Hailee
I don’t know how to tell Alex I’m going back to New York early. I don’t know if I even can. I agreed to come out here after all.
Yet even now, I don’t know how much of a choice I truly had. Would Alex have been okay with me staying in the mansion all by myself?
Probably not. He was just being polite when he asked my opinion.
Why would I have said no when the alternative was working the rest of the week?
But now I feel trapped. It was my fault. I’d seduced him . Technically.
The problem is, I’m going to blush and stutter when I see him. I don’t want to spend the next few days reading books all day when my insides feel leaden with anxiety. I can’t read when I feel like this anyway.
So back to New York. Back to our separate floors. Alex is going to resent me for the temptation I present, and I don’t blame him.
I haven’t done a good job of not tempting him, and I haven’t been punished for grabbing his cock yet. I feel like that’s coming, and not in a fun spanking in front of an open fireplace kind of way.
It’ll be more like getting grunt duties at work and being given the cold shoulder for the next few weeks.
I’m mad at myself and Alex and every decision I’ve made up to this point. I’m not sticking around for awkward dinners and nodded greetings.
Besides, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to a bar and finding the first guy who’s handsome and has good hygiene, and I’m taking him back to my apartment. I don’t even care if he’s a happy-go-lucky golden retriever of a man who has zero interest in anything outside of golf and fantasy football.
I’m getting laid.
I’m done with life as a nun.
I’m sure it’s just my standards that are torturing me. I can’t be that unlucky with men.
I use this walk to gather my wits and my courage. I’m telling Alex I’m leaving, and I don’t need him to call me a helicopter. I have money for an expensive taxi to Boston and an old college friend there. I could stay with her for the weekend and not have this trip be a total loss.
It’s hard to plot my thoughts for long. It’s about twice as windy as it was yesterday, and I’m freezing my ass off. Wasn’t it supposed to be warm today?
The cold gives me energy.
I turn on my heel and start back towards the house. I come into the kitchen to see Alex freshly showered and drinking a steaming cup of coffee. He’s in a plain white T-shirt and blue jeans, looking like a damn Abercrombie model.
It’s a good thing he has his back to me, or I would’ve had to stutter as I gained my composure. He turns, and I take a deep breath to ready my speech, but in the second it takes to breathe, he beats me to talking.
“Good morning. Would you like some coffee?”
I look at the pot. I expected him to have some five-thousand-dollar espresso machine that reports you to the police if you don’t use beans from Sumatra, but he’s brewing with a Mr. Coffee.
Billionaires: just like us.
“Yeah, I’ll take a cup.”
He grabs a mug, and I try to find the words again.
“Cream and sugar?”
“Just cream’s fine,” I say, again preferring both but wanting to be easy. Why not make the man open the sugar jar?
“You and I need to learn to get along,” Alex says as he stirs my coffee and hands the mug over.
I swallow my planned speech about leaving.
“If we’re going to be living together, I don’t want us sitting in silence. We can be friends, regardless of this morning.”
This morning. Alex’s tone is all business. “I agree,” I say all sing songy and then try to be cute. “What morning?”
It doesn’t land. Alex just gives a little nod. “We’re going out today. I want you ready by ten.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“And don’t worry about a change of clothes. I’ve got one for you.”
I’m trying to hide my bewilderment. I don’t care about going back to New York anymore. The whole walk back here, I figured Alex was prepared not to give me the time of day. But now he wants to spend the day together? We’re on the same page. He thought the whole acting like strangers in the same house approach sounded shitty, too.
Okay. This is good. We can be adults while the storm passes. “So where are we going?” I ask.
He nods towards the east while taking a sip of his coffee. “To sea. Don’t worry. It’s going to warm up.”
I’m picturing some mega-yacht coming into view from around the cove. I guess that sounds fun. Cruising along. The North Atlantic is too choppy to jet ski anyway. “Okay.”
“Great. And we’ve got the all-clear. The truck was just some fisherman after all. I can take the bedroom downstairs tonight. The master’s all yours.”
“Oh—” I’m about to protest but stop myself. “Okay, thank you, Alex.”
“Help yourself to whatever you like for breakfast. Kitchen’s yours,” he says and takes his coffee upstairs.
I don’t know what to do for nearly the next hour. It’s not until Alex is gone and I’m alone in the kitchen that I realize I’m excited.
It’s a foolish feeling. Alex and I aren’t going to ignore each other. We’re going to be friends. Or attempt to be.
I make a yogurt bowl from ingredients in the fridge and eat it cross-legged in a comfy leather chair in the den, looking at the ocean. Alana and Sophia have been texting me for updates, so I send a picture of my yogurt and the view.
This isn’t the kind of thing I’d post on social media. Breakfast, that is. And besides, I have a feeling that Alex wouldn’t be happy with me posting my location at his property. I don’t care if I found out he has a heart last night. I still don’t plan on pissing him off.
I’m not surprised when my friends respond in seconds.
Sophia: Oh my God. Is it actually a cottage and not a castle???
Alana: Where’s tall, dark, and scary? & why do I feel like you’re not wearing any clothes…
We text until they both have to get to work. I decide to leave out the part where Alex and I accidentally shared a bed. But I still get teased plenty for mentioning we’ll be spending our day on the water.
They’re both certain it’s a date. I tell them I thought they were better than believing those rumors, but apparently, they’ve spread like wildfire.
One Google search of my name brings up a dozen speculative articles now. The charity drive I organized to clean up the dirtiest ten-mile stretch of the James River in Virginia my senior year is now on page two of Google.
Page two. The Siberia of the internet.
My good deeds and LinkedIn account might as well have been sent to the moon.
This isn’t good. I was too relaxed about this previously. The world isn’t fond of women who sleep with their bosses.
Alana texts me that there are rumblings that Alex should face an ethics panel. But the gossip journalists have dug up Blackwell Mining’s code of conduct and found that dating an employee doesn’t violate company policy.
That’s good, right? Or does the fact that it’s not policy make Alex look worse?
This is suddenly a problem. I don’t know why I didn’t think this would spread like wildfire. Alex had been with plenty of women in the past and it wasn’t picked up by the press. It’s the money-laundering story and the fact that I work for him.
I almost feel sick. I can picture the disdain on hiring managers’ faces during interviews. Alex is so handsome that I don’t see how I could be faulted for leaving a shitty job in sustainability for a tryst with a billionaire, but some people like to be judgmental of what they can’t do themselves.
I need to talk to Alex about this. Now that he wants to be friendly, I’m not going to be so much of a wuss confronting him about things. I march up the stairs, but my heart still goes into my throat.
I find him in the little study. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s leaning against the wall. It looks like he was gazing out the window before he heard me coming.
“We need to talk about the news.”
“What about it?”
“The part where they think we’re seeing each other. It needs to stop. Can’t we clear the air, put out a statement that you’re friends with my brother?”
“What good would that do? They don’t care if we’re dating or not if this is getting them clicks.”
“I’m just… worried about my career. This doesn’t look great for me.”
“I can always get you a new—”
“I know. You can hook me up with a job anywhere in the world. But what if I don’t want that? What if I want to get a job of my own accord with my own resume? And not something that I’m hand selected for just because I know someone.”
“I hate to break it to you, , but ninety-nine percent of the best jobs in the world go to people who know a guy. When you’re one resume in the stack of thousands, you never win.”
He has a point. The longer I’ve spent in the corporate jungle, the more I’ve realized the game is rigged.
Unless you want to work ninety-hour weeks for five years. Even then you better still be going to happy hours to rub shoulders with the right people. I still think it’s fair that I don’t like the optics of dating the CEO of my company.
“I’ll tell you what,” Alex says. “We won’t be caught in public together again. We’ll let the story sink.”
I nod, but something about that sounds worse. “But then people will just think I slept with you.”
“Yeah…” Alex says, like this is obvious.
“Isn’t that worse than dating? Think about the story. It would be a lot more forgivable if we had a relationship. If we did couple things.” I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth. “Otherwise, I’m just the harlot who spread her legs for a Versace dress.”
Alex is shaking his head. “Let’s not complicate things.”
“Fire me.”
“What?”
“Fire me right now, and until Lucas gets back from San Francisco, when the cameras are on us, we hold hands. That’s it. If we do that, I go from office slut to star-crossed lover.”
Alex glares at me. You’d think I asked him to give up sex and eating red meat. “And what would we tell your brother?”
“Exactly this. The truth.”
He’s quiet as he mulls it over.
“Just hold my hand. You don’t even have to comment on a relationship.”
“I hate holding hands.”
“You did it last night.”
“That was different. You were in danger.”
“I’m not asking much.”
Alex sighs. “Alright.”
“You’ll do it?”
“You’re terminated, effective immediately. I’ll have HR email you the paperwork.”
I feel like I just escaped my cinder block boots after the mob dumped me in Lake Tahoe. I step forward, feeling light as a feather, and give him a hug. I don’t realize what I’m doing. He holds both his arms out in surprise before he pats me paternally on the back.
My arms are around his shoulders, and there’s nothing squishy about Alex. He’s all hard muscles. I snap to and lean back. “Thanks, Alex.”
“No problem, rabbit.”
Alex is doing me a favor. I almost feel bad. He was already helping Lucas with his paranoia. Then again, if Alex didn’t want to be in this situation, he shouldn’t have brought me to that fundraiser on his arm. Besides, how big of an ask is it, really?
We’re just going to be holding hands.