Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 23854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 80(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 80(@300wpm)
Her new boss, Dominic Blackwood, is a billionaire with a chiseled jaw and poise like a king.
When the glass on his office goes dark and Hazel sees what she actually agreed to, she should run. But then her life would fall apart. And Dominic has a secret. The job, the contract, the instant hire—none of it was an accident. And Hazel? She’s about to find out what happens when the most powerful man in the city builds a trap for the girl no man ever noticed.
A high-heat, human-written, billionaire instalove romance featuring a brutally hot alpha, age gap, secret romance, an innocent heroine, possessive hero, no cheating, and a guaranteed HEA with epilogue
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
HAZEL
“So you think you’re qualified to work at a hedge fund?” Cassi’s smile looks like it’s about to drop off as she watches me fill out the online application.
I shrug, attaching my pathetic resume to the e-mail. She’s got a point. But as a girl who is three months behind on her rent, lost her barista job last week because the coffee shop closed, and whose resume is as blank and barren as the Sahara Desert, I’m taking the shotgun approach to finding work: Aim at everything, and eventually, something’s gotta stick.
“Hey, not all of us can make five hundred a night serving drinks, okay?”
Cassi does that disapproving thing she does with her lips when I say something she doesn’t agree with. “Girl, what do I keep telling you? If you’d just come out of your shell a little bit, guys will just give you their money!”
I give her the counter-smirk I always give back, sticking out my tongue. As best friends, we can often communicate without words.
“Easy for you to say.” And it really is. Cassi has the confidence of a WNBA player. She’s the girl who all the guys liked in high school, who dated the most popular jocks, and who can wake up after an all-nighter looking ready for the catwalk.
I, on the other hand, am a solitudinarian—that’s a big word I just learned online last night. I seek solitude. I’m much more comfortable at home in a pair of pajamas with a good book than I am at the bar in a tight dress and heels, about to break my ankles with the slightest misstep.
As I’m furiously sending out my lacking resume to anyone and everyone, Cassi is just chillin’, getting ready for a brunch date with a hunk she met at work a few days ago.
“Hazel, I think you don’t give yourself enough credit,” she says as she brushes the blush onto her cheeks. “You’re a sexy girl.”
“Oh my God, stop!” My face instantly goes redder than hers.
“You are,” she protests. “You just don’t have any self-confidence, so you end up being…you know…”
I know what she’s going to say, so I just finish it for her. “Forgettable?”
This time, she twists her lips in that way that indicates she feels bad for me. “Well, what guy’s going to remember a girl who totally ignores him and looks the other way when he talks to her?”
“I don’t do that!”
“Oh, you so do,” she laughs. “That guy at work the other day—when you came to pick me up—he asked me if you ‘liked girls.’”
“He did not!”
Laughing, Cassi nods. “Yup. He said you basically ignored him when he was trying to ‘rizz you up.’”
Making my ick-face, I shake my head. “Well, maybe if he didn’t say things like ‘rizz you up,’ I would have talked to him!”
Again, Cassi laughs. “Bros will be bros. Your problem is your standards.”
“My standards? What’s wrong with my standards?”
For some reason, I’m feeling slightly persecuted. So what if I’ve never had a boyfriend? I’m waiting for the right guy!
“They’re astronomical!” she replies. “It’s like you’re waiting for Brad Pitt in his prime to come back and swoop you off your feet.”
Finalizing the application, I scroll to the send button.
“I don’t need Brad Pitt. Just the right guy.”
“Oh, like him?” Cassi leans over my shoulder and points to the screen, exactly to the spot I was hoping she wouldn’t notice.
The headshot of Dominic Blackwood, CEO of Blackwood Capital, the hedge fund I’ve just submitted my resume to.
“Holy crap, he’s gorgeous. Hazel, tell me you’re not applying here because the CEO is a ten.”
I don’t answer.
I can’t because something is happening to me.
It’s in his eyes, I think. Dark and steady and fixed straight ahead, like the photographer caught him deciding whether or not this was worth his time. High cheekbones. A hard, clean jaw with a shadow of stubble. A mouth that doesn’t smile for the camera because it doesn’t have to.
He looks rich and bored and also faintly dangerous, like the kind of man that could pick you out of a crowd, decide he wants you, and just take you home and eat you up because he was hungry.
And low in my belly, somewhere deep I’ve never paid much attention to, something tightens.
Wow. Oh, okay. That’s new.
Is this a kink I have that I didn’t even know about until now? Dangerous-looking men?
I’m blushing even harder than her makeup now.
I shift on the couch, my thighs pressing together without even asking. Heat crawls up my throat—a heat so hot even ice water couldn’t cool it.
This is absurd. It’s just a photograph. A man like that has women like Cassi orbiting him in mini-skirts every day of his life. And even then, he probably doesn’t even bother to learn their names.
He would never learn mine.
Men don’t see you, Hazel. They look right through you.