by Sienna Swan
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
My First Time With My Dad's Boss
Sienna Swan
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Dr Big Excerpt
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 Sienna Swan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
My First Time With My Dad's Boss
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Sienna Swan. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
Cover © Jack of Covers
Chapter One
Cassie
Any reasonable eighteen-year-old girl knows that at the end of the day, there are very few things that actually matter. Having your own car matters. Having a cute guy to crush on matters. Having friends to complain to when things don’t go your way and money to spend when you’re in a bad mood matters.
So when I find myself in a situation where most of the above boxes are left unticked, I feel like the world really isn’t revolving in a way that I approve of.
“So what do we think about Josh?” Stacy asks on the other end of the line as I paint my toenails on the window seat in my kitchen.
Dad’s due home any minute and I should have started dinner by now, but as usual when I get on the phone with Stacy, it’s five hours later and neither one of us has done anything worth mentioning, other than gossip and lament about our respective bad luck.
I roll my eyes at the question, glad that we opted for just a call and not video chat as Stacy is on the speaker. She knows very well what she thinks of Josh and I know what I think of Josh and at the end of the day, neither one of us thinks that much of him. But going out with Josh Szelicki sounds less painful than spending a Saturday night at home alone, chatting to Stacy again.
“We’re thinking he got us tickets to a movie we want to see and that he’s really very sweet.”
“True romance, right there,” Stacy deadpans, and I can’t help but agree with her.
I mean, Josh Szelicki is a really nice guy. He’s the kind of guy your scowling, backwards-cap wearing dad would approve of because he’d get you home by your curfew and never dream of trying to kiss you within a fifty-mile radius of said dad. And therein lies the crux of the issue, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t want to date any guy my dad approves of, and I love my dad very much.”
“You’re one to talk. How’s Seeeeth?” I ask, dragging out his name like I’m a junior in high school again, adding in a heartfelt sigh at the end.
“Seth’s just fine, thank you,” Stacy snorts on the other end.
I hear her messing around in the kitchen, probably sneaking another can of Dr Pepper. We promised to cut back on soda and get back in shape, but considering that I’m intermittently sipping on a Pepsi myself, I can’t exactly judge without being a hypocrite for it. It’s a delicate truce between us, the balance maintained by joint denial.
“He might call me this weekend.”
The flutter of hope in Stacy’s voice makes me stifle a groan. She’s had a thing for Seth Warwick since eighth grade and he’s never given her the time of day. I think it stopped being about him and started being about something she couldn’t have at least two years ago. Of course now, with Seth having moved away for college, he’s actually started paying attention to her. Typical.
If anyone were to ask for my opinion, I’d tell them that he’s a piece of shit not worthy of her time or attention. But Stacy stopped asking me a long time ago, because I’ve given one too many renditions of that particular opinion already.
“I’m sure he will,” I tell her, and I honestly hope he will.
I don’t mind being wrong if that means my friend gets to be happy, if only for a moment.
I finish with my little toenail and admire my handiwork, wiggling my toes. It’s a gaudy, crimson red that I’ve picked, but it works. It’s summer, after all, and I’m intending to wear shorts and open-toed shoes as much as I possibly can before autumn rolls by and I have to actually, gag, deal with my future. Getting a job is still high on my list even for the summer, because I’m missing both spending money and a car at this point to add to my teenage standard for happiness, but a summer job sounds much less harsh than an autumn job.
An autumn job means office dresses and demure pumps and hair in buns with minimal makeup. That’s no fun.
Dad’s car pulls in the driveway and he takes a minute before getting out. Stacy’s rattling on about how amaaaazing Seth is, giving me plenty of time to consider my father. Every time I look at him now, a pang of guilt passes through me. I know he doesn’t want me to feel that way, but it’s not something I could will to stop. And I know I’m not to blame for his cancer in any way, but an irrational part of me still thinks I might be.
The whole ‘what if I had been a better kid’ and ‘what if I hadn’t asked for that mountain bike for my fourteenth birthday, maybe he wouldn’t be so stressed then because of money’ keeps piling up, making no one happy. Finally, he exits the car, a sensible blue Ford Focus that has been in the family for what seems like a lifetime, and walks to the house.
“Stace, just a minute,” I yell in the general direction of the phone, clicking it off speaker but not hanging up.
I plant my feet on the cool, tiled floor of the kitchen and waddle carefully toward the front door, trying not to mess up my toes. Dad meets me as he steps in, but he barely looks at me.
“Hey, bug,” he says, his voice tired.
He looks more ragged than usual. His once wide shoulders are slightly slumped and he’s lost a lot of weight. His hair is starting to fall out, but it was thinning anyway so I don’t think anyone but me and Stacy have really noticed. My big, strong ox of a father is shriveling up in front of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“Hey, dad,” I say, trying to wipe the worry off my face.
He hates it when I fuss over him. Always has. I think he never learned to accept help from anyone and he’s stuck by that for his whole life.
He throws his messenger bag on the floor and steps out of his shoes, making a beeline for our small living room. Our house isn’t big but it’s cozy. Mom passed almost four years ago now, but it’s still the way she left it. It’s how we prefer it, too.
Dad slumps into his favorite recliner and I perch on the arm of the couch, waiting for him to tell me about his day. That’s how we always do it. I tel
l him about mine, he tells me about his, and we part on our merry ways, knowing that both of us are still fine and good. Of course, lately, it hasn’t always been that fine and definitely not so good, but we’ve been trying our best to squeeze some lemonade out of the endless lemons.
“I did my toes,” I say, starting the conversation.
He glances at my still-wet toes and nods approvingly.
“One of your mother’s colors,” he says.
He’s right. All her original ones dried a long time ago but I’ve painstakingly color matched them to have the exact same shades.
“I might go out with Stacy tonight, if that’s okay.”
“Whatever you need, bug,” dad tells me.
No more questions, no ‘where are you going, when are you coming home’. Someone might have abducted Thomas Newark and sent an impostor in his stead. I frown and scrunch my nose, giving him the evil eye. It always makes him laugh.
It doesn’t this time.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you feeling worse, should I get your pills?” I ask, jumping up to run to the bathroom.
I’ve become an expert in pill bottles and antibiotics and anti-nausea medication over the last few months. At this rate, I might as well become a pharmacist, I should be able to carry over most of the classes.
“I’m okay,” he lies.
I don’t buy it.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I cock my head to the side and give him ‘the look’, the updated version. The one I only bring out in case of dire emergencies, like when he wouldn’t budge to come out with me on a particularly sweltering summer day when I was twelve to buy me ice cream. I see the corner of his mouth twitch, but it twitches downward and my expression clears. Whatever it is that he isn’t telling me, it has to be major.
“Dad, talk to me. I’m not going to move before you do.”
He hesitates but relents. With a sigh, meeting my eyes, he tells me how things are and I almost wish he hadn’t told me.
“Okay, bug. I’ve been fired. I have two more weeks starting Monday and then that’s it, I’m off the insurance.”
I stand but my ears are ringing. I expect my knees to buckle but they don’t, not really. Patting the back of the seat behind me, I sit back down and when the initial shock wears off, the volley of questions and comments follows.
“They can’t do that to you! That’s discrimination, isn’t it? They can’t just fire you because you’re sick! Stacy’s dad is a lawyer, we could-“
“They didn’t fire me because of my illness. Nobody knows, I told you that,” dad tells me, and I nod blankly.
I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone either, but Stacy practically lives here half the time so of course she knows. Other than that, it’s just me, my dad, and his doctors. It’s pancreatic cancer. The prognosis isn’t good. It’ll be much worse, obviously, if he can’t get treatment.
“If you told them,” I start, but he gives me a look and I know he won’t, so I switch gears. “But what about Mason? He’s such a nice guy. The way he came by when mom died… And you did start Roarke & Newark with him so the fact that he’s fired you is a fucking outrage!”
Mason Roarke. My first crush. The first time I remember meeting him, I must have been fourteen, right when mom passed, and he was a successful, scorching hot businessman. Dark hair, green eyes, a chiseled face and arms that seemed to be made for holding someone, he was everything. I obsessed about him endlessly, filling the void left by the tragedy with everything him.
I’d like to say I got over it, but I never really did. I was just a kid, hell, I still probably am one, at least to him, so common sense eventually took over and I ‘moved on’. I still have notebooks scribbled full of his name and I’d be a liar if I claimed that he isn’t the first person my mind goes to when I want to get myself off.
A perfect daydream, and apparently a perfect nightmare at the same time.
“Language, Cassie,” dad says, but there’s no bite to his bark.
I know the company is not Roarke & Newark anymore. Now, it’s Roarke Incorporated, a multibillion dollar conglomerate of engineering solutions and innovation that my dad helped build up. And now it’ll kill him, if not directly, then by proxy.
“Couldn’t we just talk to him?”
“I will not ask Mason Roarke for anything,” my dad says firmly, closing his eyes for a long moment.
I’m fluttering with nerves and worry and my dad looks like he’s just… given up. It kills me.
“I’ll go take a nap, I think,” he says finally, tossing the keys to the car to me. “Make sure you bring it back in one piece tonight. Say hello to Stacy for me.”
I nod blankly as he gets up and shuffles up the stairs to the bedroom. I sit for a moment longer but a muffled noise from somewhere in the kitchen gets my attention.
“Oh shit,” I mutter, realizing I forgot Stacy on the other line.
I run to the kitchen, no longer giving a crap about my perfect toenails, and grab the phone.
“I’m here, I’m sorry!”
“Oh my god, Cass! What are you going to do?” she asks frantically. I can picture her brows knitted together and her fingers toying with the end of her blonde braid like she does every time she’s worried.
“So you heard the whole thing?”
“Bits and pieces. Enough. You’ve got to go talk to Mason, right?”
Do I?
Maybe I do. He would probably not even recognize me at this point. I’m just the daughter of one of his employees and he doesn’t know that I’ve had my fingers up my pussy, moaning his name into a pillow at night. To him, I’m nobody.
“You think I should? Dad would be pissed if I did,” I say, but the plan is forming in my head already.
It’s only six o’clock. Every article I’ve ever read on Mason Roarke has told me he’s a workaholic who lives and breathes being at the office. I could probably still catch him.
“What’s worse, your dad being pissed at you for going to Mason, or knowing that you didn’t do everything you could? I mean, that’s fucked up, right? He can’t just do that, not when your dad helped build the company up from nothing!
“You have to do whatever you can to make him change his mind, right? Sell your soul, sell your mind, sell your body, whatever!”
I find myself nodding along, staring at the keys in my hands. The black leather contrasts against my tan skin.
I have to do something. I can’t just sit by idly. My dad won’t ask for help, but I could, and he doesn’t even have to know.
“I’m going to go see Mason Roarke,” I say with determination, throwing on a pair of flip-flops to complete my very carefully put-together look of denim booty shorts and a semi-ironic Metallica tour t-shirt replica.
“Oh my god, you’re going to see Mason Roarke!” Stacy echoes.
I don’t think I’m supposed to be having butterflies in my stomach, but whatever. I’ll be strong. I won’t be distracted by his stupid sexy self.
The front door falls shut behind me and I already know I’m definitely going to be distracted by Mason Roarke’s stupid sexy self.
Chapter Two
Mason
The summer sun streams through my floor-to-ceiling office windows, but as usual I won’t be able to enjoy the outdoors. It used to bother me before I accepted the fact that work will always be number one for me. That’s what makes me the best in the business. It’s dedication that has turned my once boutique engineering consultancy into the multinational corporation it is today, and it’s dedication still that will see me through the corporate merger I’ve been navigating these past few months.
I’m almost there. I can virtually smell the additional market share hitting my profit and loss statement. I just hope it’s worth the investment I’ve put in, both personally and professionally.
I have to believe it’s worth the short-term sacrifices I’ve made for the future of this business. I stare through the interior glass at Jenna Ormond’s freshly-empty workstation
. She’d been with me for over five years before I let her go earlier today, beginning as a receptionist on the ground floor before I promoted her to be my personal secretary when she was just a recent graduate with fresh ideas.
It’s a stipulation of the merger. My company needs to downsize in order to incorporate the other business without loss of their existing staff, and changes like these can only be tolerated without a fatal morale loss if it’s seen that the cuts are made equally across the businesses. That’s why I let Jenna leave with a very generous severance package. That’s why I stay strong through the pang of loss I feel at losing such close members of my team over the next few weeks.
It’s business, and pure hard business is all I’ve come to know.
I remember the days when I would attempt to balance work and a personal life. I remember days when I’d indulge in social activities just for the hell of it, without the underlying tone of business networking. When things just were.
Fun.
I used to have fun.
I used to have girlfriends, and take vacation time to head to the coast and sail for days on end. I used to enjoy a movie on a Friday night and the occasional game of golf.
I barely recognize the man I was back then. I still keep in shape, but I have fine lines around my eyes these days that crinkle on the rare occasions when I smile. My once perfectly dark hair is flecked with gray at the temples, but I don’t think it does me a disservice. My eyes are as green as they’ve ever been, more cutting than ever before, and my jaw is firm from years of hard negotiations. None so hard as these I’m involved with right now, of course.
I focus back on the ream of documents on the desk before me, brushing away the desire to let this go for just one evening. I can’t. Not now.
With any luck I’ll be done here before midnight. If my luck carries on past that, I’ll manage six hours of sleep tonight before I have to do this all over again in the morning. But only if my attention is on point, and there is a whole load of small print to get through before I lock up here for the evening.
