The Billionaire Series Collection

by Lila Monroe

  I quickly checked my phone display. Yep, this was her first call this morning. Her Bitch to English dictionary must have been out of date. “I, uh—”

  “Whatever,” she interrupted, displaying a less than Sherlockian interest in uncovering the truth, “I’m not interested in your excuses. If you haven’t gotten my caffeine to me in the next five minutes, so help me God—”

  I mouthed more apologies to Kate. She pouted, rolled her eyes—seriously, I was starting to worry about the strain on those muscles; was I inadvertently setting her up to need eye surgery before her time?—and mouthed back, Happy Hour. You will tell me EVERYTHING.

  Jacinda kept steamrolling over my explanations all the way through the lobby, up the elevator, down the hallway and into her office. Let me tell you, trained operatic sopranos could have learned a thing or two from this woman about breath control. She didn’t even pause as she hung up the phone, breathlessly launching headlong into another attack as she clicked it shut and switched to berating me to my face.

  “Why the hell didn’t the Chronicle get the press release? Every bitty little broadsheet in the Bay Area is running our apology today, and you somehow manage to miss the fucking Chronicle? This completely undermines my credibil—the company’s credibility, it’s like you’re trying to run this place into the ground—”

  The paper didn’t have the press release because last night, Jacinda had snatched it out of my hand at the last second and insisted that she needed to make some last-minute changes and would personally see it to the newspaper herself, since “who knows if you’ll even make it there; wouldn’t be surprised if you got distracted halfway there by all the pretty colors.” There was no point in bringing this up, though; Jacinda wasn’t interested in the truth, just spreading around blame.

  I stared at a point just to the right of her immaculately constructed blonde beehive, just close enough to look like I was looking her in the eye, and tried to appear contrite and ashamed. The faster she felt vindicated, the faster this conversation would be over, and the more likely I could get through it without bursting into tears.

  Oh God, please let me get through this conversation without bursting into tears.

  Someday it was going to be different. Someday all my hard work and sacrifices were going to pay off. Someday I was going to be the one running the show, not scrambling around like a gofer for some incompetent ass getting paid twice what I did for a quarter of the work.

  “Are you even listening to me, you flaky little—”

  Yeah, and someday pigs will fly.

  It was almost noon, and I had just finished cleaning up this latest of Jacinda’s messes, while also simultaneously manning the phones. It’s a deceptively simple phrase which translated to “answering complicated technical questions, soothing people’s nerves, suggesting things in ways that could make people think they thought of it themselves, transferring calls to answering machines, and being the safe receptacle for all the anger and frustration that people wished they could take out on the people actually responsible if those people didn’t also hold their jobs in the palm of their hands, so the girl on the phone would have to do.”

  What was Jacinda doing, you ask? Well, those lovely nails of hers don’t maintain themselves. She had checked herself out for an hour-long break to get a touch-up at her favorite salon. Truly, the life of an executive is a hard one. Good thing they have all those stock shares, luxury homes, and tax breaks to keep them warm at night.

  I leaned back in my chair, squeezing my eyes shut for a second as I stretched the tight muscles of my arms, neck, and shoulders before relaxing into what there was of its ergonomic support. There was about as much ergonomic support in this chair as there was in a medieval rack, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  “Feel like grabbing lunch?”

  I gave a startled yelp and almost fell out of my chair as I sat up. “Grant—Mr. Devlin—I didn’t see you there!”

  A glint of amusement danced in his eyes. “It is a bit tricky to do that with your eyes closed. If you find out the secret, do let me know.” He leaned on my desk, his white linen shirt gapping open teasingly at the neck. How the hell did he manage to even lean sexily?

  “Uh, yeah, right.” Trying to save face, I scrambled for a notepad and pen. “Um…lunch, you said? I’m supposed to stay at the desk, but I can call out and order you some—where do you want—or, uh, what?”

  That damn smile just got wider, like he was the Cheshire Cat. “Actually, Miss Newman, that was an invitation. You have gotten those before, haven’t you?” He didn’t wait to hear my answer. “There’s a lovely new Thai place around the corner I’ve heard good things about. Care to have lunch with me?”

  “Uh, what?” Why the hell was the boss asking to have lunch with me? Was this about that eye-roll last night? Or the rant I’d unleashed on him in his car? Was he going to fire me over pad thai? Shit, I should’ve known he wouldn’t let it go that easily.

  But then, if he was going to fire me, why bother with lunch in the first place? There were so many things that didn’t make sense, and I took refuge in the one thing I knew for certain: “I’m supposed to man the phones while Jacinda is gone. She said.”

  Grant gestured behind him. There was a pimply guy there, one of the interns. I hadn’t seen him; Grant had that effect on people, making them blend into the wallpaper by comparison. “Paul needs some more phone experience. This is a perfect opportunity.”

  Uh, well, okay. If he was going to give me an out, I certainly wasn’t going to get down on my knees and beg to stay in the glorious land of Taking People’s Shit Over the Phone. Whatever he had in mind, it had to be better than what I’d been doing all morning. And if I was getting fired, it’s not like I could do anything about it anyway. Although a few possible scenarios involving Grant and myself did flit through my mind before I could stop myself.

  “You’re the boss.”

  He gave a wolfish smile that set my blood on fire. “Indeed I am.”

  5

  Soooooo, apparently “this lovely new pad thai place” is rich people language for Rama, the hottest new restaurant in all of San Francisco, written up in all the magazines with five stars and the kind of glowing terms usually reserved for religious texts. Reservations were supposed to be harder to get than the Holy Grail.

  And we were being ushered through the front door right now.

  Everywhere I looked there was carved ebony and white marble, gold leaf on Doric columns, spotless white linen tablecloths draped over tables staggering with a rainbow of food—salads, noodles, soups—that could have fed an army, but were currently being used to feed people with faces straight out of Forbes, U.S.A. Today, and Entertainment Weekly. I couldn’t have been more out of place if I were a cat in a dog kennel. I mean, I wasn’t exactly dressed like a bum, but in a room full of suits and chic outfits, ‘underdressed’ didn’t even begin to describe it.

  Which didn’t even matter, because the second we were through the door, I might as well have been invisible. Grant had to grab me by the arm—I definitely didn’t notice the strength of his arms, or the elegance of his long fingers, or the heat of his large hands—to keep me from getting swept away by the crowd of fawning employees swamping us, asking if he would have the usual, would he like the table by the window, there was a new red wine in stock that was simply beyond compare, one of only eight bottles in the world…

  Before I knew it, we were seated at that table with the window overlooking the street, and huge plates of food were being set in front of us, steam rising from succulent vegetables and spicy meat over noodles, the scent of peanuts, coconut, and ginger making my mouth water.

  I tentatively twirled some of the noodles around my fork and lifted it to my mouth to take a bite—and I had to shut my eyes to keep from moaning in delight. There was a Thai café down the street from me that I’d always thought had pretty good stuff—every once in awhile I consoled myself with one of their milk teas and an order of roast chicken—but co
mpared to this place, they might as well be scraping their food from the bottom of a garbage can. I felt like I’d spent my entire life eating cardboard, only to be suddenly shown what food actually was.

  “Ooooh, hello, Mr. Devlin,” a voice breathlessly announced. I opened my eyes to see a waitress hovering at our table. Her blonde hair cascaded around her shoulders, her make-up had a fresh look as if she had just touched up those pouty scarlet lips, and the top four buttons of her uniform had obviously just been hastily undone. “You are always such a sight for sore eyes.”

  “I’ll have a bottle of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Gran Cru, Marie,” he said without looking up from the menu. “The 1959, please, not the 1969 you brought last time. A very inferior year.”

  “Anything for you, Mr. Devlin,” she said breathlessly. Then with more emphasis, just in case he had missed the Slut Telegraph the first time around, she added: “Anything.”

  “I’ll let you know,” he said, still not looking up, and she finally beat a retreat, casting so many longing looks over her shoulders it was frankly a miracle she didn’t sprain her neck or bump into another waiter on the way to the kitchen.

  I decided to take advantage of his inattention by eating all my conflicting feelings—especially since the feelings on offer were in the form of the finest cuisine money could buy. I devoured a papaya salad with a delightfully crunchy topping I couldn’t identify—maybe anise? Yet there was just the hint of bacon, and candied ginger, and the color reminded me of purple lettuce… I just happened to be licking the sauce off my finger when Grant looked back up.

  For half a second, heat flashed in his eyes like a tiger spying its prey, and my panties liquefied.

  Then like a flash, he was all detached amusement again, a bored god surveying the lowly human and her foibles, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing.

  “I take it you like the food,” he said dryly, the corner of his mouth twitching just a fraction upward, as if the smile were not quite under his control.

  I shrugged, trying not to let on how much my mind and pants were still on fire after that first look he’d given me. Holy smolder, Batman! “I figured if I’m going to get fired, might as well enjoy it.”

  He looked offended. “Is that what you think you’re here for?”

  “Come on,” I rolled my eyes. “After last night, it’s not like I didn’t see the writing on the wall. I didn’t expect you to do it in person though,” I added. “I was expecting Jacinda to do the honors – she would have enjoyed it too.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I have no intention of letting you go.”

  “No?” I blinked.

  “No.”

  I waited for him to reveal the real reason he invited me to lunch, but suddenly, a cry rang across the room like the shriek of a triumphant hawk swooping down on its prey:

  “Grant, daaaaahling!”

  A woman breezed over to our table—and I do mean ‘breezed,’ she was so thin I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that it really was the wind buffeting her across the room. She rested one silver satin-draped hip on the edge of Grant’s chair, and ran her long red nails down the fabric of his shirt.“You’re looking ravishing, how are you?

  “Fine,” he said. “Lacey, meet Jenna Masters. Jenna, this is my colleague Lacey.”

  I tried to smile and nod politely but she ignored me, which was just as well, because who wanted to meet international supermodel Jenna Masters while they were trying to cough up the piece of roast duck that had decided to roost in their esophagus?

  Not me, and my blood was also definitely not boiling at the possessive way her hand was resting on Grant’s chest.

  It was totally out of line, though, the possessive way her hand was resting on Grant’s chest. Everybody who even glanced at the headlines on the supermarket tabloids at checkout knew that they’d had a bad break-up two months ago. Not ‘crying and recriminations’ bad. More like ‘throwing furniture at his head and hiring private detectives to stalk him’ bad.

  Is it a little bit pathetic that that still sounds better than my current love life?

  “Are you coming to the gala, Grant?” she asked.

  Of course she wasn’t going to call it The Modern Ball or even clarify that she meant the gala at the Museum of Modern Art. To people like her and Grant, there was only one ‘the gala,’ and anybody who needed any clarification clearly didn’t belong and should probably be summarily rounded up and quarantined.

  “They’re auctioning off some divine pieces, some very exciting dynamic new artists. So…warm-blood. Stimulating. You could even say…dangerous.” She lowered her voice, though she didn’t bother lowering it enough to keep me from hearing. After all, I didn’t exist to her. “You could help me choose one for my bedroom.”

  I had just about evicted the roast duck from my throat, but that last sentence made me start to choke on it again.

  “I was bored out of my skull last year,” Grant said bluntly. He took a bite of his own papaya salad without looking at her. He chewed slowly and thoughtfully, as if the taste and texture of his meal were a thousand times more interesting than anything any mere mortal could have to say to him.

  Jenna paused for a moment, obviously thrown off her game by the existence of a universe in which she didn’t immediately get everything she asked for. She recovered quickly from this puzzling paradox, though, giving a little fake-laugh and backing off with the studied casual air of a cat who doesn’t want you to see that it didn’t land on its feet. “Oh, you kidder! No one can ever guess just what’s going to come out of that gorgeous mouth of yours, can they? Well, let me know if you do decide to join us!”

  “I’ll think about it,” Grant said. “Perhaps if I can find company more…stimulating…than last year’s.”

  Jenna’s face froze for a second, then with a visible effort she relaxed and gave Grant a smile so fake I was surprised that government inspectors didn’t sweep down on us and arrest her. Continuing to ignore my very existence, she swept away in the same blade-of-grass-being-lightly-tossed-by-the-breeze way she had come to us in the first place.

  And I couldn’t help but notice that for all Grant’s declared lack of interest, his eyes followed her lightly swaying and bouncing figure all the way to the door.

  So much for not finding her stimulating. Not that I blamed him.

  I stabbed my fork at my noodles with the kind of avenging anger usually reserved for blood-feuding families in the Appalachians.

  “What did those noodles ever do to you?” Grant said, that exasperating smile right back on his face like it had never left. “I haven’t seen such vicious stabbing since I watched a horror movie.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered, and stabbed them harder.

  Grant’s eyes darkened, stormy weather threatening in his gaze. “Don’t lie to me, Lacey. Don’t beat around the bush—you’ve been sitting there avoiding saying a word. You have opinions—well, share them. But don’t stew in your own resentment and act as though it’s my fault you don’t have the courage to speak up.”

  That hit a nerve.

  “This is why no one takes you seriously!” I snapped. “This is why the company’s in trouble! Today is supposed to be all about damage control, and you’re out eating and flirting with bimbos and accepting party invitations from your crazy ex that will just make things worse!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Did you hear me accept an invitation?”

  That brought me up short. “W-well, no,” I stuttered. “But you implied—”

  “I didn’t accept the invitation,” he said firmly. “I’ve certainly done some foolish things in the past, and you’re very welcome to bring them up for discussion, but don’t put things at my door that aren’t there.”

  He set down his fork and squared his shoulders, looking directly at me like a man facing a firing squad. And after just now and last night, what else could he expect?

  My face was burning
; I was drowning in shame and regret. “I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” he said lightly, and took a drink of water. “Of course, I did say that I could be persuaded to attend the gala if the right companion were to accompany me…”

  I’d also taken the opportunity to take a drink of water, and at these words that water came spurting out of my mouth like Niagara Falls in righteous indignation at his about-face. “You don’t make sense! Don’t you care about this job at all?”

  He handed me a napkin and dodged the question. “What about you, Lacey? What do you care about?”

  I ignored the tingles racing through me at the way he lingered on my first name. When had he started doing that? Before today, he’d never even used my name. Whatever, this was all just a distraction; my heart was only racing because I was in an argument with my boss.

  “I care about doing a good job. I care about following through on my promises, and the promises of the place I work for. I care about doing whatever little tiny things I can to make this world a better place, and even if they’re super tiny, they’re something and I can feel good about that.”

  “An unusual attitude,” he said, signaling the waiter to refill the water glass that I’d been turning into a Yellowstone geyser, “in this day and age. And particularly in this rather laissez-faire hamlet. Did you grow up around here?”

  “I grew up in the Midwest,” I said impatiently, “land of so many damn lakes there was practically no land. I went to Stanford because they gave me some scholarships and some loans where the interest rate was a toe and finger instead of an arm and a leg. After I graduated I decided I wanted to stay in the state for the job opportunities.”

  “Just the job opportunities?” He raised an eyebrow. “There weren’t any other…incentives?”

  “Ha ha, you caught me,” I said sarcastically, ignoring his obvious implication. I wish there had been some guy worth staying in this state for. “I really stayed for the high cost of living and the thriving avant-garde sushi scene. What does it matter?”