Page 16 of The Billionaire's Beauty

“You got it, boss.”

By now we’ve made it into his office, where he settles at his desk and reaches for the stack of letters that need his attention. I watch him scrawl his bold signature on the first couple, decide he’s done barking out orders for now and turn to go with a surge of relief.

Made it. So far so good. Whew.

“So…we’re good?” he asks quietly behind me.

I freeze, stifle a curse and arrange my features into something approximating polite puzzlement as I turn back.

“Absolutely,” I say in my crisp professional voice, doing my best to make eye contact for as long as I can stand without singeing my retinas. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Just…seems appropriate to ask.”

A semi-stare-off ensues, during which he keeps watching me with that patented unfathomable expression of his and I begin to feel a flare of annoyance. I suppose he thinks one night with him is enough to make me lose my freaking mind, much like the model he briefly dated several months ago. That nut job once called him thirty-three times here in the office and ultimately had to be escorted from the premises by security. Or maybe he expects me to shrivel into the fetal position and cry my little eyes out, or just be off my game at work.

Whatever. None of that’s happening.

“Don’t worry,” I say pleasantly, staring him in the face. “I know exactly what to expect from you. And what not to expect from you.”

Since I’m watching him so closely, I have the pleasure of seeing a tiny chink in his expression when his jaw tightens. That tightening jaw makes my day, I gotta tell you.

I walk off, secure in the knowledge that I’ve had the last word. A feeling that lasts a good, oh, thirty-eight seconds.

Until he unleashes a torrent of work on me, the likes of which I’ve never seen before and vehemently hope to never see again.

He sends me on errands that take me uptown and then uptown again the second I return to the office. Makes, cancels and rearranges meetings and appointments with whiplash speed. Complains about the spice level of the lunch he had me order for him, the air conditioning in his office and the speed of his computer, as if I can control any of that. He has me track down impossible-to-get tickets for the latest Broadway smash when I know he’s never voluntarily attended a musical in his life. He has me do everything for him but chew his food and flick the pee off his dick when he visits the bathroom, although I suppose there’s time for that tomorrow.

By the time the end of the day rolls around, I’m ready to change his nickname from the Beast to the MF’ing Beast. But do I complain? No. I refuse to give him that satisfaction.

“That’s it for me,” I call into his office from my desk as I grab my jacket and bag.

He’s been tapping away on his computer, but now he looks around at me, frowning.

“Unless you need anything else?” I say cheerily, the same as always.

He hesitates. I can almost see the wheels turning in his vindictive little mind as he tries to think of more shit work to give me but comes up short. Poor planning on his part. He should’ve paced himself better.

“Nope,” he says, equally pleasant. Until he glances past me and gets a glimpse of the extravagant arrangement of flowers on my desk, a conglomeration of gorgeous yellow roses, orchids and other fragrant beauties whose names I don’t know. An arrangement that, I’m proud to say, cost five hundred dollars and is much bigger than anything I’ve ever ordered on his behalf before. Naturally, I charged it to his personal credit card. His frown deepens. “What the fuck is all that?”

“My morning-after flowers,” I say sweetly. I hadn’t planned to do anything so petty, but after the hellish day he just put me through, you’d better believe I plan to stick it to him any way I can. “I knew you’d want me to have them.”

I sweep off without giving him a chance for a comeback, the prickling between my shoulder blades feeling a lot like his daggered gaze.

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