The Astleys.
Three
Devlin
He worked here.
What were the odds?
I wasn’t sure whether I was pissed or glad or turned on. That it was a complicated cocktail to dissect only irritated me more.
“What department does he work in?” I demanded, turning to my executive assistant. Lizzie turned to her PA, who turned to hers, until we reached the bottom of the pile—Paul.
He just blinked at me. “The intern?”
I frowned. “What?”
“You mean, which department is the intern in?”
“He’s an intern?” Christ, how old was he?
Envisioning our tryst being splashed over the tabloids, I realized damage control might be in order. Those emergency lights could be the bane of my life. I hadn’t known the dark rooms even had them until they’d flashed on, for God’s sake.
“Yes. With the Marketing department.”
“I overheard Rhode praising him to Kirkland, saying that he shows promise,” Lizzie said flatly.
Taken aback, I arched a brow because Jacquelyn Rhode liked no one and approved of no one. In her mind, she was God, and the supreme being, meaning that everyone around her was a peon and only capable of worshipping at her feet.
For her to even mention that her intern had promise made me wonder if she was banging him. And if she was, was it consensual? Or another sexual harassment suit just waiting to happen?
“Keep an eye on her,” I warned my team of assistants, aware my tone was grim.
Pain flashing in her eyes, Lizzie heaved an impatient sigh. “She’s on her final warning,” she reminded me as if I didn’t know that already.
“Final warnings mean nothing to her. You know she’ll get a team of lawyers onto me the second I even dare fire her.” I grunted, as exasperated and infuriated as my EA. Rhode was a shark that darkened the halls of Astley Publishing. The day I fired her arse would be a good one. “If she incurs another warning, she’s out of here. I don’t give a shit about the litigation, even if I end up paying for it out of my own pocket, but if she’s going to drag us through the press then I want to have something to hurl back at her.”
“I keep sending the records to the lawyers,” Lizzie assured me, her mouth tightening because she knew what she was sending over wasn’t enough to protect the company. “If she tried, I’d like to think we have more than enough to get her laughed out of court.”
“And we’d still manage to end up looking bad because we kept her on.” Reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose, I muttered resignedly, “Regardless, watch the intern. If she’s complimenting him, she’s either moved in for the kill and we’re too late, or she’s getting ready to up her game.”
The thought was enough to irritate me into scowling.
Before I climbed onto the elevator, the urge to watch the guy go was a strong one. I really wanted to see if his ass was as fine as I remembered clutching at last night when we kissed.
But I was an Astley.
We didn’t shy away in the face of difficult tasks. If anything, we went head to head with them.
So, battling my desire to see if he was as pretty going as he was coming—and that wasn’t a pun because, sadly, the dark room and our positions hadn’t enabled me to see anything like that—I tried not to worry over whether the press would have a field day about Astley Publishing’s top of the tree being the bottom of the dark room.
Fuck—I just knew they’d use that as a headline too.
Priorities, however, dictated that I ask, “How old is he? Tell me he’s not eighteen.”
“Interns can’t be that young, can they?” Lizzie questioned her team of staff.
“He’s twenty-two. Two months into a three-month internship.”
“You know a lot about him,” I murmured, eying Paul up as relief battled with the disquieting notion of wondering whether the kid had boned him too.
Had I been targeted?
The insidious thought whispered in my mind, until I registered I’d been the one to go into the occupied dark room. I’d been tipsy but not that bloody tipsy.
Almost grunting with relief, I nearly didn’t hear Paul say, “He works with Cassandra. Rhode’s EA? We’re dating.” He shrugged. “We talk about work.”
I dipped my chin in understanding, oddly grateful he was dating the assistant.
I remembered Cassandra—if Paul let her discuss work, then he was wasting time. She was fine, too fine to work for Rhode that was for sure. Everyone knew working for that bitch was like becoming the prime minister of a developed nation—the second you were appointed, it might be considered a promotion, but after a single day on the job, you’d be turning gray overnight.
I was under no illusions where she was concerned. Rhode was a Marketing wet dream, but a PR nightmare.
Grateful my early morning meeting about the Trevelyan release hadn’t been with her but Kirkland over in PR, even if I’d be seeing that harpy later, I waited for the elevator to take me to the top floor of my domain where the seventy-thousand square feet of space was taken up by my office, reception, and boardroom.
Unfortunately for me, when I was spit out into the reception, Sadie, my version of Cerberus, had a pinched look on her face.
A pinched look I knew only too well.
That was what happened when you spoke with the Duke of Keighly—you looked like you needed to take a shit.
Grunting, I nodded at her and moved directly to my office. “Tell him I’ll be a few minutes.”
“Thank you, sir,” was her relieved answer, and I heard her murmur, “Your Grace, Mr. Astley will be able to speak with you in a few moments.”
Ever since the diagnosis, he’d taken to calling me every damn day, and always about the same thing.
With him and the Rhode situation, it was a wonder I wasn’t living in a dark room. Never mind trawling for cock in them. Christ.
“Don’t you think it’s about time you provided us with a grandson?”
That was the Duke’s version of a greeting, and he said it the second the video call connected through to him in our Cumbrian estate, deep in England’s North.
“Since when did you care about heirs and spares?” I remarked coolly, even though we both knew the answer to that.
Noblesse oblige ran rife in my lineage, that’s what happened when you were the heir to some godforsaken piece of wilderness. I’d never actually been to the family pile, nor had I ever wanted to go. I’d probably die without seeing the Astley’s ancestral home, and I was more than fine with that.
Since his cancer diagnosis, however, my father wasn’t fine with that.
It was suddenly family this and family fucking that.
He’d always hated Cumbria, but he’d moved up there, dragging Mother with him, insisting the country air would be a comfort to him before he died.
That, from the father who’d subsisted on the smoggy London air since he was a child and who thrived on its energy as much as I did.
We’d never been close, simply because the Astleys weren’t bred to be that way. The stiff upper lip wasn’t the cliché most Americans believed. I, for one, had several stiff things about me.
“I can leave this to you—but what about you? Who will you leave the estate to, hmm?”
“Derek? Jacob? Clinton?” I remarked, naming several cousins who’d chomp at the bit to sit in this seat. “Or how about I leave it to the board of directors?” I said with a smirk, knowing it’d piss him off.
“You can’t be serious,” he wheezed, his cheeks burning with fire at my suggestion. “I’d prefer you to leave it to a goddamn dog than those bunch of scavengers.”
And he wasn’t talking about the directors.
The only Astley worth his salt had died four years ago. My uncle Forrester. He’d taken me in when my father had tossed me out.
I shrugged. “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll leave everything that isn’t entailed to a charity. I have no desire to have ch
ildren, Father, you know that. You’ve always known it.”
His mouth tightened. “Things are different now.”
“No. They’re not,” I told him calmly. “You’re dying—but we’re all dying. You’ll just pass on a lot faster than you’d have liked.”
His scowl made a reappearance. Funny how, when I was a child, that scowl had terrified the life out of me. “Is that supposed to reassure me? Gentle words to carry with me into the afterlife?”
That right there was the proof that my father had been overtaken by aliens.
Afterlife?
He didn’t believe in things like that. At least, he’d never believed those things in the past. The diagnosis was changing him, and callous though it might seem, it was infringing on my personal liberties.
Children?
I shuddered at the prospect.
Some people were not born to be fathers.
And those people were all Astley males.
“Look, I have to go. I have a meeting in five.” It was a lie, not that he was to know that.
Of course, it pricked his attention, and he straightened in his armchair. Retirement didn’t suit Father, and after a long lifetime managing the company, I didn’t exactly blame him for being bored. “You sound annoyed. What’s the meeting about?”
I snorted. “I am annoyed. At you. Not the meeting.”
“What’s it about?” he repeated, undaunted in the face of my irritation.
“A piddling HR issue,” I lied.
“What kind of HR issue? What on earth are you handling that for?” His scowl made another reappearance. “Don’t they know you’re the bloody CEO?”
“I think they’re aware of that fact,” I said dryly. “My name’s on their pay-slip, at least. And the building, of course.”
His harrumph had me changing the subject because only one thing had him making that noise. “How’s the pain?”
He grimaced. “Bad.”
“Tell the damn doctor.”
“What they prescribe just knocks me out. I’ll be buggered if I spend the last few months I’ve got left half-baked on medicine.”
Despite myself, I had to laugh. “You do everything your own way, Father.”
“Like father, like son,” was his retort, but his brows surged in a short tango that was his idea of a dare—for me to refute his remark at my own peril.
“Perhaps,” was all I said, but I knew he was right. Which was proof I’d be as shitty a parent as he was. Deciding that wasn’t the wisest thing to say over the phone, I simply told him, “I’ll speak to you later.”
“Good.”
And that was that.
We both cut the call, our goodbyes never all that emotional, but when the screen turned blank, reverting to the messaging platform we used, I stared out onto my desk and decided that I wasn’t happy about him dying.
It wasn’t that I liked him, per se. I didn’t. He’d cheated on my mother far too many times to count, had never hesitated to spank me for any misdemeanor as a child, had thrown me out after that mischief at Eton, and…
Well, his sins were too numerous to bear.
But he was correct.
We were alike. Too alike. If anyone understood me, it was him.
It was that I’d miss.
Reaching up to pluck at my bottom lip, I rocked back in my desk chair.
A ping sounded on my iMac, and I let my gaze drift over to the message that popped up.
Dinner tonight? I’ll dress down?
Carolina. Complete with a shot of her pussy.
Christ, she was starting to get clingy.
I hated it when they turned clingy.
Preferring the prospect of a meeting with that bitch Rhode than having to break up with her, I picked up the phone and called Sadie. When she answered, she asked, “Sir?”
“I need a piece from Cartier. Spend around fifteen hundred.” Carolina wasn’t worth that much, but if it meant she’d disappear with less of a pout, then I’d be happy.
I doubted I’d be so fortunate.
I’d only realized what a pain in the arse she was after our first fuck. I thought it’d take an eviction notice to get her out of my goddamn apartment. In the end, I’d bribed her with my black Amex.
“Yes, sir. Shall I have it sent straight to her or would you like me to deliver it?”
“I’d prefer you to deliver it, but I’m not that cruel.”
A laugh sounded down the line, before Sadie murmured, “Much appreciated, sir.”
My lips twitched. “You know she’s a hellcat when crossed.” I grunted. “Make it twenty-five hundred. Maybe that’ll keep her quiet.” Sadie hummed, and I heard the disbelieving tone to it only because I knew she was right so, forlornly, I tacked on, “One can but hope.”
“Yes, sir.” When I didn’t cut the line, she cleared her throat. “Is there anything else?”
“There’s an intern in the Marketing department.”
“Oh, yes, Micah,” she said cheerfully.
Interest had me rocking back in my seat. “You know him, then?”
A little laugh escaped her, and I knew why. I’d heard enough fluttery giggles like that to understand that Micah triggered as much interest in the women on my staff as he did in me.
And who the hell could blame them?
“We all know, Micah,” was her retort.
I’d just bet they did.
My ass clenched at the thought of last night, the inherent ache that couldn’t be replicated, the feel of him inside me, and I gritted out, “I’d like to speak with him about his internship. Can you set that up for some time today, please?”
“You want to speak with an intern?” Sadie asked, and I knew her eyes would be bugged wide like they were on stalks. She might as well have asked me if I wanted to talk with the Martians who crash landed into Astley Tower’s lightning rod every night.
“Yes. I have—” I coughed. “—things I’d like to discuss with him.”
“Okay, sir, I’ll get that arranged,” she said slowly. “For tomorrow? There’s the VP meeting this afternoon.”
“Nothing earlier?”
“Well, with some wiggling around.”
Fuck the Veep meeting.
“I’d appreciate that.”
Which was why, two and a half hours later, I found myself in my bathroom.
Brushing my teeth.
Combing my hair.
And questioning whether I had time to beat one off before Micah showed up.
Four
Micah
“He wants to speak with Micah?”
My head popped up at the sound of my name, especially with the distaste which was warring with bewilderment on Cassandra’s lips.
She was still sulking about the goddamn coffee, and it was easier for me just to keep my head down and to plow on through the work she was supposed to do.
I’d been arguing with designers all morning over Rhode’s vision and what they’d come up with. I liked their premise, but she didn’t, and whatever Rhode wanted, she got.
Every.
Damn.
Time.
It’d be irritating if I wasn’t also impressed. The power she wielded in such a male-dominated environment was admirable, but rather than do much good with it, she’d just turned into a man.
It went past the difference between a woman in power simply being a bitch whereas a guy in the same position with a similar attitude was merely a ‘go-getter.’ She was predatory—now I’d likened her to that, I couldn’t get away from the image of me being a frickin’ gazelle and her being a cougar.
In both senses of the word.
“Wait a minute, Sadie. I just want to clarify that Mr. Astley wants to see Micah. Am I hearing you right?” She saw me peering over my partition wall, and scowling at me, muttered, “Right, I’ll tell him.”
The bolt of anticipation came out of the blue. When I’d Googled the Astleys, I’d found that last night’s fuck had been with no other than Devlin Astley him
self, who, according to Wiki, was also the Viscount of Lynden. I had no idea what a viscount was, but I knew who. A crusty British noble he wasn’t.
I’d never imagined I’d set eyes on my one-night stand again. In two months of working here, I hadn’t seen the ‘boss’ once. What kind of bizarre coincidence was it that I saw him this morning after last night’s sexcapade?
Arousal burned inside me as I watched her put the phone down, waiting on her instructions.
“You’re to visit with Mr. Astley at twelve-forty,” she told me primly, then her nose tipped up and her tone became scornful. “What the hell have you done to come to his attention? I wonder if he’s going to fire you for it.”
I didn’t bother answering, just cast a glance at the clock and spent the remaining moments of that one-hundred-and-fifty minute wait nervously trying to focus on my work and mostly failing.
Twenty minutes before the appointment, I got to my feet and ducked out of the cubicle because Cassandra went to use the restroom again. She either had a stomach bug, was on her period, or had some kind of UTI because I’d never known her to spend so much time in there.
Working for Rhode didn’t allow you much time to dawdle. If you could piss, eat, and have a phone conference all in one go you’d be set for life working in this high-pressure environment.
Ducking into the bathroom myself, I headed to the vanity and looked over my appearance.
He might well be calling me in to fire me... As far as I knew, from what I’d seen on the gossip sites, he was a lady’s man. Definitely not out as gay. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to shout our hook-up to the world, not with my dad for a father, but he wasn’t to know that, was he?
My suit was dark navy but lightweight thanks to the heat of the summer, and I’d forgone a tie because it was too hot for that today. The navy offset my light blue shirt which had the faintest of cross-hatch patterns covering it. Over that I wore a vest, and though it and my pants were a little creased from both the temperature and working at my desk, I looked as fresh as I could in the circumstances.
The Intern: An MM Office Romance Page 3