AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
VIOLET
As I take the elevator up to my first day in corporate hell, I try to tell myself it won’t be that bad. It wasniceof my brother to get me a job working for his best friend. It doesn’t matter that I’m an out-of-work art teacher who’s never worked in an office in her whole freaking life. It doesn’t matter that my brother’s best friend is a famously cold-hearted, competitive, annoyingly photogenic corporate raider.
Oh, screw it. I’m looking forward to my first day working for Gage Crawford like I’m looking forward to my next pap smear.
The elevator doors open, and I step out into a chilly, gray office full of miserable-looking people hunched over desks or bustling in and out of offices. Everything is polished and expensive, from the walls to the people, but that doesn’t make it any less depressing.
I smile at a frowning, balding man in a fancy suit who’s approaching me. “Excuse me, could you tell me where—”
“Out of my way,” he grunts, before charging into an office and slamming the door behind him.
I walk down the elegant hallway until I come to an open-plan area where several people are working. I walk over to the closest desk and give the stern, bespectacled woman sitting there a friendly wave. “Excuse me, but could you point me to—”
She holds up a finger to silence me and answers the blinking phone.
When I look around for someone else to ask for help, it feels like the whole room avoids making eye contact with me.
Maybe it has something to do with my vintage sundress with giant daisies printed all over it. It’s my most formal work outfit—I even paired it with a freaking blazer. But every second in this building makes it more and more clear that I don’t belong.
Even the art on the walls is drab. It might be expensive but it’s boring as hell.
A big part of me wants to turn around, take the elevator, and never come back.
But I need this damn job.
Unfortunately.
I put my hands on my hips and raise my voice like I’m projecting over a classroom of rowdy teenagers. “EXCUSE ME. I NEED SOMEONE TO TELL ME WHERE GAGE CRAWFORD’S OFFICE IS. I’M HIS NEW ASSISTANT.”
“No, you aren’t,” a deep male voice says from behind me.
I whirl around and come face to face with...fuck.
Gage Crawford.
The man, the myth, the legend, giving businessmen all over the world nightmares. He’s got a reputation for making even the most arrogant of CEOs cry when he takes over their failing companies, strips them for parts, and sells those parts to the highest bidder. He doesn’t own Crawford Investing...yet. But once his mom Lorelei retires, everyone knows it’s going to be his.
All of that would be bad enough. But it gets worse.
Gage Crawford is gorgeous. Like, old-school, heroic, lead-men-into-battle handsome. He’s one of those tall, powerful men who make you understand why suits were invented. The fabric clings to his muscles in a way that makes it disturbingly easy to imagine him picking you up, pressing you against the wall, and fucking your brains out.
Not that I’m imagining anything like that.
The reporters who interview him talk about his rakish brown hair and his sharp blue eyes. But it’s more than that. He’s got thispresence. And he’s always had it. Even when he was a twenty-two-year-old undergrad when I met him while visiting my brother Tom in college.
And fine, I might have had a crush on him for like, a second. Then he ditched Tom and me so he could hook up with some sorority girl whose name he’d forgotten by the time he came back to his dorm room.
I decided then and there I wasn’t going to pine over a guy as rude as that.
“Who the hell are you?” Gage repeats, irritated.
Everyone is staring at us. I feel myself flush under his gaze. He’s only met me a handful of times—once when I visited Tom in college, once at one of Tom’s birthday parties, and five years ago at Tom’s wedding. But I didn’t think I wasthatforgettable.
But I guess when you’re a handsome billionaire, you don’t need to remember pesky details like what your friend’s little sister looks like.
I try not to let that sting.
