Belonging to the Boss by Jenna Rose
Gracie
The servants’quarters. That’s where he put me.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I am his personal assistant. It’s not like I’m his wife or girlfriend or anything. But if that’s true, why did he freak out when Mark grabbed my wrist at the meeting last night?
And what a deal he offered him. What was it? At least two billion dollars in savings for a single night with me? What businessman in his right mind wouldn’t take that deal? And his reaction afterwards—that could only mean one thing…
…that Derick Beaumont has feelings for me.
But that can’t possibly be true, can it? I mean, who am I? Just some broke girl from Connecticut without a job, trying to make it in the big city. And who is Derick? The most eligible bachelor in the city—maybe the world—who has his choice of any girl in the world and has probably had more models and actresses than I can imagine.
No, he can’t actually be into me. What I witnessed last night was no more than an animalistic display of dominance, like two lions fighting over territory. As far as Derick is concerned, I belong to him now, and Mark tried to take him from him, so he had to show him that wasn’t happening.
“Yeah, that’s all that was,” I say to myself as I sit up in bed. Granted, these servants’ quarters are nicer than my entire apartment, but with a penthouse this size, he couldn’t give me my own room?
I get up and go to the bathroom, which I find stocked with a generous selection of products that I use in the shower. There’s also an entire wardrobe filled with clothing that all appears to be my size. There’s loungewear for around the penthouse and then some business casual stuff for when I’m on the clock.
“Get dressed and get moving,” a man says behind me. I spin around, clutching my towel to my chest and stifle a squeal to find a blond man in black pants and a tucked-in white collared shirt eyeing me from the door.
“Who are you?”
“Pierre,” he says with a thin smile. “I manage the penthouse for Mr. Beaumont. I’ll be showing you the ropes today. But right now, we need to prepare Mr. Beaumont’s breakfast. You’re already late, so I need you to get dressed and get moving.”
“Already late?” I ask. “But I just—”
“Get dressed,” he repeats. “And—”
“Get moving,” I interrupted. “Okay. A little privacy?”
Pierre slightly broadens his thin smile, turns, and exits the room. There’s no time to blow-dry my hair, so I wrap a towel around it and throw on a pair of loose white pants and an obviously expensive black T-shirt and take the stairs to the kitchen, where Pierre is already starting on breakfast.
“Mr. Beaumont likes eggs on toast with chives and freshly squeezed orange juice,” he says as he sets a carton of eggs on the counter next to a bunch of chives. “To squeeze the oranges, you first—”
“I know how to squeeze orange juice, Pierre,” I say, cutting him off and grabbing three oranges from the colander between us. “I know most girls my age don’t even know their way around a microwave, but I defy the stereotype.”
Pierre gives me a somewhat approving eye as he lays out three eggs before returning the carton to the fridge and hands me a large chef’s knife.
“Scramble them, put them over the toast, dice the chives, sprinkle them on the top, and serve with juice. When you’re done, place them in this dumbwaiter.” He points to a small metallic door on the wall by the fridge. “And that will take it up to Mr. Beaumont.”
I stop, my blade a millimeter into the rind of the first orange. “You’re joking, right?”
Pierre smiles from the door. “I am not.”
“I-he doesn’t even want to see me?”
“Don’t take it personally, Ms. Oliver. Mr. Beaumont does not like to be disturbed in the morning. This is how he takes his breakfast. And please, Ms. Oliver. Don’t screw it up. I’d hate to let him know that the reason his meal was extra late was because I had to do it over for you.”
Did I just hear him right?
Yup. I sure did. This is a new world I’ve stepped into. One where people speak their mind even more than the average New Yorker—certainly in a way they don’t do on Friends.
But this is an important moment. I can’t allow myself to buckle here. If I do, everything Derick said to me last night in the car when he snapped at me will be accurate. I will just be a girl who’s not ready for a job in the art world, a girl who can’t stand up for herself when it’s called for. So I roll up my metaphorical sleeves and get to work.
I squeeze the orange juice first and quickly. Thankfully the oranges are ripe and don’t require any sugar. I heat the pan, add a little butter, then put the toast in the toaster while I scramble the eggs. I’m actually pretty darn good at scrambled eggs and manage to pull them off on my first attempt. My toast is done just as I’m turning the gas off. I add the toast to a plate, add the eggs to the toast, and manage to not chop my fingertips off dicing the chives, which I then add to the eggs.
They’re not as finely chopped as a three-star-chef would dice them, but it’ll have to do for now. If he wants to bitch about that, I’ll just make fun of him about caring more about how his meal looks than how it tastes and see how he likes that.
Then I add everything to the silver tray Pierre has left out for me and take the whole thing to the dumbwaiter and press the service button. The door closes automatically, and there’s a faint hum as my first meal as Derick’s personal assistant, aka gopher, is whisked away up to him.
“There you go, Mr. I-don’t-want-to-see-people-in-the-morning.”
I clean up quickly, and as I’m heading back to my room, my phone dings in my pocket. I check it and find an e-mail from Pierre. I ignore the creepiness of how he got my e-mail in the first place and read it.
It’s a to-do list for the day that includes picking up some suits for “Mr. Beaumont” as well as taking delivery of a painting that should be showing up at the penthouse later this evening. Apparently, there will be a car waiting for me downstairs to take me whenever I am ready to go.
I unwrap the towel from my hair, give it a quick blow-dry, do a quick makeup job and try not to think about the fact that Derick is upstairs in the very same apartment as I am right now, eating the very meal I prepared for him, completely disinterested in being around me.
And why should that bother me? He’s just my boss, right? So what if he’s cosmically handsome with broad shoulders and a jaw so chiseled it could cut glass? I’m his personal assistant, not his girlfriend. And he doesn’t need to entertain me or give me attention in the morning like we hooked up last night or something either. So I give my hair one last toss, roll my shoulders back, and tilt my chin up at myself in the mirror.
“Do your job, Gracie. That’s all you have to do.”
I grab the purse Derick gave me last night and take the elevator downstairs to the garage where there is a Mercedes waiting for me, along with the big thug-looking guy who brought me here the first time when I thought I was being kidnapped.
“I can drive you if you’d like,” he offers.
“Thanks but no thanks,” I reply, taking the keys from him and sliding into the driver’s side. It’s a whole new experience being up front, and honestly makes me feel kind of important as I input the address of Derick’s suit shop into the GPS and pull out of the garage into the busy streets of New York.
“So this is what it’s like to be a billionaire,” I muse as I sit behind the wheel of the quiet, comfortable, perfectly climate controlled, luxury sedan. “Must be nice, Derick. Must be nice.”
As I adjust the blower, a wave of his scent wafts over me. I’m startled at the effect it has on me. It’s almost like a jump-scare in a movie; you don’t know it’s coming, and you can’t help reacting.
My whole body does just that. It’s like being dragged down by an anchor or whipped away by the winds of a hurricane. Every nerve ending I have comes suddenly alive. My nipples go hard beneath my shirt, and I’m suddenly aware of the fact that I forgot to put a bra on before I left the penthouse. I twist in my seat, the muscles in my thighs flexing and unflexing on their own.
God, what’s happening to me?
Quickly, I twist the blower away from me and then turn the air off completely. But it’s too late. Derick’s scent has already had its way with me, and no matter how hard I want to deny it, the truth is that I’m turned on.
I think about turning around and going home to change. After all, my nipples are hard, and I could use a bra, and I’m wet enough between the thighs that it’s noticeable when I shift in my seat. But when I glance down at the GPS, I see that I’m only half a block away from my destination.
“Shit.” I try thinking about the grossest horror movies I’ve ever seen in an attempt to get my body to chill the hell out, but it doesn’t really do anything, and as I’m pulling up out front, I feel more like I’m pulling up to a date than a shop to pick up some suits. This must be how guys feel when they’re doing all kinds of mental gymnastics to try and keep themselves from being premature in bed.
Inside, there’s a dapper older man waiting for me, who unlike everyone else I’ve been introduced to so far, actually smiles throughout our interaction.
They’re just suits, I tell myself as I take them and load them into the car, but it doesn’t help. They have a strange, almost magical effect on me, and as I drive back to the Penthouse, I feel all giddy and slack-jawed, like Ron in the sixth Harry Potter movie after he’s been slipped a love potion.
I’ve never even been around a man who could afford to buy this many expensive, custom-tailored suits before, let alone have a personal assistant pick them up for him and not even be worried about whether or not they would be right or not. There’s something so…kingly about the way Derrick displays his wealth, and I hate the fact that it’s having such an effect on me.
When I get back to the penthouse, there’s a truck in the garage and a group of delivery men standing by the elevator with an enormous wooden crate. My heart rate jacks when they see me and look to me as though I’m suddenly the one responsible.
“Hey, where are we going with this?”
“Yeah, we’ve been waiting here for ten minutes, and nobody’s answering.”
They look pissed.
“Oh, I-umm…” I’m about to pass the buck and start blaming Pierre or Derrick when I remember that I work here now. I have an actual job with an actual title. I’m supposed to deal with things like this, not look to someone else to handle them for me. “What is it?”
“Some painting,” one of the men growls. “Worth more than your parents’ house too, little lady. So we’d like to get it the hell outta the garage if you don’t mind.”
A painting? Of course it is!
I should have recognized it immediately by the box, and of course they’re right to want to get it upstairs as quickly as possible. No doubt it’s insured, but if Derick bought it for his penthouse, he doesn’t care about the insurance money; he cares about the aesthetic it’s going to bring to his living space.
I quickly open the elevator for the men and motion for them to bring the painting in.
“Go ahead. Bring it in and I’ll pull in and go up with you.”
They give me a nervous look. “You’re gonna go up with us?”
“Yeah, there’s plenty of room,” I tell them. “It should be fine.”
The elevator doors open, and I give the men space to load up the painting and get back in the car, my heart rate starting to slow slightly.
This is it. My chance to prove myself to him.
The men move the painting in with their carts, and I shift the car into drive and slowly move into the elevator.
As my back tires thud over the gap, I can’t help smiling as a sense of pride comes over me. He’s going to have no choice but to give me some recognition for pulling this off today. This wasn’t even on my list of things to do. No one even prepared me for this!
Suddenly, a ringing so loud my ears almost burst blares out from over the car speakers. I clutch my hands over my hears, and as I do, my foot slips off the brake and the car lurches forward.
The delivery men throw themselves out of the way as I slam on the brake again. But it’s too late.
The car slams into the crate holding the painting. Bites of wood splinter and fall to the floor with a terrible cracking sound that goes straight to the center of my bones.
“Oh my God, Gracie…”
I hang my head as I hear the voices of the men outside. I deliberately try not to listen. I can imagine what they’re saying. Slowly, I put the car in reverse and back up. More wood falls to the floor of the elevator, and as I peek up and over the steering wheel, I see the blue and orange corner of Derick’s painting, crushed and absolutely ruined.
My life is over.
I slump forward, my head on the steering wheel, for what seems like forever but can’t be more than a few minutes at most. When I look up, all the men are gone, and it’s just me and the now-destroyed painting in the elevator.
Well, nothing left to do now but to face the music.
I press the button for the penthouse and try and convince myself that I no longer have emotions as the elevator begins to rise. Of course that doesn’t work, and when I get to the top and the doors open and I find Derick standing there on the phone, completely unaware of the catastrophe that just happened, I say a little prayer that someone out there might hear that maybe my head will just spontaneously combust and save me from what’s about to happen.
“There she is,” he says with a bit of an uncharacteristic grin, almost like he’s happy to see me. “How’d those suits turn out—?”
His voice comes to a quick stop when he sees the wooden splinters on the floor of the elevator. The almost-friendly expression on his face vanishes, and he strides quickly forward. I can only cover my face for the full reveal.
There’s a pause, then I hear my door open and his voice, “Grace, what happened here?”
“There…there was an accident,” I say, trying my best not to cry. “I’m sorry, Derick.”
“An accident,” he repeats. “That’s the best you can come up with?”
“I…I don’t know what else to say.”
Another long pause, and then
“I see.”
That’s it. That’s all he says. And without another word, he walks away, leaving me alone with nothing but my pain and humiliation.
