Page 41 of Forbidden Boss (Manhattan Billionaires)

“You’re attracted to him,” she said when I finished complaining about all the running around my boss had made me do this week.

Of course, I couldn’t tell her about the specifics. If I told her about the companion job, who knew who she’d tell? I trusted her, but this was the kind of gossip that could not be contained. If I started telling my friends that I’d been hired to be my boss’s plus-one, I knew it would eventually blow up in my face.

Plus, I was a little embarrassed. The niggling feeling that I was just a placeholder in their lives, the same way I’d been with my ex-boyfriend—if you could call him that—and my landlord, and my old boss. Even with my mother, I think I’d just filled a daughter-shaped hole in her life, but I never actually lived up to who she wanted me to be. Maybe that’s why our relationship had never been strong. I was a placeholder to her, but there was no one else that would come to relieve me of the position. No one more successful, or more understanding, or more supportive. There was only me, and I wasn’t enough.

So I said nothing. I did what I always do, and I went on the attack. “Projecting, much?”

“Stop trying to deflect. You have the hots for your boss.”

Her eyes were sparkling, and all I could do was throw my hands up and give in. “Fine! Yes. He’s attractive.” That was obvious. With the wide shoulders that couldn’t quite be hidden by the well-tailored suit, the blue eyes, the thick eyelashes, lush lips, strong jaw… “But he’s seriously not my type. He’s so…”

“He’s so…”

I glared at her. “Just not my type.”

She must have seen something in my face, because she let me off the hook and said, “I can’t judge.”

Seeing my opening, I prodded her about her own situation. Bonnie had started seeing her own boss, and she told me it felt like it was the real deal.

Maybe it was my own situation that made me skeptical. Or my own secrets. But I tried to understand how Bonnie could fall for a man like…well, like Rome, really, without worrying about what it all meant. If it could really last, when we came from such different worlds.

I’d been admitted to another universe in the past week. And it wasn’t just the designer clothes and the fabulous bags. It wasn’t just the good food and the amazing service. It was theease. A car appeared when it was needed. A helicopter could land on the roof at the snap of the fingers. Doors were opened, literally and figuratively, that had previously been locked and barred.

I wondered if Bonnie might have been dazzled by it all. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight, and her Prince Charming would turn out to be nothing more than a frog in a glitzy penthouse.

She didn’t take it well. We left off feeling vaguely angry at each other, and I didn’t know if I’d been wrong to challenge her. Maybe I was projecting.

After all, I wasn’t faring much better than she was. And if she could find happiness with a man, who was I to begrudge it of her?

But after she’d gone, I sank down on my old couch, staring at the cracks in the walls and the peeling linoleum in the tiny kitchen to my left, and I wondered if this was just another ending. Another person realizing that they didn’t actually want me for me. They’d enjoyed the idea of me, or the vague shape of me in their life, but they didn’t actually wantme. The placeholder. The one you called when there was nothing better around.

The companion.

On Monday,there were no planned events but I had a few meetings to attend at the office. I wanted to do some research about a few upcoming events. There were a number of people I’d met that I hadn’t really been able to converse with, and I knew I could do better.

Unsettled by my day with Bonnie—and with the itch I felt anytime I heard my boss’s voice down the hall—I threw myself into my work.

The day flew by, and before I knew it, it was five o’clock and time to walk across to the other end of the floor for my nightly debriefing.

I found Rome in his office frowning at his computer. He glanced up when he saw me, then waved a hand at the seating area, where takeout had already been placed. I took a seat and inspected the Styrofoam containers. Thai food. Delicious.

“We’re going down to Grenada the week before the holidays, which means we have seven weeks to keep the Monks interested,” Blakely said, standing up to join me in the seating area. He sat on the couch across from me. “It’s very important that I close this deal, so I want to go over some expectations.”

I nodded and started serving myself from the various dishes. “Expectations. Got it.”

“We’ll be there for three days. They’ll probably take us out on their boat to go fishing and snorkeling. They might want to go hiking, since there’s a path around the island. And I hear they care very much about preservation, so anything you can learn about that would be a bonus.”

I nodded. “No problem.”

“I want you to use the time we have to prepare as well as you can for this. It’s very important.”

“You’ve mentioned that,” I told him calmly, “and I understand.”

He met my gaze for a beat, then nodded. “Good.”

I straightened. I hadn’t expected that from him—for him to treat me like a competent member of his team. It felt good to be trusted with something so important. Maybe he saw the type of person I was beneath the lipstick and the great clothes—saw my work ethic, my intelligence, my competence.

It made me like him a little bit more. I still thought he was arrogant and annoying, but at least he didn’t treat me like a dolt.

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