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for fucking.
    Actually…
    Releasing a low growl under her breath, she struggled to retain the zen-like pleasure her business gave her.
    It was too early for her assistant to be in; too early for most of her staff, actually. She loved the hours before the normal workday started. She could deal with East Coast and European markets in peace.
    She sat down in her large desk chair and gave it a second. A second for the zing of pleasure, for the sense of purpose to take over and tell her whether she would reach for the phone or boot up her computer. To tell her how she could make the world dance and shift.
    Her mother had sneered at her profession. It didn’t matter that Akira’s bars and clubs were expensive, exclusive venues. They would always be dens of sin. Akira would always be a useless, partying slut.
    Stop thinking about her.
    Easier said than done. Akira cranked her head on her shoulders, the nagging restlessness that had ridden her all weekend settling over her like an unwanted mantle. Running hadn’t gotten rid of it. Neither had furiously reverse alphabetizing and then alphabetizing her extensive book collection.
    Work called. She was in the process of acquiring a chain of a hundred pubs and bars in Europe, which would take her business to the next level. A purchase of this magnitude was huge for her, and she needed to ensure everything was going smoothly.
    Right…now.
    Now?
    Now.
    She scratched at a small stain on her desk.
    Damn it.
    She should have called a friend this weekend. How long had it been since she’d enjoyed an athletic, sweaty bout between the sheets? Between her mother’s death and the issues with her estate, as well as her preoccupation with finding her grandmother’s legacy, too long. Maybe that was why she’d been ready to climb Jacob like a tree. Maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to get his ass out of her dreams.
    Yeah, sure. It wasn’t because she’d spent a good chunk of her life battling her attraction to the man. And the man’s ass.
    Nope, this was old-fashioned sexual frustration, something remedied as easily as dialing a number. Ready to do just that, Akira pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through the list of available candidates. Models, actors, socialites, politicians, businessmen and women, lawyers, doctors, even a lumberjack or two from when she’d gone through her outdoorsmen phase.
    Oh, yes. A lumberjack might be nice. She had a sudden and inexplicable hankering for a nice, thick beard.
    Did she know any green-eyed lumberjacks?
    Akira snarled and tossed her cell on the desk. Heaven help her.
    It’s because you have so much on your mind.
    She snorted, too viciously honest to lie even to herself. Multitasking was her life’s blood. She was capable of feeling raw and juggling a multibillion-dollar business. Unless, it seemed, she added her unwanted attraction to a man who despised her to the mix. Then, you know, everything went to shit.
    The phone rang, shrill and loud, interrupting her thoughts. Distraction! Not checking the display, she snatched it up on the second ring. “Akira Mori.”
    “Akira! My love. You are a hard woman to get a hold of.”
    Ice spread through her veins, chilling her. That would teach her not to pay attention. “Father.” The single word was mocking. Over the years, she’d made an art form out of paternal annoyance, rivaled only by her aptitude at maternal rage. “That should tell you something. I’m busy.”
    “Too busy for your own father?”
    “Too busy for the cameras following my father around.”
    Her dad gave a chuckle, roughened from years of smoking. She knew he was probably tucked away in his lavish Calabasas home this early in the morning, his new family sound asleep from whatever late-night escapade they’d enjoyed the evening before.
    Thank God the Mori Corporation had been dissolved long ago, the great hotels once bearing her family name now Hiltons and Marriotts and God knows what else. Granted, the move had