Page 1 of Recruited By the Billionaire

CHAPTER ONE

TWO YEARS EARLIER

“Miss Clark?”

She continued typing furiously on her computer.

“Miss Clark?”

Still no response.

“Miss Clark will you please listen to me!”

Francesca “Frankie” Clark finally stopped typing and looked at the young lady standing in her office. “I’m up against a hard deadline, Britney. I told you that.”

“But I have a question and nobody can tell me anything. I don’t know what to do!”

Frankie had already informed her entire staff that she was not to be disturbed. She even had a sign on her door. But that never stopped Britney.

Frankie leaned back in her chair, folded one leg over her thigh, and folded her arms. “What’s your question?” she asked her, not even attempting to hide her annoyance.

Although Frankie Clark wasn’t as bad as some of the other supervising editors in the building, that didn’t mean Britney liked her. What was there to like? The only positive thing about her was that she knew how to dress, Britney thought, as she looked at Frankie’s red slacks buckled down by stylish red and white suspenders, her white blouse with puff sleeves, and her red beret hat slightly slanted on her small head. Looking very Parisian and chic to Britney. She had some style about her, alright, especially compared to the other supervising editors who all dressed like homeless people. But as far as Britney was concerned, that was all she had going for her. “You know what torture looks like, don’t you, Miss Clark?” she asked.

Frankie was seated behind her desk with a deer-in-headlights look on her face. What on earth would possess that child to think she would know anything whatsoever abouttorture? “Excuse me?”

“It’s Raymond’s new book,” said Britney. “I’m doing copy for his new book. It’s all about those torture chambers during the first Gulf war if you can believe somebody would waste time writing about something that boring. But that’ssoRaymond.”

“I know your assignment,” said Frankie. “I’m the one who gave it to you, remember? But you said I would know torture when I saw it. What would ever give you the impression that I would know anything at all about torture?”

“Duh! Likebecause.”

She said it as if that gibberish said everything when it said absolutely nothing to Frankie. “Because why, Britney?”

“Because you’re like what they call longsuffering, okay? Because you’re that girl.”

Longsuffering? Do they even use that word anymore? And she wasthat girl? What girl? “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Frankie said.

“You keep it all in. You peace-out. You put up with shit when you don’t even have to put up with shit. You could write your own ticket. You could sleep your way to the very top of this industry, but you won’t do it. That’s what I mean.”

Britney was chewing gum. That was what separated the young staff from the old guard. The old guard chain-smoked. The youngsters gummed. Since Frankie saw herself in the middle, not old and certainly not young, she did neither.

And to talk about Frankie being able to write her own ticket? A black woman in this uber-white publishing world writing her own ticket? Was this child even living on planet earth? And who in their right mind would view sleeping your way to the top as a virtue?

“And since you take shit,” Britney continued, “I figured you’d understand what Raymond trying to say about those death chambers and what those people were going through with all that torture and shit. Because I don’t get it.”

“Have you asked Raymond to explain it to you?”

“No way!”

Frankie exhaled. She was truly getting on her nerves. “And why not, Britney?”

“Because he always act like I’m stupid.Look, little girl, he always saying to me, like I’m some child.”

“Next to Raymond, you are a child!”

“I’m a copy editor, Miss Clark. I’m nobody’s baby, okay?”

A copy editor at nineteen. Frankie had never heard anything so absurd! With all these great copy editors out here trying to find work in this rough economy, with all of their great experience, and they give it to a nineteen-year-old. Her previous experience? McDonald’s of course. And lest we forget: A barista at Starbucks. But that didn’t count because that gig only lasted a couple months. But it was McDonald’s that showed her the way. Made the meanest Big Mac this side of Manhattan.

---