The Boss's Orders: Alpha Male Billionaire Office Romance (3 page)

I
’m determined
to prove to William Godrich just how professional I am, and how completely unintimidated by him I am, so in the morning I put on my most severe work outfit — tight black pencil skirt, black suit jacket, office blue button-down — fully buttoned
up
, of course. A small string of pearls around my neck, and matching pearl studs in my ears. I could be on the cover of
Business Woman Weekly
, if there was such a thing.

Godrich and Associates is in the West High Tower building, down near the waterfront. When I arrive I stand outside for a moment, looking up at the skyscraper, my new workplace, and take a deep breath.

“You’ll do great,” I tell myself. “You’ve never been intimidated by a man before and you certainly aren’t intimidated by him.”

It’s a lie of course. I’m fucking terrified.

Still I bite my lip and ride the elevator up to the 39th floor.

When I tell the receptionist who I am, her eyebrows shoot up immediately. She tries to recover, but I’d heard the sharp intake of breath when I told her I was Mr. Godrich’s new personal secretary.

I want to question her on it — from one receptionist to another — but before I can, an HR rep is walking me down a long glass hallway to a small office where we’ll do paperwork and get my IT access set-up.

By the time I’m finally shown to Mr. Godrich’s office, almost a whole hour has gone by. My nerves are absolutely wrecked. Even though I’m dreading going in there and seeing him, I also just want to get it over with.

Grant, the HR rep, gets me set up at my office. My desk is in a small room through a door off the hallway, and then William Godrich’s door is inside my office. He’ll have to walk past my desk every time he comes and goes. Which I can appreciate is an ideal set-up for a boss and his secretary, but which does nothing to quell my nerves about the whole thing.

Maybe I should ask Grant if telecommuting is an option.

I look around my new workspace. No stuffy office furniture here — they have me set up with a beautiful white Parsons desk with a shiny new iMac sitting on top. Definitely an upgrade from my old set-up, I’ll give him that.

Unfortunately I can’t even appreciate it because I’m too busy sneaking peeks at Mr. Godrich’s closed office door. Grant sees me looking.

“He’s out for the morning. Won’t be back until after lunch.”

“Oh.” I relax a tiny bit, but I find that a small part of me is disappointed. “Is there anything I should work on in the meantime?”

“Oh, plenty. We’ve had temp secretaries in here for the past two or three months. None of them ever lasts more than a week so the filing system has all gone to shit. You also have to log Mr. Godrich’s expenses into the company expense system, and I don’t think anyone’s been doing that. The paper receipts should all be in the filing cabinet somewhere and email ones are saved in a folder on the shared drive.”

After he leaves I get to work. I’m glad to have stuff to do to take my mind off Mr. Godrich’s impending return, and especially stuff that I’m actually good at. The filing is indeed a complete mess and even though I work right through the morning, I barely get through half a drawer.

Eventually I decide to take a lunch, half hoping that Mr. Godrich will be back by the time I return and half hoping he won’t. I kill half an hour walking around down by the waterfront. The fresh air off the lake is enough to make me feel downright optimistic. Maybe this job won’t be so bad. Maybe I won’t even see him that often. Maybe I can do this.

I even stop a little market on way back to the office and buy a bunch of yellow tulips, my favorite, to set on my desk. That’s how optimistic I feel.

When I return to the office, Mr. Godrich still isn’t there, and that leaves me feeling even more cheerful. I set the flowers on my desk. With him out of the office, I can pretend this is just a normal job. I get back to my filing, humming to myself, and time passes.

“Who are you?”

I’m bent over, ass up in the air, rummaging through the very bottom drawer of the filing cabinet when I hear his voice.

That voice.

It sends shivers down my spine. I stand up quickly, embarrassed about being caught off guard, and I almost bang my head against the filing cabinet. I spin around quickly and almost turn over on my heel.

Off to another great start.

Mr. Godrich is standing on the other side of my desk. He glances at the tulips and then again at me. A slight recognition seems to dawn in his eyes. “Oh, it’s you.”

To my disappointment, he doesn’t sound thrilled to see me.

“Claire. Claire Hearst. Your new secretary,” I add, in case that part isn’t obvious from the fact that I’m standing behind the secretary’s desk, rummaging through the secretary’s filing cabinets.

His expression doesn’t change. “Right,” he says. “I hope you’re better than the other ones.”

“I hope so too,” I say earnestly.

He cracks a small smile. Well, he cracks what would be considered a small smile for normal people. On Mr. Godrich, I’m pretty sure it’s the equivalent of a full-on belly laugh. The man is nothing if not stone faced.

He stands there for a minute, watching me. I don’t really know what else to do so I go back to filing. Finally, he turns and goes into his office.

“I would like some coffee,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” I answer automatically, just before his door closes.

Shit. What kind of coffee does he take? Is there coffee here at the office or I’m supposed to go out? And if I go out, where do I go? Starbucks? Something fancier? Does he drink espresso or drip coffee?

Oh God, I don’t want to fuck this up. I grab my purse and hurry out towards the elevators. I’m hoping to ask the receptionist for the inside scoop but she’s nowhere to be seen.

An idea occurs to me. I run back to the office and go through the filing cabinet. Grant had said all the expense receipts got put in here. I flip through the file folders until I find one crammed haphazardly full of receipts and start rifling through them.

Bingo! There are dozens of receipts for Aroma Coffee. Always the same order — medium cappuccino and a blueberry oatbran muffin. The address on the receipt puts it two blocks south of here.

I race over there as fast as I can, fully aware that Mr. Godrich is not going to be very patient. I order his coffee and muffin and grab a couple of sugar and sweetener packets on my way out, just in case. I get myself a moccaccino and a ginger cookie too because, well, I could use the pick-me-up.

When I’m back in the office, I knock lightly on his door.

“What?” he barks.

I take that to mean come in, so I ease the door open. He glares at me from behind the desk, as if I’ve interrupted him from something terribly important.

I set his coffee down on his desk and he grunts. I tell myself that means
thank you
.

He takes a sip and grimaces. “You forgot the sugar. That’s very bad, Claire.”

I flush at his words, but I reach into my coat pocket and throw the sugar packets and a stir stick down on his desk. He looks bemused.

“Alright. Very good. Next time please put it
in
the coffee though.”

I stand there, wondering if I’m supposed to wait to be dismissed. He sets about stirring a single packet of raw sugar into his coffee and he doesn’t seem to be paying me any more attention, so I start to walk out.

Just before I reach the door, I remember the muffin.

“Oh, here you go,” I say, dropping it on his desk in front of him.

He peeks into the bag. He hesitates for a second, then looks up at me.

“You did very good, Claire.”

I can’t help but flush at his praise, even if it’s for something as stupid as getting his coffee order right. I’m embarrassed to admit that his words are like honey to me, coating my whole body in their liquid warmth.

“Thank you, sir,” I whisper, and then scurry out.

A
fter a couple of weeks
, I start to ease into my new role. Working for Mr. Godrich is stressful, but it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I feel like I’m mostly starting to get the hang of things. I manage his calls — which primarily means not putting any of them through to him — and handle his calendar. I’ve also gone through several months of neglected filing.

And I can’t deny that the bump in pay has been glorious. For the first time in months, I’m actually caught up on everything I owe to April and Vanessa. I no longer have to slink around my apartment like a criminal. Amazing what a difference that’s made to my home life.

I stare at the screen and remind myself of that generous paycheck as I try to figure out what’s going wrong with this stupid mail merge I have to do. Every time I try to sort it, it loses half the information, and it’s five thousand names long so sorting it manually isn’t an option.

I rub my eyes and try to Google a solution but I’m distracted by the ping of my instant messenger.

>
C
offee
.

T
hat’s it
. That’s all I get. When Mr. Godrich wants something, he usually doesn’t even bother talking to me. I get a one word instant message.

“Please,” I mutter to myself, rolling my eyes as I slip on my coat. Would it kill the man to say please? Actually, it might. He doesn’t seem like the type to beg.

He seems like the type to expect the begging to come for others.

A little shiver runs up my spine, and I pull my coat tighter. I’ve barely seen him over these past two weeks, since he stays holed up in his office most of the time. Unfortunately that hasn’t done anything to dampen my completely inappropriate feelings for him.

At Aroma I get him his usual cappuccino with one sugar, and a moccaccino and ginger cookie for myself. Hey, it’s on the company card. I deserve a little sugar.

I head back to the office and then knock gently on his door.

“Yes?” he says, sounding bothered, even though I’m bringing him the coffee
he
asked for.

I plaster on my best smile anyway and nudge the door open.

“Your coffee, sir.”

He grunts and doesn’t look up.

“You’re welcome,” I mutter under my breath as I turn to go.

“Excuse me?”

I freeze. Shit. I obviously hadn’t meant for him to hear that.

“Nothing, sir.”

He doesn’t say anything else. His eyes don’t even leave his computer screen. I wait for a moment but he seems to have forgotten all about me so I turn to leave.

“That’s one, Claire.”

I turn back. “One what?”

He finally looks up. His eyes lock onto mine.

“One warning. You won’t get another.”

His gaze burns into me, scorching every part of my body and leaving me feeling more exposed than if I was standing here naked. I could swear sparks are flying back and forth between us but I seem to be the only one reacting. Mr. Godrich is as stone-faced as ever.

After another few seconds of this he looks back at his computer screen. A rush of breath goes out of me.

“You may go.”

“Yes, sir.”

Just like that. Dismissed.

Back at my desk I try to go back to my mail merge, but my mind is elsewhere.

The hardest part of this job so far — well, other than this damn mail merge that’s giving me grey hairs — is Mr. Godrich himself. Those smouldering eyes, the way he barks orders at me — it makes it hard to concentrate on doing my job. He takes very few meetings here and most of the staff know not to bother him, so it’s usually just the two of us in here. He keeps the door to his office closed a lot, but even through the closed door it’s almost like I can feel him, radiating heat and masculine energy.

It’s highly distracting.

He hasn’t tried to do anything untoward with me — no strange rules, no sexual overtures, nothing like what I read about online.

There is a part of me — a teeny, tiny, minuscule part of me — that can’t help but be somewhat disappointed. That part of me wonders if maybe I just don’t turn him on the way those other women did. Maybe that’s why he hired me in the first place. Maybe he doesn’t
want
me coming in with no panties on.

I mean, not that I would if he asked. Just hypothetically speaking.

I can’t deal with this mail merge anymore, so I decide to do some mind-numbing filing for awhile. The half-assed filing system that was in place when I got here is no longer working, so I’ve started the long and tedious process of recategorizing everything. Soon I have file folders spread out all across my desk. I try to start sorting, but I keep forgetting which pile is which. I realize post-it notes would make this job much easier, but my desk is low on office supplies.

I hesitate for a second but then go and knock on Mr. Godrich’s door. He doesn’t answer so I knock again and finally hear a beleaguered “Yes?”

I look in on him. He’s sitting behind his desk and rubbing at his eyes, a gesture that, for a second, makes him look more like a little boy than a CEO.

“What?” he says, looking up at me.

“I need office supplies.”

“Like what?”

“Post-it notes. Highlighters. File folders.”

He stares blankly at me and I wonder if any of these words have any meaning for him.

“You know, post-it notes? Those little sticky papers that you can write notes on?”

He rolls his eyes. “Claire, I understand what a post-it note is. Actually…” He rummages around his desk for a minute and then pulls out a sad limp half-stack of post-its. “Here!” He looks strangely proud.

I frown. “They’re the yellow ones.”

“Of course they’re the yellow ones. Is that a problem?”

“Well, they’re basically the same color as the file folders. So it makes them hard to see.”

“I see. So you would prefer…?”

“The bright green ones. They’re my favorites.”

His mouth twitches into something almost like a smile. “I wasn’t aware one could have a favorite post-it.”

I blush as it dawns on me how stupid I sound to be standing here, talking about post-it colors with a man whose time is probably worth a thousand dollars a second or something.

“Can I just put some things on the company card?” I ask, wanting to get out of his office as quickly as possible now.

He looks surprised. “Of course. Claire, that card is yours. You don’t need to ask my permission. I trust you to know what you need to do your job.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I go back out to my desk and pull up the website of the office supply company. I go on the shopping spree of my organization-loving dreams, adding to my cart highlighters of every color, bright yellow in-and-out trays to put on my desk, a dozen purple pens, a mint green pen holder, and of course, lots and lots of bright green post-it notes.

Okay, so maybe working here isn’t so bad after all.

With a twinge of guilt I think of Kelly and my other colleagues from Prescott & Bailey who were let go. I feel guilty for enjoying my work here, especially when it was because of Mr. Godrich that they lost their jobs. And at the same time, I feel guilty for not being appreciative of my job, when I know most of them would probably kill to be in my position.

So, basically, guilt layered on top of guilt. A great feeling.

I open up my personal email and shoot an email off to Kelly, telling her I hope she’s doing well and that I’d love to get together with her for coffee sometime. It doesn’t completely assuage my guilt, but it helps a little.