I urge my Ma to her feet, and once she’s in bed, I pull the covers over her, then step out of the room. Sunita shuts the door. We stand in the hallway, and she opens her mouth to speak, but I raise my hand. "I know what you’re going to say, and I did everything I could to avoid it, I promise."
She just looks at me without saying a word.
I square my shoulders. " Honestly, I tried everything. If there was any other way out, I’d have taken it," I lie. "I don't want to move her out of here, but—"
She blinks. "You don’t have to take her out of here, but you insist you’re going to. What is the rationale behind that?"
"I thought I’d find the money to pay and keep her here, but—" I blink. "Hold on, did you say I don’t have to take her out of here?"
She raises a hand. "That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You don’t have to move her."
"But I don’t have the money to pay to keep her here."
Her scowl deepens. "What are you talking about?"
"That I’ve been unable to find a way to keep her here."
She leans forward on the balls of her feet. "But her bills have been paid."
I freeze, open and shut my mouth, but nothing seems to emerge. I seem to have disconnected from my body and am looking down at the scene unfolding. So, this is what a brain fart looks like?
"Penny?" Sunita waves her hand in front of my face. "Penny, you okay?"
I draw in a breath and my lungs burn. "Her bills have been paid?" I manage to choke out.
"Yes, and for the next twelve months."
"B-by whom?"
Her gaze widens. "You don’t know who paid your mother’s bills?"
I open my mouth to agree, then give myself an inward shake. Don’t kick a gift horse in the mouth. Take it and move on. You want your mother to stay here, don’t you?
"Ohhh, I know who did. It was my new boss."
"New boss?" She tilts her head. "You found a new job?"
"Yes, yes, I’m going to be the assistant to the CEO of Warren Media."
"Warren Media?"
"Yes, he’s my friend Abby’s brother. That’s how I got the job, and as part of the deal, he—I mean, the company—agreed to pay for my mother to stay here."
She smiles. "That seems like a generous offer.”
I shuffle my feet. It’s a guess on my part to say it’s Knight who paid the bills, but who else could it be? No one else I know has that much money to spend. But why would he do that? And for the next twelve months? I pull my phone out of my pocket and pretend to gasp. "Look at the time. I need to go meet my new employer."
"You’re meeting him at five p.m.?" Her forehead furrows.
"Oh, yeah. I officially start tomorrow, but it’s a preparatory session. These big companies—" I roll my eyes. "They’re so particular." And now I can’t stop the lies that spew out of my mouth. I wave my hand at her. "Well, thank you again for being so helpful. I gotta go." I brush past her and walk down the corridor and out of the building.
My head is swimming. A strange floating sensation fills my limbs. It feels like I'm in a dream, walking through a thick syrup. I manage to make it to the tube and head over to Knight’s office building. I enter, march up to the reception and announce, "I’m here to meet Knight Warren."
"Do you have an appointment?" The receptionist sniffs.
"I don’t, but he’ll see me."
She looks down her nose at me. "I’m afraid he won’t be seeing you if you don’t have an appointment, and—"
"Penny?" His rough, hard voice rolls down my back. Sparks of awareness flicker off my nerve-endings.
The receptionist in front of me jumps to her feet so quickly, her chair overturns. Her face is flushed a deep red, and her pupils are dilated. OMG, is she going to have an instant orgasm right now? Not that my thighs are not quivering. And the inner walls of my pussy are clenching. My panties are not so drenched, I can feel the wet fabric sticking to my inner thighs. But seriously, does he have that effect on everyone?
It must feed his already inflated ego to see women melt into incoherent blobs of goo wherever he goes. As if to illustrate my point, the receptionist swallows, then stutters, "M-Mr. Warren, she doesn’t have an appointment to—"
"She doesn’t need one. She’s my new assistant, Penny Easton."
The receptionist gapes. "Y-y-your new assistant?"
"Put her on the list of people who have twenty-four seven access to me."
"Twenty-four seven?" It’s my turn to gape. I stare at him over my shoulder. "But I don’t need twenty-four seven access."
"Yes, you do." He locks his fingers above my elbow, and tendrils of heat vibrate out from his touch, arrowing straight to my core. My nipples harden, and I find myself swaying toward him to draw in his sea-breeze scent. Then, he’s steering me around the receptionist’s desk and toward an elevator set at the far side of the lobby. He stabs the button, and the doors open. He pushes me in, steps in after me, then presses his thumb onto a pad.
The dashboard illuminates with a green light, and the car rises upward. It’s so smooth, it’s only the progression of numbers in the floor display panel that indicates our upward movement. The elevator doors are buffed to a high polish that reflects back both of us. He releases me and moves to stand to the opposite side of the car, putting as much distance as possible between us, and a shiver runs down my spine. How is it possible to miss his warmth when he doesn’t mean anything to me? He’s an egotistical, pompous bastard who thinks no one can disregard his orders.
"If you think paying for my mother’s stay at the care home means you’ve bought me, then you’re—" I firm my lips, for he’s turned those startling green eyes on me. My words stick in my throat. Am I going to deny why I came to see him? Sure, it was to tell him off, but also to say I’d work for him.
The relief I felt knowing my mother doesn’t have to leave the home made me understand my priorities. It doesn’t matter what I have to do to keep her in there. Doesn’t matter that I'm going to work for the devil himself. Nothing matters as much as making sure she's comfortable and safe and content in her last days. And the bastard knows it. That’s why he paid for her for the next twelve months. Which means, I’m effectively bound to this job for that much time, at least. The fight goes out of me, and I glance away.
He notices it but doesn’t say a word. He could gloat about how he’s been proven right about the job, but he stays silent. The elevator slides to a stop at the top floor of the building. He couldn’t have his office anywhere else but where he’d be the lord and master of all he surveys, of course. The doors open, and he gestures for me to step out, then leads the way. This time, he doesn’t touch me. The first time I met him here, I was too nervous about the prospect of working for him to take in my surroundings. Now, I follow him past the rooms with executives still at their desks—apparently, people here work late nights—a small conference room with two other executives engaged in discussion, then two larger ones which are empty, and a workstation set outside double doors. He opens one and ushers me in.