Page 2 of Recruited By the Billionaire

Frankie inwardly shook her head. Because she knew like everybody else knew that the only reason Britney Zackery got that job in the first place was because her super-rich daddy-dearest was a major investor in Druce-McMillan Publishing, where she and Frankie worked, and what Daddy-dearest wanted Daddy-dearest got. But to utter that level of truth would be career suicide.

“Go to Raymond and let him answer any questions you have about his manuscript,” Frankie said, to put a period to their conversation. “He’s the expert,” she added, and then turned her attention back to the report she had to finish.

Britney rolled her big blue eyes and said beneath her breath,I thought that’s what they pay your black ass to do, and walked on out.

But Frankie heard her sly comment and called her right back in. “Britney? Britney Zackery, get back in here right now!”

There was a moment of rebellion, but then Britney came back in. Deciding to look innocent this time. “Ma’am?”

“Close the door.”

Britney reluctantly closed the door.

“What did you just say to me?”

“I didn’t say anything to you.”

“What did you just say, Britney?”

Britney jerked her blonde hair behind her back and started shaking her leg. “I’m just saying,” she said.

“You’re just saying what?”

“You’re telling me to go to Raymond, but that’s what they’re paying you to do. You’re the one who should go to Raymond. You’re the one who’s supposed to be able to answer all my questions. That’s all I said. And what I said is nothing but the truth. But if you can’t handle the truth, oh well. That sounds like a personal problem to me.”

A part of Frankie wanted to rush from behind that desk and slap the shit out of that entitled little bitch, but she kept her composure. If any craziness went down in that office between her and Britney, she knew which one would get the raw end of that stick. “They pay me to run their copy office,” she said. “They pay me to assign which editors get to work with which writers. Correct?”

Britney frowned. “Yeah, so?” She was all attitude now.

“An editor without a writer assigned to her is what?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“An editor without a writer assigned to her, at this publishing house, is what?”

“Is nothing! What’s your damn point?”

This little girl! Frankie could just see her hands around that child’s neck. And although she kept her voice as measured as possible, she’d had it with Britney. “You needn’t ask Raymond anything. Effective immediately, I am removing you from that assignment. Since there are no other assignments available at this time, I’ll bet you get my damn point now.” Then she stared her dead in her eyes. “Get out of my office,” she said.

Britney could not believe it. It was tantamount to being demoted! Without a writer of her own to work with, she would be relegated to an assistant’s role on somebody else’s project. “Why you bit--”

But Frankie interrupted her. “Watch it, little girl,” she said, “because I am not above coming up out of this chair and shoving your face up your ass. You feel me? Now get out!”

Frankie could tell the little racist was actually getting afraid of her. And she hurried out of her office, slamming the door behind her.

Any other day and Frankie would have called her right back into her office for slamming her door and would have told her arrogant butt a thing or two. Maybe even tried to fire her. But she didn’t go there. She kept her composure.

Although Frankie wasn’t street like most people in the publishing world assumed she was because she stood up for herself and wouldn’t let them treat her any kind of way, she wasn’t Ivy Tower either. Her background was solidly middle-class in her youth, where her father, before he divorced her mother and left them to fend for themselves, was a college dean. But it was in thefending for themselvespart of her life where she earned her mettle. But it also earned her a serious temper. And that temper so badly wanted to grab that little girl by the hair and drag her ass like a mop that Frankie could hardly contain herself.

But she leaned her head back in her chair and didn’t call Britney back for the grilling. Which was probably why Britney called herlongsuffering. She did take a lot of shit! But it had nothing to do with longsuffering. And it certainly wasn’t because she was afraid of that child or that child’s father. But Frankie kept it togetherthis timebecause just a couple days ago she found out she was going to have a baby: that she was pregnant for the first time in her life. It was a dream she thought was going to surely pass her by given that she was already well past thirty and had been trying to get pregnant for years. She was also, on that very night, going to celebrate her three-year wedding anniversary where she would inform her husband of her exciting news, and no little girl with rich daddy money connections was going to rain on her parade.

Until her two best friends, Royce Miniver and Taymar Grier, rained on it instead.

But it couldn’t be helped, they said after Frankie answered her phone. She had to come.

“Are you joking? I can’t just jump up and leave work right now. I’m already pushed against a hard deadline. And tonight is my anniversary party.”

But Royce, the closest of her two best friends, snatched the phone from Taymar and would not take no for an answer. “This is not debatable, Frankie. You have got to get over here and you have got to get over here now. Not after work. Not after your damn party. Now!”

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