by Scarlet West
Billionaire Boss
Scarlet West
Copyright © 2019 by Scarlet West
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Secret Daddy (Preview)
Prologue
I rolled over and pressed my body against the warm shape that lay behind me.
“Hello, honey,” a deep voice growled in my ear. I smiled and nestled in the firm arms that wrapped around me, drawing me against a lean chest.
“Hello,” I whispered back.
Adam kissed my hair, his lips warm and firm as he nuzzled my ear, drawing me closer to him. I could feel his muscled body, warm and strong, pressed to mine – the trained body of a former athlete. I twisted around, feeling a need for him that was making me ache. He grinned as I pushed my hips against his and raised a brow.
“You are awake, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Well, so am I.”
I smiled as my body melted with wanting. Strong, assured, he rolled me back onto my side and then slid into me from behind. Even though I was used to him now, the big, firm cock still took me by surprise as it entered me and I gasped.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” I said, my teeth gritted with anticipation as he pulled out and thrust in again, hitting that sweet place inside me over and over.
I could feel my orgasm building and growing and I put aside any need for quiet as I raced toward the edge. I was crying out now, murmuring his name.
“Does it feel good?” he whispered.
“Yes!” I gasped, as he thrust into me with devastating skill, pressing exactly where I needed him most. I groaned and then felt my body ignite as he did it again and my climax crashed through me, robbing me of my senses.
I lay there, dazed and feeling like my bones had melted, as he pulled out and, groaning, drove into me again before collapsing beside me.
We lay like that, our sweat cooling in the gentle breeze of the room.
I could hear that he was asleep again, and I rolled over and studied him through half-open eyes. His fine profile was silhouetted against the light from the window, his shoulder corded with muscle, the one tender spot where he’d broken it still showing.
I never thought I would end up getting used to this.
I grinned to myself. I would never have imagined ending up sleeping beside such a gorgeous hunk. And I especially would never have imagined that hunk would be Adam Stern.
My brother’s best friend.
I rolled over, smiling to myself as I recalled him from our childhood – always tall and dark-haired, always stunning. By then he had only changed in character. Then, he’d been quite unpleasant.
He must have heard me chuckle, because those blue eyes opened, and he smiled at me.
“What?” he asked.
“I was just thinking,” I said. “About when you and Brady used to play together in our backyard.”
It seemed so long ago – the scent of cut grass and the feeling of sunlight on my aching muscles after a run. I was always trying to keep up with Adam and Brady then. I smiled at the memories.
“Seems like another life.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
It did seem like another life – us three, on the sunlit lawns of my parents’ Boston home. Then, Adam had teased me about my braces and my freckles. I had watched him from afar, part of me loathing him for his teasing and another, stronger, part wishing he’d just notice me, or smile.
My big brother, Brady had defended me, stopping the worst of the teasing, when he overheard. I did love my big brother deeply. I was grateful he was still alive to share this new turn of events – I’d almost lost him. I shivered.
“Too cold?” Adam asked.
“No,” I murmured. “I was just thinking.”
“Okay,” he said, and lay back down again, wrapping his arm around me and drawing me close. “But let me know if you’re too cold. We can always turn on the heat.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
I snuggled into the soft cotton sheets and felt my mind wandering back from the dark memories of Brady’s danger, and to the present moment.
Yes, I thought, snug and warm in the arms of my gorgeous man, life had a wonderful way of working out in ways I would never have expected a year before.
1
Adam
“Damn it. Damn, damn, damn.”
I slammed down the office phone. I swore more, under my breath, so Mrs. Halston, my secretary, couldn’t hear me. She was twenty years my senior and hated bad language. Though she was my employee, I still felt like a scolded child whenever she cast a disapproving glance my way. She told me time and time again that a man in my position needed to have more etiquette. I needed to play it cooler even when my tempter got the best of me. I needed to be charming. I was most certainly not charming now. I was furious. And petrified. Being the CEO of my own multi-million-dollar company was not exactly a bed of roses and I was feeling the strain right now.
I felt my hand hover over the phone again, my other hand running desperately through my thick brown hair. Maybe there was something I was missing?
A million dollars, just gone?
“Damn.”
It felt like a horrible dream. I had invested a million dollars’ worth of shareholder funds in the campaign for Rockland Sportswear. And now the company had gone bust?
“Mr. Stern?”
I jumped. It was Mrs. Halston, calling me from outside my half-open door. I felt myself swear again in frustration, then bit my lip.
“What?” I called.
“I had a call from a Mr. Ludgate. Will you call him back?”
Stone Ludgate is the head of PR at my company, Synergy Sports Marketing. Given the news we’d just gotten, there was a PR apocalypse heading directly for us. I really didn’t want to have to tell Stone just yet.
I put my head in my hands and swore.
“Sorry, Mr. Stern?” Ms. Halston asked. She sounded curious and slightly offended. I groaned.
“I said, I’ll call him back later. Okay?”
“Yes, Mr. Stern.”
I got up and closed the door, rolling my shoulders, still thickly muscled, and too big for my shirt. The left shoulder – the one I broke – still hurt badly sometimes, especially when I was stressed.
And damn it, am I stressed now.
I could imagine what my investors would say at the board meeting. I could imagine word getting out that a disaster of that magnitude had occurred. We would lose clients; we would lose investor confidence.
I had to do something.
I caught sight of myself reflected in the window. My eyes – the cool blues that the press guys used to call “icy blue” eyes – were looking a bit wild. I smoothed my dark brown hair back into place.
“Damn it, Adam,” I s
aid to my reflection. “In the field in front of a few thousand fans, you were cool as a cucumber. Here, in your office, you get all hot under the collar?”
I shook my head, turning away from the window. Almost a decade in the corporate world had taken it out of me. In a stylish black suit, crisp shirt-collar tight round my muscled throat, I was almost unrecognizable as Adam Stern, the famous quarterback. I still had the body, I consoled myself – small waist, chest and legs dense with muscle, shoulders broad: except for the slight slope of my left shoulder, where part of the bone had failed to heal properly. I had wondered, when my shoulder broke, if it was really sensible to start a business instead. Football was a heck of a lot less stressful. But my coach and the doctor and, well, everyone, had been against my playing with a lasting injury, so I’d made the choice.
“Well, you chose it, so you’re stuck with it now, Adam.”
I pulled out my desk chair, took my phone out of my jacket pocket and called Brady.
He’s the one who got us into this mess, after all.
While I waited for him to pick up, I thought about what to say. How was I supposed to tell my best friend that we were both screwed?
Brady Williams was my best friend – we’d known each other since we were fourteen years old, just starting high-school. He was always a bright kid and, so when he became a financier, I kept in touch. His decisions had helped me, and I always trusted him. The Rockland idea had been his, and it had really gone bad on us.
“Adam?” Brady said.
I swallowed hard. “Brady! Hi! How’s things?”
My voice sounded high-pitched from the stress. I made myself breathe slowly. In, out. Coach Melling would have laughed if he could see me now. At least somebody would have been laughing. I didn’t think I’d ever laugh again.
“Things aren’t bad, Adam,” Brady said. He paused. “Well, not too bad. Cassidy was having a tough time just earlier. We had to have quite a chat. But I think I managed to help, at least a bit.”
“Oh?” I really wasn’t that interested. Cassidy was his little sister, six years behind us. I hadn’t seen her in years. As much as I liked Brady, I wasn’t in the mood for catching up.
Thinking of Brady’s kid sister, a picture flashed into my mind. She was a scrawny, bespectacled kid, I recalled, with freckles and with braces. She was too childish – and we too immature – for us to see her as anything much besides a nuisance. She had followed us around when we’d been trying to make our own club house in the Williams backyard, or sneaking off to practice football in the park. I remembered teasing her about her braces.
“Metal-mouth,” I’d called her, as she fumbled a catch of our stray football.
She’d stared at me, those brown eyes – exactly the color of her brother’s own – stiff and defiant. If she was going to cry, she wasn’t going to let me see it. She’d picked up the ball and tossed it at me, and then turned around and walked swiftly away, back into the shade of the shrubbery.
I’d turned away, shaken by her response. She was a weird kid. Hard to understand.
Later, when I’d gotten heavily into the sports, she’d been too obsessed about her grades to pay either of us much attention. She’d gotten taller, and lost the braces, but she still hadn’t held much interest for me, and I certainly hadn’t been of interest to her. I wondered, idly, what had happened to her. She worked in Chicago, now, I remembered – she was something to do with finance, like her brother.
“Is she okay?” I asked out of obligation.
“Um, yeah,” Brady sounded unconvinced. “You know she’ll manage. She’s tough.”
“I guess,” I said.
“What’s happening with you?” Brady asked, bringing me back to the present.
I swallowed hard. “Um, well that’s a bit hard to explain, right now. You see…”
“What is it, Adam?” Brady sounded concerned. “You sound stressed.”
“Remember Rockland Sportswear?” I asked, deciding I should just get it out into the air.
“We pulled major funding for the campaign, yeah?” Brady sounded happy.
“Yes,” I said, “Google them.”
“Sorry, what?” Brady sounded confused.
I sighed. “Just do it, please Brady.”
“Okay, okay.”
I waited while he went away from the phone momentarily. My chest was tight. I made my hands unclench. Telling my investors was going to be tough. Telling Brady was somehow tougher.
“Adam?” Brady’s voice was a whisper as he came back to the call. “Are you serious?”
“I didn’t say it,” I said tightly. “Google did. But, yes, it’s serious.”
“They’re bankrupt? Really?” He sounded as shocked as I felt.
“Yes,” I said. I tried to sound casual. “Maybe our advertising campaign didn’t help them too well.”
“Oh. My…”
“Yes,” I cut him off levelly. “Exactly.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “What are we going to do?”
I sighed. “I was hoping to ask you the same thing, Brady. I don’t know.”
I looked round my big, plush office, trying to find some sort of inspiration. Pictures of NFL players grinned down at me, interspersed with advertising from our campaigns involving them, and other hallmark companies and teams. What had I gone and screwed up like this for?
I heard Brady speak.
“This could kill the company.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling annoyed. “I am aware of that.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
We were both silent for a long while. I could feel myself start to go from mind-racing desperation to a sort of numbed-out apathy. We couldn’t do anything. We were doomed. Oddly, thinking that made me feel more peaceful.
“Adam,” Brady said softly after a long moment. “I’m sorry.”
I swallowed again, harder this time. “It’s okay, Brady,” I said.
I was touched, but I couldn’t let him take all it on himself. It was my fault, too, after all.
“I am just as much to blame,” I said after a long moment.
“I feel terrible,” Brady said. “I mean, this business means the world to you.”
“Yeah,” I chuckled, grim-faced. “It does.”
Brady – of everybody I knew – had understood from the beginning why I had to start Synergy. Leaving the game – which had been my life – would have been impossible, if I hadn’t found some way of keeping ties to it.
I remembered Brady and I sitting together in a bar, talking about the plan.
“I need to find something else to do,” I’d said. “Something in the corporate world. Marketing, or something.”
“You can do that for sports?” Brady had asked.
I stared at him. “You know what?” I said, slamming my hand down on the table, as the inspiration flared. “I think we can!”
“Whoa, Adam,” he said, grinning. “Slow down there a minute, man! I’m a banker. I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
“But you can help me. Like, find investors and stuff? You know all about business.” I felt a rush of excitement that I hadn’t felt in years. It felt almost like when I’d been on the field, hearing the yells and cheers, smelling grass and sweat and ozone and feeling that impossible, indescribable rush of the challenge.
He chuckled. “I wish I did know all about business. I reckon I know nothing.”
But we’d got talking from that moment, and that was when the idea had been born. Using my degree in marketing, I had founded a sports marketing business as a way of keeping in touch with the world I loved, broken shoulder or no. And now, that one link was being threatened? Broken?
I couldn’t face it. When I was at my lowest ebb, the business had saved my sanity. And I couldn’t repay it by ruining it. I couldn’t lose it, not now.
“We’re not going to let this happen,” Brady said firmly.
My heart, which had been locked in a place of numb acceptance, started beating again.
>
“We’re not?” I asked.
That was the Brady I remembered from college – the guy who always had a crazy scheme to get us out if the messes we got ourselves into. I felt myself dare to believe we could fix it.
“No, we’re not,” Brady agreed. “The issue is the PR, right?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. It wasn’t the only issue, but I had to agree with him, it was my point of greatest terror. If word got out that a company we did the campaign for was bankrupt, who was going to think we were any good?
“So?” Brady sounded happy. “What we need is somebody really good at PR. Like, really good.”
“Yes,” I said again. I was getting the sinking feeling that this was one of Brady’s brilliant ideas. Given that one of his brilliant ideas had also been to evade the press when I was trying to leave a club without being harassed by climbing out of a fourth-story window and nearly falling to my death, I had limited faith.
“So,” Brady said. “All we need to do is to find a PR expert, right?”
“Right,” I said faintly.
“Perfect,” Brady said. He sounded smug.
“Brady?” I asked, feeling a whole new kind of nervous. “What are you thinking?”
“Not to worry,” he answered, “I have an idea.”
2
Cassidy
“Just work, why don’t you?”
I slammed my hands down on the steering wheel. It was older than it ought to be – my car was at least third- or fourth-hand – and the whole car was a menace and had given me issues from the start.
“I don’t know why I bought it.”
I sighed as the engine coughed and sputtered and then, finally, got started.
