Page 3 of My Possessive Billionaire: Our Fake Marriage

“You must be quite skilled at your job. I asked Ramone if I could meet the person responsible for all of this. I’ve been to so many of these galas, and this is the most organized and smoothly run of them all.”

I blushed red at his compliments.

“Thank you. It’s been a smooth night, and I have my staff to thank for that as much as anything that I have done.”

“Oh, you sell yourself short.” His eyes bored into me. I felt as if surely he was privy to my every lascivious thought about him. I tried to be casual, to play it cool, but I was burning up on the inside.

“The thing about success in business is,” he continued, “to surround yourself with the right people. All of the hard work, luck, and gumption in the world doesn’t matter as much as that does. Obviously, you’ve surrounded yourself with the right people, hence your success.”

“We wanted to make sure that this went off without a hitch,” Marshall said. “That’s why we asked Amanda to help us out and she did a marvelous job.”

“That is high praise coming from Marshall,” Evan said, his eyes shining with meaning. “Wouldn’t you agree, Ms. Tate?”

“Yes,” I said, “and you can call me Amanda if you want.”

“Very well, Amanda. That’s a lovely name.”

That only raised my temperature about a million degrees more.

His expression changed slightly.

“I might have need of your services at some point in the future,”he said, rather cryptically.

“Oh no,” Jennifer said. “You’re not going to steal away one of our best employees. Shame on you, Evan, no way are you going to take her away from us.”

Evan smiled ear to ear, and the inscrutable gaze he gave me made me shudder like a leaf in a strong breeze.

“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”

Chapter 2

Evan

“Mr. Jones.” A relatively young man stepped up to me and shoved his hand in my direction. “I’m Pete Dempsey, executive assistant director of accounting. It’s a pleasure to—”

“Mr. Dempsey, I know who you are. I hired you. I was the one who greenlit your promotion to this board. Something you need to learn about me yesterday is that I don’t like wasting my time with meaningless introductions.”

His jaw remained wide open, and he turned about three shades paler.

“I… was only trying to be—”

“You were trying to suck up, Mr. Dempsey. While it’s a time-honored tradition at many a firm and can lead to advancement, it will not avail you here. If you want to suck up to me, do your job better than anyone else in the world could do it. Then I’ll be impressed. Now sit down.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. Jenna, my assistant, hid a smile behind her hand. Even Edmond Fitz, the firm’s marketing director, kind of looked amused, and he was usually all business.

“All right, I’m here.” I sat down in my spot at the head of the table. “You can get started, Fitz.”

“Yes, sir.” He walked around to the front of the long table. Thewindows offered a gorgeous view, akin to Mount Olympus up in the clouds. Everything else fit my style and taste, a strict minimalist interpretation of the modern office meeting room. Black, white and stainless steel, no plants, no art. Nothing to distract people from the business at hand.

And the business at hand was always the same—making money.

Fitz went through his usual spiel. He was short, bald and overweight, but he was also damned good at his job. It was as if mother nature put everything it had into his brain and didn’t have much left for the rest of him. But when it came to reading the market and predicting its unstable course, Fitz was quite literally the man.

In short, profits were up and costs were down, which was good. But I could tell he was building up to something. Eventually, after about twenty minutes of relentlessly good news and cheer, I had to put a stop to it.

“Okay, Fitz. Just out with it already.”

He adjusted the horn-rim glasses on his nose and cleared his throat.

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