How Not to Be Seduced by Billionaires (5 page)

            Last night, I stayed up late just so I could Google everything there was to know about Constantijin. Wikipedia told me he was an Eton and Cambridge graduate and an only child. His father had long retired, but his mother was Chairman of the Board while he had taken on the mantle of CEO a few years back, personally spearheading the company’s entry in the American market.

            At thirty-two years old, what he accomplished for Kastein Inc. was mind-boggling. But what really filled me with shock and not a little self-disgust was how the names of his former lovers, hook-ups, and floozies could easily fill up a phone directory.

            “Just be warned, Yanna,” Alyx murmured. “Office romances never end right.”

            I let out an unladylike snort at that, unable to help it.
Romance
was definitely not something in Constantijin Kastein’s vocabulary. Mind-blowingly hot sex, yes, but a grand sweeping romance?

           
He
might have given me my first (mini) orgasm, and he might keep me awake with consecutive wet dreams, but he was not the Mr. Right I have been waiting for.

Lesson #3

Focus on looking for Mr. Right –

And not Mr. Fuck.

If your billionaire finds out, he won’t let you go until he has you.

I am not going to look for Constantijin Kastein.

It was a mantra I repeated in my mind continuously when I made my way to the 34/F reception area of the executive offices of Kastein Inc. The girl behind the front desk, Megan, smiled at me warmly. She looked young and bubbly, but she, too, was dressed in black, and it was proof that I had made the right decision to shop for an all-black corporate wardrobe. In this office, any other color could probably get me tagged as Al-Qaeda or something equally horrible and to be avoided at all costs.

            “Ms. Everleigh?”

            “That’s me. Is Ms. Charli in already?”

            “Yes. She’ll appreciate that you’re early. Let me take you to her now.” Megan escorted me to the very same conference room that I had the highest-lowest point in my life. I was already blushing the moment I entered the room, the same sense of shame attacking me when I recalled the older woman’s look of shock upon seeing me in her boss’s arms.

God.
The memory made me feel like a slut.

Constantijin was nowhere in sight – not that I was looking or anything. Only one woman was inside the room, and boy, did she look scary! She made Vogue’s Anna Wintour look positively warm.

She stood up the moment I entered, looking svelte in her black buttoned up polo, which was worn over a black-and-white striped turtleneck and paired with a leather-belted mini and black stockings.

The overall impact was phenomenal.

Wow
was all I could think.

“Hello, Yanna. My name is Charli – without an E – and you will be reporting to me.” Her voice was very, very
cultured,
with the slightest hint of a French accent.

She was terrifying. I was tempted to run away, but only the prospect of working in my dream job kept me in place. I shook her hand gingerly and winced at the tiny tremble in my voice as I said, “Hello, Ms. Charli. I’d just like you to know how excited I am to work for you and the company.”

“Just Charli, ma belle.”

I nodded dumbly and gratefully took the seat she indicated with a wave of her well-manicured hand.

“Now, you know what Kastein company is?”

“Yes.” I recited what I learned from the Web, which was pretty much everything since I had a photographic memory. “It’s one of the fastest growing companies in Europe and North America. It specializes in real estate and entertainment. Mr. Erik Kastein concentrates on real estate while his son Constantijin Kastein concentrates on turning books and mangas into blockbuster movies and TV series.” I didn’t want to sound like I was trying to impress her or anything, even though I really was. I just wanted to make sure she knew I wasn’t taking this interview lightly.

“That’s right. Magnifique,” she murmured with a beautiful smile. “Now, we’ve hired you to be our marketing specialist.”

I blinked. “I thought you were just looking for a researcher.”

“True,” Charli replied. “But your research will be both textual and on-field. The thing is, we’re not really interested about where you’ve graduated, what your degree is, or even where you worked previously.”

I straightened at her words, now even more confused.

“What we were really interested about was your ability to meet business talents with your main passion. And that’s reading, no?”

It took me a while to adjust to her French, umm, verbal peculiarities. She said ‘no’, but what she really meant was ‘yes’…yes?

I finally nodded. “Err,
yes,
I love to read.”

            Her face remained unsmiling as she asked, “But you can’t write to save your life, no?”

The way Charli said it made me wince, but it was true. “
Yes
.”

“And that’s why we need you. We are not interested in hiring writers. They are often biased and egoistical, often unable to appreciate anyone else’s writing over theirs. But you - you know how to judge books and writing without being a writer yourself and that’s why we need you.”

“I see.” But I didn’t.

“This is what you’d call a dream job, ma belle.”

I jerked in my seat at her words.

The words sounded eerie, more like a curse than a blessing.

Charli leaned close. “Your main job is to know and if you could, predict, what the trend in the market is right now regarding these materials. You need to look for projects worthy of international viewership. You have a blog, no?”

The sudden switch of subjects made my head whirl a bit but I nodded again.

“And you review works, there, no?”

“Yes.” Did she Google me too? How did she know so much about me?

“So I want you to do the same here, but only this time, you get heard.” She leaned back on her chair and looked at me with her naturally green and incredibly sharp eyes. “You will take the job, no?”

“I’d be crazy not to,” was all I could say.

            Afterwards, Charli told me that I along with the two other applicants called back for a second interview yesterday had the same jobs. We would work as a team and individually, depending on necessity. The salary she quoted for me was standard pay in the industry, but she told me this could go higher in a short time, based on my performance. On the bright side, she did say I’d get free meals at work, excellent overtime pay when needed, and transportation allowance.

Mondays to Thursdays, I was required to report in office attire. Fridays were anything-goes. My work schedule would be from 8am to 5pm. No grace period. Oh, and one thing else, Charli reminded me as a post script — office romances were
not
allowed.

Déjà vu struck me for the second time, and I almost shivered at it.

Constantijin was still nowhere to be found when I finally walked out of the doors of Kastein, Inc. My phone rang just as I reached the other side of the street.

“Hello?”

“Did you miss me, Yanna?”

Holy...

It was him.

Constantijin.

The whole world disappeared the moment I realized who I was talking to. People were constantly walking before me, drivers honking their horns, and there was even a construction crew a few feet away drilling into the cement, doing God knew what. But none of their noise reached my ears.

“Yanna?”

I still didn’t know what to say so I stayed silent, secretly content to replay the sound of his voice over and over, especially the part where he said my name with that accented voice of his.

            “I think about you all the time,
schat
.”

           
What
did that last word mean? I was so, like, Googling that after this.

When I still didn’t answer, his tone turned from seductive to serious as he asked, “Why did you run away?”

            Why didn’t you run after me?

But I couldn’t ask him that, could I? It would have been akin to, like, begging him to come after me. I said finally, in a stiff voice that required all my acting skills to carry off, “I don’t think we should be talking like this anymore. I’ll be working for you starting tomorrow. It would be inappropriate.”

            A long pause followed, one that made me anxious and tense even though I didn’t want to be. I should hang up now. I knew that, but I
couldn’t.

            “That’s impossible.”

            I inhaled sharply at the words, conscious of the zing of relief that went through me and shamed by it. Oh, God, I was so pathetic. Sometimes, I was too stubborn for my own good. Constantijin Kastein was bad news. How many times did I have to repeat to myself that anything that had to do with Netherland’s #1 playboy was surely going to end not just with a broken hymen but a broken heart as well?

            My fingers tightened around my mobile phone. “I’m hanging up after this,
Mr. Kastein.
Please just---”

            “I want to fuck you too much to stay away.”

            Holy. Shit.

            I glared at my phone, wishing it was a blond gorgeous giant I was glaring at instead. With just those few words, he had ruined whatever composure I had. Now, all I could think about was how he had me on the table, devouring my breasts, his erection jutting hard against my core, and me right now, soaking wet in the middle of a public street.

            “Stop saying things like that,” I said weakly. Lame response, I know, but right now? That was, like, the
best
I could dish out.

            “Why not?” The purr in his voice made me tremble, something I was sure had people looking at me oddly if they noticed. It was still early in the day, with the sun sending golden rays all over the place, and yet here I was shivering with desire.

            “We just cant. It’s not…we can’t, okay?”

            He chuckled, and the sound sent deliciously erotic shivers down my spine. It was almost as if I could feel his fingers trailing my back, promising me pleasure a hundred times more intense if I finally let him take me.

            “Yanna, we are already
doing
it, whether you admit it or not. And tomorrow, when you get to work, we’ll be doing a lot more than this.”

Lesson #4

Don’t ask to be friends with your billionaire.

He’ll think you’re after the benefits, not the friendship.

In theory, first day of work should have been like first days in school. You had to feel your way around, meet new friends and frenemies, and figure out what you had to do to
not
be an outcast. But the thing was, I had
never
experienced first-day trouble, mostly because I tended to skip it altogether. By the time I did show up in school, Alyx and Daria had already smoothed things over for me. They were cool, ergo I was cool by association.