Epilogue Two #3
She turns on her heel, her posture rigidly mimicking the professional standard I just demanded, and retreats. The heavy frosted-glass door clicks shut behind her, sealing me inside the quiet vacuum of my office.
I watch the blurred outline of her silhouette through the glass as she sinks into the ergonomic chair at the assistant’s desk.
The sheer, unmitigated nightmare of this arrangement settles over me like a lead weight.
Having the woman I spent six weeks obsessing over sitting exactly fifteen feet away from me for eight to ten hours a day isn’t just going to be a logistical challenge—it’s going to be a daily, excruciating test of my endurance.
My knuckles are white where I’m gripping the silver pen. I force my fingers to uncurl, setting the expensive metal down on the report with a sharp clack.
I take a breath, but it doesn’t help. The air in the room is still faintly laced with her perfume—citrus and something warm, a scent that instantly triggers a visceral tightening in my pants.
I close my eyes, cursing my own biology.
I’m a man who prides himself on absolute control.
I survived Kelsie’s calculated destruction, navigating the darkest, most treacherous waters of family court without ever letting the board see me sweat.
I rebuilt my life by systematically eliminating risk.
And yet, I let my guard down for one night in a hotel bar, and the universe promptly hand-delivered the liability right to my front door.
I reach for my mouse, pulling up the HR dossier Xavier sent that I hadn’t bothered to read. Just like her “thing” for not googling people, I tend to prefer meeting a person face-to-face before forming a first impression—the more fool me.
My eyes scan the document, searching for a flaw, a crack in the armor, a legitimate business reason to terminate her contract before lunch.
But the resume is bulletproof. Top of her class, glowing references, an impeccable administrative track record from New York.
Xavier doesn’t hire incompetence, and he certainly doesn’t extend offers to candidates who can’t back up their credentials.
If I fire her on day one, Xavier will demand a logical explanation.
I refuse to give him one. I will not admit to my founding partner that I slept with our new executive assistant, nor will I confess that the great Thomas Canning was foolish enough to fall for a fabricated persona.
It would make me look erratic, emotionally compromised, and worst of all, weak.
Then there’s the added complication of her being Dominic Cruz’s sister-in-law. I just signed a deal he funded to the tune of two hundred million. That man has enough influence and power to bury me if I go about this wrong.
My gaze drifts back to the frosted glass.
She’s moving, her shadow shifting as she organizes her workstation.
I remember those exact hands working my shaft.
I remember those soft lips wrapping around my cock.
I remember burying my face in the soft curve of her neck, inhaling the scent of her while she whimpered against my mouth, arching beneath me, moaning.
The urge to cross that glass divide and drag her back in here—press her face to the cold desktop and fuck her until she forgets every fake story she ever told—is nearly overwhelming.
Fuck.
My cock is throbbing hard, and I glance down at the tent in my tailored slacks with the kind of pure, seething hatred typically reserved for entrepreneurs who try and pitch me without a plan.
“Don’t even think about it,” I hiss under my breath, pressing my fingers against my closed eyes until I see stars.
I will my body to forget the heat of her thighs, the taste of her cunt, and the way she screamed for me while my hands were knotted in her hair.
I cycle through every tried-and-true, kill-switch mnemonic in my arsenal—gross margin in Q3, Kelsie’s lawyers, the soundtrack of my four-year-old nephew projectile vomiting in the back seat after his soccer game—but nothing kills it.
My dick is locked on target. Six weeks of fever-dream obsession, condensed into the soft, functionally perfect form of Hailey Pemberton, currently less than fifteen feet away from me.
This is a living nightmare.
Continue reading in The Billionaire Who Made Me
Hailey Pemberton has spent her whole life doing the work and watching somebody else sign it.
Thomas Canning respects exactly one thing: competence.
He's about to hire her, and he has no idea they've already met.
One gala. Three martinis. A hotel bar at the far end of a very bad night.
She gave him a name that wasn't hers. He never gave his at all.
Then she left at six in the morning with a note that said Stay mysterious, and called it the perfect crime.
Three interviews later she has the job of her life, three thousand miles from Queens.
Her new boss is the man from the bar.
Her new boss thinks she lied to him on purpose.
Some women finally get the credit. Some men finally run out of caution. And some perfect crimes end up having a due date…