Page 14 of Beauty and the Billionaire

He licked his lips, an action so surprisingly sensitive that my mind faltered for a moment. “Don’t let me be misunderstood, but you have a very forward approach to people. You seem shy until the moment you speak. There’s anger in you.”

“Er…” I sealed my lips as a protest welled in me.

Dominic leaned in. “I could use it,” he said. “It’s an odd feeling because it sparks so much creativity at times. And I would like to get creative in this endeavor.”

“I don’t think I understand,” I said carefully.

Dominic leaned back and fingered the edge of his glass. “I took over a company from three men I once knew. It hurt their pride, but I’m not satisfied yet. I want them to hurt.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to do anything illegal.”

“It’s my company,” Dominic insisted. “I can do with it whatever I want. And I happen to want a thorough audit. I want to see every mistake, every fuckup, blunder, and miscalculation, every recorded burp, and every single case of rudeness, harassment, or cover-up neatly organized, categorized, andlabeled. I want those men’s names to be synonymous with failure. For a start.”

“A revenge,” I said. There was that familiar tickle of fear in the depths of my heart, but another feeling lurked in the shadows, and I couldn’t grasp it.

“If you want to put it poetically,” Dominic agreed.

“Why me?” I asked again.

“Why not?” Dominic replied. He didn’t want to tell me. He didn’t want to say it, so it left me in an impossible situation. The cards were mostly on the table. Whatever it was, it wasn’t illegal to want to smear someone’s name if they had done something wrong. And this was a career-forging position. Assisting a billionaire, no matter how ruthless, was much higher up the ladder than reading Walt Whitman behind the cash register.

When neither of us said anything for a little while, Dominic finished his whiskey. “Think about it,” he said. “And read the contract before you sign it.”

He stood, smoothed his pants, and walked out of the sitting room.

The scent of pine and the first winter snow lingered in the room, tickling this sensation of sheer excitement that had no right to be present in me.

He was terrible. Terrible and exciting in a way I hadn’t considered before.

CHAPTER 4

Sleepless

Dominic

Fool,I thought to myself as I stalked the hallway from the West Wing to the gallery and the grand staircase.Rash fool. The night was silver and bright, with moonlight pouring through the windows, the midnight sky cloudless.

What possessed you to bring him here?I asked myself as my lips twisted. I reached the ground floor, chased from my bedroom by a particularly bad case of insomnia. The house was silent as it had been the entire day. Zain Rashid had a secret talent for moving around the house without making a sound. He had given the signed contract to Orwell early this morning, but that was the last I heard of him.

I didn’t insist on his company over dinner again. I didn’t ask where he ate or where he went. Doubts plagued me the entire day and kept me awake all night. I had leaped at the opportunity to snatch him from his pitiful life when his old man couldn’t honor his word, but I wondered ever since if it had been a lapse of judgment.

My eyes were sandy as I flicked on the small lights in my study. The room was not very large, containing a mahoganydesk, a leather chair, and several bookcases with contemporary books, business records, and folders on various people I had yet to deal with. There was a short ottoman with armchairs and a coffee table, although I had no true use for any of it.

In there, I sat behind the desk and turned on my laptop. HVB records filled my screen from the very first minutes of the first meeting to the present day. There were records of every deal they had made, every transaction, every invoice, and I wanted to know if any of the three brutes had so much as brought a Popsicle with company money. But my time was not well spent on it, so Zain seemed like a perfect solution. Who was he going to tell? Nobody knew him; nobody had a reason to trust a word from his mouth.

I told myself it was Zain’s insignificance that made him perfect for this. I told myself that it was a stroke of luck that Amar Rashid couldn’t afford to settle his debt but had raised a valiant son who was willing to work for it. And even as I repeated this to myself, I knew they weren’t true.

My teeth gritted as I came across the photos of the three men who had bullied me mercilessly throughout my Harvard years. It made me oddly hungry to see them so happy on some hunting trip, standing proudly in front of a mountainous background, wearing camos, hugging the way real men hugged. Pathetic. The hunger that opened up in me was for their reputations, their brands, their names. The hunger wouldn’t be satisfied tonight, so I left the study and walked downstairs to the kitchen.

Cook Beard wouldn’t mind me lifting a few snacks from the fridge. And if she would, the word would never get to me.

As I turned the corner and entered the elegant, functional kitchen, I paused. The fridge door was open, and Zain rummaged through it, possibly inspired by the same idea as I was. He took out a cheese platter and set it on the kitchen island, then felt my presence.

“Oh,” he gasped, taking a step back in surprise. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Sorry,” I said.

Zain’s gaze went over my bare torso and to my pajama bottoms, then returned to meet my eyes. “You don’t mind…”

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