Read The Virgin and the Billionaires: The Complete Series Online
Authors: K.J. Diamond
The Virgin and the Billionaires: The Complete Series
The Virgin and the Billionaires: The
Complete Series
by K.J. Diamond
Copyright 2012-2013 K.J. Diamond
ARe Edition
Table of Contents
Part 4: A Complicated Situation
Part 5: An Irresistible Opportunity
Author’s Note: Thank
you for purchasing this eBook. For updates on future installments and other new
releases, please sign up for the
K.J. Diamond E-mail List
(external link).
###
Dana Jacobs got barely an hour of sleep the night before the
first day at her new job. The sun was finally creeping in through her window,
and Dana knew she had arrived at the moment she’d been waiting for since she
got the congratulatory phone call three weeks ago. Her stomach was doing flips
into her throat, and Dana knew that her standard hearty breakfast of bacon,
blueberry pancakes, and home fries was out of the question this morning.
She’d spent three months sending out 20 job applications a
day from her old bedroom in her parent’s house. With no job prospects after
graduating from UC Davis that May, she had no choice but to move back in with
her parents until she found work in her field. She was beginning to question
her decision to major in photography when she finally received a phone call
from a regional fashion magazine in Los Angeles, Southern California Style.
They had seen her resume and wanted to bring her in for an interview.
One trip to LA and a successful job interview later, 22
year-old Dana Jacobs was the new assistant photographer at SoCal Style
magazine. Not one to turn down an opportunity to break right into the fashion
world, Dana packed up her car and made a hasty move from her parents’ house in
calm, suburban Chico down to huge, sprawling LA.
Dana had barely settled into her small Burbank apartment
since she arrived only five days earlier, and now she was running late for her
first day at SoCal Style. She’d spent too long making sure she looked
presentable in her most flattering black skirt and top.
Wear a slimming color, highlight the waist, and mask the belly fat with
a cardigan
.
She was anticipating receiving the condescending stares at
her new office that she was used to receiving from strangers every day. To
expect any less would be crazy. After all, she was throwing herself into the
line of fire: a fat girl working at a fashion magazine? She hadn’t been there
yet, but she knew that LA fashion types were infamous for turning skinniness
into a competition.
She practically
bolted out the door of her apartment, down the stairs to the door of her Honda
Civic, praying that she would make it to the magazine’s Beverly Hills office on
time.
Dana had only driven a few blocks before she ran into rush
hour traffic. She had heard about the horrible reality of LA traffic from
everybody she knew who had been there. She’d even had the foresight to allow
herself ten extra minutes to get where she needed to go.
Ten minutes came and passed in stop-and-go traffic. Dana
consulted her iPhone and saw that most of her trip was still ahead of her. Her
stomach continued to do flips, getting more intense with each minute spent
driving below 15 miles an hour. She’d already felt pangs of homesickness inside
her empty apartment, but this traffic really made Dana long for Chico’s quieter
streets in a way she never had before. She knew she’d arrived in a different
world.
She realized ten extra minutes wasn’t going to be enough. As
if her leaping stomach wasn’t already bad, now she felt her heart pounding in
her chest. She finally pulled into the parking lot behind the building 10
minutes after she was supposed to. She rushed in through the back door of the
building, sauntered self-consciously into the office (
Don’t look rushed, don’t look rushed
she thought), and announced
herself to the receptionist.
The clean, cold-hued office and most of the faces in it
looked vaguely familiar from Dana’s interview a few weeks earlier. Everybody
there seemed aware of, but unconcerned with her presence. The receptionist
motioned for Dana to follow her. She took Dana back into a small, sunlit room
where a tall, tan woman stood, looking a bit perturbed.
This was Graciela Collins, the senior staff photographer and
person who oversaw Dana’s hiring. She looked Dana dead in the eyes and extended
her hand.
“Good morning, Dana. Trouble coming in?” Graciela shook
Dana’s hand firmly.
“Yes, I’m very sorry. I gave myself extra time to get
through traffic, but I underestimated how bad it was.” Dana replied.
“That’s something you’re going to have to learn to deal
with. I’ll let it go with a warning today, but you should probably give
yourself an extra half hour to get here from -”
“Burbank. And I assure you it won’t happen again.”
“Yeah, definitely. Alright.” Graciela placed her hand on her
hip and a finger on her chin, thinking. “There are some assignments and information
for you on your desk.” Graciela pointed at Dana’s desk in the corner of the
room. “So get to work.”
“Okay. Thank you.” Dana sat down at her desk. The
nervousness she had felt earlier began to dissipate.
Far from what she imagined she’d be doing on her first day,
Dana looked down at a Post-It note with instructions to write scheduling emails
to all of the names on an existing spreadsheet.
You think they’d have a secretary for this
, she thought.
After she had settled in, two young-looking girls came over to
Dana’s desk. One of them, a pretty redhead with glasses, extended her hand to
Dana first.
“I’m Amy and this is Emily,” she said, pointing to the
stylish young black-haired girl to her left. “We’re the photography interns.”
“I’m Dana, the new assistant photographer. It’s nice to meet
you both. Can I ask you guys a question?”
The girls nodded.
“Does our department have a secretary?”
Amy and Emily looked at each other and exchanged a look of
confusion. “No,” they replied in unison.
Dana sighed and began typing her first email of the day. Calming
down, she realized that she hadn’t seen a single person give her one of those
nasty stares she hated so much.
I can’t
believe it,
she thought.
***
Dana didn’t notice Graciela standing above her desk until
Graciela cleared her throat to get Dana’s attention. Dana immediately looked up
from her work and was slightly startled by the looming presence above her.
“The department meeting starts in five minutes. Let’s head
over to the conference room. I think you’re going to like your first
assignment.” Graciela smirked, but it looked like she was trying to smile.
Dana nodded, grabbed her iPad, and got up to follow Graciela
to the sunlit conference room. She took a seat at the oval table, shaking hands
and making small talk with the people next to her until Graciela stepped to the
head of the table and began the meeting with a loud clearing of her throat.
“Alright. I’ve just received the shortlist of articles for
this month’s issue, so let’s get down to assigning these.” There was quiet
shuffling around the table as people directed their attention away from each
other and toward Graciela. “First, I’m happy to introduce our new assistant
photographer, Dana Jacobs.”
The room turned to Dana and applauded politely. Dana was
pleased. No nasty stares, no eyes up and down.
“Dana joins us
fresh out of UC Davis. I’m confident that she’ll make a fine addition to the
department. Please help her to get acquainted with the SoCal Style way.”
SoCal Style ‘way’?
The way Graciela said that made Dana more nervous than she already was.
“Anyway, assignments.” Graciela loaded a spreadsheet onto
the projector screen and handed out drafts of articles individually. Dana
looked at the headline of her article, “Downtown’s Newest Trendsetters”.
Skimming the short article, Dana discovered it was about two successful young
hedge fund managers working Downtown:
If you’ve been walking
around the Financial District on any recent weekday, you may have noticed the
suited young women (and men) swooning at the presence of the area’s hottest new
ingénues, Alexander Price and William Levy. Together, the two founded
Price-Levy Investments, a fledgling hedge fund that has taken the West Coast
financial world by storm and created many happy investors.
These young, handsome,
dangerously charming billionaires may work hard during the day, but the
Financial District is abuzz with stories of the business partners’ wild nights
and legendary parties. Alexander and William agreed to let us in on their
workaday life (and lend their amazing figures to help us show off some of the
hottest new menswear from trendy Southern California designers).
On the top of
Dana’s article, Graciela had written ‘Be careful with these guys! Big dollar,
big egos, small feature. 1-on-1 3:15-3:30’. Dana’s appointment was right after
the meeting was to let out. Dana was uncertain what to think. Was this a big
article or wasn’t it?
The room spent the next 20 minutes talking about themes and
ideas for the look of the new issue. Dana couldn’t help but feel like she was
in a dream.
***
“Alright, Dana.” It was 3:15 and Dana was sitting on the
other side of Graciela Collins’ desk. “This is a three-page spread. You’ve got
your first real chance to prove yourself here, to me and the other
photographers. We’re putting it toward the end of the magazine, so if it’s bad
your ass is partially –
partially
- covered.”
Dana couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A three-page
spread for her first issue? Even if it was an afterthought, Dana was thrilled.
“Your subjects are Alexander Price and William Levy, owners
and managers of Price-Levy Investments. They’re young financial whiz kids
who’ve caught some major traction in the financial world. The writing staff
tells me they’re both intense, charismatic guys. Keep an eye on Amy and Emily
– they’ll be your assistants for the shoot. I don’t want them getting
swept up in these guys’ charm.”
And what about me?
Dana thought. Was Graciela implying she’d be overlooked because of her size?
“We want to capture the guys ‘at work’ and ‘in action’. Make
sure you get some good shots of the office. I hear it’s exquisite. Your shoot
is scheduled for the 20
th
at 8am. Don’t bother coming into the
office that day.” Graciela stood up. “Good luck. It should be a fun assignment,
but remember what I said about keeping the interns away.”
“I will; thank you,” Dana replied as she got up to leave.
* * *
Dana was watching Access Hollywood and eating Chinese
takeout on her couch, currently the only thing in her living room other than
the television mounted on the wall. She was feeling particularly sad after a
week of the same routine every night: fluffy pajamas, Chinese food, bad
television, being alone. Dana didn’t know anybody in town, had no idea where to
go to meet people, and was feeling more homesick for Northern California than
she’d ever felt in her life. Her loneliness was even more crushing when Dana
thought about the general loneliness of her life before moving to LA.
Even in college, Dana had only had a few close friends.
She’d never had a boyfriend and had never even hooked up with a guy, let alone
had sex. She couldn’t even remember a time that a guy was even interested in
her. Dana was ample and curvy, a size 18 with large breasts, a round and
prominent ass, thick legs, and a pretty and round face with delicate features.
She knew there were plenty of men who loved women with bodies just like hers,
so why had she never been able to find one to love her?
The feelings that arose when she thought about her
loneliness and bad relationship luck were made even worse by the fact that she
now had a demanding job that took sucked away most of her free time. In the
week since she had started, Dana’s hours had become progressively longer, and
she found that ten hour days were becoming normal. Fortunately, tomorrow was
the photo shoot at Price-Levy Investments and that was all she was set to do
that day.
Dana had mapped out her route in advance and factored in
time for traffic, so she was quite confident that she’d be showing up to this
shoot on time and making a good impression. It was late and Dana was starting
to fall asleep on her couch, so she took the cue from her body and walked back
to her bedroom, thinking about whether coming to LA was the right decision.
***
The next morning, Dana woke up 20 minutes before her alarm
went off, full of nerves. She wanted to make the best impression she could on
these powerful men, so she pulled the nicest dress she had out of her closet.
After a hot shower, a blow dry for her soft brown hair, and a nice breakfast of
waffles with whipped cream and strawberries, Dana slipped on the gently pleated
pink chiffon dress that she’d worn to her college graduation.
The knee-length dress fit tightly around her large breasts
and showed a little bit of her generous cleavage, which Dana accented with a
stylish gold pendant on a handmade chain. She tied a black sash around her
middle to accentuate her waist and outline the shape of her pillowy rump.
Finishing the look with a pair of black patent leather pumps, Dana neatly applied
matching makeup to her face before rushing out the door and to her car to make
the long trek Downtown.
