock in the corner started to chime and Jack hurried up.
    In a few minutes, he was going to meet with two brothers, one a physician and the other an engineer. Bryan and Kevin McKay had devised a new, faster, and cleaner way of processing blood products like plasma and platelets. They had the proper patents, so the intellectual property rights were sewn up, and with some good contracts with a few hospitals, they had an income stream. Currently housed in a small shop on the West Coast, they wanted to expand and they needed some big money. If they had the right mix of debt to equity and some reasonable growth projections, Jack figured there was a potential to make some money.
    He was looking forward to the meeting and there was no better way to spend a Sunday afternoon as far as he was concerned. One of the things he liked about the venture capital business was that it was twenty-four/ seven. There was never any downtime, no wasted moments, always something that needed to be done. Sundays, holidays, birthdays, weddings. He worked through them all.
    Hell, the day his father had been buried, he’d spent half the wake in his study setting up the funding for a tech firm down in Atlanta. But that hadn’t just been about business, he supposed. He’d found it difficult to mourn someone whose sustained disapproval had marked his life so indelibly, and getting some work done had seemed like a more productive use of time than faking sorrow.
    Bad family dynamics aside, with every sunrise, there were places he had to be, things he needed to accomplish, people who wanted to get to him and his money. It was a nonstop, frenetic ride with no clear end in sight. In all that swirling chaos, he found purpose. He knew being governor of Massachusetts would be just as complicated and demanding. And if he ever made it to the Oval Office, the stakes would be astronomical.
    Jack slid a silk tie around his neck and faced the mirror. He couldn’t wait for the future.

5
    ON TUESDAY, Callie took a train up the coast of Connecticut to Boston’s Back Bay Station and then transferred to a commuter rail line that took her out to the suburbs. As she stepped off in Wellesley with her old Samsonite suitcase and a toolbox full of supplies, she stared up a steep hill.
    Now she knew why they called it Cliff Road.
    By the time she walked up to a pair of stone pillars bearing the right number, her arms were going numb and she had pins and needles in her shoulders. She dropped her load and looked down the driveway. There wasn’t much to see. The strip of asphalt disappeared into a thicket of