The PlayLion Billionaire: A Paranormal Billionaire Romance (2 page)

“Alexander Brooke; I’m in charge of hiring for the Publicity team.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Brooke,” Olivia said.

The man shook her hand hard—as if trying to see if she would react, if she would wince, cringe, or cry out. Olivia held her polite smile firmly in place and didn’t even move to withdraw her hand before he relinquished it resentfully.

They discussed her qualifications, which was normal enough, Olivia thought, though the way that Brooke commented on them was more expressive of doubt that she was being honest than it was of interest.

“How did you go about getting an internship at Ace-Howley?” he asked her, glancing at her resume for a moment before pinning her down with a suspicious glance.

“I applied and submitted my course work for consideration, and spoke with several of the people in charge of intern hires,” Olivia answered—not quite sarcastically, since she was aware that even if she was being baited, it gave her no excuse to be rude. “They really enjoyed a project that I worked on for one of my classes, and asked me to propose a campaign for them.”

“The Howleys are known to favor a pretty face,” Brooke said, raising an eyebrow.

“The Howleys were not involved in my hiring,” Olivia told him, keeping her voice polite but firm. “In fact, I didn’t meet them until I had been working there as an intern for a month.”

“And most recently you did PR work for Bright Star Management; how did you get that position?” It had been a temporary gig—little more than a paid internship in fact, and though Bright Star had wanted to keep her on, they couldn’t afford to pay her at the scale that she would expect from a full-time, permanent position.

“I met my manager at Bright Star through my work with Ace-Howley,” Olivia told Brooke. “It was at an industry event, and they head-hunted me for the short-term project.”

“So how often do you meet potential employers at ‘industry events,’ Ms. Price?”

Olivia felt her cheeks heating up with a blush at the tone of Brooke’s voice; though he hadn’t said it, the emphasis told her that he assumed that she had hooked up with the people who had hired her—that he thought she got ahead by sleeping around.

“Industry events are a great way of meeting people in a professional setting,” Olivia said, maintaining her composure with an effort. “I enjoy talking shop and comparing strategy. But most of my opportunities have come from typical shovel-and-spade research.”

As the interview dragged on—seeming much longer than the forty-five minutes that Olivia later saw it had taken—Brooke’s questions became more barbed, more obvious in their intention; she knew that he had never even entertained the thought of hiring her.

He thought that her resume was faked—and then when he saw that it wasn’t, that she had references to back up her history—he assumed that she had achieved her standing and her history on her back.

“I’m not sure that you’ll fit in with our corporate culture,” Brooke said as the interminable conversation was finally beginning to wind down. “We tend to be less than sensitive to background here; certainly I can understand if you’d prefer an environment more flexible to your needs.”

“I believe that Lowe Freight is very flexible. I read up on the benefits package offered to your employees, and I think it’s very noble that corporate policy allows for such latitude in vacation time.”

One of the main draws of the position she had applied for, in fact, was that Lowe Freight had such a flexible policy about vacation time. They offered twelve weeks out of the year. There were longer periods of paid maternity and paternity leave, an additional week’s worth of sick time, accruing but not accessible during the first ninety days of employment.

“Are you applying to any other positions? I’d have pegged you for the non-profit sector; abuse shelters, women’s rights campaigns…” Olivia felt her composure beginning to slip and clenched her teeth as unobtrusively as possible, counting to ten slowly in her mind.

“I have no interest in the non-profit sector at this time,” Olivia said once she had regained the ability to speak civilly. “I have a lot of respect for what the women and men in those positions do, but I applied to Lowe Freight because the job itself appeals to me and I think that I would make an excellent addition to the team here.”

Finally—finally—Brooke ended the interview, shaking her hand once more, harshly, as he led her to the door of the lobby. “I would suggest that you put your efforts into the other places you’ve applied,” he said, giving her a smirk. “I have a lot of candidates to choose from for this position; I’m sure you understand.”

Olivia felt her sense of justice rising up inside of her at the self-satisfied dismissal from the man. When he turned back into the office, abandoning her with the scantest goodbye she had ever received from any professional, Olivia stood for a long moment in silence.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said, glancing at the closed door and cringing slightly.

“I need to talk to someone in your HR department right now,” Olivia said without even acknowledging the apology. She was incredibly calm—the kind of stillness within that she had come to regard as a warning sign. Everything in the lobby, from the arrangement of ferns on a low table, to the gleam of polish on the leather chairs was incredibly sharp.

“I—I understand that he was—inappropriate,” the receptionist said, stammering slightly. Olivia thought wryly that she probably had caught wind of her anger.

“Someone in your HR department. I need to file a complaint. Are you going to assist me in that, or am I going to have to raise a real fuss to talk to someone with some clout?” Olivia looked at the receptionist, holding her gaze.

“No, I’ll get you someone.” The receptionist picked up her phone and dialed a number quickly. Olivia took deep breaths, struggling to keep enough composure to avoid coming off like a complete lunatic. She would have to make her case and her complaint rationally, as calmly as possible, in spite of her righteous indignation at how she had been treated by Brooke. She had to assume that not everyone in the company shared his obviously sexist views.

Olivia felt her anger deepening in spite of her efforts to restrain it, and rising higher and higher. The nerve of that man; he hadn’t even made any effort to conceal the fact that he had such incredibly misogynistic views. He had just assumed that she would get flustered and swallow it down. He thought that Olivia would just take it -- that she wouldn’t make any effort to come back at him. She replayed the conversation in her mind as the receptionist called someone. For all Olivia knew, she was calling security, and not someone in the HR department.

Olivia told herself that she would cross that bridge when she came to it. She told herself that she would make her complaint one way or another, and if she had to report on what had happened to her on social media, she would do it.

The nerve of Brooke. Olivia closed her eyes and felt her stomach churning, her heart pounding as her anger rose up. The man had basically insinuated that she had slept her way to the meager position she had managed to acquire, or that she had lied about what she had accomplished so far in her life and career.

“Ms. Price?” Olivia opened her eyes.

“Yes?” she replied, her voice brisk with the anger she was barely able to contain.

“The Director of Human Resources is waiting for you. I can buzz you in; it’s this door here on the right.” Olivia nodded and turned towards the door that the receptionist indicated. She heard a buzzer, heard the metallic thunk of some kind of lock turning over inside of the door, and reached out for the handle, gripping it far more firmly than she wanted to do.

Her knees felt rubbery, her hands felt slick with sweat from the adrenaline rushing through her body. Olivia told herself to calm down; she was not going to shoot herself in the foot by sounding off before she even got to the person she needed to speak to in order to make sure that Alexander Brooke at the very least was censured by the company—put on some kind of performance review, if not fired.

She took another deep breath and walked through the corridor, realizing that she didn’t have any real idea of where the Director of Human Resources actually worked.

As she picked up her pace, her anger edging into anxiety that it had all been a set-up, Olivia’s thoughts were so consumed that she barely paid attention to the world around her. She didn’t hear footfalls coming from the left; she didn’t notice the soft chatter of voices in low conversation.

She plowed ahead, determined to figure out just where the office for the Director of Human Resources was. She was beginning to think that it would be a better idea to turn around and ask who she should be looking for, when Olivia’s steps brought her to an intersection in the hall, and she found herself colliding with someone.

*

Robert staggered slightly as he felt the impact of whoever had plowed into him, reaching out instinctively to steady the person. It was unusual for him to run into anyone—literally or figuratively—without some kind of advance notice. He had been so involved in his conversation, that his preternaturally strong senses of hearing and smell hadn’t alerted him to the proximity of anyone coming through the adjacent hallway.

He breathed in and a wash of pheromones flooded through him; sharp, so strong that they were almost color in his mind, Robert momentarily reeled at the second impact. Whoever he had run into had the gunpowder scent of anger, mingled with a deep, sweet-sharp musk, a slightly spicy, warm fragrance that was entirely that person’s biochemistry -- not some trick of perfumery.

Robert’s hands lingered on the person’s shoulders as he steadied himself mentally, exhaling quickly to rid himself of the scent long enough to regain his ability to think clearly. “Excuse me,” he said quickly.

He looked down and took in the sight of the person he had run into: it was a woman, several inches shorter than he was, her dark auburn hair neatly slicked and pinned into a tight bun. For an instant he appreciated the fact that while her blazer and pants were absolutely professional, the tailoring he couldn’t doubt she’d had done on them, made it easy to see the lush curve from her full bust to her slim waist, flaring out to hips that begged to be touched.

“Who are you?” he asked, bemused. He had never seen her before—never suspected that a woman like this could be hiding somewhere in the depths of his corporation.

“My name is Olivia Price,” she said, recovering her own composure. Her bright green eyes came back into focus and she peered up at him, her expression altering from surprise and shock to anger. “And I absolutely have to speak to the Director of Human Resources immediately. Can you tell me where to go?”

I can tell you exactly where to go,
Robert thought as a low thrum of desire coursed through his veins.
But you are not talking to the Director of Human Resources any time soon. Not anymore.

“I can help you,” he said smoothly. Robert glanced at the manager he’d been speaking to—a member of his Pride, one of those he knew was absolutely loyal to him. The woman held his gaze for a moment before nodding and backing away unobtrusively, moving down the corridor the way they had come. “The director is actually very busy right now, but I am uniquely qualified to help you, Ms. Price.”

“Not unless you’re ready to help me file a formal complaint about sexual harassment in this office; who are you?” Robert bit back a laugh, giving the woman’s shoulder an unobtrusive caress.

“I can absolutely help you file a formal complaint,” Robert said. “In fact, I am the single best person that you could have run into -- even better than the director you’re looking for.”

Olivia gave him a skeptical look.

“And why is that?”

Robert smiled again.

“Because, my dear Ms. Price, I am the CEO of this company. I can definitely help you with your complaint much more than a mere Human Resources Director, don’t you think?”

Robert found himself staring at Olivia Price as she spoke; he had to make himself blink, make himself relax in the office he had brought her to.
Tense as a boy on prom night in my own office.
He tried to shake off his distraction, wondering just what it was that was making it so impossible for him to focus on the story she was telling.

Olivia was cute. Robert carefully avoided looking the woman up and down again, knowing by the slightly shrill tone of her voice that it would not do him any favors. She was telling him about Brooke; how Alex had treated her in the interview, how Alex had acted. In the back of his mind, Robert had to admit to himself that it was perfectly plausible that Alex would act that way—he had always had a twinge of sexism in his views, and when his wife had left him, he’d gone whole-hog into the arms of the so-called Men’s Rights movement.

It wasn’t just that she was cute
, Robert thought. It was that scent; her pheromones were beginning to taper off now—the gunpowder edge of rage settling, as she wound herself down with her recital, but the underlying musk-honey-spice of her was still enough to coil around his brain and hold him hostage. He watched as Olivia took a deep breath and the gunpowder smell of her brittle anger subsided almost completely.

“So what are you going to do about my complaint?” Olivia asked, watching him warily. Robert pressed his lips together, thinking. He had to get this woman to stay; he couldn’t just give her a job under Alex. He would make her miserable as a matter of course. He was going to have to fire Alex; but he also knew that with the resume she handed him, Olivia was not in a position to take over the job that Alex was vacating.