Teenage me would be freaking out. He’s still just as much of a heartthrob as he had been when he was younger. Although his behavior had never impressed me, he was still gorgeous. Still, I have to be professional. I held it together for an entire interview, I can hold it together until I get back to my hotel. After that though, I’ll call my best friend, Betty, and spill all of the details to her. I’m sure she’ll never believe me.
I exit Oliver’s office and I’m instantly greeted by Joan with a clipboard of paperwork. I take a seat in one of the chairs outside and fill out the forms with all of the typical hiring information. Occasionally, I find myself glancing through one of the small rectangular glass windows on either side of the door that leads to Oliver’s office.
Usually when I look inside, he’s playing on his phone. Sometimes he’s just staring out one of the windows, appearing to be stressed out. The last time I look though...he’s looking straight back at me.
When I get outside, Edward is waiting for me. He opens the door of the car for me and I climb inside. He pulls off of the curb and starts driving in the direction of my hotel.
“So, how did it go?” he asked.
“Strange,” I said. “I thought I would be interviewing with Mr. Windsor, not Oliver.”
I see Edward’s face in the rearview mirror. His brows wrinkle and his lips scrunch to the side. I don’t think he realizes I’ve seen the change in his expression because he brushes over my comment.
“Mr. Windsor thinks it would be for the best if Oliver were to become more hands on with the business,” he said. “I assume that means he’s tired of bailing him out of trouble.”
“Right. That makes sense,” I replied. And I wonder what his face meant. It clearly meant more than what he said. I tried to brush it off though.
“He did hire me though, so that’s good. I start next week.”
Edward smiles. It seems to be a real, genuine smile.
“Congratulations, Miss Hanson,” he said. “I’ll order a congratulatory meal to your hotel room tonight. My treat.”
“Thank you, Edward.”
Chapter Three
“It was totally surreal!” I said, settling back on the couch. On the side table next to me is a glass of white wine, in my lap is the best piece of grilled chicken I’ve ever had. Edward pulled out all the stops on my congratulatory dinner. On the phone is my best friend Betty. I called her as soon as I got settled in my room after the interview.
I hear her giggle on the other end.
“So, he’s just as hot in real life?” she asked. “That’s good. I would be so upset if it was all just Photoshop.”
We both laugh over that.
“Absolutely. We’re so lucky that all the magazine photos of our teenage years were right. He’s even hotter up close,” I assured her. “But, if I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure he had no idea what he was doing. I don’t think he’s ever hired anybody in his life.”
“I mean...do you think he’s ever had to?” said Betty. “Look at his face. Gorgeous, rich people like him don’t have to worry about small things like jobs or hiring people. I’m surprised he was sober when you met him.”
It’s been reported for years that Oliver Windsor has an alcohol problem. At least once a year there’s a rumor that he’s been checked into rehab. No solid evidence has ever been produced though, and I’ve honestly never bought it. He’s rarely photographed at parties or restaurants with alcohol in his hand. If he were an addict, wouldn’t he be seen with a drink more often?
“He was fine,” I said. “Just kind of...off. Like he didn’t know what he was doing.”
“It makes sense,” Betty said.
Silence falls between us, which isn’t unusual. We’ve been friends for ten years, ever since high school. Sometimes I just call her so I don’t have to eat alone. I’m not depressingly single or anything, but I’ve just never found ‘the one’. Betty, on the other hand, has been engaged for five years. Her fiancé travels a lot for work, so I think she appreciates the company as much as I do.
I hear her gasp on the other end and almost jump off of the plush couch I’m sitting on.
“What?” I exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
She’s still silent and I feel myself begin to panic. I try again.
“Betty, what’s wrong?”
Another beat of silence. Does she even hear me? Finally, she speaks.
“Cass, whatever you do...don’t turn on the news,” she implored me. “Please don’t turn on the news.”
I’ve never understood why people say things like that. You’ve piqued my curiosity and it is human nature to seek out what you’re curious about, right? I grab for the controller, placing my dinner on the coffee table so it doesn’t get tossed to the floor. I switch it to the only national news station I remember off the top of my head...and I’m shocked by what I see.
The reporter is a woman, in a sleek blue dress. She’s standing in front of a mansion, in front of the gate to be more exact. With a microphone in hand, she speaks.
“This is Dorothy McNull. I’m currently on site here at the Windsor Manor where Alan Windsor has just been served with a warrant for murder. We’re unsure what prompted this warrant, as no details have been revealed yet. All we know is that the warrant is indeed for murder.”
The camera zooms in to the front doors of the house just as they swing open. Two uniformed officers are escorting a handcuffed Alan Windsor out of the house and down the stairs. Alan still looks as put together as possible, wearing an expensive suit. There’s not a hair out of place on his head.
In the background, there’s a blonde woman who looks younger than me. Camille Windsor, his current wife. Oliver is standing behind her, his arm wrapped around her shoulder in comfort. Next to him is Allison, with blonde curls and a look of complete disinterest. The rest of the family looks sad...but not shocked.
Betty is calling my name on the other line, but I can’t find the words to answer.
Oliver knew this was going to happen. The whole family knew this was going to happen...that’s why they reached out to me. That’s why they were so desperate to hire me.
I don’t sleep much that night. I’m too upset, too worried. I still haven’t quit my current job, so I can always go back to that...but I’m a person of my word. I signed the contract with Windsor Books already, I don’t want to go back on that. But they didn’t disclose a single thing about this to me.
I manage to sleep for an hour or so, but I’m up before eight. I shower and change clothes before I hail a cab to Windsor Books. I need to have a few words with Oliver. I enter the lobby, noticing it’s not quite as busy as it had been the day before. Sitting behind the front desk is the same bubbly blonde as yesterday.
She looks up at me, a smile pulling over her bright red lips. I begin to wonder if she’s always as happy as she seems or if she’s genuinely good at faking it.
“I need to speak to Oliver,” I told her. I don’t preface it with anything, just a simple demand.
Her red lips form an ‘o’ shape before she shakes her head.
“I’m sorry, but he’s not in right now,” she said. "I can take a message and have him call you, though.”
No. I’m not doing this over the phone. I’m going to speak to Oliver face-to-face and give him a piece of my mind. I shake my head.
“That’s not going to work for me,” I said firmly. “Tell Oliver, because I know he’s here, that I need to talk to him. Tell him Cassidy Hanson needs to have a word with him or I’m walking from the job.”
It’s a thinly veiled threat but I have to bluff and act like I don’t want this job, and that I will walk away. After all, I think they need me more than I need them right now.
The receptionist looks at me for a minute before she picks up the phone.
“Mr. Windsor? Er, Oliver. Sorry. Cassidy Hanson is here to speak to you. She says it’s urgent,” she then adds in a hushed tone, “she says she won’t take the job if you don’t speak to her.”
She falls silent for a moment before nodding.
“Absolutely, I’ll send her up.”
She hangs up the phone and looks at me.
“Oliver actually does have time to speak to you,” she said. “He’ll see you now. His office is on the twelfth floor.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
I put on my best fake smile and head towards the elevator. Luckily, I step in alone. I spend the entire ride up to the twelfth-floor seething in my own anger. I think of what I’m going to say to Oliver, how I’m going to tell him off. I rehearse it again and again in my head. Each time I think of the mess I’ve just gotten myself into, I feel my rage grow. By the time I step off of the elevator, I’m radiating with anger.
I walk right past Joan’s desk and straight up to Oliver’s door. I make a fist and pound on it. After a moment, it opens, and Oliver peeks his head out.
“Come in,” he told me. I step inside and immediately notice the difference between the Oliver I see today and the man I interviewed with yesterday.
He doesn’t look as playful or as pieced together. His hair is disheveled, I’m pretty sure he’s wearing the same dress shirt as he had been yesterday. His suit jacket is draped over the back of his chair, his blue tie is on crooked.
“Cassidy.” He greeted me without making eye contact, going back over to the chair behind his desk and sitting down.
“You knew when you hired me that your father was being arrested,” I hissed. I don’t preface the conversation with some pretty words of flattery or start with a different topic. We’re getting straight to it. “You didn’t even think to tell me that,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Would you have taken the job if you knew?” he asked, looking up at me slowly.
I scoff, shaking my head.
“Of course not. Nobody would take the job if they knew that. It’s a hell of a mess.”
“Then that’s why I didn’t tell you,” he said matter-of-factly, just like he had yesterday when he had said, ‘I’m Oliver Windsor.’ There’s something about his tone that angers me that much more.
“You should have told me!” I exclaimed. “You should have saved me the headache of finding out on my own. Tell me why I shouldn’t walk away right now before I even start.”
Oliver looks at me, his grey eyes narrowed. I can tell he’s not in the mood for this today, but I should have been informed of the mess that this company is about to be in before I was signed on. I’m literally walking into every PR representative’s worst nightmare.
“You signed a contract yesterday,” he said harshly, without emotion. “If you don’t follow through, you will be sued for the breech.”
I’m taken aback. I knew that was a probability, but I didn’t expect him to jump straight to it. I didn’t storm in here expecting to get out of my contract or to quit. Hell, I’m willing to take on this challenge. I wanted a good explanation...I wanted an apology. Instead, I just ended up being threatened. I look at Oliver and shake my head.
“Fine. Sue me,” I retorted. “I’m sure the company really needs more bad press on top of everything else going on. Because you want to bet that I won’t shill my story to anyone who will listen? How I was lied to about the PR crisis that you all are going through? Good luck in court. I quit.”
I turn, beginning to storm out of his office.
I hear Oliver faintly call, “Cassidy,” but I’m out the door before he can finish. I don’t give him a chance to try to convince me otherwise. I storm into the elevator, through the lobby and outside where I hail another cab to carry me back to my hotel.
In the hotel, I make the decision to start packing. I’m leaving tomorrow morning, even if I have to buy the plane ticket with the money I have stashed in my savings account. I just know that I’m not settling for this. Who the hell thought this would be a good introduction to starting at this company?
It’s a little past ten that night when there’s a loud knock on my door. I had just showered and changed into my pajamas. I spent the rest of the day on the phone with Betty and with my mom. I vented to both of them on repeat about Windsor Books and whatever they were trying to get at with bringing me on board blindly.
My mom told me to run and never look back. She told me she knew that the offer was too good to be true. They wanted to drag me down with them. She told me how people with their type of money only want to use others as playthings.
On the other hand, Betty told me to give them a chance. They seemed to desperately need my help. She said that I should have heard Oliver out, asked more questions instead of yelling at him. I think I did the right thing though. I’m siding with my mom.
As I go to answer the door, I can’t help but be nervous. I’m in a city I barely know, a city that has a high crime rate and I’ve heard that tourists are often the victims. I have nothing to use as a weapon, so I just have to hope for the best.
I get to the door and stand on my tiptoes to peek out of the peephole. I see familiar sandy blonde hair and steely eyes. I sigh, shifting my weight back down on my feet. I unlock the door and open it slowly. I’m face-to-face with Oliver.
“What do you want?” I asked with a sigh.
“I want to talk to you. You stormed out of my office earlier,” he explained.
“Yeah, I know. Because I was pissed.”
“And now?”
“Now? I’m still pissed.”
I want to slam the door in his face and wash my hands of this family. It’s been two days and all they’ve brought me is stress. Oliver, however, has softer features than he did earlier. He looks a little less annoyed with me and a little more understanding. Or maybe that’s because he’s at my hotel room and I didn’t storm into his office. I sigh, making it known that this is the last thing I want.
“Fine. Come in and we can talk.” As I turn around to let him in, I think I see the smallest of smirks on his face.
I lead him to the sitting room area of the hotel suite. There’s a large over-stuffed red couch with two matching recliners, a dark wood circular coffee table, and a large TV on a dark wood stand. I take a seat on one end of the couch and he takes the recliner opposite of that.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked, taking one of the throw pillows and holding it to my chest.
“I should have told you what was going on before I hired you, you were right about that,” he said. “But I stand by the fact that you would have said no if you knew.”
“Because this is a mess of a situation to walk into,” I said with a sigh. “I would have liked to weigh that into my options when I was considering this job. Instead, you painted it as a fairytale. A high salary, paying for my relocation. I knew I was going to have to work for the money, but I didn’t know I was going to walk into hellfire.”
“Right. I should have told you, but I didn’t,” said Oliver. “We were desperate. When my father found out about the warrant, he arranged for an arrest date, so he had time to put his affairs in order.”
Of course, he was able to arrange an arrest date. How privileged was that? I bet Alan Windsor is eating steak in a private cell right now.
“He informed a few people at the company, including our last PR person,” explained Oliver. “He immediately stepped down because he didn’t know how to handle it. We knew we couldn’t manage this without someone to run PR...we were nervous. But you popped up on TV one night. You changed the entire nation’s opinion about that guy you were working for. He went from the most hated man around to earning back some respect. My father knew we needed you and told me to do anything in my power to get you.”
As annoyed as I am, I can’t help but be flattered by the fact that I was sought out. They saw me and thought I was the only person that could save them. Of course, it’s nice to be wanted. However, it doesn’t make up for tricking me. I still haven’t gotten what I wanted out of Oliver yet, a simple apology. I sigh, running a hand through my hair.
“So, you knew weeks in advance that this was going on, but couldn�
��t think about mentioning it to me yesterday? Sounds pretty tricky,” I said barely containing my frustration.
Oliver sighed. He clearly doesn’t like being called out when he has done something wrong. What rich person does though? He looks visibly uncomfortable.
“Okay, I was in the wrong. I should have mentioned it before you agreed to take the position,” said Oliver. “I wouldn’t say I ‘tricked’ you into taking it, but I didn’t tell you the whole truth. Is that better?”
“Close,” I rolled my eyes. “Look, I got a guy off for soliciting prostitutes. That’s nowhere near murder. Do you know how much the public opinion of your family is going to be affected by this? They’re going to hate you. Especially since all of you are standing by your father.”
“Do you want more money?” Oliver asked. I’m amazed at the ease at which he can ask that. He doesn’t have to check with anyone. He can just throw money at me until I agree to do the work. It would be a lie if I said it wasn’t tempting to ask for a raise already, but that’s not who I am as a person. I do this job to help people.
“No,” I shake my head. “I don’t want more money. All the money in the world isn’t going to make this job any easier. I am, however, going to need things from you and your family.”
This isn’t the first time this has been said to Oliver. He looks annoyed, but ready to negotiate with me and my wants.
“Go ahead.”
I’m sure he’s expecting me to ask for my rent to be paid for a full year or a brand-new designer wardrobe. Instead, my demands are more complicated.
“I need your and your family’s full cooperation. None of the ‘we know best’ shit, got it? I know best in this situation. My job is to get you all through it and I’m damn good at my job,” I said firmly.
I’m sure that’s going to be a hard agreement. I know nothing about the world they live in. My family’s barely been middle class for most of my life. I know rich people play by different rules, but to get through this, they need to play by mine.
“Fine. Do you want me to add that to your contract?”
“None of your snarky comments,” I snapped, holding up my index finger. “I get it, you think you’re better than everybody you’ve ever met. You’re Oliver Windsor. Whatever. I know best in this situation. You have to trust me. No hesitation. No time to ‘earn it’. You hire me, you trust me.”
Fake Love Rich Boss Series Page 2
