He phrased it as a question, but it really wasn’t. It was kind of presumptuous to assume I had nothing going on, but who the hell cared? This was amazing. I didn’t have to wait four whole days until Monday, but could start earning real money now. “Of course. I can certainly clear my schedule.”
Translation: delete the delivery app. No more amped up crazies pacing in front of their doors, hollering at me that I took too long to get them their soda.
I leaned across his desk to pump his outstretched hand. “I can’t wait to meet my new boss,” I said.
“You already have,” he told me, his big hand wrapped around mine, warm and firm.
I looked back toward the outer office, not remembering meeting anyone from the company on my way up. He laughed, a deep, rich sound.
“It’s me,” he said. “I’m the owner of the company.”
Not an interviewer, not even some manager. I was looking at my new boss, just about the hottest man I’d ever seen, who’d already put me through the wringer. And he wasn’t joking around, actually snapping his fingers at me now.
“Coffee, Miss Gardner. Black. There’s a machine in the break room down the hall and to your left. And God help you trying to figure it out.”
I gaped at him, but he had already turned away, clicking on his keyboard. “Oh, and call the other candidates to inform them the position’s been filled.”
Not just a hardass. I was working for a tyrant. But at least it was finally a steady paycheck. I might just make it out here after all.
Chapter 3 - Rurik
It wasn’t just infatuation with Miss Gardner that had my eyes glued to her as she hustled out the door to meet the coffee machine from hell, and it wasn’t her amazing ass, either. That was only part of it. After only half an hour of practically grilling her, I was hooked.
She was smart, clever, a tiny bit sly with the way she first danced around my question about her future goals. It was clear she was desperate for the job, but her honesty won out as soon as she realized I couldn’t be fooled with practiced answers.
I had always believed ‘the one’—that legendary woman all the heroes of great literature eventually found—was out there. She had taken her time in turning up in my life, but now she worked for me.
Returning with the coffee in record time, she waited patiently for new orders. The coffee was perfect, not burnt and not too weak. The damn thousand-dollar industrial espresso machine was a company-warming gift from my cousin Aleks’s wife, who ran a catering company and loved any and all overly fancy kitchen gadgets. I never got the hang of the thing, and most of the other employees brought their coffee in with them, leading me to believe they hadn’t conquered it either.
“This is excellent, Miss Gardner. A bit too much sugar,” I added, to keep her on her toes.
She shrugged. “I was a barista a million years ago—not worth putting on the resumé. Oh, and please call me Clem, everyone does.”
“You might have been hired faster if you had put the barista information on the resumé,” I said. “Now, make the outer office to your liking, but keep in mind efficiency.”
With that, I dismissed her to run the necessary background check. Gavril Bocharov and I were on much friendlier terms than when he first married my favorite cousin Lilia, but he still wouldn’t take ‘she’s the one’ as a credible security clearance.
As I already suspected, there was nothing in the background check that would keep her from working at Gavrik Imports. In fact, there wasn’t much on her at all, which wasn’t strange for someone who was only twenty-two. Someone who lived in the law-abiding world, anyway.
What was a bit strange was her not using her birth name, but instead using the maiden name of an elderly relative who also had a pristine background. There was no record of my new assistant ever being married, which pleased me way too much, and I dismissed the last name anomaly. This was LA, where half the population went by a stage name or a pen name.
“Clem,” I said very softly, just because I wanted to.
She stuck her head in the door, a stack of file folders in her hands. “Yes, sir?”
I liked that she was listening to my commands, except this wasn’t one of them. Thinking fast, I asked what she was doing with the folders.
“The filing cabinet is across the room from the desk. It would be more efficient if it were behind me, where I can easily reach everything.” She muttered that it would be more efficient to go electronic, and I smiled.
She was right on both counts, but the paper would burn to nothing, leaving no evidence behind. The internet was forever, and the computer geniuses in my family had found ways to crack pretty much every security system they’d come across, easily finding things others didn’t want found. Gavril and I haddecided to take the old-fashioned route with the more sensitive invoices.
“Let me run the business, Clem. You can continue organizing.”
Was that a scowl as she left the office? I liked her fire. Hell, I liked everything about her.
Since she was the one, I decided to take things slowly. As much as I craved to know every facet of her life, everything a security search couldn’t tell me, I didn’t follow her home that first night. Or the next, or the next.
Instead, I thought of her as a book I was enjoying so much I both wanted to stay up all night and race to the end as well as force myself to put it down at the best parts to make it last longer. Clem seemed to share my love of reading, changing out her paperbacks every few days.