The Contract: Sunshine by Shiree McCarver

nicely.  “My cell phone battery is dead and I can pay him out of the thousand dollars you offered me.”
    “Afraid not.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me.”  He paused to look at her.  “Besides, I don’t carry that much cash with me.  I will take you home.”
    Silently she fretted as she doubled her steps to keep up with his stride. 
    A couple of times she stumbled but each time he was there to catch her and steady her again.  At least after the second stumble, he slowed his agitated stride.
    As they continued to make their way back to the Piccolo Belli s sima, she checked out the broadness of his back.  A lthough he wasn't overly muscle-bound, he appeared to have the hard, sinewy physique of someone that took great care of his body.  Either that, or like her, he had good genes that allowed him to be frivolous and hearty in appetite wit h out a care.  Several of her friends hated her for her metabolism.
    Reflectively she thought...Yoon definitely had a tailor to fashion his clothes perfectly.  His fitted dinner suit was the latest Japanese f a shion.  She saw it on the runway during the spring in Milan. 
    Wow, had it only been a few months since she was living richly and spending mummy darling’s current hubby’s generosity because they thought she was going to eventually earn her own fortune?  Little did they know her mother was not the Dupree heiress they had thought they managed to snag and the fact that Sunshine was, is a family secret that allows her mother to still receive a yearly allotment from her father’s e s tate.  Any normal woman could live from check to check off that large allotment, but not the several times removed Myrna Shaw Dupree.
    The thoughts of her mother depressed her even more.  She dreaded the conversation she knew was coming in regards to the preac h er.  No telling how many times she’d already called her.  Sunshine su p posed there was something wonderful about a cellular phone with a dead battery. 
    She secretly admired Yoon’s body while he wasn’t loo k ing.   Looking at him, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she ne v er wanted to visit Asia during her travels.  Oh yeah, she remembered now.  Each time she suggested it to her friends they didn’t want to go because it would be too boring when there were no hot men to choose from like in Italy and Paris.
    Her girlfriends, the same ones that were nowhere to be found now that she was on “income restriction,” had whined and giggled that Asian men were too short; too skinny; too timid; oh and the dreaded...penis too small theory.  They had to be bad lovers, they would say.
    What Sunshine never understood about that theory was...if Asian men were such bad lovers why were the Asian countries the ones with the most people?  There were over one point three billion in China alone last year.  In fact, they had a shortage of women.
    Wouldn’t that mean some women were enjoying sex with Asian men?  The stereotyping about Asian men was probably made up by those women that were having sex with them so they wouldn’t have to share them with the rest of the world. 
    Sunshine snickered at her own reasoning.  Yoon glanced back at her in question and she shook her head looking away from his face.  He was too damn attractive for his own good.  It was because of him she was thinking these thoughts and feeling all scrumptious inside.
    Now that she was given the opportunity to appreciate an Asian man that lived within her own realm of possibilities, she would never listen to her friends again when they were making plans to go abroad.  That is if she ever could afford to do so again while she was still young enough to appreciate it.  If her family has their way, she would be ma r ried and having babies by spring of next year.
    “I can’t believe you’ve managed to remain quiet this long,” Yoon’s deep voice interrupted her ponderings.
    “Miss my voice, do you?”  She released an inward groan.