Page 18 of Recruited By the Billionaire

Frankie got out of the limo, and began hurrying behind Robert just as the assistants and Jerry were doing.

“Where are we going?” Frankie asked Jerry as they hurried.

“Portland.”

Frankie was floored. “Maine? Why that’s three hours away!”

“Not Maine. Oregon,” said Jerry as he began to make his way up the air steps behind Robert and his assistants. “And I’m afraid it’s even longer than that. Five hours to be exact.”

Frankie was floored.Five hours? Why did she have to go? On the whim of Robert Marris? This made no sense to her! She stayed at the bottom of the steps.

But when Jerry glanced back and saw that Frankie remained at the bottom looking up and flustered, his heart went out to her. She was no young girl just starting her career like the assistants were. She was a woman in her upper thirties starting over. And that was hard enough.

He went back down to her. “Don’t feel bad. For him to bring you along is huge. You must be doing something right,” he said to her with a smile.

Frankie didn’t know if Jerry was toying with her again or being helpful, so she didn’t respond. Because it didn’t feelhugeto her. It felt overwhelming, as if she was caught in a vortex that wasn’t about what they were going to do on draft day anymore, but in a vortex whose sole purpose was to eat her alive.

“Also,” Jerry said when she still wasn’t moving, “it isn’t as if you have a choice. None of us do. We all work for Mr. Marris.”

Frankie knew he spoke nothing but the truth. It wasn’t as if she was on her own time. She was on the clock. Mr. Marris’s clock.

She got on the plane.

CHAPTER NINE

Frankie had never been on a private plane in her life before, let alone one so large and luxurious, and she began making her way as far away from Robert Marris as she could get. His assistants were always right up under him, as if they were in a constant battle to become favorite sidekick (orside chick, she wasn’t sure), and Frankie wanted no parts of that.

That was why, when Robert and his entourage sat in the middle section of the luxurious plane, she sat in the section across the aisle from them. If he had a question, she was close enough to answer it. But not so close that they would think it not robbery to make her the butt of their jokes. She already heard one of the aides sayParis, anyone, simply because she wore a beret, which was what she liked to wear and was going to keep wearing. She might have been the least among them on that plane, but she wasn’t going to let them treat her like she was nothing.

As the plane lifted off and the conversation on the other side of the aisle was animated and “fun,” she sat alone wishing she was the kind of girl who could just cast her cares to the wind and enjoy life a little too. But she always had to work harder than everybody else to get what little she had, which never endeared her to workers who didn’t like her hustle. And she always ended up alone, by design or by fate, and she never seemed able to change that pesky fact.

What she didn’t realize was that Robert’s attention had long since turned away from his assistants and Jerry, and he was unabashedly staring at her again. Because there was something about her that he couldn’t figure out. Why wasn’t she over here with the rest of his aides trying too hard to impress him too? That was what aides did in his world. But she was just sitting there all alone, with her shapely legs crossed and her large eyes focused solely on the contents of that folder she was reviewing. She was a loner at heart. He knew because he was one too. But he also knew people didn’t become loners by choice. Life whipped that shit into them. What whip did she go through, he wondered.

When the already superficial conversations switched from whose ass the Admirals were going to kick when the new NFL season opened, to the latest designer-whatever outfits they wanted to purchase, Robert was bored with his assistants and too intrigued with Frankie. He got up and walked across the wide aisle to where Frankie was sitting. He sat in the seat in front of her.

Frankie didn’t realize he was seated in front of her, and they were face to face again, until she finally looked up from her folder. And his presence startled her. “I’m sorry, was there something that you wanted, sir?” she asked him. Did he say something to her while her face was buried in that folder and she didn’t hear him for all the giggling going on across the aisle?

“How old are you?” Robert asked her.

It was certainly not the question she expected to hear. But it was typical aging playboy who couldn’t fathom having anything to do with a woman older than his daughter. “I’m thirty-eight,” she said. “And you?” she asked him.

Robert smiled. He didn’t expect that comeback. “Forty-seven,” he said. “Old.”

Frankie didn’t respond to that. He was the best looking forty-seven-year-old she’d ever seen.

But when she didn’t say anything, Robert smiled again. “Francesca?”

“Sir?”

“You’re supposed to saythat’s not old, Mr. Marris.”

Frankie smiled what he was pleased to see was a lovely bright-white smile. “Well, it’s not young, Mr. Marris, that’s for sure,” she responded. “So that only leaves one other option.”

Robert, caught completely off guard by her brutal honesty, laughed out loud.

The entourage, shocked by the boss’s display, looked at him and Frankie. Frankie could feel the daggers coming from the other girls like flames of fire just because she did something they weren’t doing: She made him laugh. He even crossed his legs and slouched down slightly, as if he was comfortable with her. She noticed how pristine his dress shoes were, and how they were natural leather, not that patent-leather she was used to seeing. And how big they were. Remarkably big.

Robert noticed how she had glanced down at his shoes. He noticed because he was glancing down at her remarkably luscious breasts. “Who are the people that call you Frankie?” he asked her.

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