“Watch me,” I bite.
She comes around to the side of my desk. I have half a mind to move away from her, to turn my back on her, but the stupid little voice inside me craves the closeness.
She’s all I have left.
She’s the closest thing I have to family. She might be the only person left in my life I can trust. At least, when it comes to my business and my past.
“You need help,” she says softly. It’s the way she says it. Like she’s not just talking about someone to bring me my coffee and schedule my meetings.
Like somehow she knows deep down what I can’t say even if I wanted to.
Like she knows I’m slipping, even though she doesn’t know the darkness that claws at me from the inside, begging to be set free.
“I’m fine,” I say, but even I can hear the sharpness in my voice. The lie.
She knows it, and I know it, too.
“You are not. When is the last time you left this office?” she asks. “When was the last time you went on a date?”
I shake my head. I’ve never told Chickadee about my preferences. Even when I was with my ex, most people knew him as my business partner, not mypartner.And I was fine with that, mostly, given the nature of our relationship. No one needed to know that I like men, and that I like making them submit to me. Least of all my investors and my staff. And maybe there was a part of me that kept that part of my life secret because I knew I’d get here faster if I pretended to be someone I wasn’t, and that’s exactly how I got here. That’s exactly how the self-made billionaire bachelor playboy Sloane Pierce became a household name.
But it’s not the truth, and it’ll never be the truth. I can’t afford to be honest.
Not even with Chickadee.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “I don’t have time for a relationship, Chickadee, and I don’t need some woman to be fulfilled.”
What I need is something I can’t have. Ever.
“I’m not saying you need to be in a relationship, sweetheart. I’m just saying if you don’t loosen the reins, you’re going to end up miserable and alone.”
Her words settle on me, and I hate that they make my stomach flip. I hate the anxiety that festers because a part of me worries she’s right.
It’s been nearly eight months since Robert and I broke up, and I fired him.
I should have known not to mix pleasure with business, but I thought then that I could trust him.
I was stupid. Relationships are nothing but collateral. Leverage that can be used against you.
Robert taught me that, for better or for worse. I let my guard down once, I am not going to do it again.
“I don’t see how this has anything to do with my hiring an assistant,” I tell her firmly. “You are out of line, Chickadee.”
She lets out a heavy sigh.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she says carefully. I look up at her familiar brown eyes, her stern face. Sometimes I swear she looks like my mother, even though they aren’t related.
Maybe it’s the harsh expression or the wrinkles or the overbearing need to make me hear her. Her stubbornness to not let me ignore her.
“What’s that?”
“I have a candidate for the open position. His name is Oliver Green.”
I sigh as she holds my gaze.
“I told you, I don’t need—”
“Give him three months, Sloane. Three, that is all I’m asking. If you still feel like he’sincapableof meeting your expectations, then he will be the last one you fire.”
