“Let me be clear about one thing: my title may be news director, but sometime in the next five years, I will be the president of this company. Better yet, I will be the owner of every single floor in this sixty-story building, top to bottom, staplers and coffee machines included. The rules do not apply to me. You have laws, but I operate in my own little dictatorship. As long as it’s legal and does not cross the employer-employee relationship, I can say whatever I fucking want to you. Since I have a rich legal background—Harvard Law, in case you were wondering—I know where the line is drawn, and I intend to walk it like a tightrope if you cross me.”
Her breath caught in her throat, a caged, helpless animal, and my eyes focused on her big, russet hazels, knowing that if they drifted downward, to her cleavage, I was liable to rip her clothes off and fuck her against the desk.
“Ambition,” she whispered, running her hand along my dress shirt.
What?
“I wore the black Chucks because black represents ambition. Motivation. I want to work here. I want to prove myself. I have a lot to offer, in and out of the newsroom.”
What the fuck was she doing? Touching me in the office? She wasn’t exactly trying to seduce me, but she wasn’t not-trying to, either. Turned out two could walk that tightrope.
“You’re playing with fire,” I warned.
Her hand crawled up, touching my mouth, her thumb hovering over my lower lip, tracing the seams, reminding me of three weeks ago. “Maybe I want to get burned.”
I grabbed her wrist and lowered her hand, as gently as I possibly could without pressing it against my raging hard-on. “I don’t shit where I eat.”
“Give yourself some credit.” She licked her rosebud lips. “You weren’t that bad.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. Say what you want about this girl, she had balls the size of watermelons.
“You can join my ship.” I grabbed my new wallet and phone, tucking them in my back pocket. “As long as you realize I’m your captain, and that there will be no more fucking around, literally or figuratively.”
Instead of giving her the pleasure of formulating a response, I turned around and walked away, muttering under my breath. “Just don’t expect me to help you when you drown.”
Things got progressively and methodically worse in the week following my move (Grayson: “deportation!”) from Couture to the newsroom.
The place was a zoo made out of silver chrome desks glued together in a wave pattern, circling huge monitors that broadcast different news channels from all over the world.
The newsroom was round, with glass walls. Nearby was another conference room—made of glass as well—in which fresh pastries and fruit sat in fancy baskets and elegant glass water bottles were lined together neatly. There were hundreds of monitors, switchboard phones, keyboards, and cables running from side to side. There was a stairway to the seventh floor that led to a door with a plaque plastered on it: Magic Happens Here
This referred to the actual studio, where the prime-time news show was recorded.
But I couldn’t feel the fairy dust on my skin, because I was too busy trying to survive my life as I knew it.
Milton was the first to kill my mojo.
My cheating ex had decided that the fact he’d been boning his editor was not, in fact, grounds for a breakup. First came the flowers and text messages. When those were ignored or given to the lonely, attractive neighbor upstairs (the flowers, of course. Forty-something-year-old widow Mrs. Hawthorne didn’t need to read the douchecanoe’s apologies for dipping his sausage into a different ketchup tub first thing after coming back from a grueling shift as a nurse), Milton started asking our mutual friends to be mediators. Said friends, who were neck deep in kissing his ass for landing a job at a prestigious magazine, explained that Milton was the one. My one. That we had something special going on, and it would be insane to throw it away because of one mistake.
“He was going to help you pay your debt,” one of our friends, Joe, even added. “Consider that, too.”
I told Joe and the others that if they were going to plead the case of a cheater who’d decided to throw our five years down the drain, they might as well delete my number. I was in an anxiety-filled headspace, consisting of a sick father, a new job, and a stack of bills that remained impressive even in my employed state. Acting diplomatically was not high on my list of priorities.
Then there was work.
Célian Laurent was the biggest jerk to ever walk on planet Earth, and he carried that title like a badge of honor. The only silver lining was that I now knew it wasn’t personal. He was just a dick—a dick who did a phenomenal job making news and surpassed every single talented newsman I’d ever learned from, but a dick nonetheless. And speaking of penises, contrary to my impression from our last encounter, he’d kept his tucked firmly inside his slacks all throughout the week. Not that we had any chance of working one-on-one in a busy newsroom, but when he did acknowledge my existence (albeit reluctantly), he remained cold, aloof, and professional.
And me? I tried to forget the moment of weakness during which I’d touched him.
I didn’t know why I was looking for a connection with him. Maybe I recognized how similar we were. He was bitter, and I was angry. He wanted casual, and I… I didn’t think I could afford anything else with everything that went on in my life. But I couldn’t forget how it felt when he touched me.
When his mouth was on mine.
When his hands pinned me to the wall.
When he made me forget about my sick father, piling bills, and unemployment.
True to his word, Célian had put me in charge of Reuters. The only qualification I needed for the job was the ability to distinguish between yellow, orange, and red. Most reporters—even junior ones like me—had plenty of tasks. I had just the one, to rot in front of the monitor.
Oh, and help his assistant, Brianna Shaw.
Célian’s PA was the definition of candy sweet. Unfortunately, she was also a ticking time bomb. Célian was such a tyrant, she spent the majority of the day running after him, taking orders, or sobbing softly in the restroom. Today was the third time I’d found her doing that—on a Friday, of all days, a second before everyone in New York poured into fancy bars and hole-in-the-wall pubs to celebrate the weekend freedom—and I silently slid a box of tissues and a mini-bottle of whiskey into her stall.
She’d been too scared to ask for my help, and I didn’t know how to broach the subject without making her feel weak. But that third time in the restroom broke me. To hell with my boss and his deep blue eyes, his pouty lips, dirty mouth, and Zac Efron body.
“Hey.” I squatted down, my butt hovering over the floor. My Chucks were gray today. Moody and depressed. “You need a break…and a drink. Let me help you. I have plenty of free time.” And I did. My job was as challenging as tying one’s shoes. Brianna hiccupped from the other side of the stall, unscrewing the bottle and taking a sip. “I…” she started. “He…” I strained my ears to listen. “He needs to have his suits cleaned.”
“I’ll drop them off in half an hour. Just give me their address,” I said.
“N-no. He demands that you stay at the dry cleaners and watch them clean his clothes.”
What?
“You mean make sure to take the receipt?” Maybe he had a favorite person cleaning his clothes. What a diva. Rich people had ridiculous whims. In Célian’s case, he was picky about who cleaned his suits, but was perfectly content with eating a stranger’s ass.
Brianna hiccupped again. “No, I mean he makes me sit there and look at them as they do it.”
“Why?” I gasped.
“Because they sometimes steal his clothes.”
“Why are you still working here?” I would have stabbed him in the face through the power of telepathy by now had he done that to me.
“Because he’s smart, pays well, and…I mean…” She downed the entire drink. I heard her gulping it. “He’s seriously handsome. But of course, I know he’d never look at me. He once said my legs are awfully short because I need to run to catch up with his pace. He probably thinks I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
I’d had enough.
Enough of him treating Brianna like a pest.
Enough of him allowing everyone else in the newsroom to overlook me. (I hadn’t been introduced to one person. The associate producer, Kate, asked me once where my parents were.)