Chapter Three
Someone from HR meets me as soon as I come through the door, immediately telling me to follow her, please.
“Mr Boyd has assigned the desk arrangement for the secretaries he’s hired,” the HR girl says. “As this will be a trial run, Mr Boyd will place you in his inner office first, while the other girls will work at other sections.”
“Inner office?” I ask.
The girl smiles. “Mr Boyd is an important man. According to him, he needs secretaries in his outer office — which filters through all the people trying to get in touch with him — as well as a secretary in his inner office, who works in close proximity with him. Hiring four people for a job previously covered by two is a new step. It’s likely you’ll have to expect… some teething issues.”
I try to mask my frown as elegantly as possible. The pay here is good, but maybe not good enough that I want to be a guinea pig.
And working in close proximity to Magnus Boyd? As much as I’d like the eye candy, if I’ve read him right, the man is as arrogant as he is wealthy and powerful. I suspect being alone with him is when he’s at his moodiest, showcasing everything flighty about a man who’s too used to being served.
Although I wouldn’t mind serving him in other ways…
Get it together, Shaleigh!
“That’ll all be fine,” I acknowledge. We’re in an elevator heading up, and after we exit at the penthouse floor, she ushers me through to the outer office.
I can see the other girls are already arriving now, establishing their workspaces. They all have sleek, new computers in front of them.
Sliding doors glide open to reveal Magnus’ inner office, which is not at all what I expected.
I was expecting a lavish, luxurious space that’s used to a lot of decoration; instead of bookshelves, lounge chairs and golden portrait frames, his office is incredibly minimalist.
There’s his desk, a light shade of grey, in the far corner, with loft windows. Clean, with nothing to mark the place as having been occupied before. And then, all the way across the large room, there’s a smaller desk, with a computer and some company stationery.
“This will be your desk. My name’s Melissa, by the way. If you need anything, there’s a phone in your desk drawer. I’m extension 1004.”
By the time I turn around, Melissa’s gone.
I take my position at the secretary’s desk and idly go through the computer.
Magnus has helpfully left notes for me, that immediately pop up on-screen as soon as I sign in. He tells me he usually comes in at 11am, so in the two hours before he gets here, I’m expected to make sure his inbox and schedule is as clear as possible — everything that can be delegated should already be delegated by the outer office girls, but if they miss anything, it’s my job to decide whether I should postpone those appointments indefinitely, delegate them on to one of his lieutenants, or book some time for him.
His instructions are clear on one thing, though:
“I am only to be disturbed by people already marked red (‘urgent’), as these are people I must attend to personally. Everyone else, family included, must go through the gauntlet. Don’t waste any of my time.”
It feels interestingly powerful being his gatekeeper, as I begin to reject every possible assignment that comes Magnus’ way. There’s an email box for correspondence that needs to be responded by him personally, and after I get the hang of things, I make sure that it’s as small as possible.
And then, of course, Magnus arrives. He is haughty and domineering, walking past the outer office girls as they stand up and greet him.
“What’s your name again?” he says, as soon as he slides the doors open.
“Shaleigh,” I say in my most professional, collected voice.
“Right. Shaleigh, what’s on my schedule until lunch?” he asks, not missing a beat.
I glance over at the schedule app on my computer. “Nothing, sir,” I say, smiling proudly. “Everything has been delegated elsewhere.”
“Fantastic,” he nods. “In that case, I’m going to have brunch. Book a table for two at Paolo’s, the Brazilian place downtown.”
I wonder who the second person is. A girlfriend? He’s not married, to the best of my knowledge. If anything, a quick Google search tells me that the upper-class social gossip has it that he’s a notorious playboy… although no article ever dares to name who he’s with.
“At once. What time will that be for?”
Magnus glances at his watch, an expensive lump of white gold wrapped around his wrist. “It’s a twenty minute drive or a five minute helicopter ride. Book the table for ten minutes from now.”
I gulp. “Ten minutes from now, Mr Boyd.”
“And call me Magnus — I’m not that much older than you.”
Now that he mentions it, I can’t quite tell how old he is. Magnus has the body, build and immaculate style of someone entering his early thirties… but now that I’m looking at him personally I realize there’s also a splash of salt-and-pepper in his hair. It definitely gives him an almost silver fox look. Sexy, experienced, an edge older.
But with his smooth jawline, unadorned with facial hair, Magnus maintains a permanent Greek God state that could have him as young as 27, 28.
I wonder, I murmur under my breath.
Booking the reservation is a surprisingly seamless task for me. All I had to do was give them a call, and then the maitre d’, perhaps having this phone number, immediately says he’ll clear the best table for Mr Boyd.
With Magnus all the way at the loft-style windows, looking out, I almost wonder if I could slip asking the guy on the other line who the likely partner for lunch might be.
Instead, I confirm the time for ten minutes from now, thank him profusely, and pipe up to Magnus, “I’ve made the reservation. They’re clearing their best table for you.”
Turning to face me, Magnus smirks as he glances again to his watch. “It’s 11.45am, power lunch central for the business types. Paolo’s is almost guaranteed to be full. You know what that means? If I want my regular table there, someone else has to be pushed aside. Moved to a lesser table. Now that’s power, Shaleigh.”
I bite my tongue, because otherwise I’d retort: actually, that sounds more like petty.
He straightens his tie and starts to walk towards the door. “Don’t take too long to get ready, the helicopter’s already waiting on the pad.”
“Ready?” I ask, blinking.
“A table for two, remember? Me, and you — I’m not going to dine alone, please.” Magnus still has that charming, if almost overpowering smirk on his face. “Helipad is above us. In case you were wondering.”
“I know how helipads generally work,” I whisper back. I’m confused — why does he want to have brunch with me? I’m just a secretary.
It’s now that I begin to understand that Magnus Boyd isn’t like any other boss.
He’s one to watch.
Chapter Four
We’re handed a menu each, but Magnus immediately waves it towards the waiter. “I’ll have the chef salad and Ms Williams will have the avocado and bean toast, with the soup. And wine to drink. White.”
“Oh,” I want to protest, only to realize that I would almost certainly have ordered the same thing.
“It’s faster this way,” Magnus insists. The waiter takes our menus with a smile and walks away. Paolo’s is as busy as the man suggested, with businessmen types huddled together in important meetings. I feel like the only woman here, at least the only one who isn’t wearing a power pantsuit.
“All my business rivals, collected in a single place. It’s always very grating that I come here so often and push them off their high perches,” Magnus tells me. “So! You know what Boyd Industries does, I hope? Secretaries need to know that, after all.”
“Energy. You’re in the business of acquiring new sources for energy needs,” I recite from the website. “Whether that means research and development at all stages, or building o
il pipelines, or creating safer ways to supply nuclear energy, Boyd Industries is involved vertically in the industry.”
I allow myself a smile for using every keyword I need to impress someone like Magnus.
Yet he looks bored, surprising me with his reaction. “That’s what we do, yes, but that’s not the actual fun bit. The bit I do is very different from, what was it? ‘Research and development at all stages’. Talk about a yawn. I make it a point to hide the R&D team as deep as I can underground, because I don’t want their boring, boring, boring work getting in the way of mine.”
I keep a neutral face, although our food arrives and gives us a chance to pause. “This looks delicious. Thank you,” I say to the waiter.
Magnus’ eyes flash. “Back to the topic at hand. What I do. Personally. I handle corporate takeovers. Not usually the CEO’s job to do this, but you see, this is the energy industry. Oil and gas is going the way of the dinosaur — literally. And alternative energy? Not quite there yet. So if I want to maintain my wealth, or better yet, improve it, I need to buy low and sell high.”
I nod along as Magnus explains.
“Do you know what I buy low and sell high?”
Stocks? Commodities? I’m not exactly an economics graduate here. I wouldn’t know the first thing about stock markets. All I know is that buying low and selling high sounds like how you make a tidy profit.
And given the five-figure tailored suit he’s wearing, a tidy profit sounds like something he expects every day.
I look down to the food and Magnus snaps his fingers. “Shaleigh? Any ideas?”
Pressed by him, I come up with an answer. “You… you buy companies. Other companies. If they start to look like they’re making money, you buy them out, take them under your wing, and then sell them on for a profit.”
Magnus grins. “Good girl.”
There’s an involuntary twinge of delight at his words. It’s almost as if there’s a two-word phrase that activates my absolute desire to have him lean forward and pin me down, and good girl is it. “But sometimes you don’t sell them on for a profit. The best ones you keep to yourself. Because while you want to make money, you also want to hoard the secrets to future success yourself.”
“Very good girl,” Magnus says.
The empowered, female part of me wants to protest and tell him off for sounding just so damn… patronizing. But it’s just part of him, just the way he is. Charm oozing every bit of him, epitomized in the way he just stands strong and grins at me. Or smirks at me. He loves getting a rise of people.
Out of me.
“More than just good,” I murmur, under my breath. “Don’t test me just yet, Boyd.”
Throwing myself into this job means I get to think about something other than the struggle it took for me to leave my town, leave my past behind. Magnus Boyd and Boyd Industries is all that should occupy my mind. I’m okay with this, because it means I get to really, really keep my eyes centered on the future.
Things are going to work out just fine, Shaleigh.
“Tell me about yourself, naturally,” Magnus says, gesturing that I should begin eating. The waiter returns with a bottle of Chardonnay and Magnus immediately shakes his head.
“I’ll take the Vier-de-Nantes, a ’78 or a ’79 if you have it, not an ’80 — and it better be a Sauvignon Blanc,” Magnus instructs. “I know Emilio keeps some for the VIP guests.”
“Of course, Mr Boyd,” the waiter retreats.
“Was that to impress me?” I suggest. There’s even a wink there, which I can’t really help. It just… comes out.
“Are you impressed?” the billionaire asks.
Billionaire: to think this is a man sitting in front of me has a full-page spread in the Forbes 500 articles every year.
I shrug. “Not especially. Money is just money.”
“But you’d love to have my kind of money, wouldn’t you? Money enough to free you forever from anything giving you trouble.”
I wonder if he’s hinting at something — if he’s done any digging and found something worth interrogating me over. Free me from anything giving me trouble? Hmm…
“Yes,” I tentatively reply, knowing that he was watching my body language as much as he was listening to my answer. “A billion bucks might mean I could buy anything I want… but it’s not exactly freedom, not in the way you’re suggesting. If it truly was freedom, you’d be sitting on a beach somewhere, reading books all day and listening to the waves, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t be hiring four secretaries to help clear your schedule enough to do brunch at Paolo’s, just to show off.”
“Interesting,” he answers, sounding almost wistful. “Go on…”
“Plus, you just told me you do takeovers — because you’re sort of like a shark. I don’t know if it’s you, or your company. But if you stand still, you get left behind. Like I said, you’re a shark. Stop swimming and you die. So you have to be on the offensive always. Constantly ahead of the competition, which means your time’s always being taken up by something, anything, although more likely: everything,” I say, reading from the look of interest on his face.
“And you know this all from reading my palm?” Magnus jokes, waving his open hands in front of me.
“Not quite. Almost,” I smile.
“Hey,” Magnus says, his voice now soft, barely noticeable under the murmur of all the other conversations in the restaurant.
“Yeah?” I ask, sitting up, feeling self-conscious under his gaze.
“I like your smile. It’s… very fetching.”
Rather than get all shy, I laugh instead. “Fetching?”
“Yes. That’s a thing people say, you know, to describe attractive smiles. You may have heard it before,” Magnus notes.
I laugh again, echoing the earlier sound. “In movies from the 1950s, sure. You’re not quite Humphrey Bogart,” I add. “I mean, Bogart’s old and hot in a sexy older guy kinda way. You’re… a different sort of…”
“Old?” Magnus suggests, a twinkle in his eye.
I bite my lip because I don’t want to complete the sentence and say, “hot.” So I nod.
Magnus shakes his head and chuckles to himself. “People do call me old-fashioned, but I’ve never been called old.”
“It’s a very… fetching… description,” I tease him.
His hand brushes against mine as he leans back. There’s a moment of very noticeable electricity. For the briefest moment, Magnus drops the charming, powerful mask and instead reveals himself to be quite surprised by the accidental touch.
I know his immediate reaction would be to apologize, but I don’t want him apologizing for touching me. Not when the sizzle of that touch reverberated all through me.
So instead I give him that smile he kept complimenting. “Goosebumps.” I show him my arms. “Not often a guy manages that on me.”
“Well, maybe it takes a certain type of old-fashioned man,” Magnus suggests. He look down at our plates, both empty. “Good meal?”
“Delicious. Not quite what I was expecting, though.”
“Understandable. In that case, I won’t buy the restaurant. Maybe the next one. But on that note, we’re running out of time — I’ve got an appointment to rush off to, don’t I?”
I blink. “What appointment?”
“We can’t stay too long,” Magnus says, standing. “Laurent, invoice me, the company will pay at the end of the month as usual. Miss Williams and I have a helicopter to catch.”
Chapter Five
He’s quiet on the whole trip back. I’m still struggling to register that I’m being strapped in on helicopters on Magnus’ whim, and it’s almost as if he’s trying his best to avoid looking at me.
Was it something I said? Or did? Whatever it was, I can definitely say it wasn’t on purpose.
There’s nothing I can say here except try to figure out, quietly, how best to move on from this. I feel like he’s punishing himself over something — I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that he’s
angry… it’s that he’s suddenly really guarded.
It’s not my place to ask him what’s wrong. Instead, I just go with the flow. Knowing when to push and knowing when to pull is an important survival trait, and I feel like the flighty, moody billionaire definitely does a lot of this.
Maybe he doesn’t even notice that he’s being standoffish all of a sudden.
By the time we disembark he says he’ll meet me in a few minutes at his office. “I have to check in on some other departments. I’ll take calls for the next two hours, but only book fifteen minute slots, and only for people marked orange or red. Is that clear, Miss Williams?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, walking straight to the elevator back to the penthouse. If he wants to suddenly be all cold, that’s his call. He hired a secretary, not a psychologist.
My gut feeling tells me that he’s upset that he was flirting.
It seems to run counter to everything about him so far. He’s a powerful, charming person who has a habit of toying with assets — and by and large, people are assets to him. So why wouldn’t he enjoy a bit of flirting or teasing?
Why indeed.
I settle back into my desk and begin sorting through his emails, the requests for calls. I book no more than five calls in the two hour period he wants, suspecting that he’d want plenty of time in between them. So far, it seems like I’m doing well here.
It’s a mentally challenging task that sort of feels like a game. I have to guess, with next to no context, what sort of call he might want to do. I have to analyze, based on the very brief description registered from the girls at the outer office, which calls seem actually important.
Nothing comes up that seems life or death urgent, but there are some persistent attempts by people to get in touch with him. Even these, I have to filter.
I’m in the middle of forwarding a complaint email to a designated project manager, when Magnus reenters the office. Quietly. Without any pomp, pageantry, or the puffed-out, chest-forward braggadocio he likes to perform.
Black Gold Page 2
