Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (75 page)

When Red emerged from his shower, towel
wrapped around his waist, hair slicked back, she wanted nothing more than for
him to throw her down on the bed and re-enact some of last night’s more memorable
moments.
 

Instead, she handed her phone to Red and
told him to replay the last message.

His expression grew troubled as he
listened.
 
When the message
finished, he handed the phone back to her.
 
“I have no idea who that is,” he said.
 

She wondered if he was lying to her.
 
The notion made her very uneasy, and she
dismissed it.
 
She was going to have
to trust him if they were to be married.
 
“Why would someone call me and say those things?” she said.
 
“How does he even know we’re together?”

Red shrugged.
 
“It could be anything.
 
I have a lot of people watching me, and
a lot of enemies.”

“Enemies?”
 
A chill ran up her spine.

He smiled at her innocence.
 
“Yes, enemies.
 
I run an enormous company that has ties
to foreign governments.
 
I have
investments in many different entities, some of which are controversial.”

“Such as?”

“A conversation for another time,” he
said, crossing to one of the closets and pulling out a suit wrapped in plastic,
as if he’d saved it for just such an occasion.

Nicole sat down heavily on the bed.
 
“I don’t know you at all.”

Red looked at her as he took the suit out
of the plastic.
 
“And I don’t know
all that much about you.
 
But I know
that I love you.”

“How can you say that when you barely
know a thing about me?”

“Because, I know your soul.
 
That’s the part I know best.”

Nicole smiled and her heartbeat sped up a
few beats.
 
“How do you know my
soul?”

“The first time I looked into your eyes,
I knew I’d found you.
 
A kindred
spirit.”
 
He rustled his suit.
 
“Unfortunately for us, the world of the
spirit is not always compatible with the world of the material.
 
I believe the immortal Sting once
eloquently said, ‘We are spirits, in the material world.’
 
As such, we still need to pay the bills,
so I need to get changed and ready for my day.
 
As do you.”
 
He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Okay, okay.”
 
She stood up.

They hadn’t discussed what she should do
about the strange man on her voicemail.
 
Red hadn’t seemed overly concerned about it.
 

In any case, Nicole decided to ignore the
stranger.
 
He could call her but she
wouldn’t call him back.
  

 
After they’d gotten dressed (she’d been
smart enough to pack a small overnight bag this time), Red drove them both to
Jameson International.

On the way, Nicole brought up what he’d
said earlier about her changing positions at the company.
 
“I don’t want to leave the creative
group,” she said, as he flipped radio stations, finally landing on some British
sounding person discussing the stock market.

Red swore as they hit traffic.
 
“How is it possible that we’re hitting
traffic at this time of morning?”

“Red, did you hear me?”

He glanced at her and pursed his lips
tightly.
 
“I liked it better when
you called me sir.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” he quipped.

“I’m not quitting my job,” she said,
tilting her chin proudly.

“I never said you should quit, but you’re
my fiancé now, and it’s not appropriate for you to work as an intern.
 
It’s not fitting, it’s a lowly position
and I won’t stand for it.”

“What would I be doing instead?”

“There’s a public relations position
that’s perfect for you.
 
You’d be
working directly under me,” he said, a glint in his eye.

“That’s kind of a big step up from being
an intern, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps it’s skipping a rung or three on
the ladder.”

Nicole shook her head.
 
“I don’t want special treatment.
 
Nobody will respect me if I get
preferential treatment as your girlfriend—I mean, fiancé.”

His hands tightened on the wheel.
 
“I’m starting to get annoyed, Nicole.”

“I haven’t earned that position,” she
snapped back.

He seethed for a moment, and luckily the
traffic broke so he could speed down the highway and let some of his anger out
on the road instead of her.
 
Finally, he appeared to have collected his thoughts.
 
“You’re not drawing a salary right now,”
he said, his voice even, if a little strained.
 
“Do you want to get an allowance from
me, instead of a decent wage and a job you can be proud of?”

He had a point there.
 
Her parents had cut her off financially
and she needed to make money.
 
Red
had billions at his disposal, but she didn’t simply want to glom on to him, it
wasn’t her style.

“I don’t know what to do about my money
situation,” she admitted.

“Good,” he said.
 
“I’m glad you’re seeing the light.
 
So you’ll take the PR job, and we’ll pay
you a very nice salary; something on the order of ninety-five to start.”

“Ninety-five what?”

“Ninety-five thousand a year.”

She guffawed.
 
“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s not a lot of money for New York
City,” he replied.

“Well, it’s too much.
 
And I’m not taking that job.”

“Then you’ll take an allowance.”

“No.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“I suppose I’ll keep working with the
creative group, but I’ll need to make a little money for it.
 
Just enough so that I can pay my few
bills and help Danielle out with rent.”

“Danielle.
 
Your old roommate?”

“My current roommate.”

Red breathed heavily through his
nostrils.
 
“You live with me now.”

“I’m going to have to give her some
money, at least a month’s rent to help out until she finds a replacement for
me.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he told her,
turning onto 5
^th
Avenue, where traffic was getting congested once
again.
 
He slowed to a crawl.

“I can’t let you do that, Red.”
 

“You’re being ridiculous, now.”
 
He glanced sideways at her.
 
“You don’t have any money, and I have
more than I know what to do with.”

“I can’t let you just take over
everything.
 
I need to still have
some kind of independence.
 
I need
to earn it.”

“Oh, you will,” he smirked.

“Not like that.”

“Fine,” he sighed.
 
“I suppose you’ll have to learn the hard
way then.”

“I always do.”

“I’ll speak with Edward this morning and
let him know that you’ll be added as a permanent member of his team.
 
You won’t be an intern anymore, you’ll
be Assistant to the Art Director, Remi Danvers.”

Nicole clapped her hands together.
 
“That’s perfect.
 
I love Remi.”

“How wonderful for you,” he said,
sarcastically.
 
“You’ll only make
about thirty-six thousand a year,” he told her.

“That’s too much.”

Now he was truly annoyed and it showed in
his voice.
 
“It’s the absolute
lowest salary for that position.
 
We
don’t pay any lower.”

“Oh.
 
Okay then.”
 
She was humbled,
realizing that she was negotiating with her fiancé, and also the CEO of the
company.
  

Red smiled ever so slightly.
 
“I think you might find that it would
have been better to come work for me,” he said.

“I love my team.”

“But after today, will they still love
you?
 
That’s the question.”

***

It was strange walking into the building
as Red Jameson’s fiancé.
 
She was
wearing a huge rock of an engagement ring, for one thing.
 
It was also bizarre to think that in a short
while she’d technically own half of this company.
 

Red had made it clear he wasn’t
interested in a prenuptial agreement—she would be his true other
half.
 

The knowledge made her both giddy and
frightened all at once.
 
She felt
powerful and dangerous and suddenly regal.
 
It was as if her spine had lengthened by two or three inches.
 
Now, when she walked down the hall to
her cubicle, she held her head high, smiled and nodded at the other employees
as they passed by her.

After grabbing a cup of coffee, Nicole
sat in her cube and got to work on Remi’s latest project. She’d finally
completed the dancing cowboy assignment and now it was onto bigger and
better—or at least different—tasks.

About two hours into her workday, she
received a rare email from Edward.
 
Usually she communicated with Glen or Remi, and almost never with
Edward.
 
This was an invite to the
Monday morning creative team meeting.
 
As an intern, she’d never attended it previously.
 

With butterflies fluttering in her
stomach, Nicole accepted the invitation.

An hour later, she made her way to the
conference room with its long, dark mahogany table and intimidating, black
leather chairs.
 
Everyone was
sitting there already, talking—and their voices died down when she came
in the room.

There were a few other faces present at
the meeting besides the usual cast of characters, people who worked with the
creative group that she wasn’t as familiar with.
 
An older, salt and pepper haired man
dressed in an impeccably fashionable suit.
 
And a gorgeous younger woman that seemed to be only a year or two older
than Nicole herself.

“Should I shut the door?” she squeaked,
all of her earlier confidence dissipating like early morning fog did when the
sun came up.

Edward nodded curtly.
 
Then he turned to Glen.
 
“So, now that the
whole team
is here, why don’t you start us off?” he said.
 

Was it her imagination, or did his
comment about the “whole team” being here sound slightly bitter?
 
She decided it was probably just her
imagination.
 
She didn’t even know
if Red had told him anything yet.

Nicole took a seat next to Remi and tried
to make eye contact with her friend and soon-to-be new boss, but Remi didn’t
even acknowledge her presence.
 
Maybe it was too early in the morning, or perhaps it was that things
were more formal in the meeting.

Nicole opened her notebook and held her
pen at the ready.

Glen blinked at everyone.
 
“There’s been a slight change to this
morning’s agenda,” he said.
 
“As you
may have noticed, we’ve got an addition to our weekly creative team meeting.”
 
He smiled tightly and blinked three
times, rapidly, as if using Morse code.
 
“Miss Nicole Masters,” he said, gesturing grandly toward her, “who, I
might add, has moved more quickly from intern to permanent placement than
anyone in the history of Jameson International.”

Nicole felt her cheeks burn hot as
everyone turned to look at her.
 
To
say the looks were less than friendly would have been an understatement.
 
Remi didn’t even move a muscle, her eyes
remained still and focused on Glen.
 

“Congratulations, Nicole,” Edward said
softly.
 
“Nicole will be the new
assistant to Remi Danvers, and we welcome her to the team.”

It sure doesn’t feel like a welcome,
Nicole thought.
 
“Thanks so much,”
she mumbled.

“Moving on,” Edward continued, and his
voice seemed to fade into the distance, replaced by a high pitched buzzing in
Nicole’s ears.
 
She tried to focus
on what he was saying, but she couldn’t.