Bound to her Fake Fiancé Boss: A Fun Sexy Feel Good Billionaire Office Romance

by Hayson Manning

  Now it’s my turn to look outraged. “Selective! The Bills Mafia is feral! They paint themselves in red, white, and blue, and wear nothing but shorts and an inordinate number of plastic bead necklaces when it’s thirty degrees outside. And the chanting? Dear God.”

  Her eyes widen. “Your fans wear three-piece suits, sip dirty martinis, and have as much passion as lizards mating.” She waves her fork at me. “You sobbed when Brady left. That heartfelt letter you wrote him including one of your colored tulips was so sweet.”

  “Careful Ms. Brown, getting to the heart of a Patriot is a dangerous thing.” I grin at her.

  “But by your own admission, Mr. Johnson, you don’t have a heart.”

  “You’d be right there.”

  So why does it feel hollow and weird right now?

  All too soon, the meal is over. “Would you like to go upstairs for dessert?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. And just like that, our evening is ending.

  I escort her out of the restaurant, shooting glares at fuckers staring at her legs, which should be wrapped around my hips, purely for a biology lesson.

  The valet brings the Porsche, and I slip him a fifty.

  I open the door for her and click her belt, to which she rolls her eyes. I’m awash in coconut and vanilla, and I breathe deep, letting it settle into my lungs like anesthetic, instantly calming.

  A loud rumbling stomach noise fills the interior of the car.

  My head whips to hers. “You’re still hungry?”

  She covers her face with her hands. “Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed. It’s just I’ve been nervous about this date for days and haven’t been eating even the PBJs, and I didn’t eat today. The meal was lovely, but small.” She turns anguished eyes to me.

  “Right. I’ve got the perfect fix.” I throw the car into gear, and we are soon heading to the best food on the planet voted by yours truly.

  “Ohmygodthisissogood.”

  Asia is feasting on a plate of mixed tacos. About a year ago, starving, late, and with no sushi spots open, I’d stumbled across this hole in the wall place in Inglewood, where I’d been checking out an industrial warehouse complex ripe for the picking. The long line alerted me it should be good. It wasn’t good, it was fantastic. I’d wolfed down a burrito faster than you could say eleven herbs and spices.

  Asia and I sit on a bench watching the pier at Santa Monica. While she’s feasting on the food, I’m feasting on her like a perv on Pornhub.

  “Sorry.” A delightful blush covers her delicate cheekbones. She holds out the plate. “Do you want one? They’re delicious.”

  “I’m good, but thank you.” The lights of the pier throw copper and bronze spears into her hair, bewitching and blinding me.

  “Have you ever been?” She indicates with her head toward the pier.

  “No.” I push my hand through my hair. “James and I were going to go together. Santa Monica Pier, Disneyland, Six Mountains…” I trail off, and an unexpected punch of emotion strangles the air in my lungs.

  A small hand clasps mine. “Let’s do something that’s a first for the both of us.” Standing, she smiles down at me, one hand clutching an empty plate, one hand in mine as blood pumps through my veins as if on speed and cocaine.

  Normally I would scoff and walk away, but the tender look in her eyes stumps me.

  “You’re imagining it’s my head, aren’t you?” I ask twenty minutes later when I’m being soundly beaten in Whack-A-Mole.

  “Of course I am.” She slams the hammer down on the plastic head, scoring another point. Laughter spills from her mouth and sunshine from her smile. The game ends, and I’m gracious in defeat and buy her fairy floss.

  “Here.” She holds out a handful of pink spun sugar.

  I shake my head. “I’m getting insulin dependent just looking at it.”

  She laughs, and before I can stop her, she pokes it through my mouth, where it dissolves on my tongue.

  “It’s God-awful.” I sneak another handful. It’s fucking delicious.

  “Come on.” She pulls my hand again, and like a whipped schoolboy, I follow her.

  “Two please.” She hands over cash, which makes me growl, then hands me a brown thing covered in sugar.

  “What is it, apart from a diabetes diagnosis and a dentist’s dream?”

  “A churro.” She bites into it and moans.

  Well, if it’s that good…

  I take a tentative bite, then another, before I shove the whole thing in my mouth. “Christ, that’s good.” I make a mental note to have a stand installed in the break room along with the pink fairy floss, then make a note to up the health benefits and install a bigger gym.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t been here when you’re so close.” I glare at a man who is flat out checking out Asia’s ass. I know we look out of place, me in an Armani suit and her dress and shoes, but I don’t care. “But I get why you wouldn’t.”

  I squeeze her hand at the tender hitch in her voice. She misses her sister, too.

  “Come on, I want to beat you at the Sig Alert, which is a fancy name for dodgems.” She smiles up at me, and I swear the sun dips in appreciation.

  “There’s a height restriction.” I dig my hands into my pants to disguise the semi I’ve been sporting since she moaned at the tacos. I’ve recited the periodic table and imagined myself hand washing my grandmother’s underwear to no avail, which is truly sickening even by my low standards. “You have to be forty-two inches.” I smile down at my tiny assistant/wife. “I’ll have to pretend to be your daddy.”

  “You’ve got some weird kink going on there.”

  We are strapped into the seats of basically a hovercar. A whistle is blown, music starts, and a throaty laugh comes at me from my left. I jolt when I’m rammed by a laughing Asia.

  “I take it that was a mistake.” I’m turning the car left and right to evade her.

  “Of course not. I’m coming for you, Jason Johnson. I have your number.”

  Before I can manipulate the car, I’m rammed again, and her sweet smile lights up her face. “My bad, sorry. It’s been ages since I sat my license.”

  I drive when I’m not in a phone meeting, own an Aston Martin, a Bugatti, a Porsche, and a Bentley, to name a few, and I’m getting my ass handed to me by a woman who hasn’t driven in years.

  She’s lining up her car again at me, heading toward me when a kid of about eight narrows his eyes at another similar looking kid.

  “That’s it, Sam. I’m telling Mom you aren’t playing fair.” He is blocking Asia while I gun my car to the left and bump into her at full speed, which isn’t fast, but she jolts and whips her head around, narrow eyes on me, a smile curving her very kissable lips.

  We are hammering into each other, hiding behind teenagers to get an extra advantage. Asia is as tenacious and cunning as I am.

  We both deflate when the music ends. I stride to her and help her out of the car.

  “In my count, I hit you seventeen times to your ten. Tut, tut, Mr. Johnson. Being beaten by a woman.”

  “I don’t give a shit if a woman beats me as long as we both fight fair, and we did.” I kiss the side of her head, and she sighs. “It’s the scent of coconut and vanilla. This is going to sound weird, but it fills me with calm.”

  She studies me through inky lashes, standing here in the middle of Santa Monica Pier in formal gear, and she doesn’t give a shit. Nor do I.

  “You don’t have a lot of calm in your life, do you?”

  Under-fucking-statement of the year.

  I blow out a breath and do my best deflecting.

  “If I’m not working, I’m never truly happy,” I explain for the millionth time. “Where to next?” I pull on her hand, but she’s anchored herself to the ground, the stubborn, adorable little donkey.

  “You’re going to have to let someone into your life.” Those gold and green-flecked eyes bore through me, and check out the useless thing called a soul flapping like a deflated flag
somewhere inside me.

  I’ve let you in more than any other person I know.

  And that right there is the gospel truth, and it frustrates and amazes me in equal measure.

  “Come on, the Pacific Park is over here.”

  This will be the last thing we do before I drop her home, and the date will be officially over.

  Why does it feel like I’ve eaten iguana shit?

  We nod solemnly to the young guy who takes the safety measure of the Ferris wheel very seriously. The metal capsule holding us lurches into the air, and we’re off at a snail’s pace.

  “Asia, what’s wrong?” My brows curve in.

  She is sitting across from me, pale, and clutching the bench so tightly the white of her knuckles are visible.

  “Just figured out I don’t like heights,” she whispers. “I think this might be the death trap of doom. We could plunge to the ground, and there’s so much I haven’t done.” Her eyes are screwed tight, and she’s now turning green.

  “Look at me,” I say gently and cover her hands with mine. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “You’re not God,” she huffs out.

  “Want to come and sit over here with me?”

  She nods. Her eyes are enormous in her face.

  “Give me your hands, sweetheart.”

  She rapidly blinks, then places her hands in mine. I go to guide her next to me, but she crawls into my lap, buries her head in my neck, and clings to me.

  We’re only ten feet from the ground. This is going to take a while.

  “What’s on this bucket list of yours?” I thread my hand through her silky mass of hair.

  She’s silent for a beat. “Oh, the usual. Find a man, settle down, get the shaggy dog and people mover,” she says in a shaky voice, reminding me again why we have total opposite futures.

  “That’s not a bucket list. That’s a given in your future.” More fingers thread through her hair, and she relaxes the death hold on me slightly.

  “What’s on yours?” she asks my neck, her breath puffing, causing goosebumps to erupt.

  “I don’t have anything apart from making Johnson Industries the best it can be.”

  “That’s a given for your future. What’s in your heart?” Her sweet breath puffs across my skin again, and I let myself get lost for an illegal moment.

  “Driving at Le Mans. Driving down an autobahn.” Actually, I’ve done the autobahn thing, and it was sadly disappointing “Anything with speed and adrenaline.”

  Anything to make me feel.

  “You?”

  She takes a deep breath. “Run a donkey sanctuary. Ride a bike along Malibu. Take an archery class. Swim under a waterfall. Win Powerball and buy an island in the Pacific Ocean and stock it with Viking slaves.”

  I chuckle. Some I can help with, some I can’t.

  “You never learned to ride a bike?”

  She shakes her head. “Never had a bike.”

  “Been to a waterfall?”

  I’m not picturing Asia in the tiny bikini she wore in Kona. I’m not. I’m not.

  We chat away about our dreams and ambitions. Me to keep her calm until we get to the ground. I learn things about my assistant. She buys bruised and discarded fruit and makes jam and cans fruit to save money and delivers to her neighbors like the saint she is. She has the perfect place picked out for her dress boutique, but the rent is too high, and she won’t tell me where it is.

  I’ll dig around her area until I find it.

  A smiling attendant is opening the door for us. Asia scuttles off my lap, red-faced.

  “I hope you enjoyed the ride, folks.” He smirks like we’d rubbed one out at the top.

  I shake my head and help Asia to the ground.

  She looks at the surrounding apartments. “You live around here, don’t you?”

  My gaze climbs to the penthouse suite, encased in darkness across the street.

  “Do you want to have a nightcap there?” she asks with a small smile.

  “Absolutely not. I never take a date to my apartment. That’s a hard no.” The words are out of my mouth in a nano-second. I plunge my hands into my pockets and watch the smile slide off her face and into the gutter.

  Fuck.

  She nods.

  “I’ll make my own way home. I hope the tax break works out for you.” She walks away.

  I take two seconds to catch up to her. “I’ll take you home.” She walks stiffly beside me while I try to explain badly. “It’s a hard rule. I have a year-round reservation at a nearby hotel. Now, if you want to go there for a nightcap…”

  She stops and stares at me, her eyes glacial, and I shudder at the arctic blast being directed my way. “I will make my own way home. I’m not one of your swipers or a snack you eat, then throw away the wrapper.”

  My tongue tingles. I know how she tastes, and its heaven. My spitfire is heading to what looks like a metro station.

  I catch up to her, grab her shoulder, and turn her to me. Tears pool in her eyes. Angry, sad, and hurt tears. My gut does a death roll.

  “Just when I think there’s more to you, I learn the hard and painful way you don’t have a heart and don’t care how you hurt other people.” She swats at her face before rummaging in her tiny purse. “Damn, I didn’t bring my bus card.”

  And I feel like a fucker. I spoke the truth, but I didn’t want to hurt her, not intentionally.

  “Come, I’ll take you home, or follow behind the bus or catch it with you and probably get a disease.” I try for a smile.

  “You really don’t get people, do you?”

  At least she’s walking beside me, not hurling objects at my head.

  “I don’t.” And that’s the truth. Women perplex me with all their emotions and feelings. Give me a hardened business tycoon any day over a woman who is more complex than reading ancient hieroglyphics.

  My hands are in my pockets as we walk in silence to the car where we make the drive to Compton in deathly silence.

  I make a mental note to call her landlord again after I’d complained about the security door. He hasn’t called me back.

  Her resolute but glassy eyes hold mine. “I want more out of life than to be a watercolor memory in a couple of days. You’ve just reminded me how polar opposite we are. Thank you for the reminder.”

  The door closes with a quiet resolute click. And just like that, I’m out of Asia’s life.

  Again.

  And I’m pleased. No, I’m fucking ecstatic. The fact I want to punch walls confuses the crap out of me.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Asia

  It’s been five days since our disastrous date. No, scrap that. It wasn’t a date but a tax break which had been going great until he relegated me to being a snack on his menu, reminding me again that’s all I’ll ever be. Just when I think I’ve glimpsed past his wiring and circuit boards to see the man driving them, I’m shut down and shut out.

  Again.

  Lesson learned.

  He’s tried to engage me, but on a personal level, we are done. He’s begged for a horoscope. No can do. Not in my job description. He comes back grumpy from Starbucks like he’s disappointed his name isn’t a song title, which I know to be true. Alissa from marketing said he hid a smile when he inched toward the counter, and his face fell when his name was called out. It should have been ‘Really Don’t Care’ by Demi Lovato.

  I’m ticking down the days until this farce is over and I can exit stage left in a plume of smoke, which will leave his Porsche still sitting at the starting line.

  It’s coming up midday, and I’m about to have lunch at my desk so I can leave a bit early and hang out with Mostly Harmless Pete. I’ve been trying to get the scoop on his relationship with Jason, but it’s as if they are besties. Pete is tight-lipped when Jason’s name is mentioned. Pete’s sporting some new attire, as are his friends who I’ve seen in passing but now are holding court at Pete’s bus stop.

  I’m about to heat my two-m
inute noodles and add sodium and fat into the mix in the shape of a sachet of powdered stuff that claims to be chicken but could be shrimp, beef, or roadkill. Still, it’s cheap and fills a void, plus eight for a buck is a steal as the expiry date was months ago. Last I checked fat and salt don’t expire, I’m saving every penny to help Jamaica off the opioids and into rehab, that along with my dress shop that I feel slipping away. At least the vet bills for Blossom have been paid for, courtesy of my date with Jason. Weirdly, a lifetime of food has been donated. It seems there is a cat lover in our neighborhood who heard about Bloss and donated, which is super nice. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give them my undying gratitude, and Doctor Cathy said the donor wants to remain anonymous. Bloss and I thank our faceless benefactor every day.

  “Asia, it really is incomprehensible of you to not eat the enormous amount of food in the break room; in fact, it’s your civic duty not to let it go to waste.” He does one of his angsty-slash-angry sighs from his gilded office.

  “Box it up, I’ll bring it to movie night with shared breath and sticky hands in the popcorn.” I’m peeling the lid off the noodles.

  A bag lands on my desk. “What’s this?” I eye the brown paper bag as if it contains cocaine or a kidnapped child, and the feds are about to bust down the door.

  “A sandwich.” Hands in his pockets, he stares at me intently.

  I poke it and peer in the bag. “I see that.”

  “I made it. It’s my favorite,” he says gruffly, like he’d just handed me the code to the office safe and his heart, none of which are in the building, if they exist at all.

  I pull out the haphazardly wrapped sandwich, my heart doing a little stutter, my throat a little scratchy.

  He watches as I take a bite.

  “It’s tongue, gizzards, and slugs.”

  Too late. I’ve already chewed the first bite. Smoked chicken, tomatoes—fresh and sundried—buttery lettuce and capers. My favorite sandwich in the world. The one I had at the café in Montana.

  Our eyes lock in comprehension.

  “Why do you always have to be such an ass?” I say, ogling his tight muscled ass in suit pants as he saunters into his office. My nails have clutched that ass. My fingers fit into the grooves in that ass. I’ve bitten that ass.