Black Gold
Page 1
Black Gold
Angelika Robinson
Copyright © 2017 by Angelika Robinson
First edition 2017
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.
For my best friend Sam, who’s helped me through thick and thin — I know I’m as annoying a friend as you can get, but I’m sorry, you’re stuck with me!
Contents
Love BWWM Romance? So do I!
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
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
About the Author
Love BWWM Romance? So do I!
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Love,
Angelika
* * *
Alright… on to the book…
Chapter One
I’ve always known what my best skill was. I read people. I watch them carefully and gauge, to the best of my ability, just how they’re feeling, how they’re presenting themselves to the world, how they want to be perceived by others.
It’s an important skill to have, especially when you grew up in the kind of backwoods small town I did. People just didn’t have the privilege to leave, if things went bad. You ended up having to deal with them for as long as you could. So reading people and knowing how to gracefully get out of any awkward positions can help greatly.
But even with the odds stacked against me, I left anyway. I chose to pursue… something. Something else. I will admit that I don’t know what it is.
Yet it’s this exact path that’s taken me to the headquarters of Boyd Industries, a glass and steel construction that towers over every other building in the city. Even the logo is an impressive, intimidating design: the logo shapes the letters B and I together almost in a triangle, with an asterisk right in the middle.
It looks like an all-seeing eye.
The omnipotent logo blends into the face of a handsome stock model on the giant screens flanking every pillar of the lobby. I say stock model because it’s apparent he’s just too handsome to be real: perfect lighting, perfect posture, perfect smile, the almost forced-looking gestures he’s making in some of the photos.
The receptionist notices me gawking up at the screens.
“That’s Magnus Boyd, our CEO. Can I help you?”
At her words, I blink and return my gaze forward, trying to remember why I am there. “Uh, I’m… actually here for an interview. Secretarial pool.”
My resume claims I’ve held five secretarial jobs in the past which is not technically a lie, but this white lie may require some creative thinking when I’m actually sitting in the interview.
“I’m Shaleigh Williams, by the way,” I add, tucking my resume, in a neat little folder, under my arm as I begin to offer the receptionist a handshake.
She smiles instead. “You’ll need to get a guest pass at the security counter, and then take the elevator to the fiftieth floor. Good luck, and have a nice day!”
Fiftieth? How tall is this building?
After getting the pass, my feet are on autopilot heading towards the elevator, which takes me up directly to the fiftieth floor… because there’s no other button to press.
My first thought is that I’m accidentally using someone’s private lift. My second is that, uh oh, I can’t be… I’m interviewing for the job of secretary to the CEO.
I try to swallow as my heart begins pounding. This wasn’t meant to go this way. I could fool a middle manager somewhere. But a CEO? I doubt it.
So as soon as the elevator doors open, I peek my head out to see if I can get away with going straight down to ground floor.
Instead, an older woman with a clipboard greets me perkily. “You must be one of our candidates today! Please, join the queue. Everyone standing, please.”
There are at least a dozen girls lined up against the wall, some standing, some sitting, some leaning on the wall and playing with their phones. If I leave now, I bet I wouldn’t be missed. And besides, they’d have a dozen other candidates to choose from. Just not yours truly.
But the part of me that enjoys a challenge ends up automatically stiffening my posture, elegantly stepping forward and offering a crisp and competent smile to the elegant middle-aged woman who greets me as I hand her my resume.
“Shaleigh Williams, excellent,” the woman says. “I’m Cindy Townsend, executive assistant to Mr. Boyd.”
“Will I… have to wait long?” I reply, noting the girls queueing in front of me.
“Not exactly. You see, Mr. Boyd hires in a particularly… swift manner.”
As if on cue, I hear Cindy’s intercom buzz from her desk sitting in the path from the elevator. “Speaking of swift,” Cindy remarks, gesturing for me to find a spot of my own.
I banish awkwardness entirely out of my mind. Clearing my head is easy: having grown up all my life under harrowing stress, all it takes for me to achieve mindfulness is a bit of yoga in the mornings, and to close my eyes.
The slick, professional accent I’ve been working on for the last two years has to be perfect today. If I can pull this off, I can escape the trap of minimum-wage jobs. It’s poise I’m projecting here — not the shy, nervous black girl from a small town outside Atlanta.
Projecting a sense of confidence really helps, and I can detect that it’s causing a sense of discomfort among the other girls here. I’ve chosen a black dress with white Peter Pan collars, a simple bracelet, and good white nursing shoes. Monochromatic, simple, but pretty. Cheap, too, but I take extreme pains to make sure I don’t look like I just shopped at the cheapest place I walked into.
It’s a look that I can at least be proud about. Growing up, I didn’t have much. Or anything, really. Clothes of my own were a luxury, so I would get hand-me-downs from older relatives. For as long as they felt like treating me like their charity case. And then my stepfather came along and took Mom and me out of the town to a farm he leased about fifty miles out from the nearest human being.
There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing myself stand proud at a job interview while other girls, carrying expensive designer handbags and liberal arts educations, think of me as their chief rival.
“Hi,” I decide to introduce myself to the girl waiting next to me, a model-tall blonde who looks like her default look is to frown. “Have you been here long?”
“Like, an hour and a half, yeah. I had to go to the restroom and I came back to discover someone took my spot in the queue. I tried to complain to the woman at the desk there, but she wouldn’t have any of it. That’s just, like, so rude.”
“Actually,” the Cali girl tells me, “I haven’t seen anyone been called. Not in the whole time I’ve been here.”
“That’s weird,” I say. “Why are people even waiting, then?”
The girl shrugs and I can tell from the way her hands are shaking that she really just wants to be left alone. “Thanks again,” I whisper as I tilt away from her.
A door suddenly swings open and the same guy I thought was a stock photo model emerges. He’s breath-taking: taller than I expected, too. He’s at least six-foot-five, with a body so built I feel like if he’s not careful with swinging those doors, he might just rip them straight out of their hinges.
Especially with tree trunk arms like his…
“First four to arrive and last four to arrive, step forward,” he says, his voice sounding exactly like a privileged patrician who instantly expects to be obeyed.
Seven girls step forward, and after a beat, I take one step forward too. The Cali girl standing next to me hangs back, and Magnus Boyd focuses his attention to her.
“You weren’t one of the last four to arrive?” he asks.
“No, Mr. Boyd,” the blonde answers softly. “Someone just took my spot in the queue and I had to be here instead. And I was only away for a few minutes on a bathroom break.”
“Well, that’s disappointing. Bathroom breaks are frivolous. You should have gone before you got here. Cindy, you can dismiss her, thanks,” the CEO says.
And without even explaining why he wanted the first and last four to step forward, he turns on his heel and steps right back into his office. The doors are swung shut, the loud sound of the slam making most of us jump.
I track Cindy in the periphery of my vision, hoping to read her. She’s smiling. I wonder why. Perhaps she’s just very used to this sort of abrupt performance from the man we all are hoping will be our future boss.
There’s a lot of chatter as well among everyone, although with the blonde packing her things in a huff and walking off, I’m left in an awkward gap with nobody really wanting to talk to me.
And then the door swings open once more, immediately rendering the room silent.
“First two and last two, please step into the office,” the CEO instructs.
This time I don’t hesitate. This time I lead the way, stepping ahead of the three others chosen to enter Boyd’s office.
Chapter Two
I’m holding my breath as Magnus seats himself behind an impressive mahogany desk, so broad someone could probably land a plane on it.
He’s got a smirk on. “Why do you think I chose you girls?” he begins, prompting any one of us to answer.
The room is deathly quiet, and nobody immediately responds.
I decide to do so. “Because we’re all young and beautiful,” I say softly.
“Good,” the CEO responds. “Does that make me… arrogant? That I’m somehow picking and choosing random women whose skills and talents I, as yet, do not know… entirely because of their beauty?”
One girl, with curly platinum blonde hair, raises a hand and answers nervously. “That’s not very twenty-first century.”
Magnus laughs. “How about you? What do you think?”
He’s looking right at me.
I clear my throat. “It definitely opens you to concerns about sexism, that’s for sure. But I think it speaks to a higher level — you’re essentially saying that your position is so strong here that you can afford to hire people who fit every criteria, tick every box, that you don’t have to settle. You can hire the best… and the best naturally includes the most beautiful.”
The sole man in the room leans back in his large office chair, practically a throne. “That’s… an insightful answer,” he nods, looking almost disarmed by my response.
Like I said, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s reading people.
“Well, uh,” he tries to recover himself, “I’ll take this opportunity to tell you why I’m looking for a secretary. I’m a hard, demanding boss. I pay well, but I expect to get every cent of that back in terms of quality. If that means dictating my letters at 4am, then that’s what quality means.”
Every girl here, myself included, has an impassive look on. It’s the right response here. People like Magnus expect obedience because of their money or status. Fighting back, like I might have by exposing some of his inherent thought structures earlier, can sometimes win their respect.
But most of the time, all it does is annoy the crap out of them.
“Introduce yourselves,” Magnus instructs. With a single, graceful glide of his legs, he places his feet along the lip of his table. His chair slides back, and he leans the rest against the wall and window behind him.
“I’m Jane Meyer,” the platinum blonde says. “I graduated from Hofstra, I’ve been in several personal and executive assistant roles in the past.”
The next girl immediately knows when it’s her turn. “Salma Ortiz,” she says, with a dulcet Mexican accent. “I used to run a bakery and it got bought over by a bigger bakery chain, which retained me to handle the corporate correspondence. So I was essentially rehired to be my own company’s secretary. But I’m looking to do something different.”
Magnus smiles. “Interesting.”
“Frances Delacourt,” the girl standing next to me, a small girl with short hair in a bun, wearing a very old-fashioned dress, answers. “This is the first job I’ve applied for. To be honest, I have a degree in English literature, so it’s not very… secretarial. But I work hard, I promise.”
“Noted,” Magnus says with a dismissive wave of a hand. “And how about you, sweetheart?”
I resist a frown at the sound of sweetheart, but it grates against me all the same. “My name is Shaleigh. Shaleigh Williams. I’ve worked a few secretarial jobs, sure, I’m probably no more or less well-suited for this job than everyone else lined up next to me.”
“Is that modesty I detect,” Magnus says, sitting up, “or am I right in thinking you’ve just intentionally made yourself sound so… ordinary, so mediocre?”
I shrug. “You’re the one who wants to hire the best of the best, the most beautiful girl around, so I figure I’d cut the BS and not suggest that if I were hired, I’d be giving you a hundred percent all the time, because that’s not possible. Not for me, or you, or anyone, really. Dictating letters at 4am is an unhealthy thing to do. If that’s expected of people at this job, then I’d like to remind the other girls that no matter how much money is on the table here, Mr. Boyd has no interest in hiring you for a job. He’s interested in trading money that isn’t much to him for your life — which should be a lot, to you.”
Magnus grins as he leans forward, his eyes flashing with playful fight. “Now this is the sort of spirit we were lacking when Yvonne left.”
“Did she leave because you made her cry too much?” I crack a joke in his direction… while offering him a wink.
It’s unintended, I promise! He’s gorgeous, but a wink is a step too far — I think my body just… lost control there. When Magnus Boyd, with his big, muscular frame hiding under his suit, looks at you… you sort of let go of your rational side.
To his credit (and my relief), Magnus laughs. “She’s on maternity leave, but she also wants to move on. Four years as my secretary was intense enough. She and her husband are moving to Spain. Opening a bar by the sea in Valencia. Isn’t that sweet?”
Trying to channel my sass, the Mexican girl smiles as she begins to speak. “Does that mean if you hire me I’ll get to leave in four years with enough money for a bar in Spain too?”
“It’s unlikely,” Magnus instead confesses. “After this harrowing loss, I’m really not seeing myself let go of another secretary so quickly. You see, she was quite literally like my right arm. And I don’t intend to lose my right hand aga
in.”
There’s a beat of a pause, as we all wait for him to proclaim something.
“No questions? Anyone?” he says, revealing that he was the one waiting for us to ask questions instead.
“No, sir,” Frances, the girl in the frock, says. “Just, uh… do you have someone in mind? For the job?”
“Of course,” Magnus nods.
“Will there be a second interview?”
Magnus glances over at the wall clock on the left wall, above a water cooler and an uncomfortable looking couch. I find myself looking at the couch instead, wondering how many girls this Greek God of a man has seduced right here in his office.
Not that I’d ever let him do that to me, secretary or no secretary. And if he expects that sort of above-and-beyond service… he can say hello to a sexual harassment claim instead.
“No, there won’t be,” Magnus says, fidgeting as he lifts his legs off the desk. “You’re all hired. What… Shaleigh, was it?… said was true. I can afford to hire the best, and the most beautiful. Well, that happens to be all four of you.”
He says my name with perfectly. Some white guys default to saying it like Shelly, but Magnus showcases perfect attention to detail — he was listening when I told him my name.
I exhale in surprise, feeling like there’s some sort of trick here that I’m not quite wise to yet.
“Welcome to the team.”
Magnus smiles, and waves us all out of his office.