His voice was deeper than I would have imagined. He looked focused. Serious, as he stood up from his chair. The man interviewing me for the job stepped out from behind his desk and joined me at a couple of chairs situated in his expansive office near an oversized window. The office had the feeling of a cathedral, minus the stained glass. It almost felt too good for me and my discount-rack dress. I wondered who he was. What his relation was to the company. There was no name on his door and no signs on the walls directing me to an office. Just a floor with plush carpeting, a couple of empty offices, a secretarial desk…

And him.

His office seemed to stretch on forever. It even had a couple glass booths against the walls I could only guess were for when this man needed other people working in his office. But everything else was dark. Somber. Shadowed.

Like the man standing in front of me.

My gut told me he was Maximus himself. The man who owned the company I had strolled into for an impromptu interview. The man I would be working for if by some miraculous chance I nailed the job. But my common sense told me it couldn’t be. Men like him didn’t interview for their own positions. They had people interview and hire for them. That was the perk of owning a company. People did things for them.

Right?

I went to go sit in front of his desk before his arm outstretched. He motioned towards a couple of seats and a glass table that sat by a wall in his office. I hadn’t even started my interview and I’d already screwed up somehow. There was no way in hell this man would give me this job. I smiled and nodded my head, then moved towards the set up by the wall. I watched his movements carefully as he walked over and poured me a glass of water from a pitcher on the coffee table. I steeled my nerves to get a good look at him as he handed it to me, and was even more embarrassed when his piercing silvered eyes held my brown ones.

To say this mystery man was good-looking was an understatement.

With his thick dark hair combed back, the ends of it fell just above the collar of his button-front shirt. He looked like a mix between a model and a lion. His cheekbones were guides leading me to watch his stern lips as he spoke. Those steely gray eyes of his held freckles of yellow, lending a lightness to his face that was otherwise etched with sharp shadows and a stoic demeanor.

Even his lightly-tanned skin sparkled with an illustrious darkness I couldn’t pinpoint.

“So, you heard about us through another company’s employee,” he said.

He left the sentence open-ended, but I wanted him to keep going. To hear more of that voice. I craved the timbre of it. The richness of it. The fullness of its expanse that seemed to press into the corners of his sprawling penthouse office.

“Yes,” I said. “Scarlet’s a friend of mine. I’ve known her for a few years.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Since my junior year of college. So, roughly seven years.”

“Talk to me about your recent employment.”

“I left my job a few days ago as a stockroom manager of Quake Crafts on 23rd,” I said.

“Can we call to ask about your performance there?” he asked as he marked something down on his paper.

I wanted to see what he was writing. I wanted to know what he was thinking about me. But a blush crept up my neck as I debated on how to answer his question.

“Any of the shift supervisors are a great resource to call,” I said. “The owner himself isn’t in the shop much.”

It wasn’t a lie. Ralph came in maybe five times a month. My only hope was that this man called on a day he wasn’t there. I didn’t need him to know what had happened. I didn’t want to look any other boss in the face after knowing one of my prior authoritative figures attempted to accost me.

I came back to the present and watched the dark man in front of me make another note. It was oddly reminiscent of a therapy session.

“Tell me why you think you’d be good in this career,” he said.

All his sentences were short and simple. And not quite enough for me after wanting to hear his voice more. But I didn’t like self-complimenting. I felt it was a horrid practice only indulged by those who needed their ego constantly stroked. So, I wasn’t sure how to answer the question. However, I willed myself into trying. I was for sale, and I had to make him want to buy.

I hadn’t cared much about getting hired at Abbott Financial before arriving, but now that he was there staring me down, I didn’t want to disappoint. Especially since Scarlet had stuck her neck out for me the way she had.

“I have a great eye for detail,” I said.

All of the buzzwords I’d read in articles preparing me for interviews came crashing to my mind.

“I have experience in scheduling. I’ve worked in both intake and outtake of goods. I also worked with city officials during building inspections any time they came around.”

That was simply a fancy way of saying I was who got stuck with acting like the owner of the business even though I made maybe a tenth of what he did for groping people.

“I was in the top of my class in high school as well,” I said.

“Not in college?” he asked.

“I graduated with a 3.2 GPA.”

I watched him nod before he jotted something else down on that sheet of paper underneath his massive hand. I would have paid anything in that moment to see what he was writing down.

“Do you have any shift requests? Any personal matters that might make it so you can’t come in?” he asked.

“I’m single,” I said.

More like blurted. I felt my face turning red, so I quickly began explaining it away.

“I just meant I don’t have anyone or anything that would make it so I can’t come in. No pets or children or anything like that.”

“No family in the city?” he asked.

“No family alive,” I said.

His eyes whipped up to me and I froze. It was the first time he’d looked in my direction since the interview began and I felt a rock drop to my toes. There was a glint of something in his eye. A shadow playing on his cheeks. A smile? That didn’t make sense. Why would a man smile at the fact that my family was dead?

Well, my mother.

I didn’t give a shit about my father.

I took a sip of my water to fight down my embarrassment. Why the hell did I blurt out the fact that I was single?

“Thank you,” the man said as he leaned back into his chair. “Do you know anything about Abbot Financial?”

Oh, I was glad I’d studied up.

“It’s a Fortune 500 company that has branches all over the nation,” I said. “Abbot Financial deals with the world’s most lucrative clients. Your branches willingly work with places such as the Cayman Islands as well as various Swiss banks to provide clients with the best financial services and protection of their money they can afford.”

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

My eyes glanced over his shoulder to his desk, but I didn’t see anything in the room with his damn name on it. Shit. I still couldn’t figure out who I was looking at.

“I’m Maximus Abbott. Owner and CEO of Abbott Financial.”

Even my common sense had failed me.

“Your confusion is interesting. Who did you expect to reside on the penthouse floor of the building?”

“I’m honestly not sure,” I said. “Does no one occupy the other offices up here?”

He made another note and I felt myself melting into my chair. I’d blown it. There was no way this man was giving me this job. I had done basic internet research on the company itself but didn’t bother to bring up a damn picture of the man who owned it.

“Being my personal secretary means you’d be handling highly sensitive information. Are you willing to sign an NDA if I decide to move forward with hiring you?” he asked.

My mind began to turn in on itself as the ramifications of who he was pummeled my brain. Sitting so close to someone with the kind of money the owner of a place like this would have made me embarrassed of everything I’d done in the last twenty minutes. I didn’t care about his money, but men who had money expected people to act and look and talk a certain way around them. It was a standard I knew I wasn’t reaching with my twenty-dollar Target dress.

“I’d be happy to sign an NDA,” I said.

He set his pen down and crossed his leg over his knee. Limber. The man was limber. He had a sleekness about him not many men possessed. His frame was tall, and his shoulders were broad. But his build was slim. Something told me his tailored suit held a set of lean muscles that were as unassuming as the speckled light in his eyes. Bright, but did nothing to change the stoic figure sitting in front of me. He studied me closely. Danced his eyes around my face as I sat there, looking at him. Raking my eyes down his long, lean legs and traveling my gaze up his relaxed wingspan.

There wasn’t an inch of him I didn’t want to look at, but I really had to rein it in. If there was any chance this man was going to hire me for such a prominent position in a company like Abbott Financial, then I had to stop admiring how incredible he looked in a sharp suit.

“How does eight in the morning sound?” Maximus asked.

My eyes fluttered up to his as the question echoed off the chambers of my mind.

“Come again?” I asked.

“I’d like you to start tomorrow, if possible.”

Holy shit, he was serious.

“That sounds great,” I said with a smile. “I’ll be here.”

I stood up, trying to contain my effervescent excitement, and he mimicked my movements. He stretched his arm out and offered his hand to me, so I took it to shake. His palm was warm and rough against mine, like he’d done his share of work in life. His fingers wrapped gracefully around my skin, dwarfing my hand as my eyes fell to the connection.

The electricity shooting up my arm stood the hairs on the back of my neck on end.

“Then you’re hired,” he said.

My heart hammered in my chest, even as I kept my exterior calm with nothing but a tepid smile on my cheeks. The reality of my situation slowly dawned on me as he escorted me out of his office. I didn’t even want this job when I first walked in. I had no idea how to even begin learning everything a secretary might need to know. But as Maximus walked me to the elevator and pressed the button to hail it, I drew in a slow, silent breath while his musky cologne penetrated my nostrils. In two days, I had gone from working in the dusty backroom of an independently-owned craft shop to working in the corporate office of a Fortune 500 company on the top floor of their headquarters.

I owed Scarlett so much more than a couple drinks.