A shadow there, that says he hasn’t gotten what he wanted.
He shakes hands with the other men, turning his charming grin on, and then comes walking my way. And as he walks, his face morphs from that pleasant, neutral expression to one of deep frustration and stress.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, we’ve screwed it up. I can tell already that we must have—and it doesn’t take much to figure out that it’s at least partially my fault. I could have been preparing him better last night—on the plane, even!—but instead I’d been sleeping. Or playing a video game.
Yeah, it might have been his idea. But I could have said no. It was my job to say no, and I failed.
“What happened?” I ask when he arrives next to me.
He sighs heavily and casts me a look that is at least half amused. “To put it bluntly, Ms. Evans, we played video games on the plane ride here and I spent much of last night in the hotel’s bar, thinking about things that have nothing to do with this company. We have the distribution agreement, but there are going to be several more meetings before we can finalize it. I won’t bore you with the details. But we have some planning to do.”
And with that he goes walking past me, leaving me to scramble to collect my things and catch up with him—both physically and mentally. Is he saying this is my fault? He was the one who insisted I play games with him, and though it was my fault I fell asleep last night without doing any work, it certainly isn’t my fault if he spent last night in the bar, thinking about…
Wait, what exactly had he been thinking about if it wasn’t this meeting—and the ones that are supposed to come after it?
“What were you doing in the bar last night?” I ask breathlessly when I catch up with him. I don’t even bother to try to segue into the question. I just throw it at him like a challenge—and I’m not sorry about it, either.
True, he might have been thinking about something totally unrelated. Maybe he was planning a big new design project for his apartment back home. Maybe he was planning his next charitable donation.
But something tells me it wasn’t any of those things. And I want to hear it from his own mouth.
He shoots me a side-eye as he stops in front of the elevator, one of his dimples peeking through.
“Thinking,” he says coyly.
Right. Well that’s supremely unhelpful.
“I assumed you were,” I reply. “Unless they’ve started teaching underwater basket-weaving classes in the hotel bar, and you suddenly decided to take part in them.”
“Face painting,” he returns, his eyes back on the elevator in front of us.
I let that one sit for a second, since it doesn’t make any sense by itself and I’m sure he’s going to add something. When he doesn’t say anything else, though, I turn to him, my head tipped. “Face painting?”
He gives me a shrug. “Far more likely to find face-painting lessons in a bar than underwater basket weaving, don’t you think?”
“That’s irrelevant, Mr. Billington, and you know it. What were you doing in the bar last night when you should have been preparing for this meeting? We have a number of other meetings planned for today; are you going to come out of all of them with this same problem? That you were, I don’t know”—I gesture vaguely in front of me—“learning more about face painting when you should have been preparing?”
He lets out a loud belly laugh at that, shocking me, and I take a step to the side. I’ve seen him smiling a lot. Seen him flirting with the girls in the office even more. And he’s always seemed like a relatively happy man. What would he have to be unhappy about when he can buy whatever he wants, and never has to worry about not having enough money for something he needs? But at that laugh, which sounds like it came up all the way from his feet, without him bothering to try to smother it, I realize that I’ve never actually heard him laugh before. Chuckle, yes.
Laugh, no.
He turns to me, grinning, but the grin dies out a moment later when we step onto the elevator, the doors closing behind us. At that point the business mask comes back down and he turns serious.
“Ms. Evans, we have problems, but we don’t have big problems. They want to discuss this with me further, and I agree. There are details to be handled that I hadn’t properly thought about before. Don’t worry, the deal isn’t blown.” He gives me a lopsided grin. “I do know what I’m doing, you know. This isn’t my first time. Even if I’m here with more… distraction than usual.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I have another meeting lined up with them for tomorrow, and a final meeting the day after that. I’ve already scheduled it, and we can’t miss those meetings. Those are the ones where I’m going to make sure this deal happens. I didn’t come all the way out here to let a little… Well, I didn’t come all the way out here to screw this up.”
Right. Okay. So he has this all in hand, then. But it sounds like he’s talking about an extra day, at least, and that isn’t anywhere on our schedule.
“So we’re staying for longer,” I say, turning to face the front of the elevator, my mind racing through all the details I’ll have to handle to make that happen.
“We have to,” he replies simply. “And in the meantime, you’re going to have to handle the press. We were supposed to make the big announcement today, and that’s no longer happening. Give them something that makes sense. Something that sounds flashy. I don’t know, we’re negotiating something even bigger, and that’s why we’re staying for longer.”
“Or, we’re so in love with the city that we’re making an excuse to stay longer,” I say, overruling him. “It’s sexier. Don’t worry, Mr. Billington, I’ll take care of it.”
He turns and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Ms. Evans, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Reid? Mr. Billington was my father.”
I give him a crooked smile of my own. “I’ll call you Reid as soon as you stop calling me Ms. Evans.”
I get off the elevator, trying hard to keep my mind on the job ahead, and doing everything I can not to think about the fact that I’m going to be spending more time here than I anticipated. In the most gorgeous hotel I’ve ever seen, with the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. Who is my boss. And who is also, it seems, finding his way right into my heart.
No problem. No problem at all. I am a goddamned professional. I can do this. And I am going to let a little attraction, or those dimples, or the rapidly growing desire to run my fingers through that thick charcoal hair, stop me.
Chapter 11
Reid
After the next meeting—which goes far better than the first, given that I was able to make a deal the first time through, without having to field questions I was unprepared for—I ask Josephine to accompany me to lunch.
“A work lunch,” I clarify, remembering her reaction to me having asked her to dinner the night before. “Nothing funny. We need to do some strategizing. Make sure we’re on the same page and all that.”
As if the same page is even a little bit possible in this situation. Sure, we might be able to figure out our way forward for this trip. When it comes to business. When it comes to what I’m feeling for her and the things I was actually thinking about as I cuddled up too closely with a bottle of Scotch last night, I didn’t think we’ll even be in the same book, much less on the same page.
So it’s better all around if I put that out of my mind completely. We have to figure out how to gracefully make this tour last longer than the single night we originally anticipated. We need to fill the schedule as necessary and make sure the press believes that we’ve chosen to do this rather than being forced into it. We need to make sure that the deals kept moving forward and that Build2K maintains its reputation here, in the city of tech. That’s the important thing here. That’s what we need to deal with.
After a quick look of doubt, Josephine nods in agreement. “A strategizing lunch,” she agrees. “Sounds like a very good idea to me.”
She then mumbles something else—so
mething that I can’t hear.
“What was that?” I ask quickly, wondering if she has additional thoughts she isn’t sharing with me yet.
Wondering if she’s arguing about having to spend more time with me. Because the thought that she might appreciate it never even crosses my mind. She’s made it very clear, right from her first day, what she thinks of me. We are work colleagues only, and that means we’re here to do a job. That’s all this is. That is all this ever can be.
So what if we spent six beautiful hours on-screen racing each other on the way here, completely forgetting that we were work colleagues—and that I was in fact her boss? So what if I felt closer to her during those six hours than I’ve felt to anyone else since… well, since ever? So what if I was sitting close enough to her to notice that she smelled like the most intriguing mixture of coffee and the slightly acrid scent of acrylic paints, and it made me want to bury my face in her neck and inhale until my lungs exploded—and then do it again and again?
So what if that episode left us staring into each other’s eyes, our faces only inches apart, both of us thinking the same thing: that we were sorry that moment was over?
“Mr. Billington, are you okay?” Josephine suddenly asks.
I come to my senses to realize that I’ve leaned over until I am definitely invading her personal space, and have somehow put one of my hands on her arm. I’m breathing deeply, and have the vague impression of paint again—with something softer and more floral this time, like she’s used the soap the hotel provided—before I jerk back into the real world and make my eyes focus.
Dear God, what am I doing? I’m standing far too close to her, and I can feel my body leaning in, prepared to do the very thing I’ve been daydreaming about. There’s a stirring in my pants, my cock putting in his opinion about what I should do about this situation, and the thought horrifies me.
We are in the middle a very large company’s lobby, right out of a meeting with some investors, with reporters surrounding us. And I’ve just almost kissed this girl.
A girl who works for me. A girl who hasn’t indicated any sort of interest in pursuing a relationship with me.
Jesus, I have to get a hold of myself. This is getting out of control.
I pull back and make a show of straightening my jacket. Then, when that doesn’t give me as much time as I need to collect myself, I straighten my tie as well. I almost untie it and retie it, just to give me another beat, but then I realize that I’m just being a coward.
Face it head-on, or you’re not the man you think you are, I tell myself.
“Fine, I’m fine,” I say, and I don’t care if it comes out in a rush—and makes me sound thoroughly unfine. “I’m sorry, Ms. Evans, I just got caught in my thoughts for a minute. What were we talking about?”
She gives me a look that says she doesn’t believe a word of it—making me wonder what she does think I’ve been thinking about—and then clears her throat. “We were talking about doing a lunch. Strategizing about how to handle the other companies and the press over our delayed trip back home.”
“Right. Exactly that. Shall we? I know a restaurant right around the corner from here that will do brilliantly, I think.”
I gesture toward the front door and follow after her, trying not to stare at how well the suit she’s wearing fits her curves, and telling my body to calm the hell down. This is business, and nothing else.
The sooner I can get that through my head—both of them—and make it stick, the better.
Chapter 12
Joey
A work meeting. Sure. That’s no problem. No problem at all. And it’s actually a good idea, since it gives us a chance to sit down and talk about how we’re going to handle everything. I know from the schedule that we have an hour and a half to spend at this point in the day, and it will be our last bit of free time until dinner tonight.
A lunch. It’s the obvious answer.
So why does it make me feel so nervous?
I walk ahead of Reid, trying to keep my mind on the business we need to do. I have some thoughts about how we’re going to present this to the press, when they inevitably ask, and I’m already thinking about how we’re going to fill the gaps in time we’ll have in the coming days. There are reporters I previously wasn’t able to fit in, and I know for a fact that some of the companies that wanted to meet with Reid were told that there wasn’t enough time. Now, there will be time.
I speak into my phone, setting a reminder.
“Remind me at two to call Sandra and have her start setting appointments up for the next two days,” I say, allowing the AI to take notes for me. “Tell her to start with the companies that can offer the most and move down from there.”
No, it isn’t our job. We’re on publicity, and not in charge of things like setting up meetings or keeping schedules. But this tour has been put on my shoulders, and I’m not going to allow anyone else to put their hands on it. Not when I’m having to live it in real time.
Speaking of which. I can’t lie about how displeased I am at the idea of staying here for another two days. Sure, I’ll be paid for it—and well. But it’s also digging into the amount of time I have to fix the problem with my apartment back in New York. I need to meet with my manager, make some sort of amends, promise him I’ll do better—to keep from getting kicked out.
And this delay is the opposite of convenient for, you know, my life. But isn’t that just like Billington Enterprises, to ask for too much from the people it employs? Isn’t it, at the end of the day, just like Reid Billington himself, to expect that someone will go out of their way for him, just throw their life to the wind because he needs them to? He didn’t even bother to run this by me, either. Just volunteered for it and then told me what we’re going to be doing. What if I had something big planned? What if I needed to get home by a specific time? Would it have mattered at all to him, or would he just have expected me to put that off and be at his beck and call?
I’ve seen it before. I’ve even lived it before. I’ve been at the office until ten at night for the last three weeks, working on this press tour—just for it to turn into this mess in any case, because he was unprepared for a meeting.
Yeah, I played a part in that. But he was the one who blew the meeting. And besides, it’s his company. Isn’t he supposed to be incredibly brilliant at this sort of thing? Why wasn’t he able to pull that meeting out, regardless of the lack of preparation?
So it is that by the time we get to the restaurant where we’re supposed to have lunch, I’ve worked myself into a right old temper, my blood boiling at the situation in which I find myself—which, I have convinced myself, is entirely Reid Billington’s fault.
We sit down and order our drinks, and I work hard to calm myself down. Nothing good is going to come of me getting into it with Reid. There is no way I’m going to win that particular argument.
And, I remind myself, I can’t afford to lose this job. Those student loans are sitting on my desk at home, screaming out for payment.
“I can’t imagine we’re going to be able to get through everything in one lunch meeting,” he starts. “I know your feelings about having dinner with me, but we should probably also plan on doing dinner tonight, to finish up anything we don’t get done right now.”
And at that, all my good intentions go right out the window.
“Oh, of course we have to do dinner as well,” I huff. “Why wouldn’t we? Forget about the fact that we have two more days here. I should give up my chance for a peaceful dinner, too, so that I can continue to work. Not like I work enough when I’m in New York. I better do it when I’m on the road as well.”
He stares at me, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, and I gulp. Oh God, now I’ve done it. I’ve gone and let my mouth run away from me, and he’s going to fire me. He’s going to fire me right now, and that will be the end of my career as a publicist.
And would that actually be so bad? the voice in my head wonders out loud. Would
it be the end of the world? Or would it just allow me to start my life as an artist a little sooner?
We’ve talked about this! I answer. Life as an artist won’t get my bills paid.
I can’t afford to lose this job.
“I mean… I only meant to say—” I start, stuttering.
He puts a hand up, interrupting me. “You only mean to say that you don’t appreciate having to stay here for longer. Especially with how hard you’ve already worked on this press tour,” he says, no judgement or condemnation in his tone.
I open my mouth to respond, but no sound comes out. I’m too shocked that he hasn’t fired me yet.
“You don’t have to say it,” he continues. “I know how hard you worked. I know the long hours you’ve been putting in.”
Well that makes absolutely no sense.
“How would you know?” I ask, confused. “You’re never in the office when I leave. You’re not even there when I get into the building in the mornings.”
He lifts the corners of his mouth in a smile that doesn’t make it all the way to his eyes. “Just because I’m not in the office doesn’t mean I’m not working,” he replies. “I have remote access to everything from my home office. And that includes the list of who’s still logged in at any given time.”
“So you can see when I’m still working?” I ask weakly.
A nod, and then: “I can. I’ve seen the hours you’ve been putting in lately.” He reaches out and, much to my shock, lays his hand directly over mine. When he speaks again, his voice has gone soft. Husky. “And I have to tell you that I’ve appreciated every moment you’ve been putting in. I’ve made a career out of being able to tell when people have value. You, Ms. Evans, have more value than most.”
How to Have Your Boss' Baby Page 6
