ROMANCE: Badass Boss (Billionaire Alpha Bad Boy Romance) (Western Mail Order Bride Calendar Contemporary)

by Susan Fleming

  “Just once, as a child. My mom and I went by train from here to California and back.”

  “So it’s kind of a family tradition, then?”

  “More than that—many of the men in my family in previous generations were railroad men.”

  He mused as he looked at her. She was easy to talk to. He liked that. Her family was blue collar—at least her ancestors were. That’s where her pluck came from—upfront without attitude. He liked that even better.

  One part of her thought she should politely decline, but it sounded like fun, and whether or not it was exactly what she had envisioned, she needed the job.

  He picked up his phone and asked someone named Jeanine to have his car sent around.

  “Shall we go, then?”

  She smiled and nodded. He gestured for her to lead the way, and they departed the suite.

  Chapter 4

  Winning The Game

  They took the elevator, and, by the time they reached the front lobby of the building, a black car with a driver waited outside the door for them. They drove to the opposite end of town, looking at several luxury apartments along various transit routes. They were all either embarrassingly huge or overly industrial-looking and just not her style. But the last one, the one within walking distance of the building which housed the firm, in fact, was quite different.

  When they looked at the model, she had to smile because the dining room table held a beautiful vase with a branch of cherry blossoms, the very thing she had found so welcoming about his office. She surprised him by asking to see one of the actual apartments because she hadn’t in any of the rest. She had simply gone with the standard tour and nodded her head a lot.

  “Sure, let me grab the keys,” the leasing agent said. “How many bedrooms are you interested in? We have several different floor plans….” Just then, the woman’s phone rang. “Oh, no… not again! I was just about to show apartments to a young couple….”

  Kayla blushed that the woman thought they were together. She imagined he would rush to assure her differently, but when she got off the phone, she spoke rapidly.

  “I have an emergency in a different building. Here are the keys to a few of the unoccupied apartments. The apartment numbers are on the keys.”

  The woman tossed the keys to Adrian, and waved them out of her office. “I’ll meet you back here when you’re finished.”

  “I guess we’re on our own,” he said. He rifled through the keys, looking at the various numbers. “After the apartment numbers there are dash 1s, dash 2s, and dash 3s. I’m betting that’s for the number of bedrooms.”

  “Well, there’s just me, so I only need one,” Kayla said.

  “Let’s try one on for size,” he said, “and then we’ll see if we need to look at a bigger or smaller one.”

  She was adamant they didn’t need to look at anything larger than the one bedrooms, but she was eager to see the various floor plans.

  The third one they looked at enchanted her. It was in an outside corner, so it shared no common walls with another apartment. There was an exposed brick wall which made it feel earthy, a window overlooking the river which opened onto a balcony, a gas fireplace, and a gorgeous kitchen with gleaming granite counters and lots of space. When they walked into the bedroom there was, among other things, a smaller balcony which looked down into a lovely courtyard. There was a carved niche which held a smaller vase with a branch of cherry blossoms again. It began to feel like some kind of good omen.

  He watched the obvious delight in her face.

  “You like this, don’t you?”

  “Breathlessly so,” she admitted. “I can always dream.”

  “Dream? Is there something that you want that it doesn’t have?”

  “Oh, no, it’s just that…”

  “Shh… don’t say it.”

  She didn’t care how generous he was; this was way too rich for her blood. Perhaps it was something to which she could aspire someday.

  She walked it all again. The sun was going down now, and the city lights were coming on. She could see that the night view here would be very stirring. She began to imagine a table with soft lighting beside a couch, the fireplace lit… Oh! She shook herself from her reverie.

  He watched her from the back as she looked out the window. He had to fight the urge to slip his arms around her and squeeze her breasts. Such a tempting morsel!

  “Thanks for letting me look at it,” she said. “You have been very generous with your time.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “It’s my duty as your future boss.”

  She gave him her best fake smile because she still wasn’t sure about any of this, including the job.

  They met the leasing agent downstairs to return the keys.

  “What did you think?”

  “Number 385—what is the rent?”

  “Number 385, let’s see,” she went over to her desk and brought up her computer. Kayla was embarrassed to have asked; she had figured the woman would know off the top of her head.

  “That one is $1550 a month, all utilities included—electric, water, gas, garbage, and wi-fi.”

  “Oh, wow,” Kayla said. She hadn’t dreamed it would be that much.

  “We’ll take it,” said Adrian Petrou. Kayla was struck speechless for a few seconds, but then she found her tongue.

  “No, wait, I really need to think about it. I prefer not to make rash decisions,” she said, looking directly at him. She had no idea what he was about, but she hadn’t even agreed to the job yet. He was making an awful lot of assumptions.

  He looked as though he were about to overrule her, but he thought better of it.

  “Will five hundred dollars hold it until she can make a decision?”

  “That particular apartment is rarely empty. I can only hold it for 24 hours.”

  “Fair enough,” Adrian said, handing the woman a credit card. “That’ll be plenty of time,” he said, smiling at Kayla.

  When they got in the car, she looked at him, checking her temper. “I haven’t made up my mind whether or not the job will work for me, let alone the apartment.”

  “Let’s talk about that over dinner,” he said, giving the driver the name of the restaurant where he wanted to go.

  Kayla had never been there, but she had heard of it. She looked down at herself, wondering whether she was adequately dressed to go there.

  He must have seen her looking at herself and surmised what she was thinking.

  “You’re fine,” he said, patting her knee. “More than fine.”

  When they arrived at their destination, her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She knew about the restaurant called 42° North. What she hadn’t realized was that it was at the Renaissance Center Marriott. She snapped her mouth closed when she realized she was looking at the front of the hotel, jaw agape. The front swept across a gloriously lit water display.

  She craned her neck, looking up at the gorgeous towers and the skywalk. As they moved toward the entrance, she looked at her dress again. She felt as though she should be dressed for the Oscars instead wearing of a cutesy little sheath.

  He had walked a few steps ahead of her, but suddenly she felt him near. He lifted her chin with his hand, looking directly into her eyes. For the first time, she felt a frisson pass between them. She felt her nipples tighten, and her panties became damp. It was the last thing she expected, but she realized that she had only looked at him furtively all day. She thought she would melt into a puddle right there on the concrete. But what was happening? This was her prospective boss!

  “I can read you like a book,” he said. “Quit fussing over how you’re dressed. You are quite attractive, and your dress is perfectly appropriate. You’ll see people dressed every way in there, from super-casual tourist to… to business dress like us.”

  Yeah, she thought, except you’re wearing a tailored Armani suit.

  He surprised her yet again by putting his hand in the small of her back, guiding her toward the interior. She
tried not to gawk.

  He whispered to the maître d’ and they were immediately escorted to an intimate table next to the window overlooking the river.

  Menus arrived. “May I?” he asked.

  “May you what?”

  “I’d like to order for us.”

  “I—I don’t know.” She hesitated because by now she was beginning to feel a bit squeamish about the entire situation.

  “Let’s have a drink first,” he suggested.

  “Perhaps some wine would settle my stomach.”

  She expected him to ask if her stomach was upset, but maybe he was able to read that, too.

  After she had taken a few sips of the wine, she did feel a bit calmer, and her stomach wasn’t quite as queasy.

  “So how do you see my position shaping up?” she asked. “As personal assistant.”

  He looked at her for a few seconds before answering. “It will be your job to become so familiar with me and with my cases, how I do things, and how I like things, that you’ll know what I need before I do and take care of it.”

  Her eyes got big, and he saw her swallow hard.

  “As enticing as all this sounds…”

  “Yes?”

  “You read me so well, but you certainly don’t know me. If you did, you would know that I would be lousy at something like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t read minds, for one thing.”

  “It’s not about mind reading. It’s about observing.”

  “Well, that’s me out, too. I’ve never been a very observant person.”

  “And why is that?”

  Why? Why indeed? If I knew why, perhaps I could fix it.

  “You’re very observant of one thing,” he said, “yourself. But for all your observation, you don’t see yourself very accurately.”

  She bristled. You don’t even know me, she exclaimed inside her head.

  “That seems to clinch it right there, then. If I’m not even good at observing myself, how could I ever hope to do what you want me to do?”

  “Because it would be my job to teach you.”

  “Teach me… to be observant?”

  He nodded, “But more than that—to accurately analyze those observations—of your environment or a situation—instantly, to see what is necessary in that precise moment.”

  She pondered that for a second and nodded. “I can certainly see how that would be critical in the courtroom.”

  “Exactly. Intrigued?” He continued, “I’m sure there are people out there who would say that a good lawyer is ‘born,’ just like they say about any other prodigy. But I believe that any extremely bright person with the right focus can be molded into a brilliant lawyer with the right mentoring.”

  She wanted to make another self-deprecating remark, something about him having the wrong person if he thought she was extremely bright, but she began to realize that saying those things about herself was actually questioning his judgment. Of course, she did question his judgment, but she wasn’t going to show it. She couldn’t help but be intrigued.

  “You’ll officially be my ‘Girl Friday’ as it were, but I believe it will become much, much more.” She met his eyes again, and this time a frisson went through her without him even touching her. She knew that he meant what he’d mentioned several times today, but the way he said it, she couldn’t help but… Stop it! she told herself.

  As he poured her a second glass of wine, she told him she was ready to eat. “I needed something to settle my stomach when we came in, but if I drink too much on an empty stomach, I’ll have a different problem.”

  “May I order for us?”

  “I just don’t want anything too heavy.”

  “I know just the thing,” he said. When the waiter came, he ordered an appetizer of wine and garlic sautéed mussels, grilled swordfish for her, and a paella for himself. When the dishes came, he split them in half for each of them.

  She sat watching him split the dishes, trying to figure him out. It was like him sitting on the bench today in his office and patting it for her to sit beside him. It was just so forward, awkward for her, yet fairly benign.

  “So, about the apartment. If it’s $1550 a month, then your starting salary will be $6200 a month.”

  What? That was ridiculous. No paralegal in the world made that kind of money right out of school, she thought. Maybe never. What the hell was he thinking? Who was this guy? He just seemed to take charge of everything, and whatever he indicated was how things should be.

  “I could say that I felt as though I was dreaming, but that would be disingenuous of me. The truth is that it feels so surreal as to be absurd.” She had been trying to keep the edge out of her voice, but it was overwhelming.

  “The truth is that I want you on my team, plain and simple. I’ll do whatever it takes to get you to come to work for me.”

  She wanted to jump up from the table, run out the door and never look back. But, not only did she really need the job, she also knew she might regret not taking his offer. She didn’t like regret. She’d already had plenty in her few adult years. But she also realized she might wholly regret taking it.

  How to weigh it? If she took all that he offered, the apartment and the huge salary to pay for it, how would she feel if things started to sour? If she wanted to leave, she’d be stuck with a huge mess on her credit if she abandoned the apartment, which would affect things going forward. She felt trapped, but she also knew that was simply psychological perception, and part of it was what he wanted her to feel. Despite his insistence that he could read her “like a book,” he seemed to think she was much more naïve than she was.

  So, like everything else so far, she spoke her mind.

  “I don’t know who you’ve had working for you before, but surely it’s not lost on you what a snare you are offering me. Taking the train back and forth to Auburn Hills, as expensive as that is, is still less than a thousand dollars a month, far less expensive than that apartment. If I live at home, I have few expenses, so I could easily live on a salary of four thousand a month.”

  She continued to surprise him at every turn. “So I’m offering you a salary of sixty-two hundred a month and you say you’d prefer four?”

  She shrugged. “It’s all a matter of practicality. I retain my independence, and you keep a good chunk of change. Sounds like a win-win to me.”

  He had to laugh at her beguiling tactics. Little did she know that she was turning him on much more than any woman with a lot of cleavage and a “fuck-me” look.

  “Fair enough about the independence, but I don’t want you taking the train every day. I’ll need you to have flexibility with your working hours, ones that likely won’t correspond with Amtrak schedules. How about this? I’ll make it a provision of your contract that should leave the employ of McNabb, Petrou, and Sinclair that you will have the option of selling me your lease.”

  “I still don’t need a $6200 salary. That’s insane!”

  “You’re right. Let’s make it $7500 then. You’ll need money to furnish and decorate your apartment, and perhaps to buy a new wardrobe since you seem so displeased with the one you have.”

  “Hmm… furnishing, decorating, and a new wardrobe? How about a forty thousand dollar signing bonus, and fifty-two hundred a month?”

  “Done! Wait, that’s over a hundred grand a year. How did you end up beating me at my own game?”

  She threw her head back and laughed, then looked at him through narrow eyes. “So you admit it was a game?”

  “Maybe, but negotiations are over, and you’re mine.”

  Her eyes went from narrow to big again, but she resigned herself. She was running out of arguments, and things were working in her favor, if she could get used to his quirks. But it was a step on a ladder that she had never dreamed of taking—being mentored and moving toward law school.

  What a minx! he thought. She outmaneuvered me, but now she’s in my lair.

  “So, we’ll go in the morn
ing and sign the lease; then you can take the afternoon train home to get your things together. You can take the rest of the week to move in and do whatever décor shopping you need to do, and start Monday. I’ll be glad to help with any of that.”

  She realized that it was getting later in the evening and she hadn’t thought about where to spend the night.

  “I’ll need to make arrangements for the night.”

  “Nonsense. You’ll stay right here at the Marriott at my expense. I can pick you up first thing and we’ll head over to Rivermore.”