Chapter 3
HAZEL
I draw a smiley face on Dominic’s coffee cup because I’m an idiot and I can’t help myself.
He’s not going to like it. He’s a bigtime CEO. He’s going to think it’s silly. But maybe not…
It’s a flat white from the café around the corner. A woman named Diana called while I was on my way and told me what to get him. “Flat white, no sugar, and it must be hot.”
So, I picked it up for him and raced to the office as fast as possible. On my way up the elevator, I drew a smiley-face on the cup with a sharpie I keep in my purse.
I probably shouldn’t have, but that’s what I do when I’m nervous. I make jokes or try to make things cute. It’s a disease.
Standing in the lobby of Blackwood Capital, I’m painfully aware that I do not belong here.
The floors are black marble, the elevators have no buttons—they just scan your badge and take you where you’re supposed to go. Everyone walking past me is wearing clothes that cost more than my car, and the men have on watches that I’m sure could pay for my entire apartment building.
I’m wearing Cassi’s heels because the only pair I own are being held together by tape and superglue, and I’m not about to break an ankle on my first day.
My blouse is from Goodwill, and the top button is about to pop if I breathe too deeply, so I’ve been taking short, shallow breaths ever since I walked in. Which isn’t easy, considering how nervous I am.
My skirt is the only thing that’s mine, and it’s been washed so many times that the deep black has faded into a dark gray. I like to call it charcoal.
Diana meets me on the eleventh floor—I recognize her voice instantly. She walks me to my desk. It sits directly outside Dominic’s office, which is encased by floor-to-ceiling glass walls. The glass is tinted so dark that I can’t see in.
But I can feel him. He’s in there. I know it.
“Mr. Blackwood prefers not to be disturbed until he buzzes you,” Diana says.
She eyes the smiley face on the coffee cup in my hand with more disapproval than I got from my mother in all my nineteen years.
“You’ll manage his calendar, coordinate with staff, and handle correspondence.
Do not enter his office without being summoned first. And do not make personal calls at your desk. Understand?”
I feel like I’ve just been bullied by a drill sergeant.
“Yes. Absolutely,” I reply, mustering as much confidence as I can in this place.
She leaves, and I set the coffee cup on my desk, staring at the tinted glass.
It’s gonna get cold. Then he’s going to hate me.
My phone buzzes. A text from Cassi: First day! Don’t trip! Are your tits staying in the shirt?
I angle my phone beneath my desk to respond: Barely. Pray for me.
The morning is a total disaster.
Nothing cataclysmic—like me accidentally calling the SWAT team in or something—but the quiet, humiliating kind of disaster where you realize just how unqualified you are for the job.
I put a call through to the wrong extension and accidentally connect a trader to the company’s cleaning service. Diana chewed me out for that one.
Then, when I’m trying to learn the calendar software, I accidentally delete a board meeting entry. Someone from tech support has to come and help me get it back.
I want to crawl under my desk and die.
A man named Marcus appears at eleven and leans against the edge of my desk and crosses his legs. He’s the company’s COO, which is apparently a very important position.
“How goes it?” he asks. He doesn’t care how it’s going.
“Oh, great,” I lie, nodding. “Just settling in, ya know?”
His eyes drop to the smiley-faced coffee cup, which I still haven’t delivered because I’m too afraid to knock on Dominic’s office door. It must be cold by now. “Is that for the boss?”
“Yep.”
“He’s been in there since seven. Hasn’t eaten. Hasn’t come out.” Marcus picks up the cup and examines the smiley face like it’s evidence in a court case. “You…drew on it.”
Oh, God. This is a nightmare.
“Yeah…it’s just a smiley face.”
He sets the cup back down. “Why haven’t you brought it to him? He buzzed you twenty minutes ago.”
My stomach plummets. “He did? I didn’t hear anything—”
“It’s a light.” He points to a small LED on the edge of my desk that is, in fact, glowing red. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t make him wait again.”
He walks away without another word.
My heart is ready to burst as I grab the coffee, smooth my Goodwill blouse, and walk over to the tinted glass door.
My reflection stares back at me—a girl in her friend’s borrowed heels, holding a cup with a smiley face on it, about to step into the office of a man whose net worth is more than the town I grew up in.
The door clicks automatically as I take hold of the handle.
Inside, Dominic Blackwood stands behind his desk, flanked by a wall of windows. The city sprawls behind him like he owns it. And knowing just how much he’s worth, he actually might.
“Close the door.”
I do as I’m told. My heart is hammering. The room smells of leather and designer cologne…and something else underneath. Something warm and alluring that might just be him.
“Sit.”
My body moves on reflex. I plonk down on the chair across from his desk and set the coffee in front of him. He looks at the smiley face, and something in his expression shifts, like a crack in concrete. But it’s gone in an instant.
“I apologize,” I blurt out. “I made some…mistakes this morning, and I know you’re going to fire me, but I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity.”
He stares at me.
“And I’m sorry for drawing on your coffee cup.”
Without breaking eye contact, he lifts the cup and drinks from it. It can’t be hot anymore. I wait for his eyes to narrow. For him to kill me.
But to my surprise, he doesn’t. He sets the cup down and almost smiles. “I’m not going to fire you, Hazel.”
Relief floods through me so fast my eyes start to water. “You’re not? Oh, thank God. Thank you, thank you.”
“But I do need to show you something.” He twists his monitor toward me and taps the screen. A document fills the display. Countless lines of legal language with my name at the bottom.
My signature.
The desperate, quickly-scrawled e-signature of a girl who didn’t read a word of what she was signing.
“You know what this is?” he asks.
“My contract?”
He looks briefly impressed. “Have you read it?”
Suddenly, I feel like the world’s biggest idiot. “Um, no. I didn’t read it.”
The corner of his lip twists up as he enlarges a section—two specific clauses that have been highlighted in yellow. I lean forward, and as I read them, the words seem to physically transform the structures of my brain.
Relief services…
Non-termination…
I read them again, thinking I might be hallucinating. But the words don’t change. Not even after reading them a third time.
My lips have gone dry. My hands start to tremble, so I stuff them between my knees and clamp tight.
I should probably run. Scream. Call the police, a lawyer, Cassi, anyone.
But instead, I just look up at Dominic. Really look at him for the first time since I stepped into his office.
He’s brutally handsome. His good looks are sharp but rugged, not like a fashion model or Hollywood star. His eyes are dark and carry the weight of power behind them.
I feel small before him, but in a good way. A way that has me buzzing inside.
He’s not smug or smirking. He’s not leaning back with the cocky confidence of a man who’s just cornered his prey.
In fact, like me, he’s barely breathing. His knuckles are white around the edge of his desk, and a vein is pulsing in his neck. His jaw is clenched so tightly I can see the muscles moving beneath his skin.
And his eyes are locked on me with something that doesn’t register as power.
It looks more like something I would never expect from a man like this. It looks like desperation.
The anxiety drains out of me. Not all of it but enough for something else to take its place. Something warm and fuzzy, like hot silk in my belly. It spreads out, heating my skin, causing my pulse to skip as my brain tries to process my new reality.
I can’t leave.
And he doesn’t want me just as his assistant. He wants more. A lot more.
“Why me?” I ask, my voice barely audible. “You could have any woman in the world. Why me?”
He lets go of his desk and comes around to me. He’s so tall that I feel like I’m looking up at a giant. His shoulders are broad, and beneath that thousand-dollar suit he’s wearing is a body painted with muscles.
I should feel tiny beneath him. But I don’t.
I feel found. I feel seen.
“When I first saw your face, Hazel,” he says, his voice raw and low, like he’s fighting to control himself, “I couldn’t breathe. And I haven’t been able to breathe since.”
He stops in front of my chair, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough that I can smell his cologne and that other scent—the scent that must be him. It enters my nose and lights me up like a drug.
I think about the smiley face on his cup and my borrowed shoes and the blouse that barely fits me. I think about the thirty-seven job applications that went nowhere. About how I’ve felt invisible for my entire life, ignored and looked over by other men.
But this man, the king of all kings, chose me.
I should be terrified. I know that. I can hear Cassi’s voice in my head telling me to get the hell out.
Instead, I rise from my chair. My legs are quivering, but they hold. I stand in front of him and lift my chin.
“Okay. Show me what you need.”