Two Weeks Later…
Lucy
I was frantic. The contingency play was going to be used.
The plan for if Dante had to travel somewhere for business.
The one where he jetted off around the globe… with my assistants with him.
And I’m stuck back here, running things.
Because I’m so damn important… so damn irreplaceable.
I was absolutely miserable.
Dante would be out of the country for three whole weeks.
I’d had my Dante fix five days a week, with cameo fixes via text, Skype, and sometimes emergency meet ups back at the office.
And now I was going to have to go three weeks without him.
Gaaa!
All day long Maggie, Sydney, and Jenifer had been bouncing off the walls with irrepressible excitement.
I was trying not to hate them all.
But truthfully I adored all three of them. This would be so great for them. Business travel experience. They would learn so much in those three weeks.
They’d also get to see my Dante shirtless.
Nope… I hated them.
Maybe I could somehow find someone with the flu that I could send into their little bullpen to infect them…
“You’re Lucy, right?” a woman’s voice interrupted my utterly evil thoughts.
I knew that voice immediately.
My head snapped back and my eyes took in the older woman before me. “Mrs. Roark?”
“It’s very nice to meet you, finally…” she looked around the space my desk took up. “Dante always says you’re too busy for us to have tea.” She speared me with her gaze. “Are you too busy?”
I gulped and stood up. “I’d make time for tea… or anything else you’d like.”
She nodded approvingly. “Good. There’s a place I’ve been dying to try out on Canal Street.”
I couldn’t suppress the smile on my face. I must’ve looked deranged.
“Today, though…” she said, “I need a car to drive me somewhere.”
“Of course!” I grabbed my phone to call for a car. “Where are you going?”
“Westchester.”
My stomach dropped.
I froze like a deer in headlights.
“I can’t believe Dante knew Tessa was out there in that musty old house all by herself!”
Oh dear god…
She gave me a hard look. “I can tell by your face that you know all about this.”
I bit my lip. “Yes. He asked me to set up a staff for the house, and for an old friend to visit her.”
“The Whitmore boy?”
I nodded. “He’s a doctor now—a neurologist.”
Mrs. Roark seemed to mull this over for a moment. “Good. But I still need that car. I’ll be waiting at the front entrance.” And then the older woman turned and walked out of the office.
I dropped down into my chair, shaking my head… and then I called for the car.
###
I hadn’t been able to get two words written on my lunch. I hadn’t even touched my chicken salad sandwich.
Thoughts of Dante leaving plagued my thoughts.
Dante had been at a charity luncheon for the past few hours, so I’d been left to wallow in my impotent rage and irritating misery.
And then, like a flock of crows Maggie, Sydney, and Jenifer came into my territory in the sprawling room in front of Dante’s office, their heads down, looking… nervous.
“What’s wrong, ladies?”
Sydney had something in her hands, and she glanced over to her two coworkers anxiously.
For Heaven’s sake…
“Spit it out!”
I cringed when I saw all three of my assistants flinch.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to force a smile. “I’m just a little…” I shook my head. “You know… stressed.”
Jenifer’s eyes got wide like a cartoon character. “So you’ve read it?”
“Read what?” I asked, looking at each of them.
They did that looking to each other anxiously thing again. And that’s when Maggie took whatever it was out of Sydney’s hands and handed it to me.
It was a magazine.
A copy of Commons Magazine.
Dante was on the cover, his stunning blue eyes glowering sexily from the page.
The tagline: Saint Sex
Good grief, it was that horrible Rampling woman’s exposé on Dante.
I rolled my eyes and held it out to the trio. “I’m sure it’s riveting.”
Sydney bit her lip and held her hands up, begging off accepting the magazine back.
“You really need to read it.”
I looked down at it. What had Charlotte Rampling done?
There was a bright yellow post-it marking where the article started.
“What’s it say?” I asked Sydney. I so didn’t want to read it.
Sydney wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head.
Jeez… really? “It’s that bad?”
More nervous looks at each other.
Okay, fine.
I opened the magazine and started reading.
Dante’s sexy, Dante’s mysterious and aloof and saw right through what she’d been planning for him.
Yeah, Dante’s sharp like that.
Dante took her up to his penthouse apartment for a gourmet dinner, the finest wine was served… and then they were alone.
I shook my head. If she was going to write a blow by blow account of what happened, I was not going to read it.
“They had sex,” I said, my voice cracking with strain. That happened when I was angry. “Big deal.”
“Keep reading,” Jenifer said, her eye brows so drawn they were nearly one.
Okay, back to the article.
Dante stripped her down naked in front of the enormous fireplace at the heart of the living room. “He then pulled my hair up into a messy little bun on the back of my head.”
I blinked…
He did what?
“I had a moment to reflect on a certain young woman in Dante’s employ. A pretty little thing who had her blond hair styled in that exact fashion.”
My eyes bugged out as I read more.
“He bent me over a writing desk by the west bank of floor to ceiling windows, spanking me to the view of the Chicago skyline. By then I was ready to get to the main event. But Dante was just getting started…”
I closed my eyes and bit my lip. This was ridiculous.
“I’m not going to read about her having sex with our boss.” I looked up at them and shook my head. “Take this trash and burn it.”
Maggie came forward, turned the magazine around and paged through the article.
When she turned the magazine back around to me she pointed to a paragraph and said, “Read this.”
Jenifer gasped and Sydney slapped her hand over her mouth.
Dear lord…
I started reading again.
“Though sex with Dante Saint James was a near religious experience, and I would recommend it to anyone, there was one glaring, inescapable elephant in the room. The specter of his personal assistant, Lucy Hopewell.”
I felt my stomach drop, and my flesh start to tingle.
Is this what having a stroke feels like?
“First Dante styled my hair like his executive assistant’s, and then he bent me over a desk. After a slew of sex games, him lapping champagne from my breasts, and then fucking me in his bed for… who knows how long. I gave up counting positions and orgasms at number seven.
“But then, when Dante finally came in the magnum sized, ribbed for her pleasure condom deep inside me, he gasped out the name ‘Lucy.’”
No…
No. No. No. No. No.
That lying bitch!
She had to be lying.
Right?
I continued reading, my face red hot, my spine straight and my heart thumping in my chest.
“Lucy Hopewell has been Dante Saint James’ executive assistant for over two years now. She started working for him right out of college, and is known throughout the business world as the gatekeeper of Saint James LTD.”
And then I started to hyperventilate.
“Ms. Hopewell also writes self-published billionaire erotic romances under her penname LP Hopewell.”
Oh my god, oh my god…
That bitch!
Every fantasy I’d ever had about Dante was in those books.
“And though I’ve only met Lucy Hopewell one time, I know the look of complete and total love when I see it.”
My jaw dropped as I read the last lines of the article.
“Saint Sex himself is in love with his assistant, whether he knows it or not; and she loves him right back. Now if someone would be kind enough to tell them both about it.”
I sat there looking off out the stunning view from the windows to my left.
Dante wasn’t in love with me.
Dante wasn’t in love with anyone.
That much I was one hundred percent sure of.
But the moment he read this he would know I was in love with him.
“Order me a car,” I said to my assistants. I pulled up my schedule for Dante and scrolled back to the day he was meeting with Charlotte Rampling. I had her home address, since he had planned on picking her up before she’d shown up to hijack him.
I looked to find my assistants still standing there. “I need that car now!”