Page 14 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

I know it’s possible.

Needless to say, I’m fixated on the dehydrated Vossameer problem. I eat, breathe, and sleep it. I agonize over it. Sometimes I feel like I’m running a hellish race where, the moment I think I’m nearing the end, the finish line vanishes and reappears in the distance. And then I speed up, trying desperately to reach it, only to have it move again. Forever out of my reach.

Some of my most brilliant solutions come to me in the middle of the night; I wake up in the dark with my mind spinning on the answer, and I’ll switch on the light and scribble down a chemical structure. Even that hasn’t been happening. But I live in hope, carefully working through the problem as I fall asleep.

But what did I wake up in the middle of last night focusing on?

Her. The new assistant. Ms. Cooper.

The people who apply to join the Vossameer team typically understand and admire the work I do. They’re highly driven professionals who crave the opportunity to work in a no-nonsense environment where they help bring lifesaving products to market at a fair price.

Yet Ms. Cooper practically trembled with disrespect toward me—possibly even irritation. I kept looking at her, thinking I was misreading her.

And I could’ve sworn she saidMr. Amazing is being amazing elsewhere, nothe is elsewhere,like she claimed she said.

Since when does a Vossameer employee say something like that? About me?

I found it annoying, and then I felt annoyed that I cared.

I did a little digging and saw that Sasha had used part of the social media budget to create a bonus that would attract top talent. Ms. Cooper had won an award of some sort.

So maybe she didn’t join up out of a sense of mission.

Still.

Lying there in the middle of the night, I tried everything I could to get my mind off her. Because what do I care what some lowly admin has to say? What do I care about her impudent attitude if she does her work?

But it agitated me enough that I couldn’t sleep. When the wake-up service called, I was ruder than usual.

Even then, I couldn’t get her off my mind.

Why her? She’s pretty, yes, but I’m a man of science. I know beauty is a scam, nature’s way of conning us into procreation, no different than birdsongs or peacock plumage.

Though there was something…activatedabout her beauty—it was an angry, burning beauty, jaw set impudently. Hair the color of honey. A dark freckle on her right cheekbone. The freckle ruined the perfect symmetry of her face—normally I wouldn’t like that. But the freckle made her more perfect, somehow. And, god, the way her green eyes blazed.

The blaze of her eyes seemed to have gotten under my skin, created this chemical reaction in me that eventually jolted me awake. And there I lay, with the memory of her growing brighter the more I tried to push it aside.

I create lifesaving fucking formulas, and some admin…what? Thinks my breakthroughs are obnoxious? That I’m somebody to ridicule?

Lying there in the dark of night, I realized, to my astonishment, that I found it…hot.

I tried to tell myself it wasn’t hot. But it was hot.

I should’ve fired her, but I wanted to…I don’t know what. Get in her face. Reprimand her, kiss her.

Iwantedher. It defied logic, how badly I wanted her.

I couldn’t believe it.

I have better things to do than to obsess over the female of my species, to use my mental energy on an endeavor that barely sets me apart from the cuttlefish.

I tend to have rational, low-maintenance girlfriends who are as career-focused as I am, preferably scientists and technologists who won’t give me drama when I cancel a date to stay late in the lab, women who respect that I’ll always be more passionate about my work than them.

As I’ve become more successful and well-known, my girlfriends have tended to get more respectful and compliant. More convenient.

Works for me.

And then she bursts onto the scene. Takes over my entire brain. Some lowly assistant. No woman has ever compromised my focus like this.

---