I looked up with a sneer. “And?” I tilted my chin up at her. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to begin.” She glared at me slightly and pressed her lips together. I guess my offer of $25,000 a month had persuaded her to stay. Which reminded me, I would have to talk to HR and tell them about her new pay structure. I’d never paid a secretary that much before, but I had a feeling that she was about to walk out and leave, and I didn’t want her to. Not yet. There was something about her that sparked something in me that I hadn’t felt in years. I didn’t know what it was. It certainly wasn’t lust. I dated tens and she was a four—and even that was pushing it.
I grabbed my pen and scribbled something on the pad in front of me. I knew I was being a jerk, but I liked to push the people that worked for me. I liked to see how much they could take and if they would crumble. I needed the strongest people working for me. My younger brother Kent chastised me all the time. He called me an OCD asshole, and maybe it was true, but I didn’t care. It was my OCD assholery that had taken us from the streets to a penthouse in the best city in the world. I was one of the most eligible bachelors in Manhattan. Which would have made the younger me laugh out loud. Dylan McAllister was not made to be a billionaire bachelor, but here I was.
“Take a seat, Ms. Waldron.” I nodded towards the plush leather chair on the other side of my desk.
“Thank you.” She sat down abruptly and her glasses slipped off of her face. She grabbed them up quickly, but not before I’d seen her face without them. It was surprisingly different without the glasses. I studied her for a moment. Her skin was smooth, flawless even, and her eyes looked very different when they weren’t behind the thick glass. They were light brown with green specks. She pushed her glasses back on and looked down at her lap, flustered, her cheeks a rosy pink. I glanced at her one more time to see if there was something I’d missed about her during our first meeting a few hours ago.
“Can I help you with something?” she snapped, her eyes flashing lightning bolts at me.
“I don’t know, can you?” My lips curled up at the side. “What skills do you have?”
“Skills?” She looked down at her lap. “I can type forty—I mean eighty words per minute, I know Excel very well, I can make PowerPoint presentations in my sleep, I know every Shakespeare play inside and out. And I can tell you the top ten places to get pizzas in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.”
“Any other skills?” I raised an eyebrow. I was curious about the pizza places, but I’d get to that later.
“Uhm, like what?”
“Fun skills.”
“Fun skills?” Her eyes narrowed at me. She stared at my lips for a few seconds and then looked at my chest before her eyes flew to my hands and then back to my face. So she wasn’t completely oblivious. I wasn’t attracted to her, but maybe that would make it even more interesting. I ignored the way my heart beat at the curl of her lips. They were an interesting shade of pink. And luscious.
But so what if my new secretary had luscious lips?
She meant absolutely nothing to me.
Chapter 6
Abby
* * *
I took in the smug look on Dylan McAllister’s face. I was tempted to make a snide comment, but I could tell that he was trying to rile me up. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I just did. It was the way he’d asked me what skills I had as if he cared about my typing skills or the fact that I like to try as many different types of pizza as possible. I knew he didn’t care about those things. He was really asking if I had skills in the bedroom. Did he think I was going to drop down to my knees and unzip his pants and ask if I could suck him off?
I mean, I doubted it. He was handsome. He was a billionaire. He didn’t need the likes of me sucking him off. But I knew men like him. It was all about power. He was some spoiled little rich kid. He’d probably grown up with all of daddy’s money and now he needed to show the world that he’d made it and he was the boss.
Well, the joke was on him because I had absolutely no interest in touching him, not even with a 10-foot pole. My stomach trembled jumped slightly as I stared at his lips. Okay, I guess I couldn’t lie to my own body. Yeah, if he’d been someone else, I’d have jumped his bones in ten seconds flat. He was exactly my sort of guy, but to be honest, he was universally hot. I was pretty sure that women in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia—hell, even Antarctica would want him. He was so gorgeous. And his eyes. Even though his expression bordered on hostile, his eyes were beautiful. There was a light there that seemed to radiate from within his soul … except I didn’t know if his soul was good or bad. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said more bad than good, but it was hard not to be attracted to him
“So, Miss Waldron, do you have nothing else to say?” He had that smirk on his face again.
“I was just wondering when we’d get to work, sir.” I took a pen out of my notepad and clicked it on. “Are you ready now?” I gave him my most demure smile. I knew it would rile him up. He was the sort of person who liked to see how much he got under people’s skin. As long as I pretended that he didn’t irritate me whatsoever, then I knew he wouldn’t feel like he’d gotten the better of me.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Miss Waldron?”
“I don’t really see why or how that’s any of your business,” I retorted. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No.” He shook his head and made a face. “Definitely not.”
“Okay.”
“So I answered your question, you answer mine.”
He’d got me there. I had fully expected that he’d tell me to mind my own business. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I said, deflecting again.
“You haven’t even told me if you have a boyfriend.”
“Do I have to? Is that part of my job?” I raised an eyebrow. “Because if it is, that’d be a very interesting part of the job. I wonder what HR would have to say to that.”
“HR? Is that a threat, Miss Waldron?”
“No. If I was threatening you, I’d go to the EEOC.”
“You’d go to the EEOC, would you?” He grinned. “I see. And what would you say?”
“I would say that my boss was being inappropriate and … inappropriate.”
“I just asked you if you had a boyfriend. You have no reason to think that it was for a harassing reason, do you?”
“My personal life is none of your business.”
“I don’t care about your personal life, Miss Waldron. I wanted to know because we have a lot of late nights in the office, and I want to know if there is someone who is going to get upset that you’re spending a lot of time with me. Also, I have a lot of business trips coming up and you, as my secretary, will accompany me. So, you see, that is why I wanted to know. No other reason.”
I didn’t totally believe him, but it made sense. I sighed. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Hmm,” he said and pressed his lips together. “Doesn’t really surprise me.”
“Excuse me?”