Secretive Deal With My Billionaire Boss

Chapter 2

Isla's POV

Fifty minutes, I spent battling with the concealer that I piled on to conceal the bags under my eyes from the fact that I hadn’t slept a wink did the trick my hands trembling so much that I messed up my eyeliner twice before I gave up and wiped it off.

I didn’t resemble a woman who had just surrendered her virginity to the man she’d loved in secret for years — I just looked like a tired employee preparing for a long Monday, and I kept reminding myself that as long as I kept my head down and my voice calm, I could make it through the next eight hours.

I entered the office building at my usual hour, and the lobby was already crowded, yet I felt as if I were gliding through a dream as I rode up in the elevator, which was silent with pressed buttons, to the executive floor, wondering if Cillian would meet my eyes and know just what we had done.

As I got to my desk after that, begin my one morning chores, to check the voicemails and the physical mail, and I was half printing out the agenda for the 9:00 a.m. board meeting when I heard the heavy pounding of his expensive Italian shoes on the marble. My heart rolled painfully in my chest and I grabbed the side of my desk, but as Cillian strode past me, He didn’t slow down or even greet me, just threw his leather briefcase onto his desk and groaned in frustration as he rubbed his temples.

“Isla, I need coffee, and for God’s sake dim the lights in here about twenty percent, I feel like someone’s poking my brain with hot needles,” he grumbled, reclining in his chair and closing his eyes before I could even say good morning.

​"I'll see to it immediately, Mr. Vance, would you like the usual roast or a milder one with your condition?" I told him, trying to keep my voice neutral and professional even though my throat felt like it was closing up and walked across the room to the dimmer switch to dim the overhead lighting as he requested.

“The usual, double-time, double-time, and by the way, hunt down my emerald cufflink, because I seem to have misplaced it some time between the club last night and my bedroom,’ he was still not opening his eyes, muttering, ‘I have a total blackout from about 11 o’clock on and a doctor in my guest room tells me I got a mild case of alcohol poisoning, which is just peachy timing, since we have the merger talks today.”

And with that, I felt a wave of relief so powerful that I almost fell, only to be immediately crushed by a wave of feeling totally insignificant because he could not recall the way he had held me or the things he had said, and to him, the night was simply a void punctuated by a headache.

“I’ll call the concierge in your building and have them check the hallway and the living room, sir, and I’ve got your morning vitamins and the Henderson file ready,” I said as I headed for the small kitchenette in the corner of his office to make his drink, trying to distract myself with the noise of the coffeemaker rather than the thought of his hands on my waist.

"Good, that’s why I pay you the big bucks, Isla, you’re the only person in this entire building who actually knows how to anticipate a disaster before it happens," he said, finally opening his eyes and glancing at me, but his look was nothing more than the usual icy businesslike focus, and he didn’t look at me as a woman at all, just a very useful instrument that prevented his life from spiraling out of control.

A little later that afternoon, I was sitting in the boardroom taking minutes as he ripped into a department head for a trivial error in reporting, and I studied the way his jaw tightened when he was angry and thought about how quickly I had allowed myself to want believe that his panic whispers from the night before had really meant something.

The rest of the week, I burrowed into my work, staying late to I would “organize” untouched files – just to avoid going home to the silence of my own mind – and whenever he requested that I run a personal errand, like ordering flowers for a woman he’d met at a gala, I just nodded and went along without protest.

I kept telling myself I was lucky he didn’t remember — I didn’t have to get fired, or suffer the embarrassment of a denial, but the silence that hung between us was weightier than any words could have been, and I was already checking out job postings in other cities on my lunch break.

I had nearly talked myself into just moving forward as if it never happened, but then the second week came around and there I was, on the floor of my bathroom at 6:00 AM, staring at a plastic stick that was telling me my life was never going to be the same. I sat there a long time, tracking the sunlight as it slowly moved across the tiles in the bathroom, and I understood that I could no longer be the "fixer" because this was a mess that could not be filed away or deleted with a keystroke, and I knew I had to tell him even though I was frightened of what he would say.

That day, I went to work carrying a resignation letter in my bag right next to the positive test, out of the building and I spent the whole morning waiting for the right moment to ask for five minutes of his time, but he was in back-to-back meetings and didn't even look in my direction when he left for lunch.

​I stayed at my desk while everyone else went out, staring at the closed door of his office and wondering how a man who was so smart could be so oblivious to the person sitting right outside his door, and I felt a sudden surge of anger that I had spent so many years being his shadow while he never bothered to learn anything about me. I decided that as soon as he got back, I wouldn't ask for permission, I would just walk in there and lay it all out on the table, because I was tired of being a ghost in his life and I wanted to see the look on his face when he realized that for once, I wasn't going to be the one to clean up the mess.