Chapter One
Addilyn
“Come on… Come on you little sucker.” I didn’t make a habit of being on my knees inside my boss’s boss’s office, but today I was making an exception.
Inching forward a little more, I stretched my arm and wiggled my fingers in an attempt to snag the balled piece of paper that had rolled under Mr. Worthington’s desk. It was the apology note from my ex-boyfriend. Even though we’d been broken up for two and a half months, the jerk had only just now gotten around to apologizing for cheating on me.
A half second after I’d finished reading the note, my boss, Pam—the Executive Secretary to the President, owner and CEO of Select Holdings, Inc., an international investment company—had plopped a stack of reports into my arms and told me to deliver them to Mr. Worthington’s office. I’d wadded the apology note up in my hand with a hearty, “Yes, ma’am,” and had gotten on with business. But, as soon as I had put the reports down on Mr. Worthington’s desk, my ex’s worthless note had slipped free of my hand and rolled under his desk.
As if it had planned the whole thing.
So… that’s why I had my head down and my tail wagging in the air when Mr. Worthington came into the room. It had nothing to do with how tall he was or his football-player shoulders. It wasn’t even about the way his damn suits made him look like he was ready to march down a catwalk while photographers tried to snap him at just the right angle to capture his hauntingly grey eyes. No, it was none of those things. It was just my shitty ex-boyfriend.
“Got you!” The tips of my manicured nails snagged on the edge of the wadded paper and I rolled it closer to me, allowing me to scoop it up.
That’s when I heard Mr. Worthington’s throat clear.
“Can I help you?” Mr. Worthington asked with his trademark gravelly voice. Knowing he was near and that I had instantly become that girl who would be forever remembered as the one he’d found on her knees under his desk mortified me… then it made me angry.
Getting up with a smooth ease, I turned and faced him, leveling my baby blues at him. Putting my hand on my hip, I said the first words to come to my mind. “I don’t know, can you?”
My voice was challenging. It was not the behavior of an underling hired a few weeks ago. Rather than respond to the challenge, I saw Mr. Worthington’s brows lift in surprise, and I remembered who I was and where I was. I wasn’t daddy’s little rich girl in the place. I was employee #587324, or I might as well have been. I didn’t matter, I wasn’t important, and Mr. Worthington could fire me as easily as taking a breath. And rich girl or not, I’d said no to taking any more of daddy’s money—it always came with too many strings attached. I eased the defiance of my stance by clasping my hands in front of me and lowering my eyes.
The truth was, well-educated or not, at twenty-two years old, this was the first job I’d ever had. I had no prior experience, I’d had to beat out thirty-seven other applicants, and I needed this job. I did not want to go groveling back to my father because I couldn’t pay my rent. I was done living my life to please him. Marry an influential man, have babies, volunteer to run a local charity. Those had been my father’s words. His exact words. That was the life he wanted for me. What I had wanted meant nothing to him.
“I’m sorry, sir.” The words were hard to say, and I was impressed with myself for not choking on them. I shifted my weight, unable to hide my nerves and hating that I was showing Mr. Worthington any weakness. “Am I fired?”
“How can I fire you if I don’t even know who you are?”
I dared to lift my gaze to meet his as he spoke. I saw no amusement in his eyes. I saw a man wondering if he should pounce, wondering if he should destroy me, and it made the need to fight rise up again. Yet, I kept my voice easy as I answered. “I’m your secretary’s secretary.”
“I’ve never heard such a thing,” he scoffed.
“Well maybe if you didn’t work her so damn hard. Do you know that woman hasn’t been home before 8 PM since she’s been here?” Shut up already! Warning sirens were blaring in my head, but my sense of survival had left the building and I was ready to burn it down.
It was Mr. Worthington’s turn to shift his weight onto one foot. “No, I didn’t know. Doesn’t she have a little boy?”
I could follow the track of his thoughts from his words. He was wondering how much time Pam got to spend with her son before he had to go to bed. The answer was almost none.
I swallowed, pushing my need to challenge his authority down. “Yes, sir. He cried himself to sleep two nights ago.” If her relationship with her little boy was a concern to him, I was going to drive the point home.
“I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll have to see what I can do about that.”
His straight-forward candor surprised me. If he’d been my father, he would have tried to leverage something about the situation to his advantage. Suddenly, I wanted to keep this job enough to mind my manners.
“Um, am I fired?” I asked as we traded places so that he stood next to his desk and I was closer to the door.
“Now if I did that, Pam wouldn’t be getting to go home before 8 again.” His words were light enough, but there was no smile in his eyes or on his mouth.
“No, sir,” I answered, risking a smile for us both. The man was gruff, but I could handle gruff. And fairness… well, I could downright support the hell out of fairness. This was a job I wanted to keep, and I got my hind end out of his office before I could give him any more excuses to let me go.