by Lana Dash
DEAR BILLIONAIRE BOSS
SINCERELY YOURS SERIES
LANA DASH
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
Also By Lana Dash
About the Author
DEAR BILLIONAIRE BOSS is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by LANA DASH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the author/publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1
MAREN
This is the first Friday I’ve gotten home before midnight in weeks.
My boss has zero regard for any of his employees to experience the joys of having a personal life. As his Executive Assistant, I’m expected to be in the office before he arrives and stay until he leaves for the night. And since he’s become a self-made billionaire before his thirtieth birthday, you can imagine the workaholic schedule he likes to keep.
“What have I been telling you?” My roommate Willa asks sitting on the kitchen counter.
We are waiting for our two other best friends, Lucy and Cassidy, to arrive so we can have a girl’s night. It’s been so long since I’ve seen them, I’m pretty sure that I’ve forgotten what they look like.
“You’ve been saying that I should quit my job,” I say as I pull four margarita glasses from the cupboard.
“Exactly, you aren’t happy doing what you’re doing.”
“I don’t really have a lot of options. My student loans aren’t going to pay for themselves and this job is good money. I just need to hold out until I can figure out what I want to do with myself for a career.”
“Is it possible that you put up with your tyrant of a boss because he looks like he’s just stepped off the runway?”
The doorbell rings, sparing me from having to answer her. She isn’t totally wrong in her assumptions. I mean, I do have about sixty-three thousand dollars in student loan debt that I need to pay off before I can really start my career. But in the meantime, my boss is no slouch in the looks department. His tailored Italian suits, that fit his muscled frame leave little to the imagination as to what his body looks like beneath. If I have to spend most of my waking hours in the office, there are worse people to have to see every day.
I walk out into the living room as Willa opens the front door to let in Cassidy and Lucy.
“I’ve been waiting all week for one of your margaritas,” Cassidy says, setting down the pizza box in her hand on the large square coffee table.
I pour us each a glass of the lime alcoholic goodness and we settle onto the sofa sectional and take a long sip.
“Yes, that hits the spot,” Willa sighs.
“I didn’t think you’d be home in time to hang out tonight,” Lucy says, flipping open the pizza box and grabbing a slice.
“Yeah, I know.” I take another sip. “The boss is in London this week, so my work load isn’t as heavy with a six-hour time difference.”
“You need to quit that job,” Cassidy says.
“Thank you.” Willa points at her and turns expectantly at me. “See, I’m not the only one that thinks you need to quit.”
“Well, we all don’t have parents that will pay for college and graduate school for us, so we don’t have debt to deal with.” I dig at Willa.
Lucy snorts into her drink but doesn’t say anything. Willa narrows her eyes at her but then swings her gaze my way. We both know she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. We all graduated together, but instead of heading out into the real world of adulting, she decided to continue her education on her parent’s dime until she could find out what she really wanted to do with her life.
“It’s interesting how you don’t seem to mind my parents paying for this place and me letting you live here rent free, so you can save more money,” Willa digs right back.
“Okay,” Cassidy holds up her arms between us. “Let’s all take a breath before this turns into a repeat of sophomore year when you two didn’t speak for a month because of Brandon Davidson.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, knowing she’s right.
Willa nods. “Me too.”
“Good, we are all friends again. Let’s clink this out.” Cassidy holds up her glass. We all laugh and clink our glasses.
“What I want to know is why we are all here, staying in on a Friday night?” I ask, refilling everyone’s glasses. “I mean, I know why I don’t have a life, but we are all smart, funny, beautiful women. We should have guys lining up down the block for us.” I turn on the sofa and glance out the window, down at the street below. “It’s empty.”
Everyone gets quiet for a moment, considering the question. Each of us is unique in our own amazing ways—Willa is brilliant, Lucy is a sweetheart, Cassidy is clever, and I’m a bit of a mouth. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to find someone that would see just how amazing we all are.
Willa raises her hand. “I know why I’m still single.”
She proceeds to tell us about her crush on the British professor at school, who she’s had her eye on since the start of the semester. Lucy admits that she’s been pining over the bad boy that lives next door, who she’s barely spoken a few words to in passing in the hallway. And Cassidy confesses that after seeing her brother’s best friend last year at her brother’s engagement party, no one else seems to hold her interest.
When they are all done confessing their reasons why they can’t move on to find a guy, their gazes turn to me.
“Spill it, Maren,” Willa says to me, lifting her eyebrow like she knows something.
“Spill what?”
“Don’t pretend that you aren’t in the same situation as the rest of us.”
I bite my lip. She’s not wrong, but I’m not sure how she found out about my crush on my boss. He may be an egotistical jackass, but there is something about him that I can’t put my finger on. Like there is something he’s hiding from the world, and I catch little glimpses of it here and there. I don’t think he’s really the guy that he wants the world to think he is. But I can’t help but wonder if it’s not just me projecting what I want him to be, instead of seeing him for who he really is.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie. “I work a lot of hours and that limits my chance to meet someone.”
“I call bullshit.” Willa shakes her head. “When I stopped by your office last week to pick up your keys when I got locked out of the house, I saw the way you acted around him.”
“Really?” Cassidy smiles.
“Did she do that thing with her hair?” Lucy asks.
Willa nods. “Yep!”
“What thing with my hair?” I ask.
They all laugh, each of them in on the joke but me.
“You do this thing where you tuck your hair behind your ear and let your fingertips graze slowly down your neck to your collarbone,” Lucy explains.
“I’ve s
een you do it since freshman year,” Cassidy adds.
“So?” Willa asks.
“Fine,” I hang my head. “I may have some slight feelings for my boss.”
“Was that so hard?”
I glare at Willa, but she just smiles and gives me a quick wink.
“So, what are we saying here?” I stand up from the sofa and turn to look at each of my best friends. “Are we all going sit here every Friday night, lusting after our secret crushes until we are old spinsters?”
“What are you suggesting?” Cassidy asks.
“We’ve got to tell the guys in our lives how we feel so we can move on. We can’t keep holding onto a hope that they might one day wake up and see us differently. There are guys out there waiting for us.” I point out the window towards the city skyline. “And we are too busy hiding behind our unrequited love to go out and meet them.”
“How are we supposed to tell them?” Lucy asks, her cheeks flushing. “I can barely get the courage to speak complete sentences around him, let alone admit how I feel.”
I look around the room for some sort of inspiration. My gaze narrows in on the stationary set my grandmother got me for Christmas that I have yet to open. She and I got into an argument over Thanksgiving about the lost art of writing letters as opposed to a text or an email. Her punishment gift might just be the answer to all of our problems.
“Here,” I run over and grab the box off the shelf. “We will each write out a letter. We don’t have to send them, but maybe, by putting down on paper how we feel, we can finally move on and meet someone new.”
“It’s not the craziest idea you’ve ever had,” Willa says.
Cassidy shrugs. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t hurt to try it.”
We all turn to Lucy. She has a look of determination on her face that we don’t normally see on her timid face.
“Are you in, Lucy?” I ask.
A smile spreads across her face. “Let’s do it.”
2
GRAYSON
The atmosphere in the office is always more relaxed when I’m gone for few days. When the cat’s away the mice will play. But when the cat returns, I expect everyone in the office to be the professionals I hired them to be. They think I have no clue what happens when I’m gone, but I haven’t gotten to where I am in this world by not knowing everything that’s happening in this office.
“Good morning, Mr. Grayson,” My assistant, Maren, stands up from her desk to greet me. She’s the only one that doesn’t seem to have that aire about her that she wasn’t still working one hundred percent in my absence. She’s only been working here a few months, but she’s already made herself an invaluable asset to me.
“Good morning.” I take the mug of coffee she holds out to me. “Any problems while I was gone?”
“No issues. I just moved around a few meetings because Gina Marshall insisted on having lunch with you today.”
I sigh and head into my office. Sometimes I wished Maren wasn’t so good at her job. I’d love any excuse to cancel on Gina. She’s the daughter of my mentor and currently planning the launch party for our new software. And in the past few years, she’s made it very clear what her intentions are with trying to date me. I don’t have time for her distractions today.
I take a seat at my desk and wiggle my mouse around to wake up my computer. Maren stands expectantly on the other side of my desk.
I glance up at her. “Is that my mail?”
“Yes.” She looks down at the bundle in her arms. “But I haven’t had a chance to sort through it.”
I hold out my hand to her. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just go through it myself.”
Maren pulls a face, but it disappears as quickly as it appeared. I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking that I don’t trust that she can handle even the simplest task of opening my mail. She doesn’t know that I don’t mind doing some of the menial tasks in my life, like going through my mail. It helps me clear my mind, to work through some of the bigger issues I have to deal with as CEO of my company.
She hands me the stack. Her desk phone begins to ring, and she leaves me to go answer it. I flip through the envelopes, sorting them into two piles—one pile to deal with now and another pile to deal with later.
A light teal envelope catches my eye and makes me pause. My name is written on the front in handwriting I don’t recognize. There’s no name on the front indicating the sender so I flip it over, but there’s only an address on the back.
Maren pokes her head in my office door. “You’ve got a meeting in three minutes in conference room five with the marketing team.”
“Thank you.” I stuff the letter into my black leather binder and head off to my meeting.
I can see the team scrambling to set up through the glass walls of the conference room. They all straighten when they see me approach.
“Welcome back, sir.”
“Good to be back.” I sit down at my usual seat at the head of the conference room table.
“We’ve put together a plan for the roll out of the new software—” the director of Marketing begins.
I listen as they begin the slide show presentation. I’m still trying to adjust to the jet lag, but my mind wonders a bit. I remember the envelope in my binder and open it up. It’s a handwritten letter.
Dear Mr. Grayson,
Wow, even in a letter I have no intention of sending to you, I still can’t bring myself to call you by your first name. It’s crazy that I’m even putting this down on paper, but I need to get this off my chest. I’ve been working for you for a while now, but I can’t seem to figure you out. There are two sides of the coin that makes you up—the hard-nosed business side and the nice side you think people don’t see. It’s a softer side that cares for those around you even if you don’t admit it. Other’s may not see this part of you, but I do. You’ve proven to the business world that you are a force to be reckoned with, but that doesn’t mean you have to continue to be the cold tough guy you present to the world. You care more about what people think of you than you’d ever admit out loud, maybe even to yourself. Which is probably why I like you, no— since I’m not ever planning to send this I can admit it, if only on paper— I love you. I know my feelings for you are unrequited, but I hope one day you find someone you can let in. And now that I’ve written what’s been on my head and my heart, I can finally move on.
Sincerely Yours,
Maren
I stare down at the letter in my hand, reading and rereading the words over and over again. I don’t understand what possessed her to send this to me. She even wrote that she didn’t intend to send it, so why did she?
I glance out the glass walls of the conference room. My gaze zeroing in on my assistant as she stands near the cubicle an employee whose name I don’t know. I’m not one to ever get involved with one of my employees. Its messy and unprofessional—but for some reason it’s a like a filter has been lifted off my eyes and I can’t help but see her in a new way. Maren throws her head back in laughter at something the guy says, and a surge of jealousy shoots through me. I want to be the one to make her laugh.
One of the mailroom clerks walks by and a few boxes fall off the cart he’s pushing. Maren squats down to help pick them up and I’m able to see more of what is hidden beneath the unbutton part of her silk blouse. My dick twitches at the sight of her ample cleavage.
My body is reacting to her in a way I’ve never felt before. As my employee, I would never look at her in any other way, but I wasn’t oblivious to her beauty. But this letter, her words about seeing the real me seems to pull away the restraints I put on myself.
She loved me?
“Sir?”
I turn back to every set of eyes in the room staring at me. “Yes?”
“So what do you think?”
I think I might be in trouble.
3
MAREN
There’s a subtle shift in the air when Gina Marshall steps off the elevator. I’ve already r
eceived a call from the security desk to let me know that she was on her way up, but I don’t think it’s crazy to say that temperature in the office drops a few degrees when she’s around. She’s an arrogant ice princess that likes to think she’s more important than she really is. She’s been handed everything in her life, including the company party she’s been hired to plan for the software launch.
“Gina Marshal to see Grayson,” she says without looking up from her phone.
I’m nothing if not professional, but I did secretly hope that when she was walking and texting towards my desk, that she’d catch her red bottom heel on the carpet and biff it.
“He’s on a call right now, but if you’d like to—”
“It’s fine,” she says walking over to the closed door of his office. “He’s expecting me.”
“No, wait!” I call after her and following her in.
Grayson looks up at the intrusion. One of the Research and Development guys is talking on the speakerphone, but Grayson is quick to hit the mute button on his phone.
“I think someone forgot that we had a working lunch planned for today.” Gina giggles and walks over and sits down in one of the chairs on the other side of Grayson’s desk.
Grayson’s narrow gaze on her swings over to me. I expect to feel the full brunt of his irritation at my inability to keep Gina out. That’s one of my unofficial requirements of my job—I’m the gatekeeper to his office.
I shake my head at him, like there was nothing I could do to stop her, short of tackling her to the ground. And I’m not opposed to that idea, but I don’t think that it would be the most professional approach to the situation.
“Miss Marshall—” I start to say but Grayson holds up his hand to stop me.