by Lucy Eden
She led me down a corridor of glass-walled offices full of people in business attire at desks clicking away at computers or pacing back and forth screaming into earpieces.
At the end was a pair of large wooden doors. She pushed them open to reveal a massive office. The far wall was floor to ceiling windows. At 45 stories the Strathmore was the tallest building for miles, so the view from the 42nd floor felt like standing in a cloud.
Grant Winters stood framed in the celestial view of his office window, looking like one of the gods from the myths my father used to tell me at bedtime. He was a tall, imposing figure that looked chiseled from marble. Leaning forward, he was supporting the weight of his massive upper body on his knuckles atop an enormous black mahogany desk. I heard the disembodied buzzing of a voice coming from the telephone on its surface where he focused his attention.
He briefly glanced at us with a mild look of annoyance, before motioning us inside with two fingers.
"He'll see you now," the woman said, almost pleasantly as she guided me into the office. I felt a tremor of fear and excitement as I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and stepped forward.
“Good luck…” she called in a sing-song voice before closing the doors behind her.
Grant
Because I obviously didn’t have enough shit to do in one day, my PR rep set up with an interview for a bullshit puff piece with Capital Exchange Magazine. It was a decades-old dried up rag, which people kept on their coffee tables to make them seem intelligent but nobody read anymore.
My team had been working on a multibillion-dollar deal, and the other parties involved were concerned about my private persona or a lack thereof. I didn't spend a lot of time in the public eye. I didn't party every night, fuck models and snort piles of cocaine. I didn't publicize my charitable donations, write "get rich quick" books, or judge a reality tv show. I worked like a fucking dog and expected my professional accomplishments reflect my competence as a business leader, but that's not how it works in today's world.
So after declining interviews for over a decade, I sold a piece of my soul to Capital Exchange Magazine for public visibility and discounted ad space for our commercial real estate sector.
I had almost completely forgotten about it when Gwen, my executive secretary opened my office doors accompanied by what could not have been a reporter for the magazine my buddies, and I used to swat flies in business school.
The mystery girl was a tall, statuesque beauty with the palest skin I’d ever seen. It looked like porcelain. She wore tight black jeans, and a matching t-shirt with a v neck that displayed a hint of the curves of her small, perfect breasts. Her fiery red hair was pulled into the messy bun you see on women at the gym, and I couldn’t make this up, there was a pen sticking out of it. The glasses she wore did nothing to hide the large emerald green eyes that glittered like jewels or smattering of freckles scattered across her cheek. I wanted to kiss every single one. This girl was young, she couldn’t be older than twenty-five, but her face displayed a hidden fierceness that made me curious. She also wore dog tags around her neck. They were tucked into her shirt, but there was no mistaking the steel ball chain and two rectangles outlined below her chest under her tee. She finished the look with black combat boots.
I felt myself getting rock hard at the thought of taking this woman, and I was simultaneously pissed that the magazine hadn't bothered to send a real reporter. After all the begging, bargaining and scheduling, they sent a cub reporter, barely out of school who couldn’t even bother to be on time.
I almost sent her away. I was on the phone with one of my lawyers hammering out the details of this never-ending headache. It was a bad time. It was always a bad time these days, but I figured I needed to get the damn thing over with so I could focus on important things and I wanted to spend more time with this reporter, a lot more time if I had my way.
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About the Author
Lucy Eden is an emerging author of steamy romance novellas. She enjoys reading every book she can her hands on, cooking with dangerous amounts of sugar and butter & dreaming up ways for complete strangers to fall in love and have yummy sex.
This is Lucy’s third book.