The Billionaire's Assistant Read online

  “But I never had to actually SEE them before, Abby!” Nick’s voice rose with self-righteous indignation to be just as loud as mine. “Not their FACES!”

  His eyes grew wide as he remembered. A drunken shudder ran through his body.

  “It was like they were screaming,” he concluded darkly. A look of absurd seriousness shadowing his face. “And only I could hear the screams.”

  I glared at him for a moment, before crossing my arms and turning back to the window in a sulk. “You could not hear the screams.”

  “I could hear them.”

  On the other side of the car, Nick was glaring out his own window—just like me.

  “Oh yeah?” I countered petulantly. “What did they sound like?”

  “...you wouldn’t understand.”

  Chapter 4

  By the time we got back to Nick’s penthouse on the Upper East Side, he was passed out on my lap. He’d tried several times to undress himself—seized with the sudden intoxicated fear that he’d ‘catch his death of cold’ in the heated luxury vehicle. But thankfully (and with a little impromptu help from our driver), those fears had been put to bed.

  I played absentmindedly with his wet curls as we pulled up against the curb.

  This was another place that had shocked me the first time I saw it. Yet another glimpse into the world of the rich and powerful that had stopped me in my tracks.

  Now? I knew the name of every bell-boy and receptionist. I knew which days to get the mail so that Nick wouldn’t have to see the more disparaging headlines about himself. I knew which things he was allergic to, and which chefs he preferred in the kitchen. I even knew the employee passcode to the service elevator to sneak out his various overnight guests so they wouldn’t run into one another on the stairs.

  Yes—this place no longer had any secrets from me.

  In a strange way, it almost felt like home.

  “Max,” I rolled down the window a crack when I spotted Nick’s bodyguard, “can you help me over here?”

  The man hurried over. Tall. Italian. And concerned.

  We had discovered Max on a last-minute trip to Rome. Nick had promised some barista he’d met online that he would pick her up at the end of her shift (at the time, he may have also been pretending to be Italian). At any rate, it was a good thing we were in Germany at the time, because against all the odds, we actually made it to the café where she worked just as it reached closing. Unfortunately, we had not counted on the presence of her body-building Italian husband. The woman had left out the fact that she was married.

  Max had swooped in to save the day. He’d been sitting outside, drinking with friends, and had taken pity on Nick’s half-hearted attempts to explain himself in broken Italian. Educated in the States, Max understood his English perfectly—whereas the husband did not—and stepped in just in time to stop him from getting his ass kicked by a band of Italian thugs.

  He’d been an indispensable member of our team ever since. Ironically, his daily tasks hadn’t varied much from that first day.

  “I thought you were supposed to be on your big date tonight,” he ventured, as he opened the door and helped me lift Nick out of the car.

  The guy was class act—didn’t look once at my increasingly revealing ensemble. Didn’t even mention the fact that we were both soaking wet.

  “Yeah,” I gritted my teeth as we stumbled towards the revolving door, “so did I.”

  Together, we managed to get Nick to the penthouse elevator and lower him down to the floor. Insisting on a private elevator for Nick’s exclusive use, was one of the first changes I made when appointed head of his PR team. There were simply too many wild variables in his life to risk mixing him with the rest of the population.

  The doors dinged open on the top floor, and Max offered me a sympathetic smile.

  “You want me to carry him the rest of the way in?”

  Nick snored obliviously on the ground beneath us—his face pressed up against a piece of Ethiopian marble that cost more than my whole apartment.

  I nudged him tentatively with my shoe and shook my head.

  “Naw—we’ll manage. Thanks, Max.”

  With the practiced skill of someone who had done it far too many times, I draped Nick’s arm once more over my shoulder and half-carried him into the foyer. As the door dinged shut behind us, Max bid me a typical goodnight.

  “Sorry about your date.”

  I waved over my head with a quiet sigh.

  “Me too.”

  The door closed, and the two of us limped across the tile towards the bedroom.

  Nick was in that hazy drunken state between consciousness and sleep, and although he tried his best to help me, it was an arduous journey at best. When we finally made it inside, he made a bee-line for the bed—only to get stopped by me.

  “Not so fast.”

  He stood there obediently as I took off first his suit jacket, then the white collared shirt just below. Both of them peeled off his skin, before landing in a wet pile on the floor.

  “Louise will kill me if you ruin another pair of sheets,” I murmured, working as quickly as I could. Louise, the Bavarian housekeeper, had proven even more terrifying than myself.

  Nick said not a word as I worked. Lifting his arms when indicated, and stepping meekly out of his soaking pants.

  They were strange—these behind-the-scenes kind of moments.

  As the person whose job it was to create the narrative spin, there were times I almost believed it myself. Times when I forgot that my clients were people, just like the rest of us.

  But as globally publicized as Nicholas Hunter was, no one ever saw this side of him.

  Vulnerable. Quiet. Almost childlike. Wet hair still dripping down the sides of his neck.

  When he started shivering, I hurried to the bathroom and returned with a towel, sponging up his curls before pointing him in the direction of the bed.

  “Don’t fall asleep yet,” I instructed as I returned to the bathroom once more, “you need to drink some water first. You’ll be starting a foundation for scallops in the morning...”

  “Scallops?” he repeated in confusion. “Will I?”

  “That’s if the media doesn’t crucify you first.”

  At this, he snorted with laughter—pressing a smile into his pillow.

  “Never. They love me.” He twisted around in the blankets, cocooning himself in the center as his eyes fluttered open and shut. “Besides, we have a deal: no crucifixions.”

  I returned with a glass of water, and perched on the edge of the bed.

  “Sit up.” He did as I asked. “Now drink.” I watched him thoughtfully for a moment, my own hair dripping little streams of water down my chest. “And for the record, I’m the one who made that deal. I can revoke it at any time.”

  He flashed me an adorable grin.

  “But you won’t do that either. You love me too.”

  I pressed an Advil into his hand and gestured to the cup.

  “We’ll see.”

  As he swallowed the pill, I wanted to lecture him. Wanted to give him my standard speech. The ‘fame is a fickle friend’ speech, and tell him to keep his damn head down for once.

  But such speeches had never really worked on Nick. And to be honest, he was right.

  The press did love him. They always had. They probably always would. He was their dream—a man who knew no limits. No boundaries. Every page—an open book.

  Over the years, he’d become something of a folk hero. The crown prince of mayhem who couldn’t be tamed. A source of constant entertainment and levity for the masses.

  But even by celebrity standards, Nick was a rare breed.

  Because beneath that careless playboy persona, beneath all the money, and mischief, and that unquenchable sense of adventure...he had a genuinely good heart.

  It was this ‘good heart’ his father’s company had hired me to promote. To protect. To shine a spotlight on all the good things—half to highlight them, half t
o keep that same spotlight off everything bad. By protecting his image, I was protecting their shareholders, and thus—doing my not inconsiderable part to contribute to the massive global conglomeration that was his father’s company. The Hunter Corporation. The family’s crowning achievement.

  He handed back the empty glass and lay down on the pillows, gazing up in sleepy disorientation as I pulled the decadent comforter up to his chin. I was just tucking it around his shoulders, when he shot back up in sudden surprise—propping himself up on his elbows.

  “Fuck Abby—you look really good tonight.”

  My perfect coif might have spoiled, but the look had shifted in other ways. Wet hair sticking to my shoulders. Equally wet dress clinging to my slender frame. Bright red lips, puffy from me biting them so many times in frustration.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, leaning over to push him back down. “And why is that?”

  He faltered, blinking several times as my hair dripped onto his cheeks.

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “Think, Nick. Break the stereotype.”

  It took him a second. Then it all came rushing back.

  “Your date!”

  Bingo.

  “That’s right,” I said dryly. “My date.”

  He leaned back with a bright smile.

  “How did it go?”

  I considered punching him. No one would know. He wouldn’t remember in the morning.

  “Well, it ended in your apartment—

  “As all dates should.”

  “—so what does that tell you?”

  He paused a second, before shooting back up to give me a sudden kiss on the cheek.

  “I’m sorry about your date, Abby.” He dropped back down on the bed, twisting the covers around himself once more. “It’ll never happen again. I swear.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help but smile. “My date? Or you interrupting?”

  His eyes fluttered open then closed.

  “...that’s the spirit...”

  Without another word, he drifted away. Dreaming about lobsters, no doubt, and the things he could do to save them. The same things that would surely make my life a living hell.

  I grabbed a spare blanket out of the closet, and curled up on a chair by the base of his bed to sleep. Kicking off my wet heels onto the floor.

  Just another uneventful day in the world of Nicholas Hunter...

  Chapter 5

  If I was hoping for a better day tomorrow, the next morning didn’t bode well.

  A throat cleared. The floor shifted. A sudden stab of light burned the backs of my eyes.

  I swear, if this has anything to do with lobsters...

  But it was something far, far worse. I opened my eyes to find myself in a room with not one man in the Hunter family. But with two.

  “Mitchell!” I leapt to my feet in alarm, relieved as hell that, while an impromptu visit from the head of the company was never a good thing, at least my dress had finally dried. “I’m so sorry—I wasn’t expecting you!”

  A pair of dark eyes swept me up and down. There was no hint of a smile.

  “Clearly.”

  Mitchell Hunter may have been Nick’s biological father, but the similarity between the two men stopped there. One was all light and whimsy. The other was dark. Frighteningly so.

  The first time I’d been summoned to corporate headquarters (yes, summoned), I’d waited a full two hours in the lobby as a meeting ran into over-time. It wasn’t until I heard muffled crying from the conference room, that I ventured cautiously down the hall. The door was open, and against all my better instincts, I leaned forward to peek inside.

  After years of shuddering at the covers of magazines and walking subconsciously quicker every time I passed by a news stand—I finally saw Mitchell Hunter in person.

  It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.

  He was sitting in a chair at the end of a long table, only, it wasn’t a chair the way he sat in it. It was a throne. And it had to be said, he looked the part. Tall. Compact. Silver-grey hair slicked back with expert precision. Eyes dilated so wide that they appeared almost black, and a rigid set to his jaw that spoke of a man who could never be moved enough to smile.

  On the other side of the room, a group of men and women were huddled together—like passengers on a sinking ship, staring at the one man in charge of the life boats.

  “Mitchell, please.”

  It was one of the strangest things about him. That a man so cold and far removed from the rest of society, insisted that people still call him by his first name.

  The man who had stepped forward tried again.

  “If you give us one more quarter—just one more quarter,” a shattered breath caught in his throat, “I know we can make this right!”

  A chair creaked as Mitchell leaned forward, folding his hands upon the gleaming table with a sinister smile. “You know you can make this right,” he repeated slowly, emphasizing each word with terrifying clarity. “But what makes you think I would believe that, Rick? When you’ve already proved that you’re of no more use than that empty chair?”

  “Usually, it’s over a lot quicker than this.” A woman next to me gulped and took a step away. “I don’t think anyone on the floor expected him to fire the entire board.”

  This time, I was unable to mask my shock.

  “He fired the entire board?”

  But no sooner could I process this, then the door swung open and twenty or so people rushed past. Not a sound amongst them. Every eye trained on the floor. The man who’d spoken up earlier had a greenish tint to his face. My guess was that he’d make it only as far as the elevator before throwing up.

  Then, just as quickly as they’d come, they vanished through the double doors. The secretary disappeared alongside them. Leaving me standing alone in the suddenly empty hall.

  A soft voice drifted in from the conference room.

  “Ms. Wilder, I’m ready to begin...”

  My mouth went dry, my ankles locked, and a cascade of chills went racing down my spine. It didn’t help that the second I touched the door, I heard the man retching in the elevator.

  And that was how I interviewed for my position with the Hunter family.

  Without further ado, I made my way into the conference room, half-surprised there wasn’t any blood on the floor. I circled around to the opposite side of the table, and came to a stop, my hands folded professionally in front of me. I would not sit unless he invited me to do so.

  “Thank you for taking the time.”

  I guarantee, I was just as frightened as the people who had just left—but the longer I stood there, the more those nerves channeled themselves into a strange kind of calm. A virtual shield of confidence that I carried around to this very day.

  “Well, your harassment of my company was most insistent,” he replied dryly, flipping up some papers to scan through what was presumably my file.

  I didn’t flinch at the accusation, but instead nodded with a calm smile. It wasn’t meant as a barb. These people admired persistence. More than that, they admired the self-importance it took to foist yourself upon other people under the arrogant assumption that you were absolutely worth their time.

  Either way, apologies and doubt were signs of weakness I couldn’t afford to show in this room. Not now. Not ever. I already had enough working against me.

  “Abigail Wilder,” he murmured, reading some more. “You come highly recommended, but I must admit, I haven’t heard of you.”

  First trick of the trade: turn a negative into a positive with just a bit of creative spin.

  “Mark of a good publicist,” I replied evenly. “I guarantee you haven’t heard of my clients either. At least...nothing that I didn’t want you to know.”

  He glanced up, looking as close to amused as I think the man was capable, before returning to the papers. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. First obstacle down. I would have to get these out of the way quickly and efficiently. B
ecause my relative lack of experience wasn’t the only thing I had working against me.

  I was twenty years old. Unable to order a drink at any of the bars we went to. The first thing I’d have to do after dashing back across the bridge to Brooklyn, was get myself a fake ID.

  But like I said, I had one of those faces that shifted to fit the part. And from everything I’d heard about Mitchell Hunter, when it came to the ages of his women, he tended to round up.

  At long last, the file came down. The glasses came off, and he looked at me instead. The resume part of the interview was over—it had told him everything he needed to know. The rest was up to me. Sink or swim. A life in Brooklyn...or the Upper East Side.

  “You’ve come on an interesting day,” he murmured, pulling out a monogrammed handkerchief to clean off his glasses. “Must be wondering why you’ve applied to jump aboard what looks like a sinking ship.”

  I didn’t miss a beat.

  “It doesn’t look that way to me.”

  “Oh no?” He gazed at me sharply from atop the throne. “What does it look like to you?”

  Time to sell it, Abby. You’ve got twenty seconds.

  “It looks like you’re moving in a new direction. No more dead weight. Only fresh things on the horizon.” Keeping my eyes locked warily on him the entire time, I pulled a pen and paper from my bag. “I’m sure if you tell me what those things are, I can start getting the word out.”

  He blinked three times. Each one sending me into a mild heart attack. Then the corners of his mouth twitched up into an unnatural smile.

  “You’ve got the job.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Could not believe it.

  Ninety percent of me thrilled with the opportunity—to work for the Hunter Corporation was a dream come true. In all the ways that mattered, there truly was no bigger client. The other ten percent was absolutely terrified of what I’d just gotten myself into.

  “Excellent.” I kept my cool for just a moment longer, holding in my celebration until I’d reached the lobby floor. “Who would you like me to coordinate with in corporate office?”

  “Oh no, my dear.” He reached over the table and poured himself a glass of scotch. A precise measuring. Not a drop’s deviation from day to day. “I don’t want you for the company.”