Page 11 of Jack Frost, CEO

“He told me to take the rest of the day off. He said I should use the money to pay off my school debt and maybe update my wardrobe. Where would I go for that?”

Stella grins like a kid in a candy store. “Fifth Avenue, of course! Let’s go! I know all the best shops! Let’s update that wardrobe!” She hooks her arm in mine and drags me toward the lift.

“Stella! You have work!”

“I’ll finish it tomorrow. This is a once-in-a-lifetime, rom-com, Pretty Woman moment, and I will not miss it! To the shops!” The lift door closes on her war cry, and I can’t help but shake my head.

What have I done?

Chapter 10

Jack

It’s 6:15 in the morning, a week after Maisie started working for me. My calendar is now balanced, projects are on the right track toward completion, and I could swear that our efficiency has doubled since I decided to hire Maisie Mitchell. I even find myself smiling more.

Her soft voice is constant in the background, and I leave my door open just to hear her. I’ve just sipped my coffee when Maisie walks into my office. No, she doesn’t walk. She saunters. It seems she’s taken my advice to heart. Gone are the demure skirts and black flats, and in their place, the silk button-up paired with black pencil skirts that cling to every curve, and at least six-inch heels. I swallow my coffee, hoping it will remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth. I’m still staring when she stops in front of my desk and looks up from her clipboard.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. Let’s go over the calendar.” I set my cup down and straightened my tie.

Maisie gives me a skeptical look but returns her focus to her clipboard. “Okay. Well, you have a 9 a.m. meeting with Eaton, a 10 a.m. with accounting, and a noon lunch at Julianie’s. There’s no agenda posted. We’ve moved the project meetings from yesterday to today at 4 p.m. Here are the projection reports, HR reports, and a note from—to be honest, I’m not sure who. But it’s on… this.” Maisie gingerly passes me a napkin, her pert nose wrinkled in disgust. “I pray that it’s tomato sauce.”

“Ah.” I take the napkin. “That would be from Eaton, my CFO. He’s brilliant but scatterbrained, so he habitually grabs whatever he can find when he has an idea, question, or something he needs to do. He remembers to write it down at least, on whatever’s available unfortunately. It would be remiss of me to say this is my first napkin note, and I doubt it will be the last. To answer your question, yes, that is ketchup.”

Maisie wrinkles her nose again before returning to her desk, and I open my emails to find one from my PI. It seems the preliminary check I ran on Maisie matches everything Gio told me about her before the interview. What I don’t expect is the note attached at the end.

Antony’s family knew about Maisie and paid her mother to stay away. Family friends of her mother stated that Maisie never knew about the money or who her father may have been until the DNA testing had been done. Maisie and her mother had lived a modest life in a little beach town near Sydney, where her grandmother still lives in a retirement community. The woman is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, which explains why Maisie is intent to return to Australia after her degree.

I sit here staring at the report, repeatedly reviewing it and sorting out the implications. While this has no bearing on Maisie and her job with me, I debate telling her what the PI discovered, unsure if she’ll even want to know.

Would she be upset or angry that I hired a PI? Would she want to see that she could have had a different, more privileged life all these years? I can’t see how the knowledge would benefit her now.

I’m still staring at my screen when a knock on my door has me looking up, and Eaton walks in. “I thought we were meeting at nine?” I grab my notepad from my desk, trying to look busy.

“It’s 9:05. Are you okay?” Eaton slides into a chair and crosses his feet at the ankle.

“Sorry. I got caught up with something and lost track of time.” I make quick notes, flip the page, and pick up the napkin. “You wanted to talk about—” I squint at his scribbling. “The IPA?”

“The IPO. I wanted to talk about the IPO. Right now, though, I want to talk about that sweet little thing you have admining for you. She’s new. Can I have her when you’re done?”

For some reason I don’t want to look too closely at, I fight the sudden urge to knock my oldest business partner’s smug smile straight off his face. I grip my pen and stare at him instead. “No. Hands off my assistant, you lecherous bastard. I won’t have you doing anything that would make her uncomfortable. You know the rules.”

Eaton grins and pushes his blonde hair out of his face while adjusting his glasses. At six-foot-four, he’s built. We frequent the gym together. But where I tend to be darker and more somber, he gives off more of a pretty boy surfer mixed with nerd vibe. This fact plays up in his favor every spring break. I’ve never minded his good looks before now, and we’ve been known to be each other’s wingmen.

“Anyway. The reason I wanted to chat was about the IPO.”

“What about it? You said that it was all wrapped up and ready to go.”

“It was supposed to be. But several projects are overdue, which delays the financial review.”

“Yes. I know. Shit. I have a stack of files I need to sift through. We had to fire the lead analyst.” I grab the folders and spread them out on my desk.

“Ah. Yeah. Lucy, the man-eater, or so I hear. She really made the rounds.”

“What does that mean?”

“You can’t be that obtuse. She, ah, slept around. If the scuttlebutt is true, it’s how she got to lead several important projects. There was one manager… I can’t think of his name at the moment, but they were hot and heavy for a while despite his wife and three kids. I don’t usually listen to idle office gossip, but the rumor’s been around for a while, and I’ve seen some things that make me believe it’s true.”

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