The Playboy Billionaire's Secretary

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The Business Trip

Elena’s POV

My first real week at Blackwell Industries went better than I'd braced myself for, though better didn't mean easy. Working for Adrian Black was nothing like the temporary jobs I'd cycled through before, his schedule rearranged itself hourly, meetings got moved without warning, and there was always one more email sitting in the inbox demanding an answer before I'd finished the last one. Some days I barely sat down long enough to eat lunch at my desk.

I liked it anyway. For the first time in years I had something stable under me, a real salary, benefits, a desk with my name on the door plate, a title I could say out loud without wanting to shrink afterward. More than anything, I was finally making enough to start chipping away at the mess my father had left behind, one payment at a time. I hadn't told Adrian any of that, and I had no plans to. My personal life had nothing to do with the job, which was exactly why I'd worked so hard to stay unremarkable in every way that mattered.

Unfortunately, staying unremarkable was difficult when I was around him almost every day, and he was not an easy man to stop noticing. Not because I was interested in him that was the line I kept repeating to myself like it might eventually start being true through sheer repetition. He was simply the kind of man people noticed whether they wanted to or not, tall, composed, dressed like every suit had been built around him specifically, somehow still put together even on the mornings he clearly hadn't slept.

What surprised me more than any of that, though, was that he wasn't the man I'd expected walking in. He was genuinely strict but he was fair with it. I'd watched him question a manager who tried to pin a mistake on an assistant who hadn't made it, and he hadn't raised his voice once. He'd just asked the right questions, worked out what had actually happened, and made sure she wasn't the one who paid for someone else's error. It made me respect him, which was its own kind of problem, because respecting my boss was one thing and liking him especially a boss with his particular reputation was a door I had no intention of opening.

I was still turning that thought over on Thursday morning when Evelyn appeared in my office doorway.

"Do you have a minute?" she asked, already stepping in before I could answer.

"Of course." I looked up from my screen as she set a folder on my desk.

"Adrian has a business trip tomorrow. New York, two days, meetings with the Henderson Group and a few investors on the side."

I flipped it open, scanning the itinerary. "I thought Mr. Reed was going with him."

"He was, until Damien got pulled into something in Chicago at the last minute." She gave me a look that told me exactly where this was heading before she said it out loud. "Which means you're going instead."

"Me? I've never travelled with him before."

"You'll survive," she said, already reaching for her handbag like the matter was settled.

"That's not exactly reassuring."

She smiled, unbothered. "You'll be fine. Keep his schedule updated, make sure he has whatever documents he needs, and whatever you do, don't let him skip meals he'll try, and you can't let him win that one." She paused at the door. "And don't let the billionaire part get in your head. He's a lot easier to deal with once you remember he's just a man who happens to own the building."

She left before I could ask anything else, and I sat there staring at the folder like it might rearrange itself into something less terrifying if I looked at it long enough. Tomorrow. A business trip. Two days, just the two of us and whatever version of Adrian Black existed outside these office walls.

I showed up at the private terminal the next morning in the most forgettable outfit I owned, an oversized beige blouse, shapeless black trousers, my thickest glasses, hair scraped back into a bun that had nothing to do with style and everything to do with disappearing.

Adrian was already there when I arrived, checking his watch like it might have lied to him.

"You're early," he said, not quite a compliment.

"I thought I was supposed to be here thirty minutes before departure."

"You were."

"Then I'm doing my job."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth, gone almost before I registered it. "Apparently."

Marcus took my suitcase without being asked and loaded it into the trunk, and when I thanked him he gave me a small nod before leaning in with the kind of grin that suggested he'd clocked exactly how nervous I was. "First business trip?"

"Yes."

He glanced toward Adrian, lowering his voice just enough to seem like he wasn't lowering it at all. "Don't worry he only looks terrifying."

"I can hear you," Adrian said without turning around.

"I know," Marcus said, entirely unrepentant, and I laughed before I could stop myself, which earned me a flat look from Adrian that only made it funnier.

The flight itself was quiet. Adrian worked through most of it, and so did I, until about an hour in when I noticed he'd been staring at the same page for several minutes without actually moving through it.

"Is something wrong?" I asked."No." He didn't look up.

"You've been reading that page for a while now."

He glanced down at it like he was checking whether I was right. "Long morning."

"Maybe you should rest instead of pretending to read."

His eyes came up at that. "Are you telling me to stop working?"

"I'm suggesting it, strongly."

"That's bold of you."

"I'm your secretary. If you land in New York running on no sleep, that becomes my problem to manage, not yours." I shrugged like it was the most obvious logic in the world, and after a beat he actually leaned back and closed the folder.

"Fine."

"Fine?"

"I'll rest." He said it like a concession he resented making, and I turned back to my tablet hiding a smile I didn't want him to see. Maybe this trip wouldn't be the disaster I'd been bracing for.

Adrian’s POV

I hadn't expected much from the trip going in two days of meetings, a dinner with investors, some negotiating, then home. Simple. What I hadn't accounted for was how much Elena would end up rearranging my expectations of her in the process.

I'd assumed Evelyn hired her because she seemed quiet and unlikely to cause any trouble. I'd been wrong about the quiet part being the whole story. Elena had opinions she just knew exactly when it was worth voicing them and when it wasn't, which was rarer than I'd have guessed in someone that early into the job. She also remembered everything. By the time we'd landed she'd already flagged three meetings I'd have otherwise walked into cold, confirmed the dinner reservation without being told to, checked every document for the Henderson meeting twice, and somehow talked me into eating on the plane, which I hadn't done in longer than I wanted to admit.

I didn't know whether to be impressed or irritated. Probably both, in roughly equal measure.

At the hotel she stood beside me while the receptionist ran through the check in details. "Your rooms are on the twenty third floor," the woman said, and I nodded without really listening, already thinking two meetings ahead.

Elena took her key card. "Your first meeting's at four."

"I know."

"You said that yesterday too, and you almost missed it."

She said it so evenly that I found myself actually looking at her instead of past her. "Are you keeping a record of my mistakes now?"

"No. I'm keeping track of your schedule."

"That's worse."

She smiled properly, for the first time since I'd hired her and for reasons I didn't examine closely, I noticed it. Then I looked away and reminded myself, more firmly than the moment warranted, that this was Elena. My secretary. Nothing about that sentence needed revising.

The first day moved fast , two meetings, dinner with investors, back at the hotel close to ten. Elena looked wrung out by the time we reached our floor.

"You should go to bed," I told her.

"So should you."

"I have work."

"So do I."

I looked at her properly then tablet held against her chest like a shield, glasses sitting slightly crooked after a day that hadn't let up once. "It doesn't all have to get finished tonight."

She hesitated. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Goodnight, Mr. Black."

"Goodnight, Elena."

I watched her disappear through her door before I turned toward mine, and I wasn't entirely sure why I'd watched. I just had. I didn't think about it again not until the next morning, and even then, not in any way I could have named yet.

Elena's POV

The second day was supposed to be the easier one. It wasn’t. By early afternoon I’d barely had a chance to sit, following Adrian from one conference room to the next, taking notes, fielding calls he didn’t have time for, and by the time we finally made it back to the hotel that evening I was running on nothing but momentum.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Adrian said outside our doors.

“Goodnight,” I told him, and meant it more than usual.

Inside my room, I dropped my bag on the chair and didn’t bother unpacking anything beyond what I needed for a shower. I peeled off my glasses, pulled the pins out of my hair, and wrapped myself in the hotel robe before stepping into the bathroom, already thinking about nothing except sleep.

Everything was fine until something moved near the sink.

I froze. A small spider and the next thing thatI was currently deciding was whether to run or scream first.

“No,” I said out loud, like negotiating with it might work. It crawled along the wall, unhurried, entirely unbothered by my opinion on the matter. “Absolutely not.” I grabbed the nearest towel off the rack and held it out in front of me like that would do anything useful. It vanished behind the sink, and my heart kept going anyway.

I could deal with angry clients. I could deal with men showing up at my door demanding money I didn’t have. Spiders, apparently, were the one thing I had no defenses against at all. I climbed onto the edge of the tub, glasses forgotten on the counter, and when the spider reappeared I screamed loud enough that I heard footsteps in the hallway before I’d even finished.

“Elena?” Adrian’s voice, right outside. The door opened before I could tell him not to.

He stepped in, eyes widening slightly when he took in the scene me perched on the tub edge, towel clutched like a weapon, hair loose around my shoulders in a way it never was at the office. “What happened?”

“Spider.” I pointed toward the sink.

“A spider,” he repeated, like he needed to hear it back to believe it.

“Yes.”

Something close to amusement crossed his face. “You’re serious.”

“Very. Are you going to help, or just stand there judging my life choices?”

He shook his head and walked in, scanning behind the sink until he found it. “Got it.” He hit with his slippers and said “Gone. Completely.”

The relief that went through me was almost embarrassing. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He turned to leave, and that was when I remembered my glasses weren’t on my face.

“Wait my glasses.”

I crouched down, patting along the counter and the floor beneath the cabinet while he sighed and crossed the small room to help look, both of us bent over searching a bathroom that suddenly felt much smaller than it had a minute ago.

“Found them,” I said, straightening up fast . The elastic holding my hair snapped at the same moment, and it fell loose over my shoulders in a way it hadn’t in weeks. The robe, already loosely tied from being thrown on in a hurry between showering and screaming, slipped open at the collar.

The soft white fabric parted just enough to bare the full swell of my cleavage. The inner curves of my breasts were completely exposed, soft and heavy, the valley between them deep and shadowed. My n*****s, still tight from the cool air after the shower, were hard and prominent peaks standing out sharply and clearly visible through the gap. The robe had ridden high on my thighs as well both bare legs were on full display from mix thigh down, smooth and long, the hem barely covering the soft skin higher up.

Adrian wasn’t looking at my face at all.

His eyes had dropped and stayed there for a beat too long, taking in the deep line of my cleavage, the way my hard n*****s jutted out, the stretch of bare leg the robe no longer hid. Then he seemed to catch himself and looked, deliberately, at the wall behind me instead.

My face went hot immediately. I yanked the robe closed with both hands, cinching the tie tighter than it needed to be, but the damage was already done he’d seen everything the fabric had failed to cover. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not.”

“You were.”

“I was making sure you were alright.” His voice had gone slightly rough, like the sentence had cost him more effort than it should have.

“You were staring.”

“I wasn’t.” He cleared his throat, and for the first time since I’d started working for him, Adrian Black looked genuinely uncomfortable like a man who’d just noticed something he hadn’t given himself permission to notice. He turned toward the door. “You should get dressed.”

“I was already planning to.”

“We have a meeting in the morning.”

“I know.”

He stepped out, and just before the door shut he glanced back at me once more a nothing dramatic but something in his expression had shifted, and I saw it clearly enough to know I hadn’t imagined it.

I closed the door and leaned back against it, pressing both hands over my face. This was precisely the kind of attention I’d spent weeks trying to avoid, and precisely the last person I wanted noticing me this way. I caught my reflection in the mirror above the sink glasses still in my hand, hair down around my shoulders, face bare of everything I usually hid behind. Without the oversized clothes and the glasses and the careful blankness I put on every morning, I looked like myself again. The version of me I kept locked away for a reason.

And now Adrian had seen her.

Adrian

I got back to my room and stood by the door for longer than I should have, trying to work out why that moment had thrown me as much as it had.

I’d seen attractive women before plenty of them, in far less accidental circumstances. Elena wasn’t supposed to register the same way. That was the entire problem. For weeks I’d filed her away as the quiet one in the oversized blouses and the glasses that swallowed half her face, someone who clearly wanted to be forgettable and had done a competent job of it. The woman standing in that bathroom a few minutes had nothing in common with that version.

I dragged a hand through my hair and told myself, not for the first time that night, that this was ridiculous. She worked for me. That fact hadn’t changed in the last five minutes, and it wasn’t going to.

I picked up my phone and scrolled through the emails waiting for a response, forcing myself through the first two before my attention wandered back to the bathroom anyway. The image refused to leave, the deep shadow between her breasts, the way her n*****s had stood out so sharply, the smooth stretch of thigh the robe had failed to cover. I didn’t have an explanation for why it kept happening, so I did what I usually did with anything that refused to make sense on command I ignored it, or at least made the attempt.

It didn’t fully work. Because the next morning, when Elena showed up in the lobby wearing the same oversized blouse and the same thick glasses as every other day, I noticed something I hadn’t let myself notice before.

I knew exactly what was underneath all of it now.

And knowing that made it impossible to look at her the same way again.