by Alyse Zaftig
Billionaire’s Assistant
Alyse Zaftig
Contents
1. Acceptance Letter
2. Inexperienced
3. Untouched
4. Wing-woman
5. Walking Home
6. First Day
7. Eric’s Contract
8. Interruption
9. Busted
10. Octopus
11. White Shirt
12. Squid Ink
13. Position
14. Delusions
15. Apex
16. Discovery
17. Desmond’s Place
18. First Move
19. Future
20. Hospital
21. Zara’s Return
22. Paul’s Motorcycle
23. Groceries
24. Club
25. Stage
26. Reunited
Preview of Next Book
Acceptance Letter
Riley
When I got home, I threw my purse on the counter. I sorted through the mail that I’d grabbed from our mailbox downstairs. After getting turned down by Yale via their website portal, I wasn’t too excited to read any other denials. I hadn’t applied to too many schools, since we didn’t have the money for me to go run off and attend a four-year university right now. My older brother, Paul, said that I wasn’t ready to live on my own yet. He wanted me to stay at home until I was an old maid. He was way too overprotective after our parents died. He still thought of me as the six-year-old little girl that I was when he left for college, and he never let go of it. I’d been through my growth spurt, but he still called me Squirt.
Squirt’s major ambition in life was to be a professional actress and singer, not that surprising in LA. So Paul didn’t understand my desire to become a social media maven. Facebook was something to him that was where you went to share pictures of your children, not an advertising platform of increasing relevance for businesses. He thought wanting to go into social media marketing was on par with a six-year-old girl’s dreams of stardom.
I sorted the mail into two piles: my letters and Paul’s bills. I knew that I had to leave them on the front table, but I hated watching his shoulders get tense when he got home and saw the pile of bills.
At the bottom of the pile of mile, I saw a huge yellow envelope that made my heart beat faster. Denials were short and polite. They arrived in thin envelopes. This envelope was huge and fat.
I took a look at the door. Paul would be home soon. I needed to move to my room. I took my mail into my room, even the dumb Valu-Pak envelope. I closed my door before I opened the fat yellow envelope. The return address said University of SoCal, one of the few colleges that allowed undergraduates majoring in marketing to concentrate on social media marketing.
I tore it open, even though my hands were shaking. Please. Please.
I looked at the letter on the top which started with “Congratulations.”
I didn’t know exactly what happened, but one moment I was upright and the next moment I was staring at my ceiling. Was this letter real?
When the room stopped spinning around me, I calmed down enough to read the rest of the material. I finished reading the letter, which said how excited they were to admit me, and then read through all the first-year residential materials. I had to figure out the course catalogue and make a lot of decisions.
I swallowed hard when I looked at my housing options. It was a huge stretch to try to cover the cost, even with the generous tuition help they gave to National Merit Finalists, which I was. Even if I worked my way through college, there was no way that I could afford any of it. I didn’t care. I logged into their website and officially sent my acceptance of admission, money be damned.
I heard the front door open. Paul’s footsteps thumped into our home. “Riley?”
“I’m here!” I called. I needed to figure out a safe place to stash my acceptance letter. I normally could hear the roar of his motorcycle when he got home, but I must not have been paying attention. I looked around. I saw the door beginning to open and shoved it under my pillow. Unoriginal, I knew, but I was pressed for time.
“Hurry up. We’re going out for drinks with Desmond in five. If we don’t get moving soon, we’re going to miss happy hour.”
I didn’t know what had happened to my big brother. He used to wear a hoodie and flip-flops year-round when he was off duty. Cheerfully irresponsible, never serious besides work. Now he was really boring and always stressed out. When our parents had died, they’d left substantial debts for us, the heirs, to pay. On top of Paul’s business loans, he was always fighting to stay afloat. Leaving the military had destroyed his life, but he’d done it for me.
I’d tried to tell him that I’d get a job, but it was hard to find anywhere with openings in this economy. I’d been to every restaurant within walking distance of our home, and nobody had been willing to hire me except this one creepy guy.
He’d had a thin pencil mustache and tried to convince me that by letting him take me into the alleyway behind the restaurant, I’d somehow be able to “work” my way into working. I booked it out of there. I didn’t tell Paul about it, either, because he would’ve gone insane.
I checked my hair in the mirror and re-applied some lip gloss. It was dumb for me to primp for Desmond, but I’d always had a crush on him. He treated me like Paul did, though, just an annoying little sister.
“I swear to God,” Paul said, “if you’re going to spend another hour in there putting on makeup, I will break down this door.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” With a last glance over my shoulder, I opened the door. “Why are you so impatient?”
“I’m going to get my dick wet tonight, that’s why.”
“Ew!” I heard him with girls in his bedroom, even though I had zero desire to do so. I’d learned to put on noise-cancelling headphones when he had a lady friend over. Or two.
Paul just laughed at my squeamishness. “Dez is coming over to pre-game. Do I smell okay?” Paul’s question was clearly rhetorical, because he lifted his arm and sniffed his armpit. “Oh, that’s rank. Gonna hit the shower for a minute. Open the door for Dez when he gets here. Tell him that I have whiskey in the liquor cabinet. He’s supposed to bring something, too.”
Paul was pulling his shirt off as he went into the bathroom. He was in way better shape than he should be, considering how much he drank.
Less than thirty seconds after I heard the water start, I heard a knock on the door.
“Hey man,” I heard Dez call. I smoothed my hair and yanked open the door.
Inexperienced
Riley
I was breathless when I opened the door and saw him standing there in a suit. It clung to him lovingly, following the breadth of his shoulders, which were so wide that he had to get his suits tailored. His suit probably cost five times what my dress did. He looked good enough to eat. Bright blue eyes that were the color of a cloudless sky. So tall that I had to lean back to look at him. Chiseled cheekbones that you could cut yourself on.
He was loosening his tie. “What a fucking day. I’m glad that I brought over a bottle of Glenfiddich, because I need it.” He pushed past me, as if he were the owner of our house.
“What happened to hello?” If I didn’t call Dez and Paul on their rudeness, nobody would. Definitely not any of the dumb bimbos who put on a gallon of stinky perfume and spackled on makeup that were easy prey. I called them cockroaches, because they scuttled away when dawn came.
“I don’t have time for dumb small talk. My fucking idiot assistant didn’t forward an email that I was waiting for from my lawyer that I needed to sign and send back by end of business. Instead, she was on her fucking phone all day, flirtin
g with that loser boyfriend of hers.” He rolled his eyes and poured himself some of the whiskey he’d brought. “I seriously think that I should just fire her.”
I was about to say something sophisticated and mature, but his phone rang.
“It’s my idiot assistant. Excuse me.” He turned away and barked, “What?” He waited a couple of beats. “What do you mean, sexual harassment lawsuit unless I give you hush money? I’ve never touched you in your life and I only talk to you in order to…”
He pulled his phone away from his ear. “She hung up.” He hurled his phone at the wall. The screen immediately cracked. I winced.
“Fucking bullshit blackmail.” He drained his glass. “And now I don’t even have an assistant, although that might be better than having a completely incompetent one. God, I wish I could just train someone from the start instead of having someone come in with bad habits.”
I thought about the yellow envelope hidden under my pillow. My heart leapt when I thought about the chance to work with Dez every day. I could make a little money this summer and maybe figure out a way to get enough money to stay afloat while I took all the student loans I could. It might just do the trick.
“What about me?”
He was busy pouring himself another glass. “What about you?”
“You want someone inexperienced. I’m not experienced.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you need a work permit from your high school or something?”
“No. I’m nineteen.”
“Nineteen? I thought you were younger.”
I shook my head as his eyes went up and down. He coughed a little.
“Did it go down the wrong pipe?”
“Uh, yeah.” He put down the glass. He coughed again. “I’m fine now.”
Untouched
Desmond
Holy shit, when had Paul’s kid sister grown boobs? She said that she was nineteen, but there was no way that was possible. She was a little kid, but the dress she had on today didn’t make her look like a kid sister. She was wearing something that made her lips look shiny. She was always a cute kid, but today was the first time that I’d actually seen her as a woman.
She was just my type. Curvy with the kind of ass you could hold onto as you pounded into her.
Shit. I needed to think of something other than bending Paul’s little sister over the liquor cabinet with that dress pushed up around her waist. I adjusted myself before Paul came out and saw the nine inches in my pants which were more than ready to go and didn’t care that I’d known Riley before she’d even started elementary school.
I tried to focus and not think about bending her over. “Uh, you want to work for me?”
“Yeah.” She hesitated for a moment. “Some experience would be good for my resume.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know what the fuck I’d do with this teenager in my office every day.
“How does Paul feel about it?”
“How does Paul feel about what?” My best friend had wet hair and a navy blue polo on.
“I want to work.”
His face darkened. “No. Fuck no. You’re not allowed to work.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” She stomped her foot. “I’m an adult. If I want to work before or during college, it’s my decision.”
“Your job is to be a student. I can provide for us.”
“I want to work!”
“My word is final,” he said in a tone that meant it was the end of the discussion.
I looked at her and mouthed, “Tomorrow.” She tilted her chin just a little bit so that I knew that she understood.
Money was a touchy subject for Paul. He worked his ass off when he’d switched from being a responsibility-free twenty-something to a guardian and unwilling parent for his little sister. They were twelve years apart, and I’d always suspected that Riley was an oops baby.
I knew about his parents’ debts. I had my own income from my company and a trust fund, but Paul was too damn stubborn and independent for his own good. He wanted to be the one to provide for his family and wouldn’t accept any help, even as a loan. Even if Riley was complete shit at being an executive assistant, I could make sure that they had a little more income.
Paul cleared his throat and turned to me. “Sorry about that, bro. Wanna go?”
I nodded. “Let’s do it.”
We’d done this hundreds of times, but today I was a little more conscious of Riley following us down. She’d watched me pick up girl after girl over the years. She thought I was just as much of a dog as her brother, which was right. If I wanted to touch her, her brother would beat my ass.
She was probably untouched, considering how protective Paul was. I thought about being her first, parting her thick thighs before becoming the only man who would ever be between them.
I had no right to think about her like this. We were walking down the stairs to walk to the bar that was down the block.
Wing-woman
Riley
TWO HOURS LATER
I was sucking down my third Shirley Temple of the night and watching my brother and Dez run game like they always did. They’d read in some stupid book, The Game or something dumb like that, that it was a good idea to bring a wing-woman because women were naturally competitive.
It would take a really insecure woman to want to compete with me. I wasn’t anything to write home about. I had two eyes, two ears, a nose, and curly hair that I ruthlessly got chemically straightened, even though we clearly couldn’t afford it. I tried to make it better by going for the budget option, but my hair just seemed to frizz instead of forming curls or staying straight.
I was underage, but with Dez slipping the bartender and the bouncer a twenty each at the beginning of the night and telling them not to serve me any alcohol, I could sit at the bar and watch them run game on scantily clad girls.
The weirdest part was that the smartest girls were the easiest for them to catch. A PhD didn’t mean that you were smart about men. I’d watched them do magic tricks and ask seemingly innocuous questions that would later lead to girls screaming their names when I needed to sleep. When Dez didn’t want to drive a girl home, he’d spend the night on our futon with a companion. I always made sure to wash the sheets after he spent the night, because I didn’t want any skank contamination on them.
They were sitting at a table now with two girls who were totally buying what they were selling. Paul was slipping a cheap copper bracelet onto a girl’s wrist. I could hear him saying, “I think this’ll look really good on you.”
I rolled my eyes. He had a lot of cheap but pretty jewelry that I’d helped him pick. If they didn’t seal the deal soon, I was going to walk home on my own. I was already here when they set the hook. Now they were responsible for reeling the girls in.
There was a girl who was sloppy drunk and practically sitting in Dez’s lap. She was trying to kiss him now, but she had no accuracy. Her red lipstick was smearing on his jaw.
That was it. I wasn’t going to sit here and watch that. I’d had a crush on Dez forever, but somehow tonight it bothered me more than usual to see a girl make a fool of herself over him.
My brother was making out with his girl now. I rolled my eyes. I knew that he never raised their expectations or made them promises he wouldn’t keep, but I felt like touching someone should mean more than just getting your rocks off.
Since he was clearly busy, I texted them on our group text.
RILEY: I’m walking home.
I opened up my purse and made sure that I had my keys. I shoved my phone inside and slid off of my bar stool. When I turned, I slammed into a very tall, hard wall. It took me a minute to realize that it was warm and had lipstick smudged on its jawline.
Walking Home
Desmond
“It’s too late for you to walk home by yourself.” Especially not dressed like that. She was fully covered up, but any drunk asshole on the street could accost her. She was tiny, not even up to my chin, whi
ch might have contributed to how long it took me to even notice that she’d become a woman.
She put her hands on her hips, which made her curves really stand out. I tried not stare, but it was pretty hard. There was a delicious shadow between her breasts that I wanted to lick. For a long time.
“I’ve been walking myself home from the bar for years while you and my brother hook up with skanks either in the bathroom or in my living room. I’m fine. I have pepper spray.”
“Fucking A,” I said. “You have pepper spray?”
“Yeah. Paul bought it for me.”
“Damn irresponsible, making you walk home alone.”
“It’s never bothered you before.”
“I’ve never noticed before.”
“You’ve been…busy.” She raised her eyebrows at me.
“I’m walking you home tonight.” It wasn’t a question.
“What about tonight’s skank?”
“She’s passed out.”
We both looked at the table that they’d been at. She was facedown on the table.
“She’s a lush,” I said, shrugging. “Let me walk you home.”
She paused for a half second before nodding. “Sure. Let’s talk about me working for you.”
I thought about saying, “Let’s talk about you working on top me,” but I held myself back. My best friend’s little sister wasn’t the same kind of girl that we could seduce in a night. She wouldn’t disappear at dawn to do the walk of shame. If I hired her, I’d have to see her every day.
Good: I’d see her every day.
Bad: I wouldn’t be able to touch her. Pure torture.
Paul and his girl were horizontal by the time that we left, but it was dark enough that nobody cared. He wasn’t going to notice me walking his little sister home.
