Chapter One
Noah
My office was big with a lot of windows to let in light. An interior decorator had transformed it into a place I liked. I had to spend a lot of hours in the office as the CEO of Saturn Intelligence, so I might as well enjoy it.
“I’ve set up a meeting with the investors,” I said to Elena, my personal assistant. “We have to wow them this time. I can’t afford to lose them.”
“You won’t lose them, Noah,” she said. We’d passed the point of using titles like “sir” and Miss Hayes. “They invested in SI because they see potential. They have no reason to pull out, now.”
Elena spent more hours at the office than any other of my employees. She put all her time and energy into my company, and she deserved to be treated as an equal. Funny enough, it rarely happened.
I nodded.
“I need the file on the tech prepared, and also, ask the lab if they have the prototype ready. We must have something to show.”
Elena made notes, her head down and focus on point. “I spoke to Gerald at the lab yesterday. They’re ironing out a kink or two, but they’ll be ready for you.”
I hoped to God she was right. Elena was optimistic about the investor meeting tomorrow morning, but I was worried. SI couldn’t take another blow to the gut. We had been hanging on the edge for a while. If any of the investors pulled their cash, I was fucked. The company was practically bankrupt, and I wasn’t pumping my own money into it, no matter how much of it I had. It was a rule I had learned from the late Mr. Fuller himself. You didn’t make business personal. If my company went under, it wouldn’t drag me under, too.
“I’ll shoot down to the lab after we finish here, so we’re sure. I’ll let you know,” Elena said.
I nodded and glanced at the time. It was past six already. Elena worked late most nights, even though I had told her she didn’t need to impress me anymore. Her three-month probation period had recently ended, and she was a full-fledged employee. I didn’t know how I’d managed without her. These past three months had proven that I had needed help a lot more than I’d been willing to admit.
And I had developed a soft spot for Elena.
She wasn’t only intelligent, sharp and two steps ahead of the game. She was kind-hearted and gentle, always willing to put in that little bit extra.
And she was drop-dead gorgeous. She was slender with curves in all the right places, and when she moved: poetry. It hadn’t been on the list of requirements, of course, and I told myself it hadn’t been one of the reasons I’d hired her. But I could only lie to myself for so long. When her emerald eyes had pierced my soul in that interview room, I’d already thought “I want you.”
And I hadn’t regretted it for one moment.
There was something between us, too. Nothing that we could label; I was the CEO, and she was my secretary as far as relationships went. But when I looked at her, and she smiled at me, I felt something stir in my chest. And in my pants.
“Right, I think we’ve got it covered,” Elena said to me, finalizing her notes. “You’ll blow them away with your charm.”
I grinned and waited for her to glance up at me. “Do you think I’m charming?”
“You’re fishing for compliments,” she said, and kept her head down a minute more. I waited, knowing she couldn’t stand the silence I let linger between us for too long. She finally glanced up, smiling. When Elena smiled, she had a dimple on her left cheek. Not the right, only the left.
“Sometimes a man needs reassurance,” I said, pulling up my shoulders.
Elena laughed. “And sometimes a man is too full of himself.”
I was flirting with her. Shamelessly. But she was flirting right back, and that made me think things I shouldn’t have been thinking. It made me think of pulling her closer to me and kissing her. It made me think of running my hands over her body, feeling those curves. Her hair was the color of honey, and it was loose. I wondered how it would feel if I ran my fingers through it.
It made me think of fucking her.
“Noah?” Elena said, and I realized she’d asked me a question.
“What?” I asked. I had been caught up in her curves, the line of her body, the swell of her breasts that showed enough above her neckline to spark my imagination about what was below.
“I wanted to know what time you need me here in the morning.”
I cleared my throat and tried to ignore her body and the erection in my pants. My cock was hard, and I couldn’t help it. Would she notice?
“Half an hour earlier than usual should do it,” I said, able to string intelligible words together.
“Done,” Elena said and made another note. I looked at her profile in the light of my office. God, she was beautiful.
But I couldn’t do this. I had to resist temptation and stop thinking dirty thoughts about my secretary. The company was hanging by a thread as it was. I couldn’t afford a scandal with my secretary to be thrown into the mix. The company wouldn’t survive it. Which was a pity because if I’d had a choice in the matter, I would have thrown Elena over my shoulder like a cave man and taken her to bed with me.
“How is Lillian doing?” Elena asked, pulling me out of my dirty thoughts.
A smile spread across my face when I thought about my daughter.
“She’s doing well,” I said. “They’re doing Fall as a theme at school, and she made a picture with dried leaves for me yesterday.”
Elena was the only person that genuinely listened when I talked about Lilly. She cared, and I appreciated it. So many people ignored her existence, seeing her as a liability when it came to the time I had to offer the business. Many of my friends were still single and didn’t understand what it meant to have a child.
“That sounds adorable,” Elena said. “She sounds like a sweetheart.”
I nodded. “She is,” I said.
There were times that I was in over my head as a single father. I had all the money in the world. I was a billionaire, and I could afford nannies and the best schools, all the toys and dress up clothes Lilly’s heart desired. But no amount of money could buy peace of mind that my daughter was alright. I was terrified of the years to come when Lilly would need a mother and she didn’t have one.
When I had contested custody in court, Cheryl hadn’t even shown her face to fight for her daughter. Lilly had been two, and I thanked God every day that she couldn’t remember Cheryl not being there for her. It had been two full years since the divorce and the custody hearing, but Cheryl had left us long before that.
At first, it had been nights out that didn’t make sense, stories that didn’t add up. Then the sniffing and the strange look in her eyes, the dark rings that suggested something I couldn’t see haunted her. Drugs had taken her away months before Cheryl had physically left us. She had blamed me, at first, saying that my long work hours had driven her to find entertainment elsewhere. But it had never been about my work. Cheryl had made friends that had pulled her down the wrong path.
It had taken months sitting up with a crying toddler, asking where mommy was, to stop blaming myself.
Lilly and I were doing okay, now. She didn’t remember Cheryl anymore, and I had moved forward with my life. I spent all my time divided between my daughter and work. I did what I could for the company in the hours I had at my disposal. When I was home with Lilly, I put everything I had into her. I only hoped that it was enough. That one day when Lilly was a grown woman looking back at her life, she would find that I had been enough.
“Who’s with Lilly, now?” Elena asked.
“Diane,” I said. “Her nanny.”
Elena looked at the time. I hardly ever saw her checking the time unless it was for my meetings and schedules. She never looked like she had to be somewhere else. All her time and attention went to me and she only thought about life after work when everything I needed had been taken care of.
“You should go home, Noah,” Elena said. “Go to Lilly.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. I hated having to work late.
Elena nodded. “I’ve got this. I’ll have your files ready for you in the morning, and I’ll text you what Gerald says about the prototype.”
I put my hand on Elena’s arm. “Thank you,” I said.
The building was quiet when I made my way down to my car. I pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street that was dying down after rush hour traffic. I weaved my way through downtown San Francisco, taking the shortest route home.
My phone rang, the Bluetooth hands-free set in my car picking it up, and I pressed the talk button on my steering wheel.
“Fuller,” I said.
“Noah,” a sultry voice came over the speaker. I groaned without trying to hide it. Nicole was the only woman I tried dating after Cheryl had left. It had only lasted a few months.
“I told you not to call me,” I said.
“But I miss you.”
“Hanging up,” I warned and dropped the call. I wasn’t in the mood for her games.
Nicole had been there after my heart had been shattered in the courtroom. Cheryl hadn’t shown up for her daughter, and I had needed a shoulder to cry on, a body to fuck when all the leftover emotions from my marriage threatened to spill over. She had been what I needed for a few months, but after a while, I had noticed the dynamic between Nicole and Lillian.
Lilly hadn’t liked her. Not one bit. And Nicole seemed to be irritated with children. I didn’t care about Nicole’s feelings toward Lilly, but if my daughter was unhappy, something had to change. She had been through enough, already.
So, I’d broken it off with Nicole. We had been apart for over a year, now, but she still called me every now and then. She didn’t have what it took to let go.
I pulled into the garage at the house and walked through the door that opened into the mudroom. I walked into my office and put down my briefcase before finding Diane and Lilly in the playroom.
“Daddy!” Lilly cried and ran to me with arms open wide, leaving the nanny behind. I kneeled and hugged her. She greeted me like this every day, and when my beautiful girl ran to me like I was the one person she had been waiting for, everything else fell away. It didn’t matter how difficult things became. I had Lilly.
“How are you, gumdrop?” I asked, kissing her on the head.
“We’re building a fairy castle,” Lilly said, taking my hand and pulling me to the middle of the room where a pile of Legos was scattered around a half-built structure.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Fit for a princess.”
Diane smiled, enjoying Lilly.
“Thank you for staying a little later tonight,” I said to Diane, standing up.
She shook her head. “It’s not a problem at all,” she said. “We had tons of fun together.”
I walked with Diane to the front door to let her out.
“Here you go,” I said, fishing bills out of my wallet. “For the extra time.”
Diane took the money from me. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning,” she said before walking toward the gate. “Good night, Mr. Fuller.”
I waved. Lilly wrapped herself around my leg.
“I’m hungry for ice cream,” Lilly said.
“Did you eat all your veggies?” I asked.
Lilly nodded. “Diane made me.”
I laughed. “Okay, then I guess we can have a bit of ice cream before bed.”
After having dessert together, I tucked Lilly into her pink princess bed and picked up the book we were reading. It was the classic story of the Princess and the Pea. We reached the part where the pea was placed beneath the tower of mattresses, an impossible test.
“That’s silly,” Lilly said.
I laughed. “It is a little, but it’s supposed to show that if you are who you say you are, it will show without you needing to tell someone about it.”
Lilly thought her way through it. “Can we try it tomorrow?” she finally asked. “Putting a pea under my bed?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re already a Princess. I don’t need to test to figure that out.”
Lilly laughed and wriggled further under the covers. I kissed her on the head.
“Good night, beautiful girl,” I said before leaving the room, leaving the door ajar so I could check on her throughout the evening.