Billionaire's Valentine - A Standalone Novel (A Billionaire Boss Office Romance Love Story) (Billionaires - Book #7) Read online

  “This is it?” she asked as we pulled into my driveway.

  “Yep, this is my humble abode.”

  “It’s really small.”

  “I live alone; why would I need a big house?”

  “But…well…I don’t know,” she said with clear trepidation in her voice.

  “Well, I can take you home if you’d like.”

  She contemplated my offer as I clicked the button to open my garage door and waited for her to respond before I pulled in. Of course, I could have had the three deep garage filled with high-end sports cars but that wasn’t my style, not anymore at least.

  “No, it’s okay, let’s go in. I’d love a tour,” the redhead said, suddenly more interested than ever.

  “Name?” I asked again.

  “It’s Amanda,” she smiled and leaned toward me a little.

  “Nice to meet you, Amanda.”

  I hopped out and opened her door for her before leading her inside the house. By this point, the sexual tension seemed to have fizzled quite a bit, but mostly due to my annoyance with her being worried about my net worth. It was exhausting to be around a woman who worried so much about money and so little about who a person was. But I still held out hope that the evening could be salvaged by a night cap and some mood music.

  “You’ve got to see this view,” I bragged as I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the floor to ceiling windows. “It’s not the Hollywood Hills, but not such a bad view either.”

  We stood and looked over the city, and in the distance was the ocean. It was a dark evening though, with too much smog for enjoying the view, so I quickly moved us to the living room and pulled out my favorite scotch. I needed a drink after the evening I’d had so far.

  Picking up women wasn’t supposed to take this much work, at least for me it wasn’t. I had worked harder to get this woman than I should have and it was annoying that she didn’t even seem worthy of my time. I’d really lost my touch a bit, I thought as I watched Amanda taking inventory of my living room.

  “Scotch?” I offered her a small glass.

  “Sure,” she said as she took the glass and dipped her fingers into it. She then proceeded to lick them seductively, and just like that, the sexual chemistry had re-appeared.

  “That’s an interesting way to drink your scotch.”

  “I can do other interesting things with my mouth,” Amanda said as she dipped her fingers into the scotch and licked them again.

  “Really?” I asked as I moved closer to her and stood only about a foot from the couch where she was sitting.

  My body was already throbbing with the idea of her lips wrapped around me. I could hardly be contained as Amanda leaned forward and reached for my pants to pull me toward her. This was going to be a fun evening after all.

  “I bet you’ve had a lot of women over to your house,” she said as her fingers delicately unzipped me and she pressed my pants down to the ground.

  I didn’t feel the need to reply to her. There was nothing good that could come out of Amanda knowing just how many women had been in my bed before her. I probably couldn’t even give a good estimate of the number of women.

  “Should we move to the bedroom?” I asked as I motioned to the opened window.

  “Why? Are you afraid someone will see us?”

  “Not me. I just thought you might be more comfortable. I’ll do you on the deck if it is up to me,” I joked.

  “Deal,” she said as her hand wrapped around my hard body and she gently pulled me toward the back deck.

  Although I had been joking with her, I was perfectly fine with putting on a little exhibition in my back yard. My house was on a hill with at least six other houses, but everyone was facing the same direction, and it was dark out; it was highly unlikely anyone would notice our little exploration.

  Her hand tugged on me just a little too hard as we walked outside and I was instantly over the whole idea of letting her play the dominant role. The fun of it was over, and I grabbed her firmly and pressed her up against the railing of the deck.

  Within a minute I had her naked and bent over the side of the clear glass railing as I thrust inside of her. No love making, no romantic build up; this wasn’t going to be one of those kinds of evenings. Primal lust was all there was between us, and it appeared that Amanda was perfectly happy with our arrangement as she moaned out in delight. At one point her moans were so loud, I was certain she was trying to wake up the neighbors, but I didn’t really care.

  Our lustful pounding didn’t last long. I pulled her close as I delivered my final blow and then kissed her gently on the back of the neck before pulling myself out and walking back inside. I grabbed a towel for Amanda, and one for myself as we wrapped up and both collapsed onto the couch.

  The lustful passion I had hoped to have with this woman wasn’t there at all. Instead, we sat on the couch like two people who had just met and really knew nothing about each other: uncomfortable and without a single interesting thing to say to each other.

  “What’s your number? I’ll text you, so you have mine,” Amanda said as she reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.

  “Three, zero, eight. Four, one, four. Seven, seven, nine, one,” I rattled off for her.

  “Okay, there you go,” Amanda said as she sent me a message that we both knew I wasn't going to reply to.

  “Want to stay the night?” I asked.

  “Nah, I better get going. I’ll call an Uber,” she said as she started to get dressed.

  “Let me get you a car service,” I offered.

  “Don’t bother; it will take too long. Text me sometime this week, and we can do this again,” she said softly as she leaned down and we kissed for the first time.

  “Yeah, that would be nice,” I lied.

  After a few more minutes of small talk, her Uber arrived and I walked her out to it. The idea of Amanda had been much more enticing than actually having her. I couldn’t have imagined the evening would have ended up the way it had when I was at the bar waiting around to talk to her.

  “It was nice meeting you,” she said as she climbed into the black Toyota Prius.

  “You too; have a good night,” I said as I waved goodbye and put on my best fake smile.

  Saying goodbye wasn’t my thing. Relationships weren’t my thing. The only thing I was good at was the chase; I could entice any woman into falling for me. I just wasn’t going to keep them around after they gave into my desire to have them. It wasn’t personal; I just wasn’t the type of guy that was built for being monogamous.

  Chapter 2

  Emmi

  “Thanks for your ideas; now can you please organize those books on the bottom shelf for me,” my pig of a boss demanded.

  “Really? You want me to bend over like this so you can just stare at my ass all day?” I said as I dramatically bent over near his bookshelf.

  “Yes, like that,” he said as he eyed my ass from his desk.

  “I’ve got work to do, and you’ve got a meeting in five minutes,” I huffed as I stormed out of his office.

  I was literally minutes away from quitting and trying my damnedest not to do it. My job wasn’t the best in the world, but it paid well, and I was working at a big-name New York marketing firm. Even though my boss was this biggest chauvinist I knew, he was my ticket to moving on to bigger and better positions, and I was trying to tough it out. Unfortunately, my patience was growing thin.

  I hid in my office and dialed my best friend Jessica in hopes that she would talk some sense into me and calm me down. Otherwise, I was going to be out of a job, and I didn’t have a cent in my savings account.

  “Jessica, I’m about to lose it and go crazy on this boss of mine,” I moaned into the phone.

  “Do it,” she giggled. “I dare you. Then you can come out here, and I’ll hook you up with the dance club I’m doing marketing for. You’ll love it.”

  “I thought you said your boss was a racist?”

  “Nah, he’s just an ol
d white guy. I’ve learned to deal with him. I think he actually likes me, but just has never had a beautiful ebony woman working for him before. He’s really nice, just makes stupid comments sometimes.”

  “Like what?” I asked as I tried to distract myself with her story.

  “Like last night after we had our biggest night ever at Tavern on the Red, he told me what an amazing job I had done,” she started to say and then paused.

  “Well, that sounds nice.”

  “Then he added, he had never met a woman of color who was as smart as I am,” she laughed. “He really did mean it as a compliment.”

  “That’s good, because he sounds like an ass.”

  “Really, he is just from a different age. He’s trying, and I’m trying to be more understanding. I actually really like my job. I spend my days talking to people and getting them to come to our restaurants and clubs. Then my nights are free drinks and dancing. I can’t believe I get paid for this.”

  “I can’t believe you have an MBA and are doing that,” I laughed but then realized I sounded a little catty. “But it sure sounds better than what’s going on here. My boss just asked me to bend over and organize books on the bottom shelf so he could look at my ass.”

  “You should turn his ass in! Report him or something.”

  “To who? He’s the boss. I guess I could go to human resources, but I don’t know if it’s even worth the effort. I could go all the way up the chain to the owner, but he’s probably a little hard to reach.”

  “I’m telling you, Emmi; you’ve got to come out here. Your father is out here; I’m sure he could help you get a job if you don’t want to work in the nightclub industry with me.”

  “Ugh, can you even imagine my father’s excitement if I came home and asked him for a job? He’d never let me live it down.”

  “Think about it. You’ve got lots of choices out here, plus you’ll have me around for support.”

  “Emmi, I need you in this meeting!” my boss bellowed from the hallway as he walked by.

  “That’s my boss beckoning me to come. I better get going.”

  “Are you going to quit?” Jessica asked.

  “You know me; I like to plan things out. I’m going to tough it out as long as I can, but I think I’ll start making plans to move out there in a month or two.”

  “Fine, but don’t let him push you around. He needs to know that women should be treated equally to men in the workplace.”

  “I’ll do my best. Call me tonight,” I said as I hung up and slipped my phone into my purse before heading to the meeting with my boss.

  “Mr. Duncan, I don’t think I’m supposed to be at this meeting; it’s just for team leads,” I said as I sat down in the chair next to him.

  “It’s okay, I need you to take notes,” he said as he handed me a pad of paper and then let his hand gently glide past my breast as he drew his hand back toward his own lap.

  Dan Duncan wasn’t a horrible guy; he was an average-looking man who just had this weird obsession with me. He talked to me often about how his wife hated to have sex, and he was looking for some side action. Sometimes I actually felt bad for him, at least in the beginning when I first started working for him. But as the months dragged on, I realized he wanted me to be his side action, and I wasn’t interested in him at all.

  It would have been different with we had some sort of chemistry, or if I admired him even, but Dan Duncan wasn’t a man I admired or found sexually attractive. He was a balding, overweight, middle-aged man who didn’t respect my opinions. I had an MBA from New York University, yet he couldn’t be bothered to listen to my ideas when I offered them.

  As the meeting got started, I saw Mr. Duncan move his hands into his lap and instantly got a bad feeling. I didn’t dare look over to see what was going on, but I saw movement and thought he might have been rubbing himself under the table. My body tightened with fear. I hoped he wasn’t going to grab my hand and put it into his lap to feel him or something like that. He’d never done anything as bold as that before, but I didn’t know how far he would be willing to go.

  “We need to build up our online subscriptions for the NY Magazine campaign; does anyone have any ideas for this?” Susan, the head of the campaign, asked the group.

  There was silence in the room. A deafening silence because no one wanted to say an idea that would be turned down by the whole group. I had ideas, but as Mr. Duncan’s assistant, I wasn’t in a position to give them to this group of people, or so I had been told by Mr. Duncan in the past. So I leaned over and whispered in his ear.

  “A Facebook campaign might work well.”

  “Maybe you could try a Facebook campaign,” Mr. Duncan said as he grabbed my hand tried to pull it toward his body.

  Instinctively, I pulled my hand back and pushed my chair away from the table. Because I had been leaning against Mr. Duncan, his chair also pressed back away from the table, and the whole room looked at him and I. His zipper was down, his throbbing member exposed, and there I was, right next to him. I was mortified and got up and ran out of the room.

  It had looked like I was the one who had unzipped him and was playing with him. I was leaning in to talk to him. I was the one who pressed my chair away from the table, and I was the one who everyone would think was having an affair with her boss. I couldn’t take it.

  As I slammed my office door behind me, I grabbed a box and started filling it with my personal belongings. I couldn’t stay there another minute. My face was flushed red with embarrassment, and my hands were shaking as I tried to grab my things and flee the building as fast as possible.

  “It’s okay,” Dan said as he stood in my doorway. “I’m fine with people knowing about us. We can file some paperwork with human resources, and they might have you move to a different floor, but we could be together.”

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Duncan?” I yelled.

  “I know you feel it too. Now it’s all out there. Now we can move on with this and stop playing these silly games.”

  “What games?” I yelled as I grabbed my purse and my box and pushed past him.

  By this time, the whole office was standing around listening to us argue. I had to admit, I would have been listening to any of my peers if they were having the same argument; it was a salacious event, that was for sure.

  “Emmi, it’s normal to have a crush on your boss. And I just want you to know I understand,” Dan said dramatically when he realized everyone was listening. “You’re a beautiful woman; there’s no denying it.”

  “Dan…Mr. Duncan,” I said as I tried to find the right words. “You’re a lonely old man who has treated me like a piece of meat since the day I arrived. You sold my ideas as your own or ignored them all together. You pulled your penis out in a meeting and tried to get me to touch it. I’m sure there is a huge lawsuit I could file against you and this whole business,” I said calmly as I gathered my wits about me.

  “You’re fired,” Dan yelled angrily at me.

  “Really? I’m literally walking out the door with my things in this box, and you want to say I’m fired so you feel like you are the tough guy? Everyone in that meeting saw your tiny penis, Dan; I think they know that I’m quitting and you’re not firing me.”

  “Get out!” he screamed. “I’m going to file a lawsuit against you for sexual harassment and grabbing my private area.”

  “Wow, okay, you do that,” I laughed as I stormed out of the main office and onto an elevator.

  The nerve of that guy to try and turn everything around on me like that. No one was going to believe I had been after him, but I still had a worry building in my gut. As soon as I exited the building, I called a lawyer friend of mine who had gone to NYU with me.

  “Morgan, I think I might have an issue on my hands,” I said as I stood next to the building, still shaking from the commotion.

  “What’s up?”

  “My boss basically tried to get me to grab his penis but then turned it around and told eve
ryone in the office that I was the one who was coming on to him.”

  “Typical thing for a boss to do. Want me to file a claim?”

  “I really wasn’t going to file anything, but I don’t want him turning things around on me either.”

  “I’ll feel out the human resources department. Email me their contact information and your statement about what happened. I’ll see what I can do. You’d be surprised at how much businesses know about these jerks and just don’t do anything until someone files a claim. Do you have vacation time? You might want to take a few days off from work while this all gets settled.”

  “I actually just quit over this all,” I said reluctantly.

  “Well, okay then. I’ll see if we can’t get them to give you some sort of severance pay.”

  “Don’t worry about all that. I don’t care about the money; I just don’t want him claiming I was the one harassing him.”

  “Alright, Emmi, I’ll see what’s going on. Get me that email and I’ll take care of it. Are you alright?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to be just fine. Thanks.”

  Our conversation was brief, but it was enough for me to calm down a little. My hands were still shaking, but that was from the adrenaline of the moment, at least I didn’t feel like my chest was going to explode any longer.

  I took my time getting back to my apartment and even stopped to grab a cupcake on the way. I’d lived in New York for years and hardly ever seemed to find the time to enjoy one of the amazing cupcake shops that were in the city. I loved cupcakes; it was a sign of how unhappy I was that I hadn’t been eating them lately. When I finally reach my apartment and collapsed onto my couch, I dialed up Jessica to fill her in on the rest of my afternoon and see if she was still up for having me crash on her couch.

  “If I happened to have quit my job today and needed a place to sleep in Los Angeles, would you have a couch for me?” I said excitedly as I waited for her to respond.