Dirty Nasty Billionaire [Part One]

by Paige North

  Dirty Nasty Billionaire (Part One)

  Paige North

  Favor Ford Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 by Favor Ford Publishing

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Want To Be In The Know?

  Dirty Nasty Billionaire (Part One) by Paige North

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Want To Be In The Know?

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  Dirty Nasty Billionaire (Part One) by Paige North

  Chapter 1

  Everything is going just as planned. Until it’s not…

  I wake up before my alarm, like my body has been anticipating the moment all night long. Despite my nerves, I awake well-rested and full of adrenaline. I practically leap out of bed, pouring myself a cup of coffee I barely need. My energy is overflowing.

  I shower and dress in the corporate-but-casual outfit that I’d picked out weeks ago with my roommate Elise: skinny black pants, a white silk button-up (untucked, because that says, “I’m professional, but cool”), and a gray tweed blazer. Plus a pair of black leather Rag and Bone booties on my feet that I’d scored on eBay for a song.

  My laptop, tablet, and an old-fashioned datebook are tucked into a white leather tote with my initials monogrammed in tiny gold letters at the top, a graduation gift from my parents after I told them I’d won the internship.

  The day is cold and gray, the streets wet from an evening drizzle. It’s only slightly unseasonable for May in Boston, but I don’t give a damn about the weather. I catch the red line at Porter Square, a ten-minute walk from the tiny two apartment I share with Elise in Cambridge, and join the rest of the morning commuters headed into downtown. After four surprisingly short years working my ass of at New England College, I’m finally one of them.

  When I emerge from the T at South Station, I don’t even pause, turning across the bridge at Summer Street towards Scour’s headquarters, an old brick factory building that was converted to office space just a few years ago.

  I’d practiced the trip at least ten times.

  I’m not normally this neurotic (though, okay, Elise had certainly used that descriptor for me on more than one occasion — usually after she came home from a fraternity party to find me doing extra credit for one of my honors business classes). It’s just that this isn’t any summer internship. This is the Business Lab Program at Scour, the world’s largest search engine (some people go so far as to refer to the entire internet as Scour … these people are usually over the age of sixty-five and don’t know how to use Facebook).

  Thousands of new graduates with an interest in the intersection of business and tech apply every year. They come from Harvard and Stanford and Princeton and MIT. They send their pristine transcripts and their impressive resumes and personal statements that they’d slaved over for months (although, if I’m honest, I started working on mine over winter break of sophomore year). Thousands of applications — some say as many as Harvard receives each year — and only four are chosen. Making the Business Lab Program infinitely more selective than those snooty snoots in Cambridge.

  All those applicants, and I was chosen.

  But the competition is just beginning.

  Because the four interns aren’t just gaining valuable experience at one of the most influential tech companies in the world — they are also competing for a job. At the end of the summer, when projects are done and each has been evaluated, one of us will be hired on to lead a department at Scour. One of us will join the ranks of hot-shot Scour employees at a starting salary that would make most of my well-heeled classmates at NEC green with envy.

  And from the moment I received the call telling me that I’d be one of the four, I’d been strategizing just how I can become the one. While my classmates started coasting towards graduation around the beginning of April, weeks left on their degrees, most with jobs secured (or safety nets firmly in place courtesy of mommy and daddy), I threw myself into studying Scour.

  I read everything I could find about past interns and new hires. I read everything I could find about the company itself, which led me down quite a rabbit hole reading about its founder, Nixon Blake. And while there wasn’t that much to find, I committed it all to memory.

  I feel only a little bit like a lunatic, knowing that I have Nixon Blake’s vital statistics running through my head like a Top 40 radio hit:

  Graduate, summa cum laude, from New England College (my alma mater, as of last week)

  Founded the company freshman year, when his roommate complained about not being able to find bootleg copies of his textbook online

  Was seed-funded by his sophomore year, and was a junior when Wollensky Venture Capital came a-calling and made him filthy, stinking rich

  Has since grown Scour into an international juggernaut, basically becoming synonymous with the internet and releasing a Scour laptop, tablet, and phone

  At over six feet tall, ripped, and chiseled, Nixon is a complete and total smoke show

  It’s always when I get to that last fact that my brain stumbles, the Scour image search wallpapering the inside of my mind with shots of a guy with a jaw that could cut glass, a tasteful amount of stubble, and ice blue eyes that could cause your blood to freeze in your veins. And then there’s his dark, wavy hair that looks like it would be heaven to run your fingers through.

  Jesus, Delaney. Down girl.

  I pause, now standing at the wide glass doors of Scour world headquarters, letting the last bit of burning desire run out of my body. I can’t let myself be distracted by Nixon Blake, even if he is the sexiest human I’ve ever seen (in photos, and oh god, soon to be in real life). I might possibly end up working directly for him some day, so I need to turn that part of my brain off.

  It’s usually not a problem for me, after all.

  I take a deep breath. “You will be the top intern. This job is yours,” I whisper to myself before charging through the door, my boots clip-clopping on the polished floor and into my future.

  Chapter 2

  Brand new security badge in hand (the photo only slightly terrible — at least my eyes are open), I board the elevator with a scattering of Scour employees. All of them have headphones in place, their eyes plastered to the devices clutched in their palms (all the newest generation of Scour’s smart phone, of course). I feel like maybe I should pull mine out too, just to fit in...

  I find myself jostled to the rear of the elevator, my back pressed up against the steel wall.

  “Ninth floor, please,” I say in the direction of the panel of buttons. There are at least two rows of bodies that separate me from my final destination, but since every inhabitant of the elevator has headphones on, no one hears. I have to lean forward, snaking my arm between messenger bags and hands clutching cups of coffee until I’m able to reach the button myself. I earn an evil eye from a guy wearing a knit beanie (definitely a coder) when his espresso sloshes onto his hand when I inadvertently bump his arm.

  “Oops!” I mouth the words, because of course, he can’t hear a word I say. When he turns back around, I mouth a few more choice words. I love tech, but I do not love tech bros. It’s just a tradeoff I’m willing to make, especially if it means working at Scour.

  As we rid
e up the elevator, I notice that even though everyone is dressed casually, with messenger bags thrown over shoulders, none of them appear disheveled. I don’t know if jeans and a knit cap can be described as sleek, but these people somehow manage to get there. I think their collective wardrobes probably cost more than my rent. But I guess that’s what happens when you work for Scour, where all the employees are paid at least 30% above market, receive incredible stock portfolios, and that’s to say nothing of benefits, vacations, and in-house perks. All of them got the phones they can’t stop staring at for free, for example. And the laptops and tablets in their bags, all the newest generations, were also gifts.

  And, almost desperately, I want everything they have. And more.

  It’s not like I grew up with very much money. My parents are both Boston public school teachers. I grew up in a cramped apartment in South Boston, and not the part of South Boston that is now considered trendy. Still, the only reason my parents can still afford to live there is because they inherited the place from my grandmother after she moved to Florida. If my parents want to move, they’ll probably have to leave the city. And my dad, a die-hard Bruins fan in winter and Red Sox fan in summer, would sooner cut off his own arm than leave Boston, the city where he was born and raised.

  To say that my potential salary at Scour would be a windfall would be putting it mildly. I survived my four years at New England College on a series of scholarships, loans, work study jobs, and summers waitressing at a tourist trap near Faneuil Hall.

  I want this job, but I also need it.

  The elevator stops at every floor on the way to mine, and each time the doors slide open, I see an identical white wall, the Scour name and binoculars logo in cut steel on the wall over a sleek steel and white reception desk. It’s like Groundhog Day every time the elevator stops, only a hell of a lot less colorful.

  I’ve always pictured tech offices like grown-up daycare centers, with pool tables and bright colors, people riding scooters through the halls while taking breaks in giant, futuristic nap pods. But that’s not Scour. What I’ve seen so far of the headquarters is as austere as an East German prison — but classier. Well, maybe that’s why Scour is so successful. No need to waste money on pool.

  Everything about Scour says we work hard. And they’ve got the bank accounts to prove it.

  When I finally step out onto the ninth floor (white wall, steel logo, glass reception desk, just like all the rest), I glance at my phone and see that I’m a full fifteen minutes early. Early is great (as my high school soccer coach used to say, “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is dead), but fifteen minutes early seems a little brown-nosey, even for me. So when I spot the bathroom sign, I figure it’s a good opportunity to make sure that the damp morning air didn’t totally destroy my careful home blowout.

  I shut myself in a stall to relieve myself of the cups of coffee I consumed while quietly freaking out this morning. Then I hear the bathroom door open, two sets of high heels clicking and clacking on the polished concrete floor.

  “Do you think we’re going to get to meet him today?” The voice is squeaky and tinged with a New York accent, all long vowels and nasally.

  “God I hope so. It’s never too early to start making an impression, if you know what I mean,” comes the reply, this one confident and almost sultry, which is wildly out of place in a public restroom.

  “What, scoring the job isn’t enough, you’ve gotta screw the boss, too?”

  “From what I hear, he’s hardly opposed. Besides, I’d have to be shriveled up and half-dead not to want to screw Nixon Blake. And if you say you don’t, you’re clearly lying. He’s basically Zuckerberg, but hotter than pre-divorce Brad Pitt.”

  “And single.”

  “Exactly. Someone’s gotta win the prize. Why not me?”

  “Fine, you can have the dick. I’ll take the job.”

  “Excuse me, Jenna, but I think I’ll be winning both.”

  The girls dissolve into giggles, but I stay perched in the stall until I hear their giggles disappear behind the closing door.

  Okay, if those two are my competition for this job, then I’m golden. Because I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of entitled princesses as a scholarship student at New England College, and not a single one had ever been anything more than stepping stone for me. I sprinted past them all, and even their connections and their famous last names couldn’t get them to bump me off my internship placement with Scour.

  As nervous as I am, I’m also feeling a little more confident now.

  After a quick touchup on my hair and a dab of lip gloss, I find my way into the hall and to my new workspace. The steel plate outside the door reads “Business Lab Program.” Inside I find a blindingly white conference room with a white lacquered conference table taking up most of the space. Sleek, ergonomic white rolling chairs surround the table. The far wall is floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on Boston Harbor. The opposite wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, making it feel a little bit like being on display at the zoo. The other two walls are floor-to-ceiling white boards, and in a metal box on the table, a collection of dry erase markers. It feels spare and clinical, the only color in the room coming from the people inside it.

  Two of whom, I quickly realize, are the owners of the big mouths I heard in the bathroom.

  “Hi, I’m Jenna,” squeaks the presumed New Yorker. She’s short, but everything about her is big — hair, lips, and boobs. Her friend, who is tall and thin, but also the owner of a rather impressive rack, gives me a terse smile from her seat at the table right up front, then goes right back to her phone. “That’s Amber,” Jenna says, pointing to her friend.

  “Hi, I’m Delaney,” I say. I get a big, toothy smile from Jenna, but nothing from Amber, who continues to pretend either I don’t exist, or if I do, I’m not worthy of her attention.

  A voice clears from the back of the room, and that’s when I see the fourth in our group. He’s in khaki pants, a plaid button up, and what I’m guessing must be his formal hoodie.

  “Hi, I’m Colin,” he says, having to clear his throat about three more times just to get the words out. He runs his hand through his wild curly mop before offering a handshake. Jenna grimaces and nods at him by way of greeting. Amber continues to pretend her phone is the only sentient being in the room. So I guess that leaves me. I reach out and take his hand, only slightly greasy from his hair.

  “Nice to meet you, Colin,” I say with a smile. I may be plotting how I’m going to defeat all three of them, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be nice while I’m doing it. I’m not a monster, after all. And besides, Colin has a friendly smile that makes me like him immediately.

  “Now that we’re all friends, it’s time to get down to work, don’t you think?”

  We all spin around to the front of the room, and standing there, looking every inch of his six foot three frame, is Nixon Blake. And let me just say that staring at his photo on a screen for more than a few hours of research does nothing to prepare me for the actual sight of him.

  Jenna drops into her chair, Amber’s phone is forgotten, and Colin sits down so quickly he nearly misses the rolling office chair and hits the ground. I’m the only one still standing, and that’s because the sight of him momentarily paralyzes me. I’m standing on the polished concrete of the sleek office floor, but it feels like I’ve stepped into quicksand, and I’m sinking further under his gaze.

  Holy shit does this man command a room.

  He’s in dark denim jeans that look like they were tailored to every muscle of his body, and a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which give a stunning view of his tan, muscular forearms. But it’s his eyes — ice blue and piercing, that are the real stunner. They act like laser beams, demanding and captivating attention from beneath a head of dark, tousled hair. Everything about the man says, I’m smarter than you, richer than you, better looking than you, and we all know it. So pay attention.

  And we do.

  “
Welcome to Scour,” he says, his voice full of steel and bravado. “The four of you were selected from a pool of candidates so large it could have crashed our servers, if we were dumb enough to have servers as shitty as the ones over at Twitter. Every applicant had stellar grades, incredible recommendations, and outstanding test scores. You four are the best of the best.”

  Amber sits up even straighter, if at all possible, and leans forward onto the conference table. It gives Nixon Blake a front-row seat to Victoria’s proverbial Secret, that Amber seems ready to spill to the world. But if he notices, though, he opts to ignore. Which makes me like him even more, if possible.

  And then he seems to drop the sliver of welcome wagon he was presenting. The hammer drops. “If you think that means anything now that you’re here, you’re sadly mistaken. You’ll be spending the rest of the summer — every moment — proving to me that you deserve to be here, both for the duration of the internship, and, for one of you, as a new employee at Scour.”

  I can feel pricks of sweat starting at the back of my neck. Please god do not let me get sweat stains right now. First of all, I’m wearing silk. Second, I have a strong suspicion that Scour employees do not sweat. Help me Jesus.

  As if to confirm my suspicions, Nixon arches an eyebrow. “Now, I want to start off seeing how you perform under pressure. I want you to introduce yourselves to me. Not your resume; I’ve got that. I want you to tell me something about yourself that would surprise me.” The word sounds loaded on his lips (oh my god, those lips), and it causes my heart to immediately start beating at roughly the rhythm of cha cha dancers on Dancing with the Stars.

  Nixon glances around the table, leveling his gaze first on Jenna. “You. Go.”