Forbidden Boss (Nikki and Rome's Story) (Manhattan Billionaires)

15. Nikki

My friend Bonnielooked at me curiously on Sunday, as we reclined on my velvet couch and talked about our weeks.

“You’re attracted to him,” she said when I finished complaining about all the running around my boss had made me do this week.

Of course, I couldn’t tell her about the specifics. If I told her about the companion job, who knew who she’d tell? I trusted her, but this was the kind of gossip that could not be contained. If I started telling my friends that I’d been hired to be my boss’s plus-one, I knew it would eventually blow up in my face.

Plus, I was a little embarrassed. The niggling feeling that I was just a placeholder in their lives, the same way I’d been with my ex-boyfriend—if you could call him that—and my landlord, and my old boss. Even with my mother, I think I’d just filled a daughter-shaped hole in her life, but I never actually lived up to who she wanted me to be. Maybe that’s why our relationship had never been strong. I was a placeholder to her, but there was no one else that would come to relieve me of the position. No one more successful, or more understanding, or more supportive. There was only me, and I wasn’t enough.

So I said nothing. I did what I always do, and I went on the attack. “Projecting, much?”

“Stop trying to deflect. You have the hots for your boss.”

Her eyes were sparkling, and all I could do was throw my hands up and give in. “Fine! Yes. He’s attractive.” That was obvious. With the wide shoulders that couldn’t quite be hidden by the well-tailored suit, the blue eyes, the thick eyelashes, lush lips, strong jaw… “But he’s seriously not my type. He’s so…”

“He’s so…”

I glared at her. “Just not my type.”

She must have seen something in my face, because she let me off the hook and said, “I can’t judge.”

Seeing my opening, I prodded her about her own situation. Bonnie had started seeing her own boss, and she told me it felt like it was the real deal.

Maybe it was my own situation that made me skeptical. Or my own secrets. But I tried to understand how Bonnie could fall for a man like…well, like Rome, really, without worrying about what it all meant. If it could really last, when we came from such different worlds.

I’d been admitted to another universe in the past week. And it wasn’t just the designer clothes and the fabulous bags. It wasn’t just the good food and the amazing service. It was the ease. A car appeared when it was needed. A helicopter could land on the roof at the snap of the fingers. Doors were opened, literally and figuratively, that had previously been locked and barred.

I wondered if Bonnie might have been dazzled by it all. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight, and her Prince Charming would turn out to be nothing more than a frog in a glitzy penthouse.

She didn’t take it well. We left off feeling vaguely angry at each other, and I didn’t know if I’d been wrong to challenge her. Maybe I was projecting.

After all, I wasn’t faring much better than she was. And if she could find happiness with a man, who was I to begrudge it of her?

But after she’d gone, I sank down on my old couch, staring at the cracks in the walls and the peeling linoleum in the tiny kitchen to my left, and I wondered if this was just another ending. Another person realizing that they didn’t actually want me for me. They’d enjoyed the idea of me, or the vague shape of me in their life, but they didn’t actually want me. The placeholder. The one you called when there was nothing better around.

The companion.

On Monday,there were no planned events but I had a few meetings to attend at the office. I wanted to do some research about a few upcoming events. There were a number of people I’d met that I hadn’t really been able to converse with, and I knew I could do better.

Unsettled by my day with Bonnie—and with the itch I felt anytime I heard my boss’s voice down the hall—I threw myself into my work.

The day flew by, and before I knew it, it was five o’clock and time to walk across to the other end of the floor for my nightly debriefing.

I found Rome in his office frowning at his computer. He glanced up when he saw me, then waved a hand at the seating area, where takeout had already been placed. I took a seat and inspected the Styrofoam containers. Thai food. Delicious.

“We’re going down to Grenada the week before the holidays, which means we have seven weeks to keep the Monks interested,” Blakely said, standing up to join me in the seating area. He sat on the couch across from me. “It’s very important that I close this deal, so I want to go over some expectations.”

I nodded and started serving myself from the various dishes. “Expectations. Got it.”

“We’ll be there for three days. They’ll probably take us out on their boat to go fishing and snorkeling. They might want to go hiking, since there’s a path around the island. And I hear they care very much about preservation, so anything you can learn about that would be a bonus.”

I nodded. “No problem.”

“I want you to use the time we have to prepare as well as you can for this. It’s very important.”

“You’ve mentioned that,” I told him calmly, “and I understand.”

He met my gaze for a beat, then nodded. “Good.”

I straightened. I hadn’t expected that from him—for him to treat me like a competent member of his team. It felt good to be trusted with something so important. Maybe he saw the type of person I was beneath the lipstick and the great clothes—saw my work ethic, my intelligence, my competence.

It made me like him a little bit more. I still thought he was arrogant and annoying, but at least he didn’t treat me like a dolt.

We ate for a few minutes as I glanced around his office. Last week, we’d had one of these office debrief dinners on the Friday of the luncheon, but I’d been so focused on not spilling food on myself that I hadn’t really looked around. He had his degrees up on the wall, and a large piece of abstract art behind his desk. Everything looked expensive. The view was great.

The whole room was extremely impersonal—except for one thing. When I got up to toss my takeout container, I paused beside Rome’s desk to look at the only photo in the entire room. It was a young Rome with a beaming smile on his face, a basketball under one arm while the other was hooked around an older man’s waist, who was busy ruffling his hair. The man wasn’t his father.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

Rome glanced up from his food, then looked away. “Coach Reggie. Basketball. Reg coached the team through high school.”

I set the frame down carefully. “I hadn’t realized you played.”

“Stopped when I graduated, but I kept in touch with Reg until he died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

He set his empty plate down and leaned back. “It’s fine.”

“You were close?”

“Closer than I was with my own father,” he admitted. “He’s the one who told me I could build companies if I wanted to. He told me the only thing that would hold me back was my own mind.”

“And was he right?”

“About most things, yeah.”

“What was he wrong about?” I sat down across from him, crossing my legs as I leaned back. A deep, unquenchable curiosity opened a pit inside me. I’d spent hours with this man at various events over the past week, but I knew precious little about him, other than the fact that he was great at closing business deals and his family sucked.

But there’d been a mentor. Someone who had cared about Rome Blakely, the boy, and not just Rome Blakely, the business mogul.

“He told me if I didn’t let people in, things would crumble in the end. No man could stand on his own, he said. But I’m here, and I’m standing.”

“On your own.”

“Precisely.”

“On the other hand, my dad once told me that lighthouses don’t run around looking for boats to save. They just stand there and shine.” I grinned at the memory. My dad was a cheeseball.

“Maybe I missed the shining memo.” A hint of a grin twitched over his lips in response.

Encouraged, my smile widened. “You just stand there and wait for unsuspecting boats to crash at your feet.”

That coaxed a chuckle out of him, and he asked, “What about you? Close with your dad?”

“I was,” I said. “He passed when I was fifteen.”

Rome nodded. “Sorry.”

There was no pity in his voice. No discomfort that usually came with people hearing about loss. He seemed to understand me without me having to say a word. We sat across from each other, separated by several feet and a food-laden coffee table, but I felt closer to him than I ever had before. “Thanks. Stomach cancer. It was horrible.”

“I can imagine. Reg was a smoker. Got his esophagus in the end, and then spread. But it’s funny; after he died is when this really took off.” He waved a hand around his office. “Sometimes I think it was his final gift to me. The last push I needed to make something of myself.”

Or maybe, I thought, he channeled his grief into work, because the alternative was standing on a windblown coastline watching ships shatter on the rocks.

My phone buzzed, interrupting our conversation. I glanced at the notification and let out a frustrated huff.

“Everything okay?”

Glancing up, I saw the frown on Rome’s face. I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’ve just been applying for rentals for weeks and I keep getting rejected. I don’t get it. My new salary should be more than enough to satisfy these people. But they don’t just want an employment contract, they want months of pay slips. They want deposits. They want my firstborn child. It’s never-ending.”

His frown deepened. “A rental for what?”

“Um. To…live?” I laughed. “An apartment. I have to move out of mine by the end of the month.”

“How come?”

“The owners are moving back in. It’s a real shame because it was a rent-controlled place, and my living costs are going to skyrocket now.” I grimaced. “Not that that’s your problem.”

“I’ll talk to Clara. She’ll sort something out.”

Warmth spread through me, but still, this job had fallen into my lap. I didn’t want to tie my living situation to it as well. Then if things went wrong, I’d be in really bad shape. “No, that’s okay?—”

“It was inconvenient for us to pick you up in Brooklyn. We’ll get somewhere on this side of the bridge so we don’t have to drive so much.” He stood and stalked to the office door then poked his head out. “Clara. Find somewhere for Jordan to live. Somewhere we don’t have to cross half the city to get her to an event on time.”

I scowled at his back. He sure had a way of making a favor from him sound like it was my problem.

When Clara called out an answer, he crossed back to the couch in front of me. “Next weekend is the anniversary party at Garcia’s place in the Hamptons. We’re going to have to address the perfume bottle incident.”

“Right,” I said, trying to follow the subject change. We were done talking about personal issues, it seemed. Back to work. “I’m guessing he was angry about the damage?”

“We’ve been working on a CGI version of the commercial, but the man is obsessed with authenticity. We need to wait for a new bottle, and I know he’s getting antsy. He’ll have to delay his launch because of the mistake.”

Because of my mistake, he meant. Guilt squirmed through me, and I shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was an accident.”

I straightened. “You mean that?”

His gaze settled on mine, and he arched a brow. “Off the record, I do.”

A smile twitched at the corners of my lips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I won’t say it in your lawyer’s presence.”

My smile widened. “You think he’s that much of a shark?”

“I think I’m done being squeezed for all I’m worth by opportunistic women in red lipstick.”

“Opportunistic!” I protested, even though it was true.

“Don’t play the innocent doe. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I think you’re mad you didn’t intimidate me.”

He scoffed. “Hardly.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I wasn’t trying to squeeze you for all you were worth?”

The flat look he gave me was answer enough. I shrugged, not wanting to protest too much. If he wanted to think the worst of me, that was his problem. Wanting to escape his incisive gaze, I rooted through my purse and pulled out a little plastic packet containing two chocolate chip cookies.

“What are those?” Rome asked, frowning.

I lifted the packet. “These are my emergency cookies.”

He blinked. “Emergency cookies?”

I nodded. They were the hard kind you got at the grocery store with the chocolate chips that tasted kind of bland and waxy, so not ideal, but that was why they were emergency cookies. “For when I need a snack,” I explained. Or something to do with my hands when faced with a large predator sitting on the other sofa. A predator who was shifting and leaning forward.

Before I could open it, the package was plucked from my fingers. “What the hell is this?”

“Hey! Give those back!”

He held them between his thumb and forefinger like they were some disgusting biohazardous waste, his lips curled. “You eat this shit?”

“Blakely. Give me my emergency cookies.”

“These aren’t cookies. These are garbage.” He stalked to the trash can next to his desk and dropped them in.

I stood, aghast. “You can’t just throw my cookies away!”

“Again, Jordan. They aren’t cookies. They’re sugary cardboard circles.”

“But they’re my sugary cardboard circles.”

“If you want chocolate chip cookies, I’ll get you chocolate chip cookies.”

“That’s not the point!”

“Grab your things,” he said, and he walked out of his office.

I stared at the takeout containers on the coffee table and then slid my gaze to the trash can. They were individually wrapped, and his trash was mostly paper, so I could retrieve them if I really wanted to be stubborn about it. But before I could decide whether I was part-raccoon or not, Clara poked her head in and said, “I’ll handle the cleanup. He’s waiting at the elevator for you.”

“I don’t know how you deal with him every day. I’ve got whiplash after one conversation.”

She flashed me a smile and shrugged. “He hasn’t been so bad lately.”

“Jordan!” my boss’s voice boomed from the other end of the floor. “Get over here!”

“Not so bad?” I asked, slinging my purse onto my shoulder.

Clara laughed and waved me off. I made a point to walk at my normal pace, because I wasn’t scurrying for a man who trashed my sugary cardboard circles without even consulting me. He glared at me from the elevator, his arm across the opening as the doors tried unsuccessfully to close.

“Where are we going in such a hurry all of a sudden?” I stepped into the elevator and felt the same thrill as I did whenever I was in an enclosed space with the man—all of a sudden, there wasn’t enough air in the place, and there was altogether too much him.

“We’re continuing your education,” he said, shooting me a sideways glance. “Clearly, you need it.”

“You are insufferably rude. Did you know that?”

He turned to face me as the elevator shot downward, closing the distance between us. I backed up until I hit the wall, giving him my best glare.

He didn’t seem intimidated by it. A broad palm landed on the wall above my head, and then my boss was only inches away from me, his dark gaze roaming over my features.

This was familiar. And just like last time, my breath hitched and my body went on high alert.

“I think you like it when I boss you around,” he said softly, the toes of his glossy black shoes touching the toes of my cherry-red pumps.

“I think you’re delusional,” I said, trying to sound tough and failing. My voice came out breathy, because he was so close I couldn’t breathe properly, and his eyes seemed to be devouring me, and his scent was everywhere, and I wanted to know if his lips were as soft as they looked.

Because I did like it when he bossed me around. I liked it a whole lot more than I should’ve.

I was once again saved by the elevator coming to a smooth stop. An electronic voice announced that we were not on the ground floor, but one of the basement parking levels. Blakely pushed himself off the wall and strode out. Heart clattering in my chest, I followed.

Now, I had never been a car person—still wasn’t, to be honest—but when Blakely stopped in front of a hot little two-seater coupe with a Ferrari logo on the hood, my middle gave a tiny, undeniable thrill.

He watched me from across the roof as the doors unlocked as if by magic. “Get in, Jordan. We’re getting cookies.”