I looked up, my eyes going out the window and to the ocean beyond, which took up most of my window. That view was the reason I’d placed my couch right here. I’d never lived in a place where I couldn’t see the ocean, even just a slice of it. I’d never lived anywhere but Hawaii, and I’d never wanted to.
OBN, I remembered from having dealt with them in the past, was in Australia. Sydney, to be specific.
They sure were casting out a wide net. Then again, a quick scan of my mental database told me that they did almost the exact sort of business that PBC did. We’d come up against them in the past in some dealings on the international market. So I supposed it made sense for them to shop for new assistants in their competitor’s camp.
New assistants. My God. A week ago, I would never even have considered it. Working with a different company? No way. It would mean leaving Damon. Leaving Hawaii. Two things I’d never thought I would want to do.
After last night, though, I had to admit that the idea held some attraction. In fact, it might be just the thing I needed. Particularly if word about my night with Damon Parker spread, and I found myself needing to get out of town.
I hesitated for a moment, my hand hovering over the touchpad… and then moved the cursor to the ‘reply’ icon and clicked.
Chapter 8
Damon
When I finally stopped looking at the door—and after Aubrey, who was, at this point, long gone via the cab she’d called—and back to my laptop, I sighed, remembering suddenly what I’d been doing when she first walked into the kitchen.
And why I’d been so annoyed when she walked in. Because I certainly hadn’t been annoyed at her.
I’d opened up my laptop this morning to find an email. An email from my biggest competitor. Josh Brody was the CEO of Oceania Broadcasting Network, based in Sydney, Australia. They weren’t quite as big as my company—but they did the same business as we did, specializing in broadcasting and the cables and networks that supported getting things into the air. That meant, of course, that we competed for the same clients when we found ourselves on the international market.
I had a lock on all the broadcasting rights in Hawaii, and many areas of the West Coast, and for the most part, I was satisfied with that. Josh, on the other hand, had been working for some time on quite the little monopoly in Australia, where he controlled the rights in great swathes of the country—and didn’t share them with anyone else. Josh had greased the right palms, I guessed, to get the officials to look the other way.
And wasn’t that just like him. I’d known Josh for a long time, since we’d attended business school together, and he’d always been that way. Always been the guy who was willing to screw everyone else over if it meant he made an extra dime for himself. In fact, I didn’t even think it mattered about making an extra dime. The Josh Brody I remembered went out of his way to screw people he saw as competition just for the pure joy of it.
Which was probably a large part of the reasoning behind what looked like his current move.
“Hey, buddy, just wanted to give you a heads-up that I’m about to close a massive deal in the Northern Mariana Islands. Looks like we’ll finally get to go toe-to-toe. Though I doubt you want that.”
I took a deep breath, trying to get my temper under control, and clicked over from the email to a new tab, where I did a quick search on OBN’s business interests in that area. They didn’t have any, and there was a good reason for that: namely, that I held all the rights in the Northern Mariana Islands, courtesy of a deal I’d done with the governor years ago.
The market in the islands also made up a relatively large part of my portfolio. Those islands weren’t large, but they had a very dense population, in some areas, and they represented an important expansion for me, out of Hawaii and the US and into the international market. I’d worked really, really hard to get that done.
I didn’t like the idea of someone taking it away.
I looked again at the email from Josh, narrowing my eyes. If he thought he had a deal on those islands, it could mean only one thing: that he’d been dealing with the governor himself, and had something in the works. Strange that the governor hadn’t let me know, considering my contract with that municipality, but then again, politics were politics.
Maybe Josh had offered him something I wasn’t yet able to offer, though it was hard to imagine what that could have been. As far as I knew, our companies were nearly identical in terms of our capabilities.
Though if I knew Josh, he’d probably paid good money for the governor to keep his mouth shut until it was almost too late for me to do anything about it. He was just sleazy and underhanded enough to have done exactly that—and to think he was clever, and going to get away with it. In fact, he’d probably demanded that the governor keep his mouth shut if he wanted the deal to go forward.
Josh had probably wanted to deliver the news himself. He definitely wouldn’t have wanted to give me too much time to stop him. He wasn’t the type who liked actual competition; he just liked to win.
Well, this time, he was going to have to get used to the idea of losing. I’d had that market cornered for nearly a decade, and I wasn’t ready to give it up. The islands were too important to me, too important to my company. And if it was important to my company, that meant it was also important to my employees—who I fought for, tooth and nail.
If Josh wanted a fight, I was going to give him one.
I closed the email app and grabbed my phone, punching in a number that I knew by heart.
“Honi,” I said, when the head of my transportation team got on the phone. “Book the jet for a flight to Saipan. Tomorrow morning, as early as possible. I have business I need to do there.”
I paused, listening to him as he asked for some further details—including why I thought it was a good idea to fly over there at the drop of a hat.
Not his job to worry about the why. But I wasn’t going to bother reminding him of that. We’d already had that conversation too many times in our long relationship.
“Just take care of everything you need to take care of,” I answered, not interested in the minutiae of the thing. I needed to get off the phone and start working on a plan for my meeting with the governor.
Then Honi asked who would be going, and I almost swallowed my tongue. I’d thought the answer was obvious. But then, I remembered last night… and began doubting myself.
I needed my best assistant with me on that flight. I needed her in on that meeting. The governor of Saipan adored her and if I didn’t manage to make him see reason, then I’d need her to charm him into submission.
But could I still count on her?
“Just me and Aubrey,” I finally said. “We won’t need anyone else there.”
I hung up before he could ask anything else, my attention caught on that last statement. I wouldn’t need anyone else there. Just my trusty assistant/expert-at-everything. If she’d agree to come. If she was even still talking to me.
If she was even still my assistant after what I’d done last night, and then again this morning.
Chapter 9
Aubrey
I woke up the next morning feeling just as awful as I had when I’d woken up in Damon’s bed.
Wait, that’s not true. Because this time I was at least waking up in my own bed, and without having just made the colossal mistake of sleeping with my freaking boss. And I wasn’t hungover, at least. And I didn’t have to do the walk of shame through a mansion.
And I didn’t have to find my boss in the kitchen on my way out, scowling and telling me that the fact that we’d slept together didn’t mean anything. That we should just pretend it had never happened.
I quirked my mouth into something that didn’t quite make it all the way to a smile, and adjusted my opinion of this morning. Yes, I still felt like crap. But at least I wasn’t humiliated and embarrassed. At least I wasn’t rapidly rethinking my entire career and whether I even had one left. I’d left all of those emotions in yesterda
y. And in last night, which I’d spent most of with an entire tub of cookie dough ice cream and hours of the trashiest TV I could find.
None of it had done much for how I’d felt about what had happened. None of it had made me feel much better. And it was really pushing things to claim that I’d left all those negative emotions in yesterday.
I hadn’t. Not really. The truth was, doing all that stuff had really just confirmed to me that I should have known better than to do what I did.
I even had a list of reasons.
One, I’d seen Damon’s life. Two, I knew he was a high-flying exec, and three, that he was just this side of being a playboy, and four, that he liked to live his life quick and on the verge of reckless, despite the enormous empire he’d managed to build up. Plus, five, one of the reasons he’d hired me at all was so he had someone making sure he didn’t do anything so stupid that it would ruin everything, and I’d spent the last five years of my life staying on top of things and guaranteeing that nothing ever stuck permanently.
I’d made him Teflon. But I knew exactly what was constantly having to bounce off of him.
No, he’d never gotten a girl pregnant or been caught up in some big scandal or anything like that. But he was no angel. And no, he didn’t have a deep or what I would consider rewarding life, and he was certainly lonely—but he’d never said anything about wanting to change any of that.
So why on this earth had I thought he would change the moment I broke out with ‘by the way, Damon, I’ve been in love with you for four years, and how about we just hook up and make it a happily ever after?’
Because I’d been stupid. That was the only answer there was. And that was exactly what I’d figured out on my fifth hour of reality TV, at about three forty-five this morning.
Sure, my sister was getting married. Sure, I was stuck in a job where I was in love with my boss and afraid of telling him because I thought it would ruin the job I had, and our friendship. And yeah, that whole situation was keeping me from moving forward with my life. That didn’t mean that the solution was to actually tell Damon what I felt. That right there had been my stupid, stupid mistake.
After that realization, I’d finally crawled into bed, sick with too much ice cream, and even sicker with the thought that I’d ruined everything doing something I should have known better than to do.
What could I say? My heart had run away with me. And look at the damage it had caused.
“The one time I go after the thing I actually want,” I breathed out on a sigh.
I squinted around the room, then glanced at my phone, trying to take in how long I’d slept. To my surprise, I’d woken up at six thirty—which meant that I’d only had about two hours of sleep, and that I still had the entire day ahead of me. An entire day of not thinking about how much I’d screwed things up. Because like I said, I was leaving all of that regret in yesterday. I’d done enough wallowing and crying.
Today, I was going to move forward.
I reached out and snagged the laptop that was next to me on the bed, and when I opened it, saw the email I’d been composing yesterday. I minimized that and went back to the original email, reading it more carefully now and realizing that it was more than just a headhunter throwing out a line—it was actually a job offer.
They wanted to know my salary requirements. They wanted to know when I could start. They wanted to know how much I would need for moving expenses, to get me from Hawaii to Sydney.
“A PA to Josh Brody,” I whispered, staring at the screen.
Damon’s biggest competitor. The man he’d practically made an entire career out of hating.
I’d have to move across the globe to take it. I would have to move away from my family—and miss my sister’s wedding planning. Leave Damon behind, and probably never see him again. Well… probably definitely never see him again, because I couldn’t imagine one single situation where I would just happen to run into him.
In a different country. On a whole different continent, thousands of miles away from where I was living.
I mean yeah, my family would still be here in Hawaii and I’d come back to see them as often as I could. But it wasn’t like Damon and I moved in the same circles, even now, when we were working together. He was miles above me when it came to the social ladder. I wouldn’t just run into him at a house party or out to lunch with my family.
And that was just one more reason to do this. If I just left, I wouldn’t have to see him ever again—or ever relive what had happened between us. And now more than ever, I realized that I needed that change. A big change. I’d swung for the fences with Damon and missed, and even if my job was still there, I didn’t think I wanted it anymore.
What was I going to do, walk into the office and pretend nothing had happened? Act like I didn’t know how he looked naked, and like he’d never kissed all the way from my neck to my—
No. There was nothing for me here now. No room to move up with Damon. No room to move forward with him. The only choice was to leave and start over again.
I brought the email I’d been writing back up and scanned it again, and then made some tweaks here and there. My salary requirements. How much I’d like to have for the move—which I was really just guessing at, because I wanted to get this email out before taking the time to do too much research. The start date I had in mind. And a very sincere thank you for offering me the opportunity.
Then I hit send.
Done and done. I’d hand Damon my resignation tomorrow and tell him not to worry about paying me through the end of the month. Because I’d be moving to Australia next week, and Josh Brody would be paying me enough that I didn’t need to worry about that extra two weeks of pay from Damon Parker.
Chapter 10
Aubrey
I’m not even kidding when I say that within thirty seconds of me pressing send, my phone rang. And when I picked it up and glanced at the screen, with that confused face you use when something like that happens, I saw Damon’s name.
I’m also not kidding when I say that I almost had a heart attack in that moment. Oh God, did he somehow know what I’d done? Did he have some sort of link with Josh, where Josh’s company had immediately told Damon that I’d accepted a position with him? Had Josh just called him immediately, either to brag or to turn me in? Was there some sort of universal code amongst CEOs that said that if you hired someone else’s assistant, you had to send them a telegram right away? Or something slightly faster than a telegram? A message written in the clouds? A psychic link?
Did he have my freaking apartment bugged?
I glanced up into the corners of my apartment—because if you were going to bug someone’s apartment, I figured you’d put the cameras in the corners. That was where they always were in the movies. But no matter how hard I looked, I didn’t see any red blinking lights up there, and after a moment of looking hard enough that my eyes actually started to hurt, I began to feel pretty stupid about the whole thing.
Of course he didn’t have my apartment bugged. Who was I kidding? He didn’t even care enough about me to care that we had slept together. In what world would he have bothered to bug my apartment?
I’d been working for the guy for years and had never stepped one freaking toenail out of line. I’d done everything he asked me to, and done it better than he expected. I’d done things I knew he’d need before he even knew to ask for them!
There was exactly zero reason for him to distrust me enough to put cameras in my apartment. Far more likely that he was calling for actual work stuff. Seeing as how I, you know, still worked for him and everything.
Still. I wasn’t happy with him right now. Officially, I didn’t know if I was even on speaking terms with him, or if I was still allowed to be ignoring him after what had happened between us. The bugging idea hadn’t pleased me, either—even if it turned out to be an exaggeration—so when I answered the phone, I knew that my voice was at subarctic temperatures.
“It’s Sunday, Damon,” I said quiet
ly. “Even I have to have at least one day off a week.”
There was a tense pause, which I took to mean that he realized he was out of line calling me on a Sunday—after having completely blown me off yesterday morning—and I bit my lip and narrowed my eyes, wondering if he was going to chicken out. Sort of hoping that he would, honestly, because no matter how good I was at arguing with him in my head, I wasn’t anxious to do it in person. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Then he started talking after all, and my hopes that he would just let this go flew right out the window.
“Aubrey, I need you,” he said, his voice full of nerves. “I’m sorry to call on a Sunday. You know I never do that. I always try to give you at least one day where you don’t have to talk to me.”
This was a total lie. He called me on Sunday almost every week. But I let it go, because it wasn’t worth arguing over. I mean really, what good would come of arguing that point when I wasn’t going to be with him much longer, anyhow?
“I really need you right now,” he said. “It’s an emergency.”
And at the invocation of that magical word, I forgot all about being angry with him. Because that’s what you do when someone you care about says they have a problem that only you can help them with.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” I asked, already up off my couch and moving toward where I kept my keys, my brain going through the steps I’d need to take to get a cab while I was on the phone with him, courtesy of my truck still being in the parking lot at that stupid restaurant. “Do you need me to come over? What happened?”
“No, I’m fine, you don’t need to come over,” he said—and I could hear the change in his tone. The change from the tone he’d started with, which had said he wasn’t sure whether I was going to accept him, to the tone of voice a man used when he knew he was on solid footing. When he thought he was going to get his way.
The Billionaire's Lockdown Baby Page 4
