Sleeping With My Boss: A Standalone Novel (An Alpha Billionaire Romance Love Story) (A Dirty Office Romance) (28 page)

Chapter
Three

Austin

When
the room server brought the food up to my suite, I had him lay it out on the
table like I was hosting a dinner for two so he wouldn't think I was alone.
Once he'd left, I turned up the Yankees game and dug in. The burger was a
perfect shade of pink and was so juicy that I ended up licking it off my hands
as I devoured it and the accompanying crispy steak fries. When I'd finished my
meal, I sighed, cracked open another chilled Deschutes Black Butte, and leaned
back to watch the Yankees stick it to the Mets, yet again.

Just as the game was winding down and the
Yankees were assured of another win, my phone began buzzing. I looked down and
smiled as I answered it.

"Hi, Mom, what's up?" I said
knowing full well that she was calling to crow about the game.

"Well, the Yankees did it
again," she cheered a little too loudly over the roar of voices in the
background.

"'Where are you, Mom?"

"Where the heck do you think I
am?" she laughed. "I'm at the game, silly boy!"

"What the hell?" I laughed.
"Mom, what are you doing?"

"Look, my son is a multi-billionaire
and I can afford to take an afternoon off work and cheer on my team now,"
she replied.

"But how did you get tickets?" I
asked.

"Oh, I have my ways," she
assured me.

"Mom, you didn't buy those tickets
from a scalper, did you?" I scolded.

"Don't ask, and I won't tell,"
she warned. "But no, I didn't. I got them from a friend who couldn't go
and needed to unload them at the last minute."

"Mom, this sounds somewhat
shady," I began.

"Austin Edward Marks, do not lecture
your mother," she said in an ominous tone.

"Okay, okay!" I laughed, giving
up. "How was it?"

"How do you think it was?" she
shouted. "The Yankees won!"

I looked up at the television screen just
in time to see the banner flash "YANKEES BEAT METS 6-2" and see the
crowd let go with a huge roar that seemed to shake the stadium. My mother
continued talking, but she was drowned out by the crowd, so I hung up and
texted her.

Austin_Marks: Talk later! Love you!

Mama_Marks: OK. Want to hear about dates!
Love you 2!

My mother was relentless when it came to
marrying me off. She wanted to see her only son married and producing
grandchildren so that she could spoil them in the way that she'd wanted to
spoil me, but wasn't able to. I loved her for her attempts to set me up with
women she deemed appropriate, but it never quite clicked, so she was constantly
disappointed.

I tried to reassure her that it wasn't her
fault, but she seemed to assess every failed date with the attention of a war
general and double down as she tried again. I'd protested, but it had gotten me
nowhere, so now I just gave in and figured that at least it was giving her
something to do. Besides, I wasn't around enough to have to go on many of the
dates, so really all it ended up being was a string of infrequent nights out
with good girls who were the daughters, and sometimes granddaughters, of my
mother's closest friends.

There
are worse ways to spend an evening,
I thought as I looked
around the suite and noticed that the lights had come on in Central Park. I
stared down at the city for a long time, thinking about how different it looked
from this vantage point.

I'd come a long way from the little
one-bedroom apartment on Evergreen Avenue in Brooklyn, but I wasn't sure that I
was any happier than I'd been back when it had been just my mother and me.

She'd worked as a secretary in Manhattan
before I was born, but when I was small, she changed jobs and became a
librarian in Brooklyn so that she could be home when I got out of school. I'd walk
the three blocks from my school to the library and find her packing up her
bags. She'd always have a new book or magazine for me to read and would always
tell me that I had to be careful with it since no one had even touched it yet.
There was something about her ability to turn the average everyday thing into
something fresh and new that made me feel like I had everything, despite the
fact that we lived a pretty meager existence.

Our apartment was sparse in its
decoration, but my mother somehow managed to make it a warm and inviting home
with her thrift store finds. I never had the most fashionable clothing, but she
made sure that everything I wore was neat and clean. And although we weren't
able to afford lots of groceries, she always focused on buying high quality
food from farmer's markets and local butchers. Some years, she would claim a
patch of ground out behind our building and plant a variety of vegetables. The
patch would often get raided by neighbors and animals, but my mother never
seemed to mind. She'd say that if someone needed the food more than we did,
then they were welcome to it. Besides, I never went to bed hungry, though
looking back on those years, I think that she often did.

The only time my mother would ever get
testy would be when I peppered her with questions about my father. She told me
that he'd died in an accident, but she never said when or where or how that had
happened, so my young mind was left to weave a story in order to satisfy my
curiosity and longing. In the process, my father became a legend in my own
mind. He was a hero and someone who I longed to know. By the time I was ten, I
realized that my mother would never give up the details of his life, so I began
to investigate.

That investigation would lead me to the
story that would eventually change my life, but as I sat back and considered
where I was now, I began to wonder if it was for the better.

Chapter
Four

Emily

It
felt like a long drive home from the airport, but I told myself that it would
all be fine once I got home. I'd make a great dinner for Tom and me, and then
I'd tell him the good news about my promotion. We'd celebrate and things would
go back to how they used to be when we were happy and in love.

Pulling into the driveway, I winced when I
saw that Tom had, again, put another car up on blocks in the backyard. It
wasn't that I was so particular about the yard itself, after all, it just a
rock-covered area with some plants that thrive in arid climates. It was more
that I felt frustrated by the fact that Tom never cleaned up after himself, so
the backyard always vaguely resembled a wrecking yard.

I forced a smile as I popped the trunk of
my beat up Corolla and got out. I looped the few grocery bags in the back over
my arm and yanked my travel case out so I could haul it inside. Right after
we'd gotten married, Tom used to meet me in the garage and bring my bags
inside, but the honeymoon phase was long past and now, I did it all myself.

"Hi, honey, I'm home!" I called
as cheerfully as possible.

"Hey, babe," Tom called from the
backyard. "Come see what Billy brought me to work on!"

"Oh wow," I said as I set the
grocery bags down and walked to the backdoor. Up on blocks in our yard was a
car that looked to be the size of a small boat. I had no idea what it was, only
that it was huge, there were a lot of parts spread out all over the patio, and
there was oil leaking from under the hood and pooling on the concrete. "It
looks...complicated."

"Damn right, it does!" he
crowed. "It's a Buick and these things are incredible!"

Billy stood behind him nodding as he took
a pull off of a long neck bottle of Budweiser. I didn't have a good feeling
about this, but I knew better than to voice my opinion when Tom was riding high
like this, so I smiled and headed inside to change my clothes and cook dinner.

"What do you think, baby?" Tom
whispered as he snuck up behind me in the bedroom. "It's pretty amazing,
isn't it?"

"It's amazing," I repeated, not
quite understanding what was so amazing about the car.

"Billy is going to have me rebuild
the engine and then he'll drive it cross country and sell it for double what he
bought it for," he continued as he began running his hands up my sides.
"I stand to make a sweet profit from this deal, baby."

"That's great, honey," I smiled
stiffly, remembering the last time that Tom and Billy struck a deal and how we
were saddled with over five hundred dollars of parts that Billy claimed were
unusable. With Billy, it was always about how to get the most out of those he
used, but Tom couldn't see that and he usually ended up paying the price. I
knew better than to say anything, though.

"What's wrong? You don't think it's a
good deal?" he whispered as he leaned down and brushed his lips across my
neck. I could smell the beer on his breath and wondered how many he'd had
before I arrived home. If I knew the exact number, I'd know what was coming
next.

"No, it's just that..." I
trailed off as he worked his way down my neck with his lips while he worked his
way up under my t-shirt with his hands.

"It's just what?" he breathed
into my shoulder as he kneaded my breasts.

"I'm just thinking about how to
adjust my dinner menu to accommodate the three of us," I said quickly,
covering my real thoughts.

"You don't like the deal." Tom
stopped kissing me. His voice had an edge that I knew well and didn't like.

"No, seriously, I just had a really
long day at work and I was thinking about how I can stretch the groceries so
that all three of us get enough to eat," I repeated.

"You're such a wet blanket sometimes,
you know?" He gripped my upper arms as he spoke. "Most guys' wives
would be grateful that they take on extra work and do something to make a
little extra, but not my wife."

"Tom, I'm not arguing with you,
honey," I said in an attempt to soothe his bruised ego. "I think it's
great that you're working on the car and I was only trying to figure out how to
feed us all since I didn't buy enough for three. I swear."

"You think you're so much better than
me, don't you?" His voice rose as he got worked up. I knew that once we
reached a certain point, there would be no turning back – and no dinner.

"Tom, baby," I said as I turned
and wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face in his chest. "I was
only thinking about dinner and about how much I was looking forward to having
you all to myself tonight. I'm sorry if I seem out of sorts, but I felt
disappointed when I saw Billy here and knew I would have to share."

I leaned back and tipped my face up so
that I was looking right into his eyes. I plastered the best customer service
smile I had on my lips and then pulled him down so I could kiss him. He wobbled
a bit and then leaned heavily into the kiss. He was already drunk, and I knew
the evening would be a mess if I didn't get started cooking dinner soon.

"Tommy," I sighed.

"Yeah, baby?" he replied as he
bent lower and kissed his way down my collarbone. It was something that used to
thrill me, but now only repulsed me.

"Are you hungry?" I whispered.

"Hungry for what, baby?" he
replied as his hands once again headed up under my t-shirt.

"Dinner, sweetie, dinner?" I
giggled. I stopped for a moment and I held my breath, waiting to see if I'd
tamed the beast for the moment.

"Yeah," he mumbled into my neck.
"I guess I could eat something. Hey, is it okay if Billy stays?"

"It's fine, baby," I replied.
"It's just fine."

He let go of me and turned to leave the
room. As soon as I heard him opening the backdoor, I sank down on the edge of
the bed and held my head in my hands.

I'd loved Tom from the minute I met him in
ninth grade and I'd loved him even more the day we'd stood up in front of the
small gathering of our family and friends and promised to love, honor, and
cherish each other for always, but now we'd become something so different from
what I'd envisioned and I had no idea how we were going to make this work.

Rather, how I was going to make this work.

Chapter
Five

Austin

I
was half asleep when my phone began buzzing. I ignored it until it lit up for
the third time in ten minutes and then grabbed it off the nightstand and
checked the screen. I sighed as I hit the call back button and waited.

"Hey, Bax, what's up?" I asked.

"Austin, there's a problem with the
Sydney developers on the casino," Bax began. Jonathan Davis Baxter III, or
Bax as he was better known, was my second in command and the person I trusted
the most, so I knew if he was sounding the alarm, the problem was real.
"They're threatening to walk off the job. Can you go calm them down and
keep the team moving forward?"

"Why me?" I yawned into the
phone.

"Because when it comes to charming
the natives, no one, and I mean no one, can do it better than you, buddy,"
he laughed. "Get your ass on the next flight to Sydney and fix the problem
or we're going to have way bigger issues to deal with."

"Why aren't you doing this? You're
pretty damn charming, my friend," I asked.

"Because I'm the ugly one," he
shot back. "And thanks for reminding me of that. You're a real pal."

"Aw, Bax, don't go to bed mad,"
I laughed. "You know how they say that it isn't good for a marriage."

"You wish," he sniffed.
"You'd be beyond lucky to find someone as well suited for marriage as I
am."

"You're telling me," I muttered.

"Speaking of which, how was the date
with Angela or Andrea or whatever her name was?" he asked. "The one
your mom set you up with?"

"Andrea, and she was a really nice
girl," I replied defensively.

"Yes, like every other nice girl your
mother has set you up with over the past three years," he said. "When
are you just going to give it up and settle down like a good little son and
give her what she really wants?"

"What do you know about what my
mother wants?" I asked.

"Oh good lord, all parents get to the
point where all they want is grandchildren," he sighed. "Your mother
is no exception."

"Good to know," I grunted,
nonplussed. "Maybe what I ought to do is knock up one of these girls and
give my mother a grandchild without having to mess with the marriage
part."

"Don't even think about it," Bax
warned. "That's whole mess of trouble that you do not need, my
friend."

"Yeah, you're probably right," I
sighed. "Alright, then safe sex it is until I find the one."

"Good choice," he approved.
"Now, be on the flight to Sydney and solve the problem."

"Will do, boss man," I said as I
saluted the phone.

"Don't mock me, jackass," he
warned. "I know your mother."

"Point well taken," I said as I
tapped the screen and ended the call.