She caught it midair, still typing on her iPad, without lifting her head.
“Familiarize yourself with what’s inside. The players. Their likes and dislikes. Their weaknesses. There’s an upcoming merger between American Labs Inc. and Martinez Healthcare. I don’t want anything to fuck it up. Including my new PA.” I rubbed my chin, my gaze shamelessly gliding over her body. “I think we’re done here. Oh, and Emilia?”
Her eyes flicked up, meeting mine from across the desk.
I smirked arrogantly and tilted my head to one side. “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve come full circle? The daughter of the help becomes…” I dragged my tongue across my lower lip. “The help?”
I didn’t know how she’d react, just knew that I wanted to poke her one more time before she left my office. This woman made me feel uncomfortable, exposed. Fuck, I didn’t even know why I’d hired her ass. Well, I did. Still, most of the time she made me feel like I wanted to explode and tear the whole place apart.
Help raised her head proudly and got up from her seat, but didn’t make a move toward me. She just stared at me like I was a fucking freak. I knew my shirt was stainless and ironed. Black, crisp, and sharp. That I looked presentable. Handsome, even.
Then what the fuck was she staring at?
“You’re still here,” I said, moving my eyes to my laptop screen, clicking on my mouse a few times without purpose. She needed to leave. I needed her gone.
“I was just thinking…” She hesitated, staring at the reception area through the open blinds of my glass office walls.
My eyes snapped to where her gaze landed—the golden FHH hung inside a bronze circle. There was a hint of a frown on her full pink lips, and despite disliking her, I wouldn’t mind having them wrapped around my dick under my desk at some point.
“FHH?” She scrunched her nose in a way that I suspected most men would find adorable.
“Fiscal Heights Holdings,” I replied, curt and formal.
“Four Hot Holes,” she shot back. “You’re the Four HotHoles of Todos Santos. You, Trent, Jaime, and Dean.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Just hearing her utter his name aloud made me want to punch the desk. The initials of our enterprise were our little secret, but sometimes, especially when we met once a month for beer and business, we’d talk about how we’d fooled everyone. How people put their hard-earned millions in the hands of a company whose name stood for four football idiots, three of whose rich daddies paved their way to success.
But not Help. She knew. Saw past our bullshit. Guess that was what had always drawn me to her. To the girl who lived off cheap carbs and wore four-year-old shoes but never once fawned over my big mansion and glitzy car.
There were several reasons why I hated her. The first and most obvious one was that I suspected she knew what Daryl and I were talking about in my family’s library. That she knew my secret. It made me feel pathetic and weak. The second one was that she looked just like a young Jo. Same eyes. Same lips. Same slightly overlapping front teeth and that Lolita look about her.
Hell, even the same Southern accent, even though I could hear that she’d lost most of it now, after ten years.
Hating her was like atonement to my mother, Marie, for a sin that wasn’t even mine.
The third one, though, was part of the reason why I didn’t just hate Help, I respected her too. Her indifference to my power somewhat disarmed me.
Most people felt helpless around me. Emilia Leblanc never had.
I uncuffed the links on my dress shirt and rolled my sleeves up, taking my time and my pleasure in knowing she was watching me. “Now get your ass out of my office, Help. I have work to do.”
“Darlin’, bless your heart, I swear you look too good!” Jo clutched my cheeks in her cold, leathery hands. Her manicured fingernails dug into my skin a little deeper than they should have, and not by accident.
I flashed her a detached smile and allowed her to lower my head so she could kiss my forehead one last time before everything between us went to shit. This was the most physical contact I’d allowed her over the years, and she knew better than to overstep her boundaries. She smelled of chocolate and expensive perfume. The cloying scent felt rotten in my nostrils, even though I knew other people probably found it sweet.
Finally, she released me from her grip and inspected my face closely. The bluish tinge under her eyes suggested she was recovering from yet another facial surgery. Jo was what happened to the Bond Girl twenty-five years later. Her resemblance to Brigitte Bardot used to be uncanny. Only unlike Bardot, Jo never agreed to this thing called nature. She fought it, and it fought right back, and this was how she’d ended up having more plastic in her face than a Tupperware container.
That was her problem. All the bleached-blonde hair, surgeries, makeup, facials, and superficial bullshit in the world—the designer clothes and shoes and Hermès handbags—couldn’t cover up the fact that She. Was. Getting. Old.
She was getting old, while my mother remained young. My mother, Marie, only thirty-five at her death. With hair black as night and skin white as a dove. Her beauty was almost as violent as the accident that eventually ended her life.
She looked like Snow White.
Only unlike Snow White, she wasn’t rescued by the prince.
The prince was actually the very man who agreed to poison the apple.
The witch in front of me arranged for it to be delivered.
“Familiarize yourself with what’s inside. The players. Their likes and dislikes. Their weaknesses. There’s an upcoming merger between American Labs Inc. and Martinez Healthcare. I don’t want anything to fuck it up. Including my new PA.” I rubbed my chin, my gaze shamelessly gliding over her body. “I think we’re done here. Oh, and Emilia?”
Her eyes flicked up, meeting mine from across the desk.
I smirked arrogantly and tilted my head to one side. “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve come full circle? The daughter of the help becomes…” I dragged my tongue across my lower lip. “The help?”
I didn’t know how she’d react, just knew that I wanted to poke her one more time before she left my office. This woman made me feel uncomfortable, exposed. Fuck, I didn’t even know why I’d hired her ass. Well, I did. Still, most of the time she made me feel like I wanted to explode and tear the whole place apart.
Help raised her head proudly and got up from her seat, but didn’t make a move toward me. She just stared at me like I was a fucking freak. I knew my shirt was stainless and ironed. Black, crisp, and sharp. That I looked presentable. Handsome, even.
Then what the fuck was she staring at?
“You’re still here,” I said, moving my eyes to my laptop screen, clicking on my mouse a few times without purpose. She needed to leave. I needed her gone.
“I was just thinking…” She hesitated, staring at the reception area through the open blinds of my glass office walls.
My eyes snapped to where her gaze landed—the golden FHH hung inside a bronze circle. There was a hint of a frown on her full pink lips, and despite disliking her, I wouldn’t mind having them wrapped around my dick under my desk at some point.
“FHH?” She scrunched her nose in a way that I suspected most men would find adorable.
“Fiscal Heights Holdings,” I replied, curt and formal.
“Four Hot Holes,” she shot back. “You’re the Four HotHoles of Todos Santos. You, Trent, Jaime, and Dean.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Just hearing her utter his name aloud made me want to punch the desk. The initials of our enterprise were our little secret, but sometimes, especially when we met once a month for beer and business, we’d talk about how we’d fooled everyone. How people put their hard-earned millions in the hands of a company whose name stood for four football idiots, three of whose rich daddies paved their way to success.
But not Help. She knew. Saw past our bullshit. Guess that was what had always drawn me to her. To the girl who lived off cheap carbs and wore four-year-old shoes but never once fawned over my big mansion and glitzy car.
There were several reasons why I hated her. The first and most obvious one was that I suspected she knew what Daryl and I were talking about in my family’s library. That she knew my secret. It made me feel pathetic and weak. The second one was that she looked just like a young Jo. Same eyes. Same lips. Same slightly overlapping front teeth and that Lolita look about her.
Hell, even the same Southern accent, even though I could hear that she’d lost most of it now, after ten years.
Hating her was like atonement to my mother, Marie, for a sin that wasn’t even mine.
The third one, though, was part of the reason why I didn’t just hate Help, I respected her too. Her indifference to my power somewhat disarmed me.
Most people felt helpless around me. Emilia Leblanc never had.
I uncuffed the links on my dress shirt and rolled my sleeves up, taking my time and my pleasure in knowing she was watching me. “Now get your ass out of my office, Help. I have work to do.”
“Darlin’, bless your heart, I swear you look too good!” Jo clutched my cheeks in her cold, leathery hands. Her manicured fingernails dug into my skin a little deeper than they should have, and not by accident.
I flashed her a detached smile and allowed her to lower my head so she could kiss my forehead one last time before everything between us went to shit. This was the most physical contact I’d allowed her over the years, and she knew better than to overstep her boundaries. She smelled of chocolate and expensive perfume. The cloying scent felt rotten in my nostrils, even though I knew other people probably found it sweet.
Finally, she released me from her grip and inspected my face closely. The bluish tinge under her eyes suggested she was recovering from yet another facial surgery. Jo was what happened to the Bond Girl twenty-five years later. Her resemblance to Brigitte Bardot used to be uncanny. Only unlike Bardot, Jo never agreed to this thing called nature. She fought it, and it fought right back, and this was how she’d ended up having more plastic in her face than a Tupperware container.
That was her problem. All the bleached-blonde hair, surgeries, makeup, facials, and superficial bullshit in the world—the designer clothes and shoes and Hermès handbags—couldn’t cover up the fact that She. Was. Getting. Old.
She was getting old, while my mother remained young. My mother, Marie, only thirty-five at her death. With hair black as night and skin white as a dove. Her beauty was almost as violent as the accident that eventually ended her life.
She looked like Snow White.
Only unlike Snow White, she wasn’t rescued by the prince.
The prince was actually the very man who agreed to poison the apple.
The witch in front of me arranged for it to be delivered.
