Chapter 1
One
You need this job… You need this job… You NEED this job.
So here I was, waiting for the exact right time to enter my boss’s office …
I squinted at the clear plexiglass wall opposite my desk to do a quick scan of my appearance in its reflection.
Lucky mustard yellow cardigan correctly buttoned? Check.
Wrinkle-free, gray pencil skirt? Check.
Glasses on straight? I pushed my sensible black frames up my nose … check.
Makeup? Eh, not bad, especially considering how hard it was to match my unique shade of “too much time spent indoors” beige, which had only become more pronounced here in Scotland.
I’d made do as best I could with the MAC products my roommate, Tara, brought back from her last trip to London. So, sure … check.
Hair? Well, they say opposites attract. But thanks to the opposite types of kinky hair genes I’d inherited from my Jewish-by-way-of-New Zealand father and my Ghanaian-American mother, my coils kept battling for curl superiority—long after my totally opposite parents split up shortly before my birth.
The never-ending curl war on top of my head had resulted in a veritable nest of frizzy spirals that could only be governed by a triple regime of headband, ponytail holder, and products with aggressive adjectives like super, maximum, and extra before their brand names.
Even then, there was no guarantee a few of the curls wouldn’t mutiny by the end of the business day.
But for now, they were all contained and accounted for.
So, check, I guess.
My hair was what it was. Just like this job. Which I needed. Even if it meant reminding myself of that fact while standing like a dog outside Iain Scotswolf’s door at the butt-crack of dawn so I could walk in the second the clock struck four.
Speaking of which …
I glanced at the huge brushed-steel clock on the other side of my glass-encased workspace.
Oh no …
The short hand now sat completely on the four. But the long hand was now just a little past the top of the hour and the thin second hand was rushing past the 10 …
My heart thunked.
Like some kind of time-jumping horror movie, it had suddenly become just a few seconds short of 4:01 A.M.
I quickly reached out to open the do—
“Stop your dithering and get in here, Millicent!” a voice boomed on the other side of it.
Crap! Crap! Crap!
I rushed into the office suite as quickly as I could. There I found the infamous Iain Scotswolf standing behind a high, black standing desk with six widescreen monitors mounted on top of it
“Tardy!” he yelled out before I could even open my mouth to apologize.
My cheeks heated. Getting reprimanded by someone so handsome still flustered me, even though I knew … knew with every fiber of my being that Iain wasn’t the total dreamboat the local Scottish media made him out to be.
Sure, he was a brilliant coder who’d cleared a billion in product alone with the first version of his visionary AlgoFortune finance software—all before reaching the age of 25.
And okay, he was insanely good-looking. The genetic gods had graced him with thick black hair, a long patrician nose, and the kind of strong, square jaw you don’t see much on tech geniuses.
I’m sure he’d strike most women as a total catch—women who didn’t know him like I did.
To me though, he was nothing more than a foul-tempered, rude, and ridiculously demanding boss. At least, that was all he should be.
Gotta admit, even after three years under his extremely unpleasant employment, it remained hard not to stare at the man who looked like a modern-day Scottish male fantasy come to life.
From what I’d observed while working in Edinburgh’s main technology district, no Scottish guy with a nine-to-five office job wore kilts to work on a regular basis.
But Iain Scotswolf did. With a vest and blazer during the colder months, and a simple button-up shirt during the warmer months. And thanks to exceptional good looks and what appeared to be a generous helping of muscles beneath his unusual business attire, he pulled it off.
And then there was his accent.
Even before coming to Scotland as an intern, I had loved the Scottish accent.
The brogue-ier, the better. And Iain’s accent was especially delicious.
Deep and rich, with a gruff undertone. That voice of his had sent shivers up my spine when we first shook hands across his standing desk during my interview.
“Hello there, Millicent. I’m Iain Scotswolf,” he’d said with a huge smile. Like I’d already made his day just by walking into the room.
My heart, my mind—heck, my entire body—had warmed beneath the sun of that smile. And for a full five seconds, I’d thought I might have scored a dream job interview with an even dreamier boss.
But then his smile suddenly disappeared. Replaced by the cold, expressionless mask I’d come to know well over the next three years.
“We’ll be conducting the interview while standing,” he said instead of inviting me to sit. “That is my standard.”
That was how I discovered the first of Iain’s long, long list of standards. There were no chairs to be found anywhere in his office space because “sitting”—yes, sitting—wasn’t up to his standards.
And the interview had only gone downhill from there. He’d spent an entire hour basically lecturing me about the long list of things he wouldn’t abide, without letting me get a word in myself. And then—much to my shock—he’d hired me on the spot without bothering to ask me a single question.
“Tardiness, Millicent. By now I’d expect you to know that’s not up to my standards,” Iain said in the present, still clacking away at his computer.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, shooting him an apologetic look.
Not that he noticed. From the look of extreme concentration on his chiseled face, he was still knee-deep in the new algorithm he was drafting for next year’s AlgoFortune 4.0 product launch.
And instead of acknowledging my apology, he just barked, “Report!” rolling the second “r” hard.
“Okay, let’s see …” I pulled out my tablet and nudged my glasses back up my nose.
“Yesterday I received the first draft of the new pitch package and checked it over for errors. So that’s ready for you to look over.
Oh, and the business development team is requesting you get it back to them by Thursday—”
“Tell them they’ll bloody get it when they get it!
If their reports were up to my standard and not riddled with so many mistakes that my assistant was forced to do the first pass just so I can read the twaddle they come up with, then maybe—mebbe—they could start inquiring about deadlines.
Feckin’ wallopers, the lot of them—tell them that exactly. ”
“Okay …” I opened the email browser on my tablet and composed a polite note to the head of biz dev, letting him know Iain would look over the package at his earliest convenience.
I pressed “send” and then continued, “Your brother called. He and your father want to have lunch with you this Thursday.”
“Not possible. I’m swamped.”
I winced. “Your brother told me to tell you it was a command if you said no.”
Iain’s fingers paused on his keyboard, his clean-shaven jaw locking for a few irritated seconds before he grudgingly replied, “Fine, put them on the calendar. Tell them they’ve got forty-five minutes with me.
Not a minute more. I will not have my time wasted, and there’s a ton that needs doing before the long weekend. ”
Funny how Iain always caved to his brother’s demands no matter how much he had going on at work. Maybe it was because Magnus was his older brother? Having no siblings myself, I could only guess.
But without fail, whenever Magnus “commanded” my boss—the busiest and least accommodating man I’d ever met—Iain always acquiesced.
In any case, I made a note to send Magnus an email with Iain’s available times on Thursday, before moving on to the next item: “The speaker for tonight’s 30 Under 30 event had to drop out due to a family emergency. The organizers are wondering if you can take his place.”
“Last I checked, I’m thirty-one now.”
“Yes, but you won the award three years ago, so it would still be—”
“Got my Highland retreat tonight, too.”
Oh, this Highland retreat business again.
Once a month, Iain took a full night and day off to go on a “Highland retreat.” Which from what I could tell, was nothing more than him returning to the village where he grew up to go camping.
Most people would probably just call it a “mental health day,” but you know …
visionary genius and all. He always drove there directly after work and from the time he left until three o’clock the next day, he didn’t answer his phone or emails.
“Yes, I realize that, but they’re desperate. So, I told them I’d ask you—”
“You asked. Now you can tell them I cannae do it. Next!”
I glanced at my list and groaned inwardly. I hated going over Iain’s dating items. “Um … Caro Salzig’s assistant texted a few times since your date last weekend. Ms. Salzig is wondering if you’d like to go with her to the premiere of her new movie next Thursday.”
“Is that the one about the high-stakes heist in Monte Carlo?”
“No. It’s about the guy who goes home to Dublin for his father’s funeral. She plays the sister of the girlfriend he left behind—”
“Hard pass. But the Irish gal who plays the girlfriend …”
“Hmmm …” I racked my memory to come up with the name, “You mean Lisette Collier?”
“Aye, her. Put her on the calendar for this weekend.”
Hard pass. Put her on the calendar. All of these phrases were Iain’s way of telling me to blow off the actress voted last year’s Sexiest Woman in Britain for the one on this month’s cover of British Vogue.
By now, I had become used to doing just about all the work when it came to Iain’s love life.