Page 60 of Assistant to the Billionaire CEO

The elevator doors opened, and I flew out, heading straight toward the ladies’ room. I burst inside like a marathon runner powering over the finish line, startling an older blonde lady who was washing her hands at one of the sinks.

“Sorry,” I immediately apologized.

“No one that’s sprinting toward the bathroomthatfast ever needs to apologize to me,” the lady said. “Been there, done that. One word: prunes. I’ll leave you to it. Good luck!”

“Oh, trust me, I’m going to need it.”

She dried her hands on a paper towel and smirked at me before slipping through the bathroom door.

From the bathroom’s mirror, my reflection stared back at me. Someone had drawn a bright-red heart in lipstick in one of its corners, with the letters “AW” inside.

AW?

Ace Windsor. Naturally. Who else? Well, the lipstick drawing hadn’t been me (but totally could have been in my teen years). I wet my hands and tried to rub it off. I smudged it but didn’t remove it.

Now if someone came in right then, they would think for sure it had been me. And by the way ridiculous gossip spread around in this company, no doubt my boss would hear about it too.

CEO’s Assistant Madly in Love

with Her Boss Who Almost Spanked Her for Loitering

Later Caught Drawing Hearts in Company Toilet

I entered one of the stalls and peed. Phew. Better, much better.

My phone started ringing as I stepped away from the toilet and flushed. I quickly pulled it out of my handbag, digging past Winifred’s pens to get to it. “Bonnie” flashed across its screen. I swiped to the right to answer and held it up to my ear.

“Stella.” Bonnie sounded excited on the other end of the line before I could even say hi. “I hope I’m not bothering you. I’m just calling to ask how your day is going. Are you at work?”

“Yeah, I am. I’m in the bathroom now.” The invisible connection between my best friend and me was reliable. “I’m glad you called, and as always, at the right moment! I need your help. You’re an operations agent. How does a company find lost packages without a tracking number?”

“Depends on who the company used.”

“MKY Shipping. The boxes were shipped from San Francisco to New York City, and they never arrived. But we don’t have tracking numbers or login info to the account it was ordered from. Apparently, the former assistant signed up with her private account. Now she’s gone.”

“Gone…as in got fired, am I right? Well, are you sure she labeled them correctly? Maybe somebody else is really happy about those boxes.”

“I don’t know. All I know is that twenty boxes are missing. Thing is, we need them, and urgently.”

“Tell you what. You’re in luck. I happen to have a former colleague who is now a branch manager at MKY. I can ask him what to do.”

“Oh my goodness. That would be great!”

“Just send me the info, and I’ll see what I can do. But first, tell me how your new job is working out. What exactly happened after Ace hired you?”

“To be honest, it’s a long story. I’m having a bit of a weird day. I’ve actually had a few weird days lately.” I leaned against the bathroom’s tiled wall.“Is it okay if I call you at lunch?” Although I’d already spent too much time in my Miss Marple role, I was hoping to squeeze in another half hour once I’d finished the blueprints with Mr. Hardy.

Bonnie laughed. “It sounds like your lunch break is barely enough. Call me when you have time to tell me all the juicy details. Until then!”

We hung up at the same time.

Glancing at my watch, I noted it was getting late.

I needed to take the pens to Winifred, inform her that I was going to help her look into the whole MKY issue, and then report to Mr. Hardy.

When I opened the door to the hallway, I almost expectedhimto be standing in front of it, tapping his foot, expecting me, ready to go through with his punishment this time. He wasn’t. With a sigh of relief, which contained just a tiny bit of disappointment, I went about my tasks.

24

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