Neglected Wife of a Billionaire Husband

Prologue

Harry

The woman sitting across from me has been talking for six minutes, and I stopped listening four minutes ago.

She’s qualified, the way they’re all qualified, with a fancy degree, three years at a big firm and excellent references. She’s also terrified of me, which means she’ll say yes to everything I ask and never tell me when I’m wrong.

I’ve fired four assistants this year. The first one cried when I raised my voice. The second one couldn’t keep up with my schedule. The third one stared at my bank account instead of her work. The fourth one tried to sleep with me, which might have worked if I’d found her even remotely interesting.

I don’t do relationships, I do transactions. There’s a different woman every week, always beautiful, always forgettable and always gone before breakfast, and it’s cleaner that way.

“Mr. Winslow?” The woman across from me is blinking. “Did you have any other questions?”

I check my watch. “No. We’ll be in touch.”

She knows what that means, because they always do. She gathers her bag and her perfectly organized portfolio and walks out without looking back, and I’m already thinking about the report I need to read before my two o’clock.

My door opens again.

“Your next interview is here,” my temp says. “Jules Rivers.”

“Send her in.”

I don’t look up from my laptop. I’m reading through a deal that’s been eating my time for months, and whoever Jules Rivers is, she’ll be exactly like the last one.

The door closes, and ten seconds pass, and then twenty. There’s no throat clearing, no nervous shifting and no desperate attempt to fill the silence with small talk.

When I look up, she’s already sitting down.

She’s tall, with black hair pulled back in a low ponytail and brown eyes that are looking directly at me without a flicker of intimidation.

Her blazer has a loose thread on the cuff and her heels have seen better days, but she sits in that chair with her back straight and her eyes on mine, and I get the feeling she’s the one conducting this interview.

“Jules Rivers,” she says. “You’re Harry Winslow.”

It’s not a question.

“I am.”

“Good. I’d hate to be in the wrong office.”

She doesn’t smile when she says it, and she isn’t trying to charm me. She’s just stating a fact, and I close my laptop.

“Tell me about yourself.”

“My resume covers the basics. I graduated top of my class about a year ago, I’ve been doing administrative work since, and I type ninety words a minute. What do you actually want to know?”

Nobody talks to me this way. I’ve made grown men sweat across a table, and this woman is looking at me the way you’d look at a math problem you haven’t decided is worth solving.

“Why do you want this job?”

“Because you need someone who isn’t afraid of you, and I’m not.”

“What makes you think I need that?”

“You’ve fired four assistants this year. Either you have terrible judgment, which your business record suggests isn’t true, or you keep hiring people who can’t handle you. I can handle you.”

I lean back in my chair. “You’re very confident for someone who needs a job.”

“I don’t need this job. I want it.”

She’s not beautiful in the way I’m used to.

The women I take to dinner are polished within an inch of their lives, all sharp cheekbones and designer clothes and practiced laughs.

This woman looks like she got dressed in a hurry and didn’t bother checking a mirror, and there’s a smudge on her collar that might be coffee. I can’t stop looking at her.

I should end this interview. She’s too blunt, too direct, and far too likely to tell me when I’m being an asshole.

“Page fourteen of your annual report has a mistake in it,” she says.

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“The one on the table in the lobby, the display copy. Page fourteen, third paragraph. There’s a decimal in the wrong place, and it throws everything after it off by about six million.”

“You read my annual report in the lobby on your way to this interview.”

“I had a few minutes. I like numbers.”

She’s not bragging, and she’s not trying to impress me. She spotted a six million dollar error in a document my entire staff signed off on, and she’s telling me about it the same way she’d tell me my shoe is untied.

My chest goes tight in a way I don’t recognize and don’t particularly want to examine.

“You’re hired,” I hear myself say.

Her expression doesn’t change. “You haven’t asked me about my salary requirements.”

“I don’t care about your salary requirements. Name a number and I’ll pay it.”

“That’s not how negotiations work.”

“It is when I’ve already decided I want you.”

The words come out before I can stop them, and neither of us pretends they’re only about the job.

She tilts her head and studies me.

“You’re not what I expected,” she says.

“Neither are you.”

We look at each other for a long moment. I’m aware, suddenly, that my heart is beating faster than it should, that my palms are sweating, and that I’m sitting up straighter in my chair to impress a girl I met three minutes ago.

“I’ll take the job,” she says. “But I have conditions.”

“Name them.”

“I don’t work weekends unless it’s a genuine emergency. I don’t fetch coffee. And I don’t tolerate being yelled at.”

“I yell.”

“Then you’ll learn to stop.”

She says it with the confidence of someone who’s already won this negotiation and is just waiting for me to catch up.

I should be annoyed. I should tell her that I’m the boss and I’ll yell whenever I damn well please. I’m fighting the urge to smile.

“Fine,” I say. “No weekends, no coffee, no yelling. Anything else?”

“That’s all for now.” She stands, and I stand too, which I never do. “I’ll see you Monday, Mr. Winslow.”

“Harry.”

“Mr. Winslow.” She extends her hand, and when I take it her grip is firm and warm, and it sends a jolt up my arm that I feel in my teeth. “Until Monday.”

She turns to leave, and I hear myself say, “Have dinner with me.”

She stops and turns back.

“Excuse me?”

“Dinner, tonight. There’s a place I know that does incredible pasta.”

“You just hired me.”

“I did.”

“I don’t date my boss.”

“I could fire you.”

The words come out wrong, too eager and too desperate, and I watch her expression shift into disappointment.

“I also don’t do casual,” she says. “I’ve seen the tabloids. A different woman every week. I’m not interested in being next week’s photograph.”

“That’s not…”

“Thank you for the job, Mr. Winslow. I’ll see you Monday.”

She walks out before I can come up with an answer, and I stand there for a full minute, staring at the door.

My phone buzzes with a reminder about my date tonight. She’s a model, blonde and forgettable, and I’ve already forgotten her name.

I cancel it from the elevator before Jules Rivers has reached the lobby, and I never call another woman again.

***

For four months I work beside her, watching her roll her eyes at my moods and listening to her tell me when I’m wrong.

She steals my coffee when hers goes cold, she laughs at my jokes and then pretends she didn’t, and her hand brushes mine when she passes me a document.

I want her so badly I can barely function.

I ask her to dinner once a week, and she says no once a week. I send her flowers, and she donates them to the reception desk. I offer to fly her to Paris for the weekend, and she tells me I’m being ridiculous and goes back to typing.

She’s impossible and she’s perfect, and she’s the first woman who has ever made me want a thing I can’t buy.

On a Tuesday in November, four months and three days after I hired her, she walks into my office with a stack of contracts and stops halfway to my desk.

“What?” I ask.

“You look terrible.”

“Thank you for that professional assessment.”

“When did you last sleep?”

“I don’t know. What day is it?”

She sets the contracts down and crosses her arms. “It’s Tuesday. You were here when I left at nine last night, and you’re wearing the same shirt.”

“I had work to do.”

“You have people for that.”

“I don’t trust people.”

“You trust me.”

She says it with total confidence, and the thing is, she’s right. At some point in the last four months, Jules Rivers became the only person in my life I actually trust.

“Go home,” she says. “Sleep. I’ll handle your three o’clock.”

“You can’t handle my three o’clock. The guy is an asshole.”

“Then I’ll handle him being an asshole. Go.”

I should argue. I sign her paychecks, and the decisions around here are supposed to be mine. But she’s looking at me with those brown eyes, and I’m so tired I can barely see straight, and when she takes my arm and steers me toward the door, I let her.

“One condition,” I say.

“You’re not in a position to negotiate.”

“Dinner, when I wake up. Say yes.”

She’s quiet for a long moment. Her hand is still on my arm, warm through my sleeve, and I’m aware of every point of contact.

“One dinner,” she says finally. “That’s all.”

“That’s all I’m asking for.”

It’s a lie, because I’m asking for everything, and I’m asking for the rest of my life.

It takes me four months to get her to dinner, and I knew before she left that interview that I was going to marry this woman.