Boss' Secret Baby

Chapter One

Chapter One

Aura

“Is this a f*****g joke?”

I tensed at Steph’s tone and turned to look at what she saw, her eyes poring over a memo on the break room bulletin board.

“What is it?” I asked lightly. “They’re bringing meatloaf back?”

“No!” She snapped, giving me a contemptuous look. “It’s our health insurance, Aura.”

With a flip of a hand as if talking to me was a waste of her breath, she stormed out, leaving me staring after her. I’m not sure why she still caused a knot of tension in my stomach. After all, I’d been working with the miserable cow for two years. Her free use of expletives and surly attitude were hardly shocking but there was something about her…

She reminded me of my mother.

I steadied my breathing and turned to look at what she was reading and sighed heavily. For once, I agreed with Steph. It was bullshit.

The memo, written by someone in upper management who had probably spent all of two minutes dictating it to his secretary and probably even less time giving any thought to its repercussions.

Fellow employees of Child Motors, it began. Commencing February 1st, the company will discontinue the practice of covering 80 percent of employee Apex Insurance premiums. Also, all medical, prescription, and dental benefits in the basic comprehensive insurance bundle will now be subject to a 50 percent copay, and mental health or physiotherapy services, including massage benefits, are no longer covered at this time.

The above-listed benefits are still available at the Apex Gold premier insurance level. Please speak to your resident payroll administrator for the current rates of that premium plan.

Also, please note that employee life insurance benefits have been cancelled across the board due to company budget cuts.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Management

I stared and reread the memo for so long that my eyes got blurry.

This country is going to hell in a handbasket, I thought bitterly. They just gouge us piece by piece until we’re all right back to just scraping by.

The insurance benefits were the reason I’d opted to work at the luxury car company in the first place. It certainly wasn’t the twelve bucks an hour I was getting. My paycheck barely covered my most basic expenses.

Lucky for me, I was used to pinching my pennies. I hadn’t had much of a choice during my childhood. My mom’s gambling addiction had left me and my little brother Alex without food so many times, I had learned to squirrel money away for those days when she took off to Vegas on gambling binges.

“You’ve been standing there a long time.”

The statement caused me to spin, partially because I was embarrassed at being caught doing nothing but mostly because I recognized the voice at my back even before his steely blue eyes locked with my green ones.

“I was just reading the memo,” I sighed, reaching for the now-cold coffee I’d left on the counter by the coffee maker.

Javier shook his dark blonde head in disbelief.

“He’s such a prick,” he growled, shoving a pile of files onto the round table at the center of the room before snatching the memo off the board, crumpling it in his hands and shooting it into the wastebasket.

I was mildly impressed that he made the shot. I hadn’t realized that Javvy played ball. Not that he didn’t have the body for it; he was at least six foot three and muscled in precisely the right spots.

Even as I thought it, I found my eyes moving over his sculpted arms, a flash of heat burning through my body. The Christmas party hadn’t been that long ago. I wonder if he still remembered our little tryst in the coatroom at the Carrington Arms. I’ve thought about it more than I should.

“You know, someone might have wanted to read that,” I commented dryly, nodding toward the discarded paper, but I deliberately turned my dark mane of hair away, so he wouldn’t read the blush on my face.

“It’s overkill. s******c,” Javvy snickered. “They already sent out an e-mail to everyone. Putting it up here is just adding insult to injury.”

I admitted I was a bit touched by his annoyance. He had nothing to worry about. These changes weren’t going to affect him in any way.

I shrugged and dumped the old coffee I had made into the sink, reaching for another mug in the rack.

“You want one?” I asked, and he nodded, exhaling in a huff of anger which I knew had nothing to do with me.

“Black, right?”

Javvy blinked and nodded, his head c*****g to the side slightly.

“You remembered?”

My cheeks, which were finally returning to their normal color, flushed crimson again.

“It’s not that hard to remember,” I quipped even though I felt like kicking myself.

Could you show him that you have a ridiculous girl crush on him any more than you already have?

I got the sense that signal flares were springing from my eyes every time I looked at him, but I didn’t know how to stop myself from oozing with adoration for him.

It wasn’t just that he was gorgeous. I mean, he was—but that wasn’t the point. Javier hated the CEO of Child Motors probably more than everyone else in the company, and that was hot in itself.

Mostly because Javier was a Child. His father owned the luxury car company in which we worked but you wouldn’t know it, partially because George Child treated his only son worse than most of us, but also because Javvy was simply likeable. No one would ever suspect that he was brought up in private jets and yachts, fed caviar, and treated to spring breaks in Belize.

But maybe he didn’t live like that? It was hard to know considering that his job was barely a step above mine. There was a rumor that he had started working in the mailroom the year he turned sixteen, and at twenty-six, he was just middle management, still clawing his way up the ranks.

I handed him the coffee in a mug which read THIS MIGHT BE VODKA, and he grinned at me, a sheepish look on his face.

“You must think I’m a real tool,” he sighed. “Bitching about stuff like this.”

My dark eyebrows shot up, and I shook my head in denial.

“I don’t think you’re a tool at all!” I blubbered, again hating myself for spewing my words out all in one gush.

“You may not believe this, but I get paid the same way everyone else around here does. This insurance thing affects me too.”

I had not known that.

The information made him all the more intriguing, but before I could open my mouth to press him on the way his family business operated, a sharp tone caused me to turn toward the door.

“Must be nice to flirt all day while the rest of us pick up your slack, Aura.”

“Coming, Steph,” I mumbled, realizing that she did have a point. My “break” had lasted a lot longer than ten minutes.

Steph grunted and stomped off, leaving me to glance apologetically at Javvy.

“Duty calls,” I chuckled even though my heart was pounding.

“Yeah, don’t worry,” he replied. “Kevin will be down here barking at me in a minute, too. Thanks for the coffee.”

He raised it in silent toast toward me, and I nodded, shifting my eyes shyly downward.

“See you later.”

I hated the way I said that, my tone almost petulant. I didn’t want to leave but I couldn’t very well stay and hang out with Javier Child all day long. If they were making cuts, I wasn’t high enough on the food chain to be playing games. And God knew, I needed that job. My writing career hadn’t panned out the way I’d hoped.

It also helps if you actually write the novel you want to be published, I reminded myself, thinking about the half-written manuscript buried in my closet.

“Hey, Aura…”

I paused in the doorway and studied his handsome face.

“Hm?”

“Listen, I—” He stopped speaking as if trying to collect his thoughts before he uttered another word. I stared at him curiously. I couldn’t imagine what would tie Javvy’s tongue. Even as I thought it, a rush of heat warmed my crotch as the memory of his very skilled tongue flooded my mind in an instant.

“I just wanted to say that what happened at the Christmas party…” he trailed off again, and I turned so red, I was sure the expression frozen on my face resembled Grimace from McDonald’s.

“Don’t worry about it,” I breathed, wishing he had not ruined a perfectly good moment between us. Why was he bringing that up now?

“No!” he choked, his own cheeks staining. “I mean to say that what happened between us at the Christmas party was amazing. I know we never really talked about it after it happened, but I’ve thought about you. A lot.”

That, I had not been expecting. It had never really occurred to me that the drunken escapade of heavy petting and intoxicated kisses had meant anything to him.

It wasn’t that I considered Javvy a playboy. I didn’t really know him enough to have an opinion on his personal life. How much could I glean about a guy who I only passed in the hall day to day or bumped into at break or lunch? Still, he didn’t strike me as the type to spread his seed with any woman dazzled by his last name.

Even so, I didn’t think there was anything more appealing about me than say, oh, a thousand other women I could think of off the top of my head. I wasn’t being self-deprecating; it was a fact.

I was by no means a raving beauty although I did have my charms: a brilliant white smile and intense green eyes that shone like cut beryl.

Against my almost black waves and naturally olive tone, I could be very alluring in the right light. But we lived in California, and the competition was fierce.

“I have completely humiliated myself, haven’t I?” he muttered, turning away. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I just—”

“No!” I gasped, snapping back into the strange reality in which I found myself. “No, I…I’m glad you said something. I…I’ve thought about you too.”

The words tried to stick in my throat, but I managed to force them out as I smiled nervously.

“Honestly, I wanted to ask you out afterward, in the New Year, but…” he cleared his throat and looked up at me, his steely eyes boring into mine. “Let me just be honest. My dad has been making my life miserable since I broke off my relationship with the daughter of some oil tycoon he was in cahoots with. She didn’t take it well either and suddenly, I was being double-teamed by two of the biggest psychopaths on the planet.”

The confession was certainly stunning, more so because it was the most he’d ever disclosed to me at once that the nature of the topic.

“I… I’m sorry to hear that,” I managed to say, and he grunted, shaking his head.

“Okay, I’m not very good at this,” he sighed. “I didn’t mean to regale you with the minutia of my personal turmoil. I am actually trying to ask you out.”

My mouth gaped open, and I was nodding even before I realized I was doing it.

“Yeah.” I replied, happiness tickling me as it crept up and down my spine. “Yeah, I’d like that. Let me give you my number.”

I extended my hand for his cell, but Javier hung his head guiltily downward.

“I already took it from your personnel file.”

I knew I should have been somewhat annoyed, but I was completely flattered by the gesture. I wondered how long he’d been holding onto it.

“Are you completely turned off now?”

He sounded like he expected my answer to be a resounding “HELL YES,” but how could I be? For almost two months, I had been secretly pining for the boss’s son, and here he was, handing himself to me on a silver platter.

“Nope,” I answered. “Make sure you use it.”

He looked back up, his charismatic smile illuminating his features.

“You free tonight?”

“Not anymore.”

Our eyes locked and a familiar s****l thrill slithered through me. Javier was finally going to finish what he started.