CHAPTER 3
The last day and a half of moping around my apartment had been torturous. With nothing but worry and time on my hands, I’d started reliving some pretty crappy memories, including that fateful day seven years ago when I found out the truth about my father and how he wasn’t an absentee father who gave up his jet-setting career in order to see us every day. No, he was a poor excuse for a man who abandoned his first family and took no responsibility for the woman who overdosed in his presence. This led to thinking about my relationship with my mom and about how shit things were before she died. None of those were things I wanted to remember, so I spent most of my time going over and over my accounts trying to figure out a way to stretch the savings I had. I could get by, living in my apartment without a well-paying job, for six months. This meant eventually giving up the apartment was inevitable.
Accounting was so depressing.
I lounged, legs dangling over the arm of my big comfy armchair that probably wouldn’t fit into the kind of apartment I’d have to move to if Benito didn’t hire me back, and I sipped at my Cherry Coke while Bing Crosby sang out “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” from my speakers.
“You sing it, Bing.” I raised my glass in the air in a gesture of solidarity and nearly spilled my soda as the much louder sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing “Johnny 99” blasted from my cell.
So I liked a relevant sound track to my life.
Heart racing, hoping the name I’d see on the screen was Benito, I rolled off the chair, landed hard on my knees, bit out a curse word, and scrambled along my floor, spilling Cherry Coke on the hardwood.
Almost smacking my nose against the wall, I got up onto my feet and snatched at the phone buzzing on my kitchen counter. I frowned at the number on the screen.
I didn’t recognize it.
Deflated, I answered in a pathetically sad tone, “Hello.”
“Hello, this is Ethan Rogers calling from Mr. Carraway’s office. Am I speaking to Miss Alexa Holland?”
My pulse started going wild again. “You are.” I held my breath.
“Mr. Carraway requests that you attend a meeting with him in his office tomorrow at noon.”
A meeting with Caine? What on earth—“Did he say why?”
“No, Miss Holland, he did not. May I tell him you’ll be available tomorrow at noon?”
Why, oh, why, after all his protestations did Caine want to see me again? What had happened since I crashed into his office? My stomach did that nervous flippy thing again. “Um …” Had Benito said yes or no? Or was this about something else? What did Caine want from me?
Did it matter?
He wanted to see me again, and that was an opportunity to change his mind about me.
“Sure. I’ll be there.”
Ethan led me into Caine’s office the next afternoon and I was surprised to find Caine not behind his desk but standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows staring out over High Street and Atlantic Avenue to the harbor beyond.
With his back to me, I stole that moment to fully appreciate Caine Carraway without him knowing it. So yeah, I couldn’t see his face, which was the best part, but with him standing with his hands in his trouser pockets, legs braced, shoulders relaxed, the view was delicious enough for me. His height, those broad shoulders, and let’s not forget that ass.
That was a mighty fine ass.
When the seconds ticked by without a response from him, I began to feel like a high school nerd waiting for the captain of the football team to pay attention to her.
I didn’t like that nearly as much as the view of his ass.
“You rang?”
Caine turned his head slightly in profile. “I did.”
“And I assume there was a reason?”
He faced me and I felt that flush of attraction as his eyes swept over me. “You would assume right.” He sighed and strolled over to his desk, his gaze raking over me speculatively as he did so. “Do you own a suit, heels?” His scrutiny moved to my face. “Makeup?”
I looked down at my clothes. I was wearing jeans and a sweater, and no, I wasn’t wearing makeup. I had good skin. I’d inherited my olive skin from my mother, and despite those darn freckles sprinkled across the crest of my nose, it was blemish free. I rarely wore foundation or blush, and because my eyes were so light and my lashes so dark, I only wore mascara when dressing up for an occasion.
I knew I wasn’t glamorous, but I looked like my mom—I had her apple cheekbones, blue-green eyes, and dark hair—and my mom had been very pretty. No one had ever looked me over and considered my lack of makeup with disdain before.
I frowned. “Weird question.”
Caine relaxed against his desk in much the same pose as he had used the last time he pinched his lips at me in his office. And he was pinching his lips and inspecting me. I felt like I was being judged and found wanting, which was insulting normally but somehow even worse coming from a guy who looked as put together as he did.
Sexy jackass.
“I couldn’t change Benito’s mind,” Caine informed me. “That little bastard can hold a grudge.”
If I weren’t so deflated by his news I would have laughed. “Bu—”
“So I thought about it,” he said, cutting me off, “and you can try working for me. You’ll need to invest in some appropriate clothing, however.”
Um … what? Did he just …? “I’m sorry. What?”
“Benito informed me that it kills him but he just can’t take you back after your behavior with a client lost him such big accounts. You’re the biggest disappointment of his thirties and before you went insane you were the best PA he ever had. The disappointment of your behavior on-set, and I quote, Broke. His. Heart.”
“Oh yeah, he sounds devastated.”
“Despite his flair for the melodramatic, it seems he has high standards and he has led me to believe that before you acted like an insane person you were intelligent, efficient, and hardworking.”
“Insane person?” That word had been used as an adjective to describe me twice now.
He ignored me. “I need a PA. Ethan is a temp and my previous PA has decided not to return from maternity leave. I have a job opening and I’m offering it to you.”
Dumbfounded.
There was no other word for how I was feeling.
How could this man go from never wanting to see me again to offering me a job that meant I was going to be in his face? A lot.
“But … I thought you didn’t want me around.”
Caine narrowed his eyes. “I need a PA who will fulfill all my wishes and demands immediately. That’s not easy to find—most people have social lives. You, however, are desperate, and the way I see it, you owe me.”
I sobered at his reminder of the past. “So what … you get to act out some kind of vengeance by working me into an early grave?”
“Something like that.” He smirked. “It’ll be a comfortable grave, though.” He told me the salary and I almost passed out.
My mouth parted on a gasp. “For a PA job? Are you serious?”
I’d get to keep my apartment. I’d get to keep my car. Screw that … I’d be able to save enough money to afford a deposit on my apartment.
Caine’s eyes glittered triumphantly at my obvious excitement. “As I said, it comes with a price.” His grin was wicked and I suddenly felt a little breathless. “I’m a hard man to please. And I’m also a very busy man. You’ll do what I want when I want and I won’t always be nice about it. In fact, considering what your surname is, you can pretty much guarantee I won’t be nice about it.”
My heart thumped at the warning. “So you’re saying you plan to make my life miserable?”
“If you equate hard work with misery.” He considered me as I considered him, and that damnable little smirk quirked his beautiful mouth again. “So … just how desperate are you?”