The Hated Billionaire by Erica Frost

Chapter 5: Christina

I walked into my office on Monday morning and stopped what I was doing as Mr. Caden walked in. I stared.

“Good morning,” I said.

Under the circumstances, I thought it was quite impressive that I could find words. There was absolutely no reason for the CEO of our company to be standing in my office at 8 am on a Monday morning, looking at me with a slight lift of his lips that suggested a smile.

I waited for him to speak.

“Morning.” He put his head on one side curiously, regarding me. “You’re in early…I couldn’t help noticing.”

“Um, yeah,” I said, shrugging. So, I was early – as far as I knew, that wasn’t something I could be fired for, was it? I looked up at him, feeling uncomfortable. “You wanted to say something, Mr. Caden?”

He looked back at me, from where he had stared out of the window. It almost seemed like he was nervous, and I wondered what the heck he’d come in here for. He cleared his throat.

“Well, I was early too, and since you were in, I wanted to ask you how the software is working.”

“The software?” I was bewildered. Which software? Was I supposed to be doing something with new software? I felt suddenly concerned – I must have forgotten to do something. All the same, he didn’t seem annoyed with me.

I saw that he was looking at me expectantly, and instantly recalled the meeting, where he’d said he wanted us all to try the new software. I took a deep breath, calming down. “Um, I downloaded it. I haven’t had much chance to play with it yet…” I trailed off vaguely. Why was he asking me? As it happened, I really had taken the chance to download it as soon as he sent the link. But it seemed weird that he was so interested in my opinion about it.

He grinned. “No worries,” he said. “I mean, it isn’t like you had any more board meetings that needed preparing and you needed to use it. I just wondered how you experienced it.”

“Oh. Not bad,” I said. I had looked at it for a bit, and the little I had done I had found really straightforward. “It’s okay, actually. I found it pretty intuitive.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I also thought that. It does things the way you expect to.”

“Yeah,” I said.

He looked at me. I looked at him. I was sure he could see pretty clearly on my face that there was no way I understood what he was on about or why he was here. I was frankly confused. I was sure it showed on my face.

He lifted one shoulder, giving a shrug. “Okay, that’s great.” He nodded. “Well, I guess I should go and leave you to whatever busy things you were doing.” He smiled a little nervously.

“Yeah, I guess.”

We looked at each other and I was surprised to feel a tingle of something down my spine. I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but it was a strange feeling. My heart raced and a strange shiver went down my spine. I pushed it away, feeling annoyed at myself.

“See you tomorrow,” he said.

I frowned.

“Why tomorrow?” I asked. Then I remembered – we had an important meeting tomorrow – the joined meeting with the marketing guys. “Yeah, the meeting,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

He smiled and walked out.

I gaped after him for a moment, completely confused.

“What was that about?”

I hurriedly got busy with something – I had some data to check that one of my colleagues had sent me. I was having a hard time focusing, though – my mind kept on going back to the strange incident with my boss.

Why had he come here, and acted so weirdly? He had always been rude and patronizing, and then, suddenly, just before a big meeting, he comes in and talks randomly about software? I had no idea what he was up to. It also annoyed me that I seemed to respond to him – or at least, that I actually enjoyed talking to him.

“I just feel unsettled,” I told myself. That was what it was. It wasn’t because I actually liked him. That definitely wasn’t it – it couldn’t be.

He was an annoying jerk. He always managed to say something disconcerting, and I didn’t like the way I felt when he was around. I absolutely didn’t.

“Hey,” someone said from the door. I looked up to find my immediate junior in the doorway. His sandy hair indicated that he had showered and run straight to work – he hadn’t brushed it and it was in quite a style. He looked worried.

“Hey, Millwall,” I greeted him. For some reason, we all called him that. It was his surname. I hadn’t actually asked anyone what his first name was, which was kind of bad of me. He looked worried.

“Christina,” he said.

“Hey! Come in,” I said, beckoning him over.

“May I sit down?”

“Sure,” I agreed. I showed him the chair across the desk, a plastic one that isn’t quite as nice as my own office chair. I felt a bit bad about that, but it wasn’t like anyone had to sit there, and it wasn’t my fault that we can’t buy better furniture for the office, for some reason. He looked at me. “What’s it?” I asked.

He coughed. “Um, Christina,” he said haltingly. “I’ve been looking through the presentation, and there’s something bothering me. I was wondering if you could explain it to me?”

“Sure,” I said. I was pleased he’d asked – I had definitely been in situations as an office junior where I would have been too scared to admit I wasn’t sure. I opened the presentation and tried to turn the screen, so we could both see. “What slide?”

“Um, slide nine,” he said. “I was really struggling with the part where they show last year’s expenditure. The way I worked it out, the totals should be different, and I can’t see how they did it.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “Well, I got these slides from Benni – it was his job to work this bit out. He sent me the sheets. Let’s look at them together, shall we?”

“Thanks, Christina,” he said.

We looked at the figures together and I thought he was starting to understand. I could see how Benni had done the calculations and it made sense to me. I tried to explain it to him.

“So, you calculate the tax from the gross income. And then you take away the other expenses, including tax. I think I see where I went wrong…” Millwall nodded. “I think my sheet had the tax programmed in automatically, so I ended up with less income than I thought we made.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Sounds right. Would you like to show me the sheet? Or are you cool with it now?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He smiled. “And thanks for taking time to talk that over with me. You’re a great boss.”

“Thanks,” I said. I felt my heart warm. I had never thought of myself as a good boss. I had always thought of myself as not being able to handle being in charge. I had seen myself in the worst possible light, I was starting to think. “Glad you understand it now.”

“I do now. I’m going to go and check through my calculations again. And I will send you the projections for tomorrow’s meeting again if anything comes out a different value this time round!”

I chuckled. “I’m sure it will be fine,” I said. “Let’s talk about it this afternoon, when we go through the presentation, okay?”

“Great. Thank you!”

I felt good, leaning back in the chair after he’d left. Having been able to help with the calculations made me feel good. I liked being able to support the people who were now in a position where I had been five years ago. I always believed in being kind.

I felt my thoughts wander back to the paid internship I’d held. I had fought hard to make way for myself there – I’d been pretty intimidated by all the people in the company, and I felt like they somehow sensed that I wasn’t from the same background as them and didn’t get their references and jokes. I’d worked so hard just to try to blend in and not do anything that would single me out. I didn’t want any of my employees to go through that.

I glanced back from the window to the door, just in time to see the departmental secretary hurrying up the hallway with a form. I remembered that I had to get something back to Burgess early. I signed it hastily.

“Great. Should I take it down to the boss now?”

“No. Thanks, but I need to check some stuff and then I’ll go and take it back to the boss myself.”

“Great! Thanks.” She hurried out of my office, back to her desk, and I hastily read through the document, checking for any errors. I got it to Burgess just before five and then rushed back to my desk.

I was just going down the stairs, hurrying so that I might shave a few minutes off the time spent in traffic, when I came to a halt. Mr. Caden held up two hands.

“Heck! Sorry…I didn’t know how fast you were going. Sorry…that was my fault.”

“No, not at all,” I said. We had almost collided, and I’d managed to stop short of knocking him over.

“It was my fault, really. You must be in a hurry…I’ll let you off.”

“Thanks,” I said. I looked at him, trying to decide whether he was being an ass or whether he was being nice. With him I often found it pretty hard to tell. I could see an odd expression in his eyes and I didn’t stick around to try and figure out what it was. I hate being stuck in traffic. I turned around and ran down the stairs.

“Have a good evening,” I heard somebody say as I passed. I didn’t stop to see who it was.

“Good evening!” I shouted over my shoulder. I ran to where I’d left my car and jumped in, turning the key with unnecessary strength. I knew there was something wrong with the engine and I was sure I was going to have to take it in to get it fixed, sometime soon. Right now, though, all that mattered was that it got me home.

I drove back, pleased to have avoided the worst of the traffic somehow.

When I got back to my apartment, I was surprised by how much Mr. Caden was on my mind. I wished I understood what was getting into him. He had spoken to me really nicely this morning, and even when I almost ran into him, he wasn’t as rude as I would have expected, in fact he wasn’t rude at all. I was still baffled by it, and turning the question over in my mind, when I fell asleep.