The Billionaire From Atlanta

by Susan Westwood

  She smiled wide and leaned forward kissing him again. “Thank you for believing in me. I’m not going to let either of us down.” Her kiss became long and lingering, their tongues twisted and tasted, and a moment later he was pulling her body on top of his hardening groin, moaning as she began to move over him again.

  Chapter5

  Celeste was on her way into the office the next morning for her first day at work when her phone rang and she saw that it was Kevin. They’d had a very late night that had spilled into an early morning, and she was a little surprised to hear from him, but not too surprised. They had bonded the night before in many ways, particularly over agreeing to become intimate partners.

  With a bright smile and a lightness to her voice, she answered the phone.

  “Good morning! I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Did you get any sleep?” she asked, knowing that neither one of them had really gotten all the sleep that they probably should have.

  “Yeah, I got enough. It’s not going to be a long day anyway, so it’ll work out all right. Listen… I wanted to talk with you about something before you made it in to the office this morning.” His tone sounded serious, and not at all the sexy playful voice she had expected to hear.

  Blinking in slight surprise, she drew in a breath. “Okay, what is it?” she asked curiously, wondering if he had decided against them being regular lovers.

  “Nothing big really, but I wanted to share something with you. I would really rather prefer to keep my business life and my personal life separate, especially at the office. I think it would be best if you don’t try to seek me out at the office. Let’s keep our distance there so that we can focus on our work and maintain our professional lives separate from one another. It’s not anything wrong, it’s just a separation of church and state so to speak. I would just really like to keep our distance there. I hope you don’t mind.” He spoke with all seriousness, but it was not unkind. There was compassion in his tone.

  She had been holding her breath as he spoke and she let it out slowly as her mind wrapped itself around what he was asking of her. She nodded, though he couldn’t see her do it. “I get that. I definitely understand. You’d certainly be a distraction there if I ran into you. So, I guess that’s fine. Yeah. You can stay in the accounting department and I will stay in Hector’s offices, and we will keep the nighttime visits separate from the daytime work. That’s okay with me.”

  Celeste heard him sigh with relief. “Good. I’m so glad to hear that, and I’m really glad that you understand it. It’s just really important to me. So, there’s that, and I also wanted to tell you good luck on your first day at the office. I know that you’re going to do really well.”

  She grinned. “Thank you! I hope that it’s a good day. I’m certainly going to do my best. I’m really excited for it.” She had been far more than excited as she had gotten ready for work. It was closer to giddiness.

  “I can’t tell you how truly happy it makes me to hear you say that. I really admire your passion and drive. You are a rare, rare woman, Celeste. I feel lucky that I found you.” He sounded completely genuine.

  “Thank you!” A rush of bliss washed through her and she knew that he was going to be as good a friend to her as he was a lover.

  “Okay, I have to go, but have a great day and we’ll talk later, because I want to hear all about it.”

  A little laugh escaped her. “Sounds good.”

  They ended the call and for the rest of her drive in to the heart of the city, her mind volleyed between him and their passionate affair and her new job. By the time she reached her new desk, she was much more focused on the job, but that train of thought was quickly derailed when she saw that her new desk had a big bouquet of colorful flowers on it, waiting for her.

  Taking the card from the bouquet, she pulled it from the envelope and read it with a widening smile the further she got. ‘Open doors lead to new roads, best of luck. -K’ it read. Her heart flipped over in her chest and she squealed softly and held the card to her heart for a moment before putting it back into the envelope and tucking it into her purse. She put the beautiful floral arrangement off to one side of her desk and took her seat.

  She had made it in to work early so that she could learn whatever office basics she needed to in order to begin doing her job as well as she could. Hector saw that she was there and walked out to her desk with an armload of files.

  He planted them unceremoniously on her desk and gave her a stern look. “You’ll need to go through all of these, enter the information in them into the computer, it’s the Avatar program, check for any errors and correct them, and then leave the files over there for me to pick up later on. You’ll be contacting some of these people at different points, so it would be good to learn their names and to study their files so that you know what’s going on with them and their business with us.

  If you do well here and show me that you can handle it, I will have you working with some of these clients, so this first step in familiarizing yourself with them and their business history with us is vital. This is a trial run for you, Celeste. Show me what you can do, and I’ll decide if you will be doing more or not.”

  She was astounded that the warm and welcoming man who had interviewed her just the day before had seemed to cool somehow overnight and become a bit of a task master. He seemed determined to find out what she was really made of by putting her through the ringer. She made up her mind right then and there that she was not only going to match his requests with the quality work that he was looking for, but to exceed his expectations and show him just how valuable an employee she could be. If he was going to test her, she thought to herself, then she was going to ace everything he threw at her and prove to him that she was more than whatever he might think she could be.

  “I’ll have them back in to you as soon as I can,” she told him, wondering how long it would really take her to get the information into the computer system and examine the files. She felt some relief that she had a special talent for remembering things that she had only seen once or twice. She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that that skill was going to become essential to her success at the firm.

  Hector eyed her curiously, and with a silent nod, he turned and walked back into his office, closing the door behind him. She started up the Avatar program on her computer and flipped the cover of the first file on the top of the pile open.

  After some time consuming trial and error learning in the computer program, she figured out how to get into it and enter the information that needed to be entered. As she entered it, she read it out loud off of the file with a soft voice, and then said it again as she typed it, reinforcing the memorization of it by reading it, speaking it, and hearing it.

  When lunchtime came, she saw that if she left for her lunch, she would not get the stack of files done in time before the end of the workday, so she called out for delivery and had her lunch brought to her at her desk. She worked straight through, only taking a few minutes to eat a sandwich and drink some water, then she was right back to work again.

  Working as hard and as fast as she could while still learning and still doing her best to memorize every person and every file, she managed to finish just before she needed to leave for the day.

  With a sigh of relief, she set the files down on the small table behind her desk where Hector had requested that she place them. Hector came out just a minute later and saw the pile. He picked it up and frowned slightly, looking at it and then shifting his gaze to her.

  “You did the whole pile?” he asked in disbelief.

  “I did.” She gave him a nod as she stood up and faced him.

  “You entered all of this into the computer and studied the clients and their business with us, and you got it all done today?” He looked enormously doubtful.

  “Yes,” she told him with complete confidence.

  “Name one of the clients,” he challenged her.

  Her mind went blank for a moment and he looked as
if he was just about to give up on her when a flash flood of information crashed its way through her mind.

  “Garrison,” she answered. Everything that she had looked at that day was coursing through her thoughts at a million miles an hour.

  He raised an eyebrow. “When did Garrison sign with us?”

  She didn’t even blink. “Five years ago.”

  He raised both of his eyebrows. “And why are they currently in our active business files?”

  Celeste felt her heart soaring. She knew that she was impressing him, and it made her feel so proud and confident. “Because they are considering purchasing a smaller company by the name of Waterstone Inc.”

  Hector tried to hide the surprise on his face, but she saw it, and it gave her tremendous satisfaction.

  “Good. Well, we have more to do tomorrow. Good night.” He turned then and scooped up the files, taking them into his office and closing the door behind him.

  She lifted her chin and slung her purse over her shoulder, heading for the elevator with a triumphant grin on her face.

  An hour later she was pulling the old apron on over her clothes and heading to her cash register at the grocery store. She wished that her two weeks were up, or more than that they didn’t have to be done at all, but there was just simply no way around it at all.

  Tonia and Keisha were there, and they asked her how her first day at the new job went, though Keisha was completely skeptical about it. Not wanting to have a big discussion or an argument, Celeste replied offhandedly that it went fine, and then she turned to her register and busied herself with work there until customers came to her line and she was able to work rather than be grilled about her shift in employment working on the other side of the tracks.

  The time seemed to drag by at the grocery store until partway through her shift when her phone buzzed. She excused herself to the restroom to answer it so that she wouldn’t draw any attention to that either.

  It was a message from Kevin, and the sight of his name and an unopened message on her phone made her heart skip a beat as happiness shot through her. She tapped on it and read it. ‘How was your first day at the new job?’ he had asked.

  She messaged him back. ‘It was great. Hard work, but good work, and I think I’m going to do really well with it. I’m still very excited about it, and I love the flowers, thank you!’ She sent it off and squealed quietly to herself. There were changes happening in her life, good changes, and she was enjoying the hell out of all of them, especially Kevin.

  Celeste went back to her register beaming with happiness. Keisha and Tonia both saw it and Tonia smiled at her, but Keisha studied her curiously. Celeste ignored her and began straightening the magazines in her area.

  Her phone buzzed and she pulled it from her pocket, seeing that it was Kevin. He was answering her back, sending a reply message, and making her feel excited and happy all over again. ‘So glad to hear that it went well! I’ve been thinking about you all day and wondering how it went. I’m really happy that it was good for you.’

  She replied to him. ‘It was, and tomorrow is going to be even better. Thank you again so much. It means everything to me.’

  Celeste hadn’t noticed that Keisha had walked up and was standing just behind her. “Who you texting?” she demanded with her hands on her hips.

  Tonia came over as well and stood near Keisha and Celeste. Both of the other ladies were eyeing Celeste curiously.

  “Just a friend. Why?” Celeste asked, hoping that by talking about it like it was nothing, they would believe that it was nothing and leave her alone about it. She had no interest in sharing any information with them about Kevin or in truth, about her new job. She knew that they disapproved of the job, and if they found out about Kevin she felt that they would disapprove of him as well, especially if they discovered that it was him who had gotten her the interview for the job.

  Keisha narrowed her eyes cynically at Celeste. “A friend? Are you sure about that? Because you got a look on your face like you’re texting a boyfriend or something.”

  Celeste shook her head. “No, listen… it’s just a friend, that’s all.”

  “Uh huh. I ain’t never looked like that with just a friend.” Keisha broke into a laugh and shook her head. “Who is he? What’s his name?”

  With a sigh of exasperation, Celeste headed back over to her register. “It isn’t anyone like that, Keisha. Don’t get on me about this. It’s nothing, okay? It’s nothing.”

  She pushed her phone down deep in her pocket and was grateful when a customer came to her register just then. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

  They brought it up once more that night before Celeste was done with her shift, but she waved them aside again with disclaimers that it was no one of consequence, and they finally let it go. She left the grocery store in total exhaustion and went straight home to try to get as much sleep as she could.

  The next morning, she was up early again and headed for her new job in the city, feeling a little sleepy but very excited for the opportunity that she had been given, and she realized that she was fired up with determination in surpassing Hector’s expectations for her. She was going to prove to him beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was in fact the best person that he could possibly have hired for the job. She was going to make him say that he was glad that he had hired her, come what may.

  When she came off of the elevator into her office she saw that there was an even bigger stack of files than there had been the day before. Feeling only slightly daunted by it, she reminded herself that it might have been a shorter stack the day before, but she hadn’t known the computer system or what she was doing the day before, and she had learned most of what she had needed to learn already.

  She knew that there would be the remainder of a slight learning curve, but she would be working much faster at it on her second day, and even faster than that on her third day, so even if the piles of files were bigger, she refused to let that fact intimidate her. She was going to do them all and impress Hector again, just like she had the night before.

  She sat down and got straight to work, and not a few minutes later, Hector came walking through the office, gazing over at her to see what she was doing, how she was doing it, and he didn’t bother to hide the fact much. She didn’t mind. Celeste told herself that if she was in his shoes, she’d be watching the new employee too, to make sure that she was doing things right, at least for the first week.

  At lunchtime, she could see again that if she took an hour off for lunch, there would be no way that she would get all of the files finished before it was time to go that night, and she didn’t want to give Hector the satisfaction of seeing her not complete the task he had given her. She knew that it wasn’t that he didn’t want her to complete, and that he was hoping that she would fail, but it was instead that he just didn’t fully believe that she could do all of what he was giving her so early into her new job. He expected her to come up short.

  It made sense to her. How could someone unfamiliar with the business environment that she was in walk in brand new, pick up the work and get it all done right and done within the allotted time without mistakes; she was sure that was what he was wondering, and possibly trying to stump her on, but she was hellbent that she wasn’t going to let him get the better of her.

  Celeste ordered out for lunch again and ate as she worked. It was the slowest that she went during the whole day, and she still had her lunch gone in less than ten minutes and was back to supersonic speed on the files once more.

  Hector had made it a new habit to walk through the office several times, eyeing her and seeing what she was doing. He saw that she hadn’t taken lunch outside of the office, but rather ate at her desk, but he said nothing about it. He let her work in peace and quiet, watching her from the distance of his repeating trek from his office to the restroom, and his office to the water cooler, and his office to the elevators, and back again. She knew it was all about his curiosity about her work, and sh
e ignored it and focused on what she was doing.

  Late in the afternoon, he came out and stopped at her desk. She stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. “Yes?” she asked politely.

  “Did you finish the Epstein file?” he asked in a challenging tone.

  She nodded and reached for the file off the table behind her where she had placed all of the finished files. “I did, here you are,” she answered with a smile, handing it to him.

  He nodded silently and flipped it open, looking at it, and then snapped it closed again. “What about the Henderson file?”

  She leaned back again and pulled it from the stack of finished files, knowing full well that he could just as easily have taken the stack of finished files to his office and pulled out the ones that he needed instead of asking her for them, but he was testing her, and she felt ready for him. She knew that he would be, after her first day with him, and she was prepared for it.