Chapter 5
Damien
“Brenda!” I call out from the doorway of my office.
I should never have to yell for my assistant.
In fact, I should never have to leave my chair.
She should know my needs before I do. She should be studying my schedule and the goings-on of the place so that I don’t have to lift so many fingers just to ensure that my hotels are running the way they should be.
And yet here I am, barking down the hallway, turning every head, showing everyone that works for me that I hired someone incompetent. She’s making me look bad. That alone is reason enough to send her packing.
“Jesus, did the intercoms go out?”
I whip around to see Diego, my best friend and right-hand man, standing in the doorway of his office, which unfortunately is located right across from mine. He also has his signature shit-eating grin spread across his spray-tan face.
“I’m trying to find my fucking assistant,” I bark out as I rake a hand through my hair.
“Well, first of all, her name is Bernadette, not Brenda,” he points out.
“Well, the way I go through them–”
He nods, rolling a toothpick in his mouth. “It really is like toilet paper.”
“Yeah, well this one’s gone too,” I say. “Why the fuck is it so hard to find good help? It’s not like I ask a lot.”
I walk back into my office, and Diego follows.
“Oh no, you don’t ask much at all. Just five foot three, nice ass, good rack, but enough brain cells to predict your every move before you even wake up in the morning.
Hotel industry experience, but not so much that she aspires to climb any further on the corporate ladder than the step below you.
Oh, and not to mention the extracurricular itinerary.
Which in itself requires no less than falling from heaven with a few years of experience in hell status…
you know, to keep it interesting,” Diego says with a wink and a smile.
“I’m glad you find my frustration amusing. You have an assistant,” I point out as I slam things around on my desk. I haven’t had coffee, which is notably half of my problem. That isn’t Diego’s problem. It is, however, Brenda’s problem. Brenda? Bernadette? What the fuck ever.
“I do, and she’s great. You know why?”
“Because she swallows?” I ask.
“No. I mean, she does. But no, she’s a good assistant because I don’t expect her to be perfect.
She shows up, she does the things I ask, and she’s great in the after hours.
I’m not looking for the do it all Barbie.
I have five requirements: Get here before me.
Only make eye contact with me. Make sure lunch is on my desk at eleven thirty every day.
Don’t tell me jack shit about her personal life, and never wear any perfume that is cucumber based.
Because fuck that. You, on the other hand, are looking for a unicorn. ”
“Yeah well, I have higher standards than you, clearly,” I say as I sit down and open my laptop.
The assistant job isn’t one I list on public job sites.
It’s more of an inquiry from within sort of thing.
There are also a lot of allusive clauses around the ‘all inclusive’ part of it.
Again, it’s not something I can just list. Even Sin City has a certain amount of morals. Or the facade of them anyhow.
“What you are looking for, you aren’t going to find,” he says, sitting down in the chair in front of me and kicking his feet casually up on my desk. “Because it doesn’t exist.”
“Perfection exists,” I tell him. “I’ve had it.”
Diego snorts out a laugh as he tosses his empty coffee cup at my waste bin and misses. “Lies.”
“Six years ago,” I tell him.
“Six years—ah yes. Your one and done lady of the night. Masked and manipulated,” he muses.
“I didn’t manipulate her. She didn’t do anything she didn’t want to,” I snap.
“I know, I know,” he holds his hands halfway up in mock defense.
“But she was cornered by Dylan fucking Decker. She was a damsel in distress at that point, and you dropped in like the Phantom of the Night and whisked her away. That was well played, by the way. My only criticism is that you didn’t get a number. Or even a name.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that,” I admit.
In my defense, I truly wasn’t. That woman from six years ago was so bewitching, so mesmerizing, so fucking surreal, that by the time we fell from the clouds and drifted back to Earth, I was incapable of anything but running away.
No one, and I mean no one, has ever knocked me off my game like that nameless masked woman.
And I sure as fuck haven’t had anyone like her since.
“No, you were too busy falling for her.”
I smack his feet off my desk. “Fucking shut it,” I warn him. “I didn’t fall for anyone. You know that’s not how I am.”
Diego’s phone buzzes, and he sits up. “Alright, alright. So you weren’t into her. It wasn’t fate. You didn’t miss your one in a million. Fine. But either way, you’re going to have to find another assistant. And for that, I say Godspeed. Because you, Damien Graves, are impossible.”
My friend makes his way out of the office, and I sit with a cold stare.
I am aware that I am picky. But I am also the proprietor of two of Las Vegas’ most prestigious hotels.
Not to mention, one of Sin City’s hottest gentleman’s clubs.
A good assistant who understands her job and can switch her role at the drop of her panties is a must. I don’t give a shit what Diego says. I will find her. Whoever she is.
“So are you going to call me or do I call–”
“We’ll let you know,” I cut the red head girl off and as she pigeon-toes her way out of my office with her red hair in a messy bun I literally don’t understand how she even made it to the interview line up.
Whoever is vetting these people is fired.
Jesus. My staff are dropping like fucking flies.
But seriously…the criteria isn’t that complicated.
I wipe my hands down my face before spinning my chair around.
I stand up and walk over to the liquor cabinet.
It’s only nine thirty, and I already need a drink.
That’s what happens when you sit through two hours of grueling interviews where every girl is either too nervous, too bitchy, too unprepared or, honestly, too fucking clueless to meet the requirements of the position.
For a moment, just one tiny tick of a moment, I wonder if Diego is right. Maybe I am looking for a unicorn. But you know what? If a unicorn is what I need, a unicorn is what I’m going to fucking get.
“Sorry I’m late,” the voice catches me off guard enough that I almost spill my drink down the front of my button-down. I grit my jaw and whip around.
“Hasn’t anyone told you not to enter a room until you’re…” I stop. Because the girl standing in front of me seems to have messed with the otherwise smooth-running control panel that is my working brain.
Five foot five. Three if she’s not wearing heels.
Heart-shaped face.
Perfect lips.
Perfect widows peak.
Blond hair that even from five feet away smells like flowers.
Flushed cheeks.
Curves like honey with a waist small enough I could just about wrap my hands around her.
“Invited in.” I finish my sentence, but the word kind of just falls on the floor like a dropped ball.
“I’m sorry,” she says for the second time. Her feminine, feathery voice goes straight to my head. “Would you like me to go back out again?”
“No,” I shake my head. “Sit.”
She does, and I swallow hard.
Gorgeous and obedient. I don’t have a five-check box list like Diego, but if I did, she’s two for zip.
“Annelise?” I ask, looking at the first line of her resume that is open on my computer.
“Yes. But I go by–”
“I don’t care for nicknames,” I cut her off. I shut my laptop. “When can you start?”
“I…” she looks around, her cheeks flushing, and she smiles a little. My chest tightens. “Aren’t you going to interview me?”
I hold my hands out, palms open. “What do you think I’m doing?” I ask.
She studies me. This is when most girls would start to stutter. To fumble. To fuck up. But instead, she bites her lip and brushes a blond lock behind a perfect ear. “Okay. I just assumed you’d want to know something about me.”
Hmm, no backing down. No second guessing. I don’t hate that. Any girl who wants to last as my assistant has to have a spine. Until that spine is horizontal on my bed of course. In that case, talking back will have consequences.
“How about you tell me what you think I need to know about you?” I say, flipping the tables. Again, this is where the dumb ones would be filtered out. I’d learn about hobbies and personal problems while getting an unnecessary earful about multitasking, fast learner, and customer service qualities.
As if my assistants are ever permitted to deal with customer affairs.
“How do you like your coffee?” she asks, and for a moment, I am the one who is speechless.
“Americano. Two raw sugar packets.”
“What time?” she asks.
“I walk through that door at 6:52 every morning. No exceptions, no holidays,” I answer.
“So, six fifty on a coaster, on your desk,” she says. “Do you prefer your schedule in hard copy or email?” she asks.
“Email.”
“Calendar or bulleted?”
“Bulleted daily.”
“How do you want to be addressed?” she asks.
“Mr. Graves. Both day and night shifts.”
Except in the bedroom when I will be called Sir, Damien, or Daddy…
I stare at her. And she stares back. “I have worked in hotels before,” she tells me while sitting up straight in her pink button-down shirt that she has tucked into heather gray dress pants.
I want to untuck them. I also want to tell her that I’d prefer my assistants don’t dress like Hillary Clinton, but that kind of feels like a dick thing to say.
Not that I care. Instead, I just listen.
“I don’t mean front desk or waitstaff and certainly not cleaning staff.
I mean I have worked high up in customer relations and event management.
I am qualified for this job. If anything,” she laughs lightly.
“If anything, I am overqualified for this job. I want this job because I am tired of waiting tables and answering phones and–”
“Annelise,” I cut her off.
“I prefer when people call me–”
“I already told you that you got the job,” I reiterate as I turn my pen in my hand, clicking it on my desk.
“On what premise?” she asks. “You haven’t even–”
I lean in, piercing her eyes with mine. “On the premise that this is my hotel and I need an all-inclusive assistant and I want to hire you.”
Annelise swallows and looks around the room with a nod. “Okay. Yeah. I got the job.”
“Yes,” I tell her. “So let’s go over the benefits,” I say as I get up from my chair, walking towards the door to close it.
“Benefits. Right. God, I have missed benefits. Do you know what it’s like to go from having full health coverage to state? It’s a nightmare. And don’t get me started on dental.”
“I’m not talking about healthcare,” I tell her as I walk over by the window, looking down over the city. “Though you will have coverage, don’t worry about that.”
“So…if it’s not healthcare…what kind of benefits are you talking about?” she asks.
Here we go. This is always the make-or-break part of the interview. Because women are either going to call me insane and sick (exact words from the past) or they’re going to sign the contract.
“Everything you mentioned before the coffee and the scheduling and predicting what I need in this hotel before I even need it. Those are obviously ideal characteristics of what I am looking for, but I also own The Opal Room, as I’m sure you know.”
“The Opal Room?” she echoes as her cheeks flush and my dick hardens in my slacks. “Isn’t that the ahh…the strip–”
“It’s a gentleman’s club, yes. There is dancing, a bar, and the Velvet Lounge,” I say as I walk over to her. I grab her swivel chair and turn her to face me as I lean against the front of my desk, forcing her to look up at me through her lashes. “Do you know anything about the Velvet Lounge?”
I watch her soft throat rise and fall as she swallows. “I know people go there…to have sex. Publicly.”
“Sex. Drinks. Just enjoying each other’s company really in a private, sexy environment,” I tell her.
“And you want…you need…an assistant to work there with you too?” she stutters.
“Not work. I want to be accompanied. You see, Annelise, I am looking for someone who can take care of all of my needs, not just the ones pertaining to the hotel. There will of course be a consent form with all the details. Nothing is ever forced. Anything we do or don’t do will be your choice. And we can go over that.”
She shakes her head, and I clench my jaw.
“No,” she says.
“No?” I ask.
“No. I…I’ve never heard of such a job. I mean…sex? The all-inclusive part…is…sex?” she asks.
“Among other things,” I tell her.
Annelise stands up. “I don’t know. This is…a lot. You get that, don’t you? That this is…not what I was…I’m sorry, I don’t know.” She grabs her things and heads for the door.
“So that’s it?” I ask. “You don’t want the job.”
Annelise stops right in front of the door. “I want the job. I just…I need to think about it.”
And just like that, she’s gone. I’m not going to lie.
I’m pissed. She’s perfect for the job, even if she does correct me.
Even if she talks back and calls me out.
She’s not respectful. She’s overly confident.
And…I want her. I want her for this job, and I’m going to have her.
One way or another, Annelise is going to take this job.
And while I can’t force her to accept it, I can persuade her. And that’s what I intend to do.