Plush Book 1: A Billionaire Romance (11 page)

I gasped and clasped a hand to my mouth, unable to contain my horror. The pages were each a full-sized image of Cooper and me in the dim hallway from the launch party. The first few were innocent enough. We just looked like we were talking, but then as they went on, it was clear that whoever the photographer was had waited around and caught the whole scene on their camera.

Cooper pressed against me, his head bent down, his lips on my neck, hands lost in my hair. My dress hem pushed up as I crushed my body to his.

The last picture showed me leaving the hallway and there was no mistaking it was me in the full frontal shot.

There was no room for reasonable doubt. The pictures were me and they were Cooper. No one would argue otherwise.

I searched my memory but for the life of me, couldn’t remember even seeing anyone the whole time I was in the hallway. I knew there had been photographers at the party. Lots of them. But none of them would have been looking in dark, bathroom hallways. Right?

I was starting to get a headache as I stared at the pictures in front of me. I wanted to reach out and grab them all away from Rita. Rip them into little pieces. Burn them. Anything! But my hands stayed glued to my lap as I desperately tried to maintain some appearance of professionalism.

“Is this really necessary?” Bryce asked as he began to gather all the pictures, setting the pile face down on the desk. He glanced at me and then back at the bitch.

“Apparently so. I spoke with Miss Rand earlier this afternoon and she was less than truthful with me in regards to this very situation.”

“Where did those even come from?” I asked, figuring I had nothing to lose. My job was already gone at this point.

“Does it really matter? The source is not the issue. The actions are. These pictures very clearly display your blatant disregard for the policies and procedures that are required of our employees. So, as I said before, I will have to ask you to gather your belongings and leave the building immediately. HR will ensure that your final check is deposited by the end of the business day.”

“Rita, come on, be reasonable. It’s not like this is the first time this has happened,” Bryce pleaded.

My eyes darted to him, wondering what he meant by that. Not the first time? Did he mean with Cooper? Or just in general?

“It’s a done deal. Miss Rand, you are excused. Bryce and I have further business so we won’t be able to walk you out. Brittany will be waiting to escort you.”

“Rita, please, you don’t understand. It was a mistake, and trust me, it will not happen again. Not with anyone! Especially not Coop—Mr. Brighton.”

As soon as the outburst escaped from my mouth, I wished I could take it back. Giving that bitch the satisfaction of watching me beg was only adding to my nausea.

“The decision has been made. You’re done here,” she answered.

I got up and stalked from the room, shooting a final sympathetic glance at Bryce before turning to leave. All I could do was hope that it wasn’t too late for him, and that Rita was just bluffing to get rid of me and hopefully stifle any tantrum.

Brittany was waiting for me outside the door with a stupid smirk on her face. “Please follow me.”

I spun on my heel and glared at her. “Don’t speak to me. I know all about you and Cooper and I have half a mind to go back in there and spill your dirty little secrets. Leave me alone.”

She laughed in my face. “It wouldn’t matter even if you did. I was never stupid enough to get caught on camera,” she hissed back at me.

I was stunned. For a moment it seemed like I had my answer as to who sent the pictures in the first place. It had to be her. How else would she have known of their existence? But then again, she was Rita’s closest assistant, always half a step behind her and probably had access to all of her files and paperwork. She’d probably seen them on Rita’s desk prior to the meeting. I also realized that if she’d been the one trying to get me fired, she wouldn’t have gone out of her way to warn Cooper of what was going on here in the first place. Unless she was just trying to get on his good side. Possibly she wasn’t over him. Maybe she wanted him back.

“Ugh, whatever!” I said out loud, more to myself and my insane mental argument than to her.

She backed off of me and picked up her phone. “Get me security.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m leaving. You don’t need to call security.”

I couldn’t tell if she was pretending or not, so to be safe, I stormed off to round up my few belonging from my cubicle and then made my way out of the building, openly glaring at anyone who dared to look my way as I flew through the office. There was absolutely no point in trying to blend in, not make waves, or stay inconspicuous anymore. Let them talk. I no longer cared.

Chapter Thirteen

Thirteen hours of sleep—helped along greatly by a bottle of Merlot—started to repair my frayed nerves and I woke up Saturday afternoon feeling a little better. Free, almost. Sure, it sucked that I now had no source of income, but the knot in my stomach feeling that used to hit me every morning before leaving for work was gone. I rolled over in bed and snuggled up closer to the fuzzy ball of Sam next to me. He started purring and I smiled. It was a simple smile but it felt so good. It was the first time I’d felt relaxed in weeks. Just content to be.

My happy bubble popped a few hours later when I finally got out of bed and went into the kitchen to get some breakfast. I was met by the stack of unopened envelopes I had shoved into the corner of my old school, roll top desk. I had repainted it a few years back to match my shabby chic décor. It turned out really nice, but was covered by so much junk mail and scrap papers that you couldn’t really tell anymore.

I ignored it for the time being and grabbed a bagel out of my pantry, and after properly dressing it up with a glob of vegan cream cheese, I parked my ass in front of my laptop to start looking for new jobs. I first went to my email and saw the statement from my final paycheck.

“Ouch,” I said out loud, looking at the small bump it made in my checking account. I had already been overdrawn, so a partial check wasn’t enough to make much difference. I slowly exhaled and clicked out of the website.

Sam came over and hopped into the chair next to me. I reached out my free hand and scratched the top of his head. “Don’t worry, we can still afford kibble.”

He meowed at me in understanding.

I clicked around, browsing a few popular job search websites. Nothing really stuck out and I started to feel defeated before even really getting started. The only thing on my resume was my coffee shop job, which was great, if that is what I wanted to do. But I knew I wanted more. The opportunity with Spotlight had been a total lucky strike, simply by meeting Bryce and building a friendship over time. I knew that most people wouldn’t take a chance on someone like me, not for something real and important, with skills but no experience.

I remembered Cooper’s job offer. I had been tempted to call him last night. To tell him about the horrible meeting with Rita, and getting fired. I had come close to a good, old-fashioned drunk dial, but had resisted. Or maybe that was around the time I passed out. Either way, I was just glad I hadn’t gone through with it. Although, I had to admit, I was curious at what kind of job he would offer me. Brighton Enterprises was a huge company with branches in all kinds of industries. The possibilities would be endless and there was a good chance I could get stuck in some obscure department with little to no contact with him. Surely he didn’t make the rounds on a daily basis. Then again, I wasn’t really sure what he did all day.

I started to wonder what he was doing right now. I wondered if he slept in on the weekends or if he just worked right through, not stopping to rest. Did he play golf with his richy-rich buddies? Did he cook himself breakfast? Order out for every meal? Have a hot maid catering to his every need?

My mind flooded with images of him, imagining all the scenarios as they popped into my head, adding myself into whatever the situation was. There was no denying that with a man like that—life could become quite the adventure. Traveling, fancy parties, anything and everything you wanted right at your fingertips.

I shook my head. “Stop obsessing,” I ordered myself.

I forced myself to return my attention back to the computer screen and continue to live in reality, where I needed a new job if I wanted to buy groceries and pay rent. I couldn’t keep visiting fantasy land where I was a billionaire’s mistress, living in a dream world.

In the middle of my job hunt, I got distracted by a nagging thought in the back of my head. A memory. I kept replaying the image of Rita handing me the print-out in her office last night. Something about it was catching in my mind. My fingernails tapped along the keyboard as I tried to sort it out.

I couldn’t shake the voodoo, déjà vu feeling. “They were emails! Someone emailed the pictures to her. I need to see those messages,” I said to Sam.

I figured that my company login would be restricted by now, but I pulled up the website to log in for employees and tried it anyway. The cursor spun for a few seconds and I waited for it to kick back, but to my surprise, it popped open my inbox and everything was there, just as it had been the day before.

“Bunch of genius’s they have running that show,” I said, laughing to myself. I mean really…isn’t that Firing 101? Change logins, change security codes, take back keys.

With this new piece of information, my brain began to formulate a plan. My fingers followed along, dancing across the keyboard at a rapid-fire pace, digging deeper and deeper into the company website infrastructure. Eventually I hit a wall, where my login was not high enough clearance to get me in. I felt a little guilty, but I decided the next login I needed would be Bryce’s, and since I knew him the best I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to hack his account.

Sure enough, his password was easy to unlock—his dog’s name and birthday, which I only knew because he showed me pictures of her now and again back when we knew each other at the coffee shop—and I suddenly had access to everything. As a manager, his login worked to get me into the main database that contained all of the clients’ information and logs and logs of data.

“Jackpot!” I pumped my fist when the screen loaded and I could see the list of every employee and their personal files. I quickly scanned to Rita’s, working as if someone was going to bust down my door any moment, and I scribbled her login down on a napkin, just in case I got locked out before I finished gathering all the information. “God she makes bank. No wonder she’s such a bitch,” I mumbled to Sam who was now on my lap.

From there, I went back to the company email portal, plugged in her login details, and BAM. All of Rita’s emails loaded on my screen.

I chuckled loudly, thoroughly impressed with my efforts. Sam leapt off my lap and hightailed for the bedroom.

It was hard to hold back my giddy energy, but I slowed down and focused on each subject, scanning for anything fishy-looking.

A few threads were between Rita and Bryce. My curiosity got the better of me and I pulled open the conversation and began to read. Apparently, Rita had been skeptical of me from the beginning and her messages got downright hostile, dating back to the day I met Cooper.

“…inexperience, naïve, uneducated girl who is in way over her head,
” and
“I don’t know what you were thinking with this one,”
and
“if I didn’t know better, I would have thought she slept with you to even get this job in the first place
,” were among the highlights, as I read Rita’s side of the conversation. Bryce tirelessly defended me and constantly reassured Rita that I would find my place and that I would do great things with the company.

My heart warmed at his championing efforts. I made a mental note to text him later and make sure everything was okay after my departure, praying that he hadn’t been caught in Rita’s warpath.

Tired of the virtual assault of my character, I clicked off that set of emails and moved on. The next batch of emails was between the design team and Rita. I pulled up the first one in the series and the whole screen filled with the final product ad
I
had collaborated to design. The image flashed in my mind the way it had looked on the huge screen the night of the product line launch party. The first night Cooper had touched me. Kissed me. Claimed me.

My eyes closed as I remembered every sensation, movement, flash of heat between us, pressed up against the wall, his kisses on my bare skin, his hands on my waist, his lips on my ear.

“Ugh!” I forced my eyes open and back on the screen in front of me. My new unemployed status allowed me oodles of spare time. However, if there was one thing I did not have time for, it was sitting around playing the “what if” game over Cooper Brighton.

I went back through the general inbox but couldn’t find anything else that pertained to me. I sat back in my chair and my fingers went back to tapping the keys as my mind turned over the possibilities. I thought the pictures she’d printed out had to be from an email. They weren’t high quality enough to have been from a photographer or a PI. Ironic they weren’t printed on better paper, considering they were likely printed by an ad agency exec.

Off topic, I reminded myself.

As my mind wandered I saw a list of folders on the left side of the screen. It took a little more thought and a lot more creative hacks, but after a few minutes I was into the one labeled Internal Affairs. I had to laugh a little at the title. “She sure takes herself seriously, doesn’t she?” I asked aloud.

I clicked on the first set of emails in this new folder and sure enough, an email popped up with a bunch of attachments.

“Finally,” I whispered under my breath, assuming they were the pictures.

For whatever reason, my finger hesitated over the track pad, waiting just a beat before clicking down.

The download window popped open and the photos loaded one at a time, cascading down the page. Oddly enough, seeing the photos didn’t fill me with the same heat and longing that I’d had moments before when replaying the night in my mind. I saw the images as an outsider, someone who wasn’t a part of that moment, and it felt extremely creepy.