Beauty and the BOSS (Billionaire's Obsession Book 1)

by R. S. Elliot

  “God,” I moaned, putting my head into my hand. “This is all my fault. I was stupid and let myself get carried away and…”

  “Oh shut up Em,” Sonia said affectionately. “You’re just a kid. You fell for someone. He fell back. What were you supposed to do? Say no? I wouldn’t have.”

  “Yeah, well,” I grumbled. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that whole falling back thing.”

  “Oh no… Did the DTR moment not go so well?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it. Listen, I could barely sleep all weekend thinking about those pictures. Has anyone in the office seen?”

  “I don’t know honey. I haven’t been asking around—”

  At that moment, Oliva stood up from her desk, smoothed her skirt, and walked primly over to us. Sonia looked like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  “Oh, hi, Olivia. We were just talking…”

  “I know about San Francisco,” she said, voice low. She was doing her best to keep her expression neutral, but I could hear the concern in her voice, and maybe a little anger too. “I could kill Luke.”

  “He told you?” I asked, dismayed.

  “No, I just saw…” She glanced nervously over to Sonia. “Does she not know about the pictures?”

  “Oh no,” I whispered. “Olivia, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know anyone was there… we weren’t supposed to—”

  “I know,” She sighed. She looked tired, as if she had been up all night at the hospital too. “Listen, I appreciate the effort, but I didn’t have a lot of faith in that whole ‘never again’ promise the two of you made. People don’t work like that.”

  My shoulders sagged. I felt utterly defeated.

  “So everyone knows. The whole office?”

  “Not everyone. But I heard a couple of girls talking about it in the lunchroom today. I’m sorry, Emily.” I put my face in my hands, feeling miserable. Olivia reached out to touch my arm, a sweet gesture I hadn’t expected from her. “If it makes you feel any better, they were all very jealous.”

  “What are the papers saying?” Sonia asked.

  “They don’t know who the woman is. Not yet. But I would only give it a few days, tops.”

  “I can’t do this,” I said. I felt like I was on a nightmare tilt-a-whirl, screaming for the operator to let me off. There had to be a way out of this. I couldn’t sit idly by and listen to the world talk about me, speculate on a relationship I didn’t even have, especially when the man who turned my life upside down worked right next door. If Luke and I were going to get through this, we had to have a game plan. I had to know what to say. He had been dealing with the paparazzi far longer than I had and even if he didn’t want me in his life, he could at least do the courtesy of helping me out of the mess he had gotten me into.

  I was on my feet before I knew I was standing, Sonia looking at me with mouth agape.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Olivia said, but we both knew she couldn’t stop me. I had come to work that morning bare-faced, barely taking the time to swipe some moisturizing sunscreen and mascara onto my face before running out the door. Now I rummaged around in the makeup bag rescued from a San Francisco hotel room and swiped on my favorite peach lipstick. It didn’t do much to make me look put-together, but it made me feel more like myself.

  Before either of the other women could stop me, I was marching down the hallway towards Luke’s office. I felt more eyes following me than usual and caught snatches of a couple of whispers as I walked by. People were talking, and I knew gossip spread like wildfire. It was already too late to save my secrets, but I still might be able to salvage my reputation.

  I knocked three times before letting myself into Luke’s office, not waiting for his reply. I thought by now we were close enough that I could request an audience with him whenever I wanted. At least that seemed fair to me at the time. He was on the phone when I entered, and he looked startled to see me at first. Then the expression faded into neutral tiredness, and he gestured silently at a nearby chair for me to sit down like I was a low-ranking employee waiting for my meeting with him. I obeyed, cheeks burning as I waited for his attention.

  “Thank you… Yes that all sounds fine to me, you know I trust you with all this… Of course. Listen, I’ve got someone here right now, can I call you back?… Sure. I appreciate it. Bye.”

  He set the phone down with a definitive click and turned, his hands on his hips. He looked his age then, or well past it, the lines around his eyes made more prominent by exhaustion and, as I realized with horror, grief.

  “Emily. What is it?”

  His voice was soft but flat, entirely devoid of the sweetness that he had lavished on me in San Francisco. This was a man with absolutely nothing left to give.

  I had gone in there with requests to make, answers to demand. I was bound and determined to elicit his help in fixing this problem we had gotten into together. But now, all I could manage was a miserable, “Luke.”

  “My father passed away this morning,” he said. “Congestive heart failure. That was Sarah, calling about the funeral.”

  Tears stung my eyes on his behalf. I had never met his father, but I couldn’t imagine anything more miserable than losing a parent. After all, I had done this once before.

  “I’m so sorry,” I breathed.

  “What do you need, Emily?” He asked.

  “I…” I didn’t know what I wanted now. Any request would be ill-timed and completely irresponsible, but he was pinning me in place with those green eyes that once looked on me kindly. Now they were hard and wary. “The newspapers…”

  “I know. I’m so sorry you’ve been caught up in all this. But it will blow over soon, I promise. I’m completely willing to deny that the girl in the pictures is you. I’ll just make up some old girlfriend, and it will be over.”

  This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to work through this together, as a team, with a unified plan that would bring us closer together. Now, he was just pushing me further away.

  “Luke,” I said, trying to begin this whole conversation again. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just worried. I don’t know what’s going on out there or between us.”

  “Nothing’s going on anywhere,” he said tiredly. “I told you.”

  That hurt, and I couldn’t help the fresh tears that welled up hot in my eyes. I tightened my jaw, begging them not to fall, and Luke pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked like a king who had lost his entire empire in one day.

  “You’re not in trouble, Emily. I’m going to do everything I can to protect you from harm. You’re going to be alright.”

  “But you’re not alright. Your father—”

  “This is something I need to handle myself. Please. This is a family issue, and I shouldn’t have brought you along with me to the hospital, it was asking too much. There’s so much to do for the funeral and I just… I don’t have room for anything else. I’m sorry.”

  I had always thought love songs that whined about having one’s heart broken into pieces were too dramatic, but now I felt a pang in my chest like something splitting right down the middle. I had been stupid to come. I had been stupid to believe I had anything to offer him or was owed any of his time.

  “I understand,” I said, rising to my feet. Luke was watching me with a tight expression, his hands bunched into fists at his sides. For all I knew he might have wanted to go with me, but he made it clear that ship had sailed. “I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time, Mr. Thorpe.”

  “Emily…” He began, but I didn’t let him finish. I marched back to my desk, letting his door swing shut behind me, and ignored the scandalized glances that followed me. People pulled out their phones to text the latest gossip or leaned over to let their cubicle mates know they had seen me coming out of his office, but I didn’t let myself care. None of them mattered, not even Luke mattered right now. Only I did. So I sat down at my desk and put in the best damn eight hours of work I have ever logged in my life and ignored
the persistent pain in my chest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Luke

  You never expect how much work it takes to plan a funeral until you’re in the middle of planning one. My father had not left behind clear end-of-life wishes for his children, which made an already complicated situation stickier. Everyone had a different idea of how things were to be handled but in the end I ended up conceding most of the responsibility to my sister, who rose to the occasion with the grace of a saint. I spent most of Monday on and off the phone with her, the hospital, my lawyers, the funeral directors. Everyone needed something different from me, wanted more money or opinions or more of my limited time. The day passed in a miserable blur, and I never left my office once. When Olivia came in with my coffee, I just shook my head at her and sent her away with an apology in my eyes. Today, I didn’t want friends. I didn’t even want to exist.

  I knew I could have handled things better with Emily. Every hour her crushed expression would come back to mind, tormenting me, but the pain was dulled by my exhaustion and grief. The few hours of bliss I had shared with Emily were overshadowed by the knowledge that at that time, my father had been falling ill all the way across the country, and I hadn’t been able to move quickly enough to get back in time to say goodbye. The last time we spoke I had brushed him off, ever the ungrateful, bitter child. Now I would never have a chance to make good on my promise to get dinner with him and the rest of the family.

  I actually left work at a decent hour that day and traveled to Sarah’s townhouse, where Aunt Martha was sitting with my sister and sipping coffee in the living room. When she saw me she stood without a word and folded me into her arms. She smelled like home, and I almost broke down crying for the first time since I had heard about my father’s death.

  “I am so, so sorry, Luke,” she said. “It should never have to be like this, a child burying their parent. But please don’t blame yourself.”

  “I wasn’t there,” I said into her shoulder, voice muffled by her. “I was working too much, I should have been home, I should have…”

  “We cannot live our lives in shoulds,” she said firmly, “And I won’t have you carrying this guilt around for the rest of your life. Let it go, son.”

  Sarah watched on from the couch, crying softly but persistently. She had always been the crier in the family and I was sure her eyes hadn’t been dry for days. I reached out to her and pulled her into the hug, and she buried her face in Martha’s shoulders and cried and cried until she was spent.

  While we were still embracing, Ryan appeared down the hallway, looking rumpled and wide-eyed. He didn’t seem like he got much sleep recently either, and I wondered if anxiety for all the grown-ups around him, or the absence of his grandfather had been keeping him up.

  “Uncle Luke?” He asked.

  Sarah held out her hand to him and he joined our family hug, letting me smooth back his hair from his brow. After a moment I pulled away from everyone, but scooped Ryan up like I had when he was a baby and settled him down next to me on Sarah’s couch. I felt totally exhausted, like I hadn’t slept in a year, but I knew that this was just the beginning of the stress. There would be funeral arrangements soon, and the reading of the will and the statements in the papers and all the socializing I was going to have to do with relatives I hadn’t seen in ages.

  “Where’s Eric?” I asked, realizing suddenly that Sarah’s husband wasn’t in the house with us.

  “He’s down at the funeral home talking to the director, getting quotes and looking over different funeral packages. I just… I couldn’t do it, Luke.”

  “Of course not. I understand.”

  “It was so sweet of him to go but I feel bad sending him off alone. He’s been such a rock through all this.”

  “I know,” I murmured, making room for Ryan as he snuggled up next to me. He set his head down in my lap, looking miserable. All the usual color was gone from his cheeks, and I thought it horribly unfair that someone so young should have to experience all this death and stress. Adults were supposed to have everything figured out, they were supposed to be able to handle these sorts of things behind closed doors without children seeing them, but we weren’t able to. We were hardly able to figure things out over the phone, Sarah and Aunt Martha and I, much less come to a total consensus. My father had never liked talking about death, and he hadn’t planned for it. That, as it turned out, was making our lives a lot harder than expected. The only one of us who knew anything about funerals was Aunt Martha, who had already buried both of her parents.

  We ended up leaning heavily on her expertise the next couple of days, and I stayed with everyone in Sarah’s townhouse in the Upper East Side. She had done well for herself with her marriage to Eric, and I had made sure she never wanted for anything until then, so she had plenty of room to spare. Aunt Martha was good enough to spend the next few afternoons with us, going over paperwork at the kitchen table with Sarah while I cooked up a grilled cheese for Ryan or played checkers with him in the living room. I think Sarah was grateful to have someone help ease the stress of parenting while she processed our father’s death.

  Eric continued going in to work, but as soon as he stepped into the house in the evening he became fully available to his wife and child, pulling them into his arms and asking, with real gravity, how they were and if there was anything he could do. My respect for him grew tenfold during the couple of days I spent living with him in my sister’s house, and by the end of my visit we had reached a grudging peace.

  The third evening, after Ryan had taken his shower and been tucked into bed by Sarah and me, we stood in the kitchen with Eric sharing a bottle of red wine. It was the first real socializing we had done during my time there, since most of our waking hours were devoted to Ryan, or funeral planning, or to my answering work emails from my phone. For the first time in, well, ever, we were all relaxed. Eric was telling some story about work that wasn’t absolutely humorless, and it was making Sarah laugh, which was making me smile. I realized that I was relaxed, leaning against the kitchen counter with wine in my hand and my elbow brushing against my sister’s, and that’s how I knew it was time to go home. It was time to pull myself back up and get back to daily life.

  “Luke, can I get you more wine?” Eric asked, reaching for the bottle.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’ll take some,” Sarah said, putting out her glass. She had a lovely flush in her cheeks from the wine and the laughter and it was the first time, I thought, I had seen her genuinely happy since our father’s death.

  “You wouldn’t believe some of these guys at work,” Eric went on. “Or maybe you would, Luke. I hear SkyBlue attracts all sorts of eccentric Silicon Valley types.”

  “Some,” I admitted. “But most of them aren’t so bad.”

  It was impossible to keep Emily, glowing-eyed and happily exhausted in bed next to me, out of my mind. Somehow, even through the haze of grief, I had been seeing her for days, while I was awake and in my dreams. Guilt rose up in my throat whenever I thought of her, but it seemed too late now to reach back out. She didn’t want a part of this, anyway. She deserved better than someone who only knew how to work and could barely grieve his own father properly because he had lost touch with his own family.

  “Listen,” I said, swirling my wine around in my glass. “I think it’s about time for me to go back to work.”

  “So soon?” Sarah asked, looking a little distressed. But Eric didn’t seem upset. He just nodded at me, man-to-man, indicating that he understood perfectly. Sometimes, the best way to deal with your life getting turned upside down was to continue on with your daily routine as though nothing had changed and to let the work bring healing.

  “It’s been three days, Sarah. As wonderful as it is to spend time with you both and with Ryan, I can’t hide out here forever. I have a company to run.”

  “Aw, Luke.” Sarah leaned her drowsy head against my shoulder, threading her arm through mine. “It’s been so nice to see you
.”

  “It’s been good to see you too. I think I’m going to get my things and head back to the apartment this evening, try to get a good night’s sleep in my own bed before work tomorrow. I’ve got a company to run.”

  “I know,” she said, and pushed up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. Eric put out his hand and gave me a firm, heartfelt handshake.

  “Damn good to see you again, Luke. Listen. I’ve been meaning to apologize. For that dick move with the investments and SkyBlue. I shouldn’t have pulled out at the last minute like that; I was a stupid kid and I should have kept my word—"

  “Eric.”

  I took his shoulder in my hand and gave a reassuring squeeze.

  “It’s alright, really. We’re alright.”

  Sarah’s eyes shined with joy and Eric nodded at me. We were going to be fine. All of us, together, if we could just get through this funeral. But that, I knew, was a bridge I would have to cross in the coming week. Until then, I had a company to run and a public image to rehab from the gossip mills.

  It was going to be a long week.

  Chapter Twenty

  Emily

  Luke arrived quietly back to work, with no public announcement. It was only remarkable because no one at SkyBlue remembered when he had taken personal time away from the office before, but his father had just died. If that didn’t make you step back and take stock of your life, nothing would.

  The gossip hadn’t stopped in the days that Luke had been gone, but it had gotten better. Some girls at work threw me knowing, eyebrow-waggling glances in the lunchroom, and one outright asked me if I was seeing Luke and if he was any good in bed. Plenty of people didn’t seem to care either way, though, and others didn’t seem to have seen the photographs at all. I hadn’t gotten any strongly worded emails from my school either and after a while my fear of opening my phone to find that they had fired me dissipated. Things slowly returned to normal.