by Lindsey Hart
Mr. Perfectly Wrong
Alphalicious Billionaires Boss
Lindsey Hart
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
BOOK DESCRIPTION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
EPILOGUE
MR. GRUMPY BOSS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR’S NOTE
COPYRIGHT
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or transmitted by email without permission in writing from the publisher. While all attempts and efforts have been made to verify the information held within this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or opposing interpretations of the content herein. The book is for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed are those of the author alone and should not be taken as expert instruction or commands.
Copyright © Passion House Publishing Ltd 2021
All rights reserved.
Edits by Charmaine Tan. Cover by Cosmic Letterz.
You can contact the author, Lindsey Hart at:
[email protected]
BOOK DESCRIPTION
He might be my boss.
He might be charming, gorgeous and single.
He might be everyone's Mr. Perfect.
But for me, he just flips all of my damn switches every single time!
And his latest request is no different.
Pretend to be his girlfriend?!
Me?! His secretary?
Out of the whole female population that exists on this planet? He asks me?
The only female who he knows is absolutely oblivious as to what makes the great Mr. Boss so Great?
And I am supposed to sell this to his ex?!
Did I mention he wants revenge on his ex?
No?
Well, that's going to cost him a pretty hefty amount.
Because this girl is not working for free!
So, my biggest issue with all of that... how am I supposed to act like I love him forget even like him?
Like who would be dumb enough to fall for him,
Especially when his heart belongs to another already.
Definitely not me!
Not in a million years.
The saying about never saying never?
Nopes. Totally will not apply to me!
CHAPTER 1
Stephanie
“Steph, your house does not look…uh…exactly like how I pictured it when you said you bought something new.”
That’s my boss’s code for what are you doing with all the money I pay you?
But it’s not like I get paid that much. The just under fifty thousand dollars I make every year to do everything for Adam Fino other than breathe doesn’t even begin to cover the renovations the house needs. I bought it a few months ago and haven’t had the time or cash to work on the major renovations. But I did hire people to fix the immediate, smaller problems. I guess when you buy an old character house in an ancient neighborhood, you’re going to inherit some problems. I knew there was a problem with the roof before I even bought the house, so I had a quote included in the sale. I knew the whole thing was going to have to be replaced, but that aside, the house and neighborhood are both perfectly charming, plus real estate isn’t exactly cheap anywhere.
“Uh, I just bought it a few months ago, remember? And I said I bought something new to me. Not new. There’s a difference.”
But you know what’s not charming?
What I’m about to do for my boss because the said house needs a new roof.
My boss.
Adam Fino, thirty-four-year-old billionaire. He inherited the company when his grandpa died, and his dad decided to enjoy life on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean.
Adam is actually quite bearable. He’s not one of those rich kids who never worked a day in their life. He’s into the socks company. Yup, socks. That’s how he made his fortune, or at least, how his grandpa did—selling socks. All kinds of socks. Men’s, women’s, children’s.
Novelty. Compression. Sport. Medical grade. You name it; they have it—a sock for any event.
Anyway, Adam is a rock star when it comes to running the company.
Things he’s not that good at? Everything else. That sounds terrible, so I usually temper it with a kind of. So, kind of everything else.
My title is Executive Assistant, but really, I’m like the life fairy that flutters around, making sure Adam has everything he needs. And by everything, it entails anything from his low fat, coconut milk latte to making sure his twenty-million-dollar shack doesn’t have a single speck of dust. I actually don’t do much when it comes to the actual company work. I book meetings, take care of all of Adam’s travel details, and have access to most of his files and email in case he needs me to handle something, but that’s rather rare. Adam has a whole team of people under him that help him out with his socks, his socks sales, and his socks this and socks that.
I’m sure each and every one of them would like to sock him.
Well, okay, that’s not true. Maybe just me because Adam is truly pretty nice to everyone. He’s actually one of those bosses who care. A lot. About everything company-related and for everyone who works for him. He never forgets a name or a face. He has this steel-trap memory for all facts that are sock related. He always has these really good ideas and plans on how to execute them.
What he’s not so good at? His personal life. It’s kind of a mess, which is why I’m currently sitting beside him in his three hundred thousand dollar car. I’d say he’s overcompensating, but I saw his junk by accident once, so I know he’s not.
It’s a long story but there was this one time where I stopped by Adam’s house—and when I say house, I actually mean mansion—to drop off his dry cleaning. I could have let the cleaners do it, but the place is on my way home. I picked it up on a Friday and forgot the shit in my car overnight. I was panicking, thinking it was all wrinkled, but when I checked, it was fine. So, I decided to drop the package of anxiety off at Adam’s house. I obviously have the code because I have to schedule all the pool cleaners and maids and everything. So, I dropped the shirts off in Adam’s closet, and thinking he wasn’t home, I went into the backyard to check and make sure the pool had been properly cleaned the day before. Adam was back there, tanning. Nude.
There are really high fences and things like awnings and privacy screens in his neighborhood and around the house, so I guess he felt comfortable just getting loose and free out there.
He never knew I was there. I think he was sleeping. I just quickly backed the heck up and ran out of there. So uh, yeah. That’s how I know. I can’t exactly unsee it�
��his junk.
“Do you need help? We have to be at the lake in two hours, and traffic’s going to be terrible.”
What he means by do I need help is, can I grab all the shit we need. Neither of us has anything that would be suitable for camping because we have never gone camping once in either of our lives, so I had to buy a lot of crap, all just so Adam can make a point. And when I say make a point, I secretly think he’s going to try and win his ex-wife back. I mean, it doesn’t appear like he’s moved on in the two years since they’ve been divorced.
“No, I don’t need help. And yes, I’ll hurry,” I say, hoping Adam will decode it and realize I do indeed need help carting all the junk, but he smiles at me very nicely and takes out his phone. I immediately know he’s answering work emails.
There really isn’t that much stuff to pack into his trunk. I suppose I can handle two backpacks stacked full of camping and hiking gear, a tent, pillows, sleeping bags, coolers, and all. I mean, I said I could. I do handle a lot, and Adam really can’t help that he’s totally oblivious. I already bought everything the night before with Adam’s personal credit card. Yes, I do have that and his work credit card as well. He has a ton more to spare, and it’s just easier that way. I do have to do the expense sheets later, though.
When I’m done and finally try to get into the car, I basically have to melt myself into some substance made up of gelatinous goo to be able to slide into the passenger seat. The car is that low.
“Watch the door! The sidewalk!” Adam says in a panic, half-yelling at me.
The door narrowly misses scraping over the said sidewalk, both when I open and close it.
“How do you expect me to get in if I can’t open the door? Don’t park so close to the curb next time. What should I do? Climb through the sunroof?”
Adam sighs. He leans forward and punches something into the giant, space-age flat screen in the car. Classical music starts blaring through the speakers. Not my jam, but I’m not going to complain. I’m really glad we get to peel out of here. Getting picked up by a low lime green pickle of a car isn’t exactly what I want my neighbors to see me doing.
But it’s all just part of the plan.
This horrible-no-good-probably-won’t-succeed plan from which I get five grand out of will go a long way toward fixing my roof.
Long story short, Adam’s ex-wife said some really nasty things to him when they were getting a divorce. This was before she even took a ton of money from him. She said things I wouldn’t even wish on my worst enemy. I probably only know a fraction of it. Well, okay, so I know the whole thing, but I only found out because I was going through some of the security footage for Adam’s house, seeing as there had been a whole crew of porch pirates going around the neighborhood. A few packages had been stolen from Adam’s doorstep. I ended up finding the big fight, and Adam has a really good security system, so I heard the whole thing.
Obviously, it stuck with him. I work with the guy, so I can just tell. Adam’s always been kind of gooey about his ex-wife. When she wasn’t his ex, he did anything for her. And I mean anything. He treated her and bought her all sorts of stuff. He never had a bad word to say about her. I always thought she was nice enough to everyone, myself included, so it was a bit of a shock to hear how she spoke to Adam in the surveillance footage. My guess is that it wasn’t the first time either.
So since the divorce, Adam’s been kind of weird. He wore his wedding ring for a year after the divorce was finalized. He just gave in and didn’t even really fight his ex-wife that hard when she wanted a freak ton of money from him. He still never said a bad word about her after all the hurtful shit she said, and even when he paid out the money.
He hasn’t dated anyone ever since then. Hasn’t shown any interest in it at all. Whenever anyone brings up his ex-wife, he gets this super strange look on his face. I know for a fact that he’s lonely, but it’s more than that.
I just have this gut feeling—and my gut feelings are generally both right and trustworthy—that he’s not over her.
So, I wasn’t all that surprised when he announced it, a couple of days ago, that we were getting coffee together, out of the office. That’s not entirely out of character. Whenever he wants to talk to me about something other people shouldn’t overhear, we go out and walk to get a coffee.
It turns out, for this one, it should have been whisky or something stronger.
Someone told Adam that his ex-wife was going camping with her new, chunky muscled, younger boyfriend. Camping. At an actual campground. Not somewhere fancy. It’s not rich camping. They’re doing regular camping like everyone else. And because this is Colorado, it involves the full deal. Like lakes, mountains, trees, hiking, and tents. Gulp. Did I mention we’re both total city slickers?
So, Adam’s mind worked hard at this, and he hatched a plan. A plan to prove to his ex-wife that all the shit she said about him at the end (and maybe during their marriage too) wasn’t actually correct. From the nature of the plan, I think he’s more concerned with trying to win her back. Yes, for real. It makes him sound like a bad guy, but really, he’s not. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I doubt it.
One more slightly creepy detail is that his ex-wife happens to be named Stephanie, just like me. For confusion's sake or lack of confusion, we both refer to her as Ex-Stephanie, at least in our minds. I know Adam does because it popped out once when he was talking to someone at work and trying to differentiate between her and me, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.
So, about said plan.
Adam wants to prove he’s good at something other than work. You know, to prove he rocks at life and has moved on in the healthiest of ways, that he has skills. Wilderness skills. Life skills. His ex-wife basically accused him of not being able to do a single thing that didn’t involve work. In other words, accusing him of being totally useless, and that’s putting it nicely. It means he wants to be manly with a tent, hiking boots, and an ax. He needed someone to make sure he didn’t cut his foot off, or if he did, that someone was there to call for an ambulance. Since I’m practically his life manager, or at least I take care of a lot in his life, it only made sense for me to come along. And then there was the incentive of having a new roof over my head.
But for him, it’s different. His idea is to pretend we’re dating and are blissfully happy about it. Even though it’s cliché AF for him to be with his assistant, he doesn’t seem to mind.
Anyway, here’s what I think is the secret plan. I think Adam actually wants to make his ex-wife jealous. Maybe. Although, if he wanted to do that, he probably wouldn’t be doing it with me. I’m not exactly one of those lusty, busty types. In fact, I’m the total opposite. I’m also not rich, highly educated, or exceptionally talented. I’m not famous, and I don’t dye my hair every other week or get fillers injected into my lips. I don’t wear designer clothes, and I hardly bother with makeup. So, I’m not entirely sure what it is about me that would make Ex-Stephanie jealous, if anything
Anyway, we peel out of my neighborhood, heading for the token stretch of open road that will take us to the mountains, where we will be wild and free and all that stuff you see written on t-shirts nowadays. I send up a silent plea for god to strike me down now.
Sadly, it doesn’t work.
“Remind me again why we didn’t just rent a cabin?” I whine just for the sake of saying something.
“Because she’s not. They’re tenting it, roughing it. She said, right before she asked for a divorce, that I’m spoiled and useless. That I can’t do anything for myself. That she was tired of being with a limp noodle instead of a real man. That I couldn’t even change a lightbulb,” he rants, obviously trying to let out some steam.
“That’s mean,” I reply. Adam doesn’t know I know everything that was said. He just thinks I know the bits he’s told me. I slide down in the seat to hide my face when I recognize Mrs. Johnson walking by with her two poodles. She lives a few houses down from me. Gosh, this pickle of a car wi
th the big black stripes down the middle screams mid-life crisis. I don’t want to be seen in it. “To be fair, the lights in your house are all very expensive and complicated. I can see why you wouldn’t want to fiddle around with them. They do require an electrician to get them working properly.”
Adam’s hands tighten on the wheel.
I have to admit that he’s pretty attractive. He works out, and I know this because I make sure he has the best nutritionist and personal trainers. Plural. Yes, he goes to a premium gym, but don’t ask me what’s so premium about it. It just says premium in the title. He also pays for an actual trained chef to come to his house three times a week to cook him meals and leave them in the fridge and freezer—all healthy meals. So everything adds up to him looking pretty dang good. I can say so because I have eyes. The guy’s fit and healthy. Plus, I’ve seen all of him that one time.
“I’m sorry,” I say more softly when I notice Adam’s hunched shoulders. “You know I just say whatever I’m thinking. That’s the reason we work well together. Because I’m the only one who’s not afraid to tell you the truth. Still, I wasn’t trying to be mean.”
“Thank you, but it doesn’t exactly make it easier,” he grinds out, not even paying attention to me.
Okay, so this is about his pride getting stomped all over and the fact that he can’t get on with getting on with it. Basically, this is how it went down.
Ex-Stephanie and Adam met in college. Even though he had tons of money, he still went and got a business degree so he would know what he was doing. He was serious about running the company. He went to an Ivy League school, of course, and Stephanie came from money too. She was there training to be a therapist. Then, they met, fell in love (I think), and got married a few years later. They never had any kids because they were both workaholics. Stephanie was pretty down to earth for a rich person. Her parents were lawyers or something, so she always had more money, and then she became uber-rich by marrying Adam. Anyway, she was fine. Or so I thought.