Impossible Billionaire Boss (Impossible Billionaires #1)

Chapter 1

Elena

"Tell me you delivered the flowers."

"I'm delivering the flowers."

"Elena."

"Nadia."

"Tell me you have delivered the flowers, past tense, and are leaving the building, present tense."

I look down at the orchid arrangement sitting on the coffee table beside me, missing one hazel branch and visibly losing a second.

I glance around the empty reception area, all cedar and old money, a phone on the desk ringing on and off for the past twenty-two minutes, and beyond it, a city view so ridiculous it almost feels like part of the decor.

"I'm having a small issue with timing," I say.

"What kind of issue?"

"Human-resources kind. There is no human. To resource."

"Elena."

"Nadia, listen, the receptionist isn't here, the assistant isn't here, nobody is here, I am alone on a floor in the sky with a phone that won't shut up, and the arrangement looks fantastic, by the way, except for one small structural concern that I'm choosing to interpret as character."

A long, sisterly silence.

"You're planning something."

"I'm sitting."

"Whatever you are about to do, do not do it. Drop the arrangement. Leave the card. Walk out. I am asking you, as your sister, who loves you, who has never asked you for anything except this one thing, please do not improvise."

"Nadia—"

"I have to take a call. The Hendersons are bleeding me on the centerpiece count. Please. Just leave."

She hangs up.

I sit very still on a couch so soft it is trying to absorb me.

The phone rings.

The truth is I was always going to improvise.

I rehearsed the pitch on the train —three subway stops of muttering “weekly arrangements, predictable revenue, brand consistency” under my breath until the woman across from me started mouthing it back at me with a look of profound concern.

When I close my eyes I can see the contract, signed, in Nadia's hands.

Since our parents died she has been carrying both of us in ways she never names out loud, and I owe her something that actually helps. I have to get this right.

The dress is the most professional thing I own. It is doing brave work, considering I bought it for a wedding three years ago, back when I still thought I was getting married. The heels are red because Nadia once told me red heels make you look like you've decided something. Today, I have.

The phone rings.

It is, at this point, ringing in a way that has stopped being ringing and started being a full public-service emergency. A phone cannot ring forever. At some point, a person has to intervene for the good of humankind.

I look at the light oak desk, polished so perfectly it looks soft. The phone on it has approximately forty-seven buttons and one of them is lit up like a small red emergency.

I try to do the math instead of focusing on the ringing phone. I have fifteen dollars left. Rent is due. If this works, it pays for basic groceries every week. That’s not nothing.

The phone rings.

"Oh, for the love of God," I say to no one, cross the rug, and I pick up.

"Hello?"

"Finally." The word lands like I've done something heroic. It feels nice. "I need Patrick Aldera. Right now."

"I'm just here delivering flowers, I don't actually—"

"Get him on the phone."

"Sir, I really don't—"

"Now."

The heroic feeling evaporates. I press a button, statistically probably not the right one, and set the receiver down.

I look at the orchid. The orchid offers no advice.

Right. Find Patrick Aldera. How hard can it be.

The hallway past the reception area is long, bright, lined with closed doors.

I walk it the way you walk into water you suspect is colder than it looks.

Conference room. Empty. Another closed door, no label, the kind of door that exists in novels for reasons that are never good.

At the end, a single door, larger than the others.

I knock.

Nothing.

I push it open.

The office is the size of a small country and most of it is window.

The skyline is doing a whole performance behind the glass, sun on steel, the kind of view that exists to remind you of your own ZIP code.

I notice all of it for approximately half a second, because there is a man at the desk fifteen feet away and the view behind him has just become the least interesting thing in the room.

He is, I will note this once and move on, the most aggressively handsome man I have ever stood in a room with.

Dark hair, short at the sides, a soft wave at the top falling just out of place, the kind that looks effortless and probably is.

A jaw a sculptor would have fought over.

Sleeves rolled to the forearms, which are doing things I cannot, in good conscience, look at directly while attempting to form a coherent sentence.

He raises a finger without breaking his sentence. “Wait.”

I wait.

I clasp my hands in front of me, then unclasp them, then put them at my sides, and none of the positions feels like something a hand is supposed to do.

The scratches on my forearms, courtesy of the hazel branch that betrayed me on the subway, are catching the light.

They look, in this office, like I have been doing something interesting in an alley.

He hangs up.

"Yes?"

"There's a man on the phone." My voice comes out faster than I would like. "He says it's urgent. He's looking for Patrick Aldera."

"Everything is urgent." He picks up his receiver, presses a button, and says, "This is Aldera." He listens. His face does not move. "Send the revised terms by end of day."

He hangs up and looks at me.

The look is the one you give a piece of furniture that has been delivered to the wrong office.

"You are?"

"Elena. Brown." The pitch. Do the pitch.

Now! "I'm with Brown Florals, my sister Nadia is the principal designer, I came to deliver the arrangement you ordered, and I was hoping to take a moment of your time to discuss a weekly subscription because she is genuinely talented and a steady client like you would make a real difference for her business—"

He is just looking at me. Of course, he must be thinking that I shouldn't have picked up the phone.

I have sweat on my palms now. I was expecting a question.

A "How much?" or "Will I get a discount?

" something to negotiate around. Instead, he is giving me nothing, so I keep talking at a speed my mind can barely catch up.

"—and I know this is not a normal delivery visit and I know I answered your phone, which I am sorry about, the man was very persistent and I cannot physically let a phone ring without —that's not the point, the point is the subscription, and the arrangement is beautiful even though it has lost a branch, and I realize I am not making the strongest case for myself right now, but I need this to go well today because I do not have a job and my sister has been incredibly patient with me—"

I stop.

I have said all of that out loud.

To a man that has no interest in my life. What the hell Elena?

"You don't have a job," he says.

"That was a lot of information," I say. "You can ignore most of it."

He checks his watch.

"I need someone now. My assistant quit this morning. Sit at the desk outside," he says. "Answer the phone. Take messages. Names, numbers, what they want."

"What?"

"The desk outside, in the reception area. Answer the phone. Take messages." He reaches for his jacket. "We’ll try it for a week. Two thousand dollars a week."

The number hits me somewhere between the sternum and the better judgment I apparently left on the subway.

Two thousand a week. To answer a phone. I have spent six weeks failing to get hired for things I am actually qualified for, and this man is offering me a salary in sixty seconds because I walked down a hallway.

"Yes," I say. "Okay. Yes."

"Good." He shrugs into the jacket. "Don't pick up anything from the third line. That's private. If it rings, leave it."

"Third line. Got it."

"What did you say your name was."

"Elena."

He nods once. "Elena, you start now."

He looks at me, and I... now I am staring, but it takes a moment for my brain to register what I'm doing.

He notices. "Elena."

I clear my throat. "Yes. Leaving now. Answering phones. Yes."

My legs take me back down the hallway before the rest of me has agreed to anything. Past the unlabeled door. Past the conference room. Past the orchid, which is still doing brave, asymmetrical work on the coffee table.

I slide into the chair behind the desk and put both hands on the wood like that might transmit competence through my palms.

Two thousand dollars a week, I think. You can answer a phone for two thousand dollars a week. People less qualified than you answer phones every day. Children probably answer phones.

The line is still ringing.

I pick up.

"Patrick Aldera's office," I say, which is not elegant, but it is a sentence, and that feels like a strong opening move.

I press a button that looks correct, and the line goes dead.

I stare at the phone. The phone stares back. There are forty-seven buttons on this thing and I have now confirmed that at least one of them is wrong.

The same line rings again almost instantly.

"Patrick Aldera's office," I say, this time with the shaky brightness of a woman who has just realized the trapdoor was always open.

"I was disconnected," the caller says.

"Yes," I say. "Technical difficulties. One moment."

I press a different button. A more confident button. A button I have chosen with intention and purpose.

The line goes dead again.

I close my eyes.

This is how careers end. Not with scandal. With decorative office technology.

Footsteps come down the hallway, fast and even. Patrick Aldera rounds the corner, walks straight to the desk, and stops close enough that the air changes.

He does not say anything. He leans past me, reaches over my shoulder, presses a button, and picks up the receiver.

"Aldera." He listens. His face goes still in that particular way that suggests somebody else should be worried. "Walk me through it."

I keep my eyes on the desk because looking anywhere else feels unsafe. He is close enough that the clean-shirt, dark-underneath smell of him slides straight into my bloodstream and starts making administrative decisions without consulting me.

He sets the receiver down.

"That was the CFO of one of our largest accounts," he says.

I know what is coming. I have known since the second dead line. I wait for it anyway, the way you wait for the dentist to tell you what you already know from the x-ray.

"That's a hundred dollars off your first paycheck."

"I can explain."

"Can you."

"Not well, probably, but with sincerity."

His mouth does something very near amusement and then thinks better of it.

"You're not to transfer anything unless I tell you to," he says. "Write the message down. Bring it to me. That is the job."

"Right. Yes. Of course. Message. Writing. Basic office civilization."

He checks his watch. "I have to leave. Back at four." He reaches for the Post-it dispenser beside my hand, pulls one free, and writes a number in quick, hard strokes.

He sets it down in front of me.

"Urgent calls only."

He straightens, but he does not move away immediately. He looks at me.

It is not the cool, assessing look from the office. It catches, just briefly, on something more specific. On my face, maybe, which is almost certainly betraying me in several languages. On the space between us. His jaw tightens. Whatever he almost says, he keeps.

Then he walks out.

I look down at the Post-it.

A phone number.

Nothing else.

The phone rings.