Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (2 page)

He never missed a beat, of course. “In fact, he appears to be washing down my doughnuts with Thunderbird – I wouldn’t see that as the beverage of choice at Killane Corporate Holdings, but there you are. Tell me, Ms. Daniels, does this sort of thing happen every day in my lobby, or did I just make a lucky choice in deciding to use the main entrance today?”

 My brain finally clunked into gear. Think, Ashley, think – you’re doomed, sure, but go down to defeat in style, okay?

First, just who is he talking about? Which one of the regular crew of homeless guys happened to wander in early today?

With an effort, I pulled my eyes away from my handsome billionaire boss and his deadly smile. I noted the crowd of executives, assistants, and hangers-on hovering off to one side – every one of them wearing the identical ‘thank God it isn’t me’ expression – and then I spotted Jerry slouched in a chair, swilling Thunderbird and happily working his way through yesterday’s leftover doughnuts.

Swell, this was doable.  Jerry was a sweet old guy, and with some gentle persuasion and a promise of future doughnuts, I could probably get him out the door in under a minute. Then I could deal with how screwed I undoubtedly was, but in the meantime, at least this poor frazzle-brained old veteran would be out of Mr. Killane’s line of fire.

I leaned over Jerry, as my eyes watered from his personal aroma – not his fault, I reminded myself, since showers and soap are hard to come by when you’re living on the street. “Jerry, my boss is here, you need to go –”

“Your boss?” The old guy lurched to his feet, staggering a bit and spilling doughnut crumbs onto the immaculate floor, and he stared right at Mr. Killane.

“Mr. Boss, Ashley here is a really nice lady!” His cracked voice echoed across the lobby, and I ducked as he pointed me out by brandishing the Thunderbird bottle at my head.

“I’m sure she’s a fine girl, Jerry.” Mr. Killane beamed the world’s most insincere smile at Jerry, and then fixed me with a blank stare.

I grabbed the old man’s elbow, pried the bottle from his grip and stowed it in his coat pocket, and then steered him towards the entrance, praying for a miracle. I counted every step toward those doors as a tiny victory, I let myself think I might survive this – and then he twisted out of my grasp and swerved back toward the reception desk.

 I watched in horror as he moved with surprising speed to stand directly in front of Mr. Killane.

“Mr. Boss, you should give Ashley a raise!”

At that range Jerry’s breath would be enough to peel paint off a wall, and I saw Mr. Killane blink a bit as he leaned further back in my chair, lacing his hands behind his head.

“I’ll certainly give that idea due consideration, Jerry.” My boss looked over at me with a thin smile that said he would give due consideration to whether he should kill me with a chainsaw or a hatchet.

I scrabbled in my purse, came up with the five-dollar bill that I’d planned to spend on lunch, and thrust it into Jerry’s hand. “Jerry, here’s five bucks you can take down to the doughnut place on the next block, but you have to leave right now.”

He bellowed like a happy, ailing bull. “You’re NICE, Ashley!”

He grinned at the five, twisting it in his fingers as I herded him toward the door. Once outside, I had to give him a shove to get him headed in the right direction for the doughnut shop, and off he wandered, smiling from ear to ear. He’d probably end up spending my five on more Thunderbird instead of doughnuts, but that was between him and the gods of alcoholism.

I went back inside to meet my fate.

Mr. Killane seemed determined to extend his reign as lord of the reception desk, and remained lounging in my chair as I walked toward him.

I stopped just short of the desk. “Sir, I apologize for Jerry, he’s just a harmless old guy who –”

“I hardly care if he’s the patron saint of homeless derelicts, Ms. Daniels – he doesn’t belong in my lobby, guzzling that wretched swill and eating my doughnuts. Really, don’t you think my doughnuts deserve better than Thunderbird?” He arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow.

Mr. Killane stared at me, waiting for an answer. I looked down at my worn red pumps. The crowd of executives huddled a few feet away, watching us as if we were the cast of an award-winning Broadway play about a serial killer.

“Ms. Daniels, have you forgotten how to speak English? Or are you in mourning for my doughnuts, doomed to meet their end in a belly full of cheap wine?”

It might have been his confident voice, the smile on his full lips, or the shameful fact that I felt a tiny thrill of arousal at standing this close to him – he was the asshole of the universe, but he was a gorgeous asshole. But in the end, I think it was just that behind his perfect smile, this man with more money than God looked at me and Jerry as if we were pieces of dog shit he’d found clinging to his imported Italian shoes.

Something inside me rebelled.

I tried to stop it. Have you ever had one of those moments when you were horrified at the words spilling out of your mouth, but you just kept right on blabbing anyway? It happened to me, and it was like trying to hold back water roaring out from a broken dam.

“Fuck your doughnuts.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me – I said ‘fuck your doughnuts,’ in clear, unaccented English. You know, you might want to see a doctor about your hearing problem.”

Ashley, what is WRONG with you?

He stared at me. He said nothing. A minute of excruciating silence passed. Meanwhile, all my internal alarm bells were ringing off the scale, three or four of the executives and assorted underlings waiting off to the side gasped, and the rest just stood frozen in shock.

Finally, Mr. Killane tilted his head just a bit and locked his eyes on mine. “Ms. Daniels, it’s quite clear that you –”

“And by the way, those were my doughnuts, Mr. Killane, because I paid for them out of my own damn pocket, okay? And I’ll hand out
my
doughnuts to –”

“No, Ms. Daniels, they’re mine.”

My brain realized a beat too late that the crack resounding through the lobby was the sound of Mr. Killane’s shoes slamming to the floor as he flashed from sitting to standing in an instant. A millisecond ago, he was draped over my chair like a leopard dreaming about its next meal – now he pounced.

He leaned over the reception desk, his arms braced straight as doom on either side, his hands splayed wide on the gleaming glass-and-chrome surface of the desktop. He loomed over me with every inch of his towering body, his blazing eyes pinned me in place like the claws of a cat spearing into a mouse, and the suicidal courage I’d summoned a moment before decided to take a hike and leave me to my fate.

I stared back at him, my mouth hanging open while vague thoughts of unemployment wandered through my brain.

“You see, Ms. Daniels, unless you’re supplementing your Killane Corporate Holdings paycheck by rolling hobos or playing saxophone in the park in your spare time, the money in your pocket comes directly out of my pocket. Therefore, those were my doughnuts. In point of strictest fact, everything in this lobby is mine.”

Without warning and without looking, he lifted his right leg and kicked back at my chair, sending it slamming into the wall behind him.

“That chair is mine. This desk is mine. The elevators are mine, the hideous plants we seem to have scattered everywhere are mine, and there’s an 1880 oil painting by Van Gogh around here somewhere which has been mine ever since I paid seventy million dollars for it last year.”

He leaned forward until his eyes were only inches away from mine.

“More to the point, your luscious ass is mine.”

He nodded at the flock of executives waiting for him nearby. “Those gibbons in suits over there are mine. Every scurrying ant of a wage slave in this extravagant building is mine, and –”

Whoa, wait up – the tall, gorgeous billionaire thought my ass was luscious? Did I wander into an alternate universe this morning?

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed one of the executive types staring at my allegedly luscious rear and then turning to raise an eyebrow at the guy standing next to him, who responded with an indifferent shrug. Apparently, those two gibbons did not share Mr. Killane’s high opinion of my ass.

“ – and is your attention wandering, Ms. Daniels?”

My deadly boss now stood two steps back from my desk. His arms were crossed, his head was cocked to one side, and he looked every bit of his imposing six feet and five inches. His voice dripped with acid, his body language vibrated with contained anger, and if the look in his blue-violet eyes could kill, I’d be bleeding out on the floor with a dozen knives sticking out of me.

“Even your modest pay grade should be enough to compel you to pay attention to me when I’m talking to you – Mr. Covington, just what sort of salary am I paying her, anyway?”

He whipped his head around to stare at the herd of suits hovering a few feet away. They backed away a step like a single frightened animal, leaving the unfortunate Mr. Covington to stand alone.

“Sir, main reception is not a salaried position – it’s paid at a straight wage of … $14 an hour, I believe?”

I chimed in, “More like $13.25 an hour, Mr. Killane, and no benefits.”

“Really? I don’t see how a church mouse could live on that kind of money, not in this city – if you were going to remain employed here, I’d have to do something about that, but as matters stand … oh, and Mr. Covington?”

The suits took another step back, and the fidgeting Mr. Covington looked as if he’d rather be standing on the surface of the sun than under the withering glare of Devon Killane.

“Yes, sir?”

“In future, Mr. Covington, I expect accurate information from you. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

Mr. Covington shrank back into the herd. At the same moment, another of the executives stepped forward, sliding her eyes from Mr. Killane to the elevators and back again. I noticed she held the handle of her briefcase so tightly that her knuckles were white.

“Sir, whenever you’re ready to wrap this up, we have the negotiation team from Botetourt & Rockbridge waiting for you in the main conference room on the thirtieth floor.”

“And how long have I been letting them cool their heels up there, Ms. Buchanan?”

Her eyes flicked to the digital clock mounted over the bank of elevators. “One hour and twenty-three minutes, Mr. Killane.” No inaccuracy from Ms. Buchanan – she at least could probably count on still being employed at the end of the day.

“Very well – I suppose I should start drifting up that way, but let’s take our time about it, shall we?”

Then he walked away from me without another word. He strolled out from behind my reception desk, he sauntered in the direction of the elevators, his executives and aides closed in around him like scavengers trailing after a shark, and he was gone, just like that.

Almost.

Mr. Killane and his retinue approached the elevators. The crowd of employees and visitors already waiting there melted away in an instant, suddenly remembering urgent root canal appointments, or feeling the need to take lunch a few hours early, or coming up with any activity at all that involved avoiding the notice of the CEO of Killane Corporate Holdings.

The executives and aides stood staring like an array of expensively dressed and very important statues at the floor indicator lights above the middle elevator. Mr. Killane waited at the center of the group, still as death and staring up like the rest. He stood out as the tallest man there by at least a few inches, looming over his underlings like a lion in the company of house cats.

The indicator lights flickered, the elevator bell dinged – and as the doors slid open and the crowd of besuited gibbons surged forward, Devon Killane turned and stared right at me.

He stayed where he was as everyone else crowded into the elevator, and he kept staring at me. His expression was – confused? Bewildered? Edgy, unsure, at a loss? Where was that blazing anger from a minute ago? I had no idea what he was thinking or why he was staring at me – I just stared right back at him, utterly lost as to what the hell was going on here.

A few brave aides finally emerged to herd him into the elevator with everyone else, but Mr. Killane was still staring at me as the doors slid closed.

***

Who was she? In a world of shadows, why was she so real? Why did I care?

***

So was I fired or what?

I spent the next eight hours asking myself that question. I slipped behind my desk on shaky legs, I retrieved my chair, I plopped my theoretically luscious ass into its cushioned embrace, and I wondered when the other shoe was going to drop.

For the first couple of hours, I assumed that someone from security would be by any minute to take me by the scruff of the neck and hurl me out into the street. I entertained visions of fighting back, of standing on my desk and issuing heroic declarations about management’s abuse of the humble working class – but I nixed that idea, seeing as how I didn’t want everyone’s mental classification of me as ‘that fat girl’ to be amended to ‘that crazy fat girl.’

Eleven o’clock rolled around, and still no security goons. Well, my former boss did have that meeting with the representatives from Rockbridge & Botetourt to get through, and terrorizing those poor bastards would burn up at least an hour or two of the Chief Executive Asshole’s time. He probably planned to fire me right before lunch, so he could go out to celebrate afterwards at some trendy restaurant in the keep-the-disgusting-common-riffraff-out part of town.

Twelve-thirty, and it seemed that I was still an employee of Killane Corporate Holdings. My own lunch ran from twelve-thirty to one, but since I’d fronted Jerry that five to advance his drinking career, I had to be satisfied with feeding some change to the vending machines in the basement break room used by the housekeeping staff. Yep, there was nothing like a ceremonial last meal of pretzel twists and Pepsi to remind me of my pending status of extreme poverty.

I was back at my post just before one, and security still had not arrived to escort me out of the building. It had to be just a matter of time before Devon “Your Luscious Ass Is Mine” Killane got around to giving me the boot, though, right?