The Marriage Ultimatum (City of Dreams Series) (3 page)

Sabrina was to report to the executive suite at five o’clock. Flicking her braid back over her shoulder, Sabrina assumed a relaxed pose and texted Mrs. Egan that she was delayed. Gert Bordon’s lips tightened, her tiny eyes jumped like angry insects in her face.

“Soon you’ll realize you can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” Bordon said before she stomped back to her office.

Sabrina’s careless smirk was replaced with a thoughtful frown as she contemplated the tired wisdom of her supervisor’s parting comment.

****

The top floor of the building, the executive suite, hummed with an even more determined air of industry than every other floor at VGI combined. Surely, no one on the fiftieth floor was tasked with typing and retyping the famously complex and thoroughly boring procedures manuals the way Sabrina was. This was where the company’s heavyweights thought deep thoughts and came to considered decisions that determined the future course of VGI.

Although she never actually had a reason to visit this floor before, walking down the long corridor, Sabrina knew for a certainty that it could be five in the morning or five at night and the cubicles here would still be amply populated with VGI personnel.

There were two full sets of executive support staff so that Vladimir Grigory and his deputies could work at every hour imaginable from any given spot on the globe.

It was said that as top man at VGI, Vladimir Grigory never took a day off and never stopped raking in his millions designing, manufacturing, and selling his fleets of tankers and carrier ships across the world.

Every single head swiveled toward Sabrina as she made her way along past the center hall of cubbies and the offices that flanked them. She wished for the billionth time that she had managed to find something a bit less random to wear this morning than the thin pink sweater purchased when she was too young to realize how badly it clashed with her coloring. She tugged it down over her midriff again as the assistant bade her enter.

He was opening a folder, but he glanced up when she entered the room.

It was a close thing to say who was more stunned.

Sabrina was flabbergasted. The hot guy from last night looked like he owned the place, decked out in a sharp navy suit and tie pulled straight from a high-end men’s shop. Her mouth fell open as realization dawned, and she didn’t even need to check the name on the plate affixed to the door.

His initial look of astonishment was quickly masked.

“Yeah, it’s me, Vladimir freakin’ Grigory.”

The deep drawl with the faintest of accents shivered down her spine just as it had last night. Only this time he was laughing at her.

Sabrina cringed. This could not be happening. She had to be asleep, trapped in a nightmare. Her face burned as she recalled one of the more vivid dreams she’d had last night. He hadn’t been wearing that bespoke suit and starched white shirt. He hadn’t been wearing a stitch!

“Ms.,” he glanced at the folder again, “Boyd.”

Now Sabrina felt lower and dirtier than the bottom of a trashcan. They hadn’t exchanged names the night before.
We went from zero to sixty in five minutes in the backseat of a car. We were seconds away from completely anonymous sex.
You’re the top guy at VGI. Hell, you are VGI, and I climbed over you like a lap dancer. But buddy, your hands were glued to me, too!

The heat climbed up from her chest to her face again.

If she could rocket off the planet, she would in a nanosecond. Her heart blocked her throat, and she couldn’t utter a word if her life depended on it. Not wanting to look but unable to tear her gaze away, she just stared.

And man, he was taking his sweet time staring right back.

****

Vlad could not credit his own eyes. The hot number who had rocked his jetlagged world last night stood before him as if he’d willed it. There’d been no explanation for his unusual behavior with her; he’d never been so out of control with a woman that he hadn’t waited for the privacy of a room with a bed. Hell, he hadn’t even attempted to get her name.

Since forming his company, his personal and professional life had been organized around the PR ideal he wanted the world to see. He chose his women with a rational eye toward their pedigree and sense of what kind of media image they would reflect upon him. He avoided actresses and models and mainly chose women who excelled in their chosen field, whether law, medicine, or physics. He’d even dated an opera singer. They were always beautiful, of course, but that was only part of the larger package. They had to exude a quality of stability and breeding such that if he ever took one to wife, there would be no unwelcome reflection by the press about her suitability and absolutely no cause for the media to seek out any hidden information about him and his past.

His life history was his fiction and his sex life, though very real, was as carefully orchestrated as the tune-ups on his garage full of sports cars and marina filled with yachts; regular attention and maintenance yielded no surprises.

And no excitement.

The unbidden realization rankled.

For some reason, likely having everything to do with stress of travel and plain chemistry, this particular woman turned him on fast and hard.

And he was about to fire her.

He didn’t invite her to sit down, and his gaze wandered over her as if compelled.

Vlad had a policy of never asking a subordinate to do something he wasn’t willing to tackle himself. He knew how to perform every function major and minor within his empire and it didn’t matter that these days he had someone to take care of all of his daily needs both personal and professional. From preparing spreadsheets to building the ships that had made him millions, he kept up with every innovation and made it a point to be the person where the buck stopped.

His company was his baby and as the only offspring he was ever going to create, he took every person’s contribution, or lack thereof, seriously and sought to replace anyone who didn’t fit the mold.

So he always took upon himself the unwelcome task of letting go of staff that could not meet his sky-high requirements. People knew this and many self-selected out of the opportunity to work at VGI for fear of never measuring up to the exacting standards of the boss.

Even though he’d made the monumental and unprecedented mistake of hooking up with this particular employee, she had to go.

“Ms. Boyd, your annual review has come back and it isn’t good. You’ve failed to meet the minimum standards for attendance and commitment to continuing education. This has been a recurrent pattern over the entire course of your employment here. As a result, your services are no longer required, effective immediately.”

“I’ve never had a complaint about the quality of my work. In fa-act…” Her voice tapered to a halt of sound.

“It’s more than work product.” He interrupted her, needing to get this messy business finished. “You are late arriving for work, late for meetings, and have failed to attend all of the continuing education seminars required in your department.”

He was glancing through a folder again as he spoke, avoiding those eyes.

Then he glanced up and watched her throat work for a second or two, and when her voice emerged, it was a low, ragged sound. “I’ve good reason. I have family obligations. I can’t spend overnight at a department retreat. I was told I would be excused.”

Vlad looked away from the obvious signs of turmoil on her face. She was biting down hard on her lower lip, her eyes were wide and glassy, and the freckles on her nose were the only color on her face. He had no time for drama where his living was concerned, and he required total commitment even from his junior staff. They were compensated handsomely for their efforts as a result.

Family obligations: the giant catchall of excuses. Hadn’t he been an obligation his mother had been all too eager to set aside? He pushed the thought down and concentrated, as always, on work.

His company, his creation, his sweat, had now grown to a multinational concern. Better than any real life baby could be. He had created a workplace that was as comfortable and accommodating as possible, but it was a work place and there were always people who pushed the envelope too far.

He closed the folder and put it aside. Her time was up. Without lifting his head he said, “You may collect your things, Ms. Boyd.”

He sensed rather than saw that she hadn’t moved. He finally looked up into stunned green eyes.

“It’s Sabrina,” she stated baldly. My first name is Sabrina.”

Chapter 3

Kicked to the Curb

Fired!

She was fired.

She was drowning. As a non-swimmer that was the most horrible end she could imagine, and Sabrina knew this was how it felt. Desperate cold. No air. Head ready to split open with pain. Heart bursting out of her chest. Unable to call out for help, unable to even think. Sinking fast. This could not be happening.

This
was
really happening.

Not quite aware of how she got there, Sabrina was back in her cubicle stuffing her oversized purse with random items from her desk. The insistent chirp of her cell finally shattered the ice enclosing her numbed brain.

Mrs. Egan. Alex!

Like a coma victim returned to consciousness, Sabrina had a blanked out feeling; not knowing if she’d lost days from her life or just minutes. Hyperventilating, she pulled the elastic from her hair and pressed her thumbs along her temples in an effort to squash the gallows drumbeat of her pulse there. Sitting on the edge of her chair, she took a gulp from the water bottle she always kept on her desk. Either that or she would faint. She shivered as the water slid down her throat and looked at the clock. Only twenty minutes had passed. Twenty, life-altering, minutes.

She found Mrs. Egan in the lobby amusing her little brother with a nursery rhyme that always evoked lots of giggling from Alex. She didn’t have the heart to tell her sitter what had just happened. Because Sabrina losing her job, meant Mrs. Egan lost hers. And with her husband sick and unable to work, that would not be welcome news.

“No worries, I’ll take him home and reschedule the checkup. Sorry you had to wait,” Sabrina said.

Mrs. Egan planted a kiss on Alex’s head before hurrying out of the VGI lobby.

It was just so unfair.

This was the best job she’d ever had. It was the best job she would get in her current situation with a child to raise and college to finish.

Now that the shock was wearing off a little, Sabrina’s brain turned back on with cold clarity. One thing was very clear.

Vladimir Grigory was an unfeeling bastard.

Nine months after she began working at VGI, her mother had died in a hit and run. Overnight, Sabrina plunged into a waking nightmare of nonstop work and fulltime care of an infant. Life was a constant, chaotic juggle of priorities, all of which had equal value in her mind. Every day was endless and yet shorter than what she needed to accomplish her goals.

Her job at VGI had been a literal lifesaver when her mother died. She turned part time hours into a full time position. She couldn’t just walk away now, not when she and Alex were finally so close to achieving the next major step. Alex in preschool. Her own college degree.

So what the hell was wrong with her? She would not allow this to happen. No way was she going to meekly turn tail and disappear without a fight.

Vladimir freakin’ Grigory needed a reality check. And she was just the person to give it to him.

Settling Alex in the stroller, Sabrina headed back to the elevator bank.

****

Once again, she passed through the gauntlet that was the VGI executive floor and kept her head up, gaze focused straight ahead. The whispers buzzed feverishly around the woman in the train wreck of an outfit as she strode down the corridor—this time with a toddler in a stroller.

“Ms. Boyd,” his assistant stepped in front of her, guarding the domain of the boss like a rabid pit bull, “you can’t—”

Sabrina looked her straight in the eye. That was what you did to make a dog back down. Or was that what made a dog attack? She couldn’t remember, and she didn’t care.

“I’m not leaving, so you might as well move before I shout this place down.”

There was steel in Sabrina’s tone, and her voice was pitched loud enough for the hapless woman to know that she couldn’t care less who heard.

The assistant stepped aside. “Now this should be interesting,” she muttered.

She shoved the door open and pushed the stroller inside as if she did it every day of the week, then nudged the door shut with her elbow.

“It’s not gonna be that easy to get rid of me.”

“I get the feeling nothing is easy with you,” he said.

His gaze was trained on her, and, as he leaned back in his seat, his relaxed body language was like a red flag to Sabrina’s overwrought senses.

Then, belatedly, he noticed Alex sitting quietly in his stroller, plucking Cheerios from a plastic cup and popping them into his mouth with toddler concentration all the while staring up at him with huge eyes.

His spine straightened at the sight of the little boy, disbelief evident on his face for an instant before being replaced by an impassive, clenched jaw.

Sabrina launched into speech.

“Yes, this is Alex. He’s the reason I’m here. You need to know, to understand. I want you to think about what you’re doing to us.”

“I just fired you. This is where you…”

“No.” She was emphatic. “I’m not going to just get out. I can’t just fade away. I need this job. We…need this job.”

She raised her chin, forced strength into her voice, forbidding the emotion to emerge.

“There is no one else. Alex needs me, and I need to work.”

Sabrina had her pride. She didn’t want him to know how close to the edge they lived. But unless he understood some of it, she had no chance of survival.

“Ms. Boyd…”

“My name is Sabrina and after last night, I can’t believe you have the nerve not to use it.”

“After last night, the last thing I’m going to do is use it,” he said. He looked up for a moment straight into her eyes.