Seduced By My Billionaire Boss (The Billionaire Boss Series, #1) (4 page)

She dabbed her perfectly painted lips onto a napkin. “And as for the boss’ son, you could have canceled with me, you know. I wouldn’t have minded.”

I tossed a piece of rice at her. “He looks like the Greek god of employment termination notices. I am not going down that road.”

She giggled and held out her hand, completely oblivious, as a star-struck waiter handed her the check and then promptly walked into a wall. I rolled my eyes and returned to my food. Who was I kidding? Rose wasn’t exactly the best person to talk to in regards to ‘normal relationship advice.’ Let’s put it this way, each of my four older brothers had been in love with her at some point in their life. It wasn’t even her fault. She’d been blessed with a model’s face and a razor-sharp tongue—two things that served her well in a career of public relations. But when it came to keeping her head down and steering clear of potentially hazardous romantic entanglements, she didn’t have a clue.

“Wait a minute,” she said as she scribbled her name under the card, “which son? The older or the younger?”

“Younger,” I answered between bites. “Michael.”

She frowned thoughtfully. “Isn’t he the one who got banned from the Brakener’s Club after falling into the fountain with a host of Victoria’s Secret models?”

“He’s the one.”

She considered this for a moment. “On second thought—probably best you skipped the lunch. In fact, make it a point to skip all lunches.”

I grinned but shook my head. “And what if he keeps asking me? You should have seen him at the meeting and then in the lobby—he was so obvious. What if he keeps hounding me until the wrong people notice, and then I’m standing on the sidewalk, holding the contents of my desk in a little carton, thinking, ‘Actually, lunch wouldn’t have been so bad...?’”

She slipped her credit card back into her purse and looked at me calmly. “If he does anything to endanger your job, just let me know, and I’ll pay him a little visit.”

Somehow, despite the Larchwood name and the towering inferno in which they resided, I believed in her threat whole-heartedly. She may not have Michael Larchwood’s billions, but she was an equal force in her own right.

“In the meantime,” she poured me a cup of sake to match her own, “you have a job to do Miss Seventieth Floor.”

I clinked my cup against hers and braced myself for what was to come. “Once more into the brink...”

E
ither the clock on my desk had been tampered with as a prank, or time itself had slowed down as karmic punishment for my little identity theft. My ‘first day at the office welcome wagon’ had been postponed in light of the new scramble regarding the merger, and I spent the remaining afternoon hours locked in my office, pouring over the same stack of papers Patti Macer had given me that morning. When I had finished with that, she came in with an even bigger stack and the news that I’d be giving an early morning presentation on it the following day. It was then that my afternoon hours began stretching into evening hours as well. When at last I could no longer ignore the looks from the irritable late-night janitor, I packed up my briefcase with whatever was left to read and shuffled down the darkened halls to the elevator.

How different it was coming in than going out, I thought as I watched the numbers descending with a feeling of hollow relief. Don’t get me wrong—I had signed up for this. I had signed up for endless hours with an impossible amount of work. I’d signed up for unprecedented stress and Machiavellian supervisors to spring last minute presentations. I’d even signed up for the new wrist groove I feared was permanently indented into my arm from typing all day.

I just hadn’t expected it all to happen at once...

“Heading home?” The night receptionist asked as I passed the front desk in the lobby.

I nodded mutely as I signed out below where I’d signed in that morning. Seven twenty to one forty-five. Not bad for a first day’s work.

“You won’t have to do this tomorrow,” the receptionist assured me.

I looked up with heavy eyes. “I’m sorry?”

“Sign in,” she explained. “Just pick up your name badge on the way inside and you should be good to go. Oh—” she rummaged around in her desk, “and that reminds me...”

Something metallic whipped out between us, and for a split second of sleep deprivation madness, I thought I was being mugged.

“Say cheese!”

I blinked sleepily as a flashbulb went off in front of my eyes. She glanced once between me and the finished product before pursing her lips and slipping the camera discreetly back in her desk.

“We’ll just try that again tomorrow, shall we?”

I nodded gratefully and waved my hand in a half-hearted goodbye before trudging out the thick-paned doors to the sidewalk. The frigid New York air bit into my skin like a million little knives and I yanked my coat tighter around me, dancing in place to keep warm as I waved my hand for a cab. Fifteen minutes and thirty dollars later, I was pushing open the door to my Upper East Side apartment.

I used the term ‘Upper East Side’ loosely when describing where I lived. It was on very bottom, the very last street that was technically considered ‘classy Manhattan.’ Look to the right, and you saw Park Avenue princesses strolling up and down the streets with designer handbags and matching dogs. Look to the left, and you were back in Midtown—cheap beer and awesome pizza. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I was the middle ground—the neutral fence sitter who got the perks of both worlds while really belonging to neither. East 60
^th
Street and proud of it!

Rosalie and I had gotten this place about two years ago when we finished our grad programs and settled into more permanent working internships. Rose advanced through the ranks quickly. Her light olive skin, onyx colored hair, and wide blue eyes couldn’t have hurt. But like I said, she was wicked-smart and PR was perfectly suited for that sort of thing. My internship at Goldman Sachs was a different ballgame altogether.

In finance, what was valued more than flash and first impression pizzazz was endurance, consistency. The ability to stick it out no matter the circumstances and do whatever it took to get the job done. Could you stay up for thirty-two hours, keeping an eye on the market while simultaneously adjusting to balance your client’s portfolios? Could you essentially survive on nothing but coffee for weeks on end and still manage to bleed red for the company? These were the sorts of questions they checked on your resume. These were the benchmarks to be attained.

For a long time, finance was primarily a man’s world. Women made up a fraction of the general population, and most of the ones who were able to gain employment were automatically forced to start as secretaries or front room hostesses. It wasn’t until the last decade or so that the doors opened to allow for women with actual business degrees. And even then, it was a rather stereotypical looking bunch. Needless to say, I didn’t fit the stereotype.

I was petite, a bit to the extreme, with creamy skin, dark eyes, and an almost invisible sprinkling of freckles across my nose. My cheeks were naturally rosy; my cinnamon colored hair had a natural shine. Even living with someone as jaw-dropping as Rose, I’d racked up my fair share of stalkers and broken hearts. It was impossible to be an attractive girl living in the city without getting into a little trouble along the way.

That being said, I did everything I could to combat these possibly career threatening attributes. I’d wear my hair in tight buns or long French braids. The hairstyle was sleek and modern, but it was also a warning. A ‘don’t fuck with me’ sort of do. Instead of dolling up each day with Rose in tight fitting designer dresses, I opted for the pencil skirt and conservative blouse. It wasn’t often that a woman would advance in this sort of corporation too far beyond the mail room, and I didn’t want to give the higher ups any excuses not to promote me. My work would stand for itself. Looks would have absolutely nothing to do with it. There were days when I considered getting frameless glasses just to experiment with the vibe...

I pushed open the door and dropped my things in a heap in the living room. Rose wasn’t home yet—her division was just as consumed with the merger as mine—and in the absence of a wingman to commiserate with, I made a bee-line for the kitchen. A massive headache was already forming, and after popping two Tylenol, I yanked open the freezer. A moment later, me and my bottle of vodka settled down on the living room floor.

About two hours later, the nylons were off, the blouse was unbuttoned, the bottle was half-empty, and I was sitting on a small island in a sea of market predictions and data analysis. I didn’t even hear it when the key clicked in the lock; I was in a pressurized world all to myself.

“What if I had been a burglar?”

I jumped in alarm, holding up a quarterly report as an automatic shield. When I lowered it a second later, breathless and blushing, I saw Rose staring at me speculatively from the door.

“Well, you’d be the worst burglar ever,” I defended myself. “Where would you hide your gun in that dress?”

“This?” She gestured down at herself before kicking off her shoes and ambling over to the couch. “This isn’t by choice. Do you think I’d volunteer to wear silk in this weather? No, this is for work. I had to go to an after party for Nike’s new line of footwear. I was a consultant.”

I shook my head sleepily. We might work for the same company, but Rose and I had very different jobs.

“So what have you been doing?” She stretched out and gazed over my ocean of papers, looking bored by the very sight of them. “What’s all this?”

“Oh, these?” I smoothed them over with a drunken fondness. “These are my friends.”

She snorted and slipped off the couch to join me. “Wow, they’ve certainly gotten you drinking the Kool-Aid.” Her eyes drifted to the vodka. “Or...something.”

I raised my hand charitably. “Help yourself.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

One of the things that Rose and I had bonded over in the beginning was that, if given the opportunity, we both preferred to drink from the bottle.

“So why are we imbibing so heavy so early? It’s only four,” she joked.

I tossed back my bangs and gave her a wry smile. “We’re celebrating my first and last day on the job.”

She gasped. “Oh no, Jen! They didn’t fire you!”

“Nope, but they will.”

“What are you...?”

I tossed up the remaining papers into a heavy cloud of financial confetti. “This, all this, I have to know it by tomorrow morning. I’m giving a presentation.”

She raised her eyebrows and picked up the nearest page. “Chinese market risk analysis of 2004? You’ve got to summarize it or something?”

“Their overall percentages dropped from point eight to point six, but what was of greater concern to me was the turnover rate at the start of the new quarter. You can’t make up thirteen weeks just by laying off forty-seven employees, am I right?” I hiccupped and waved my arm in a dismissal. “Granted, that’s just my humble opinion...”

There was a brief pause as she gave me a hard look.

“Jenna...did you
memorize
all of this?”

I struggled to keep her in focus. “You know, I always said that I had a budding photographic memory.”

“Be serious.”

“Of course I memorized it! They said I was giving a presentation and I didn’t—”

She leaned forward and took both my hands. “Jenna Harks, repeat after me: I am a ridiculous perfectionist who’s already gone above and beyond so now I’m going to bed.”

My head tilted to the side, and I squinted at her. “Could you just say that last part one more ti—”

“
Okay
.” She heaved me up by the shoulders and started herding me to my room. “That’s it; you’re done. Shower then bed.”

I glanced longingly over my shoulder as I was manhandled down the hall. “I’d like to read through them just once more before—”

“Nope.” She sat me firmly on the counter then started up the hot water. “There is such a thing as over-preparation, and I for one, am going to make sure you don’t burn out in the first week. Now get in—then straight to bed.”

She left, closing the door behind her, and I obediently began to undress, muttering statistics under my breath to commit them to memory.

“And if I hear you doing that weird numbers chant you do when you think no one’s listening, I’m turning off the hot water!”

I took the rest of my shower in silence.

*   *   *

T
hanks to a miracle hangover cure I’d discovered in business school, I made it into work the next morning symptom-free. I was even a little early as I breezed up to the receptionist’s counter and took a new picture for my name badge.

“There,” she said as the computer printed it out, “that’s much better.”

I tucked it into my briefcase. “Last night was pretty bad?”

“Honey, I’ve seen better mugshots.” She smiled sweetly.

My returning smile morphed into a frown as I turned my back on her and headed to the elevators, wondering why the hell that was her automatic comparison. Did she spend the long hours waiting to lock up trolling those ‘Criminals Near You’ sites? On that note, I wondered how many of these hypothetical mugshots could be working in the building. I’d thought that janitor shooting me the dirty glares last night looked especially sinister—

“Jenna!”

The second the elevator doors opened, I whirled around to see Jamie racing toward me through the crowd. There was an especially panicked look on his usually sunny face, and I found myself instinctually bracing for whatever was coming.

“Hey, Jamie, what’s—”

“Listen, Jenna, I feel terrible,” he interrupted. “Patti called me last night—realized she’d given you the summaries of the last three years, instead of just the last three months. She asked me to head over and pick up half to present myself, but Stacy got the stomach flu last night, so I was with her and didn’t hear my phone. I just got the message this morning.”

I tried to speak, to reassure him, but he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.

“I’m so sorry! Listen, if you come with me to Patti’s office right now, I’ll explain everything. You won’t have to give a full-on presentation today.”