The CEO's Fantasy (The Billionaire Bachelors Series) Read online

  “Save us from our sensitive musician,” Peter intoned dramatically. “I feel like we should hug it out now and really share our feelings. Maybe Henry will co-write a song about it full of angst and alliterations.”

  “No, this is logic. Strategy.” The guitarist persisted. “Something Dean has had to learn a lot about in the last few years. Humor me for a minute. Tracy’s easy so we can start with him.”

  “I am not easy.”

  “He wants a family. So a woman who loves children and old-fashioned family values, can cook and is probably as comfortable in the country as he is. And we’ve known him long enough to know he prefers blondes.”

  “That description makes his dream girl sound like Auntie fucking Em.” Peter joked. “Daisy Duke in chains is more his speed. Someone athletic, open-minded and obedient. Preferably discreet. The last of his friends he introduced us to spent the entire evening enlightening me on his stamina and how she needed vitamin b shots and energy drinks to keep up with the stallion. Even showed me her rope burns. I wasn’t sure if she was bragging or offering me a challenge.”

  “Not playing this game with you, Dick,” Tracy warned him.

  “Suck me,” Peter snarled in response, and Dean took a drink to hide his smile.

  When would Peter realize the only reason Tracy kept using that old gag was because he kept rising to the bait so beautifully?

  “Well I’m playing,” Henry declared. “To make it fair, I’ll go next. I know exactly what my ideal woman is like.” He rolled his bottle back and forth between his palms and glanced across the table with a defiant smile. “But I don’t think Dick will approve.”

  “Ganging up on me, I see,” Peter growled. “I thought we agreed not to talk about her anymore.”

  Dean and Tracy looked at each other, both knowing immediately who they were referring to.

  “Holly Ruskin,” Dean chuckled for the first time all evening. “I haven’t thought about that name in a while.”

  Peter and Henry had both been in love with the brilliant, vivacious Holly in college. Competed for her affection as if it were an Olympic sport. She didn’t seem to mind. Dean distinctly recalled how often she encouraged the competition. For a time.

  It seemed the one that got away was their fantasy. That made sense—everything came too easily to both of them. It was the challenge they loved.

  “What about Dean?” Peter’s voice was gruff. “Does he get a pass because we’re worried about him, or are you going to tell us what kind of woman he secretly longs for so he can feel just as uncomfortable as the rest of us?”

  The words came out of Dean’s mouth before he had a chance to consider them. “Curvy redhead. Smiling green eyes. Luscious.”

  She likes cinnamon on her strawberries.

  “Wow.” It was Tracy’s turn to laugh. “This conversation is officially interesting. Helluva lot of detail for a fantasy, my friend.”

  Too much detail. Too revealing. And currently impossible. “This conversation is pointless,” he said restlessly. “I don’t need your worry. I’m perfectly capable of handling my own affairs.”

  “I can manage my own affairs, too,” Tracy agreed, “but however much I hate to admit it, Peter’s right. It’s time I took charge of this the same way I would anything else. Make it happen.”

  Peter’s eyes widened. “I’m right? Did he just admit I was right?”

  “Shut up, Peter. We’re talking about Dean.” Tracy pinned Dean with a piercing look. “About why you know what you want—sounds like who you want—and you’re not going after her. Does the bastard finally have something on you? Ready to let us take care of him?”

  “My uncle makes a play for the company following each review, but after five years he still hasn’t gotten what he wants. Unless pissing me off is his only goal.” Dean’s laugh was hard. “As to why I’m not dropping everything to chase a momentary thrill? It’s called facing reality. Henry can be a wicked rock star like his father was before him because his mother married him despite the backlash. Rebelliousness runs in his family. Peter’s from old money that not even he could work his way through or scandalize his way out of in one lifetime. And you have more relatives than any of us, all of whom could pick up the slack if you let them—if you really wanted to start a family. But that’s your choice. You all have a choice. I don’t.”

  Peter whistled under his breath. “It’s really getting under your skin isn’t it? The will didn’t stipulate that you had to be in charge of running the company, Dean. You could be traveling the world right now, taking dirty photographs, falling in love and sleeping in.”

  He slammed his glass down on the table. “You’re right, Peter. I could have said fuck the business my grandfather built from nothing. I could have grabbed my substantial inheritance and let my uncle take the reins at any time since he refuses to sell me his shares every year. Of course, he still wants what he wanted five years ago—to break up the company like a jigsaw puzzle and ship the pieces he can’t sell overseas.” He swore under his breath. “Shit, I’m sorry, guys, but I don’t have time to play in Fantasyland. I have rules I have to follow. Rules I don’t break.”

  Poor little rich boy problems.

  “Hell, man,” Tracy murmured. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Ignore me, Tracy. I’m in a rotten-ass mood.”

  “Like hell we’ll ignore him,” Peter declared. “At least he’s finally opening up and getting some of that inner jackass out. That is the first step to healing, and it was very informative. We can discuss this company business later, but right now I’m more interested in the redhead.” His smile was enigmatic. “She works for him. He has the hots for someone at Warren Industries. No wonder he’s tense, Henry. He takes that shit seriously.”

  Dean shook his head. That would be what they took away from his rant.

  “I know he does,” Henry sighed. “About as seriously as he’s been taking himself lately. But I think it’s time for him to drop the Daddy issues and break his rule. Fuck this board bullshit. The world isn’t going to end if you grab a little ass in the copy room. In fact, I think it’s the only thing that will cure your current mood.”

  “That’s your advice?” Dean scoffed. “Stick to your songs, Vincent. You suck as a therapist.”

  Henry shrugged. “Everyone believes that’s what we do anyway. That we’re spoiled deviants who use the fame and fortune at our disposal to get our way. You’ve been living like a hermit and following your rules and they still report your every move. I say if they’re going to talk about you, you might as well give them something to talk about and get what you want in the process. Think of it as a challenge, Dean. I will if you will.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Peter warned.

  “Afraid I’ll find her first?”

  Tracy‘s laugh boomed through the small private room. “Jesus, you two are dogs over that bone. What if she’s taken? What if she’s married and she’s spent the last fifteen years having a dozen babies?”

  “She hasn’t,” both men said in unison.

  Dean was no longer paying attention. He was still too thrown by what had come out of his own mouth. They’d been friends for so long now his bitter venting hardly made a dent. What they’d said, however, had. They were right about him being a jackass, right that he was avoiding life beyond work. Avoiding what he really desired.

  Curvy redhead. Luscious.

  Sara Charles. The accountant on the twenty-third floor had tempted him for close to two years with a smile that always reached her eyes, full, succulent breasts that would overflow in his hands, and that sweet, delectable ass that would look even better bent over his desk.

  She’d woken needs in him he thought he’d buried a long time ago. Desires that were more than most women could handle. Insatiable desires. Not pressing her against the wall of the elevator and reaching for the bounty she offered on a daily basis, or joining her in the atrium where she always had her lunch and spreading her legs to feast on her until she scre
amed loud enough to alert security, had been his own personal torment. A true test of his willpower and a silent testament to the fact that he was nothing like his father, who’d practically invented sexual harassment during his tenure as CEO of Warren Industries. He may be guilty of wanting someone he couldn’t have, but he never acted on it.

  He’d come close. So close there was a file in his desk with her name on it that he’d shamelessly requested but never opened. If he wanted to, he could find out everything about her. Where she was born, how many men she’d slept with. He could satisfy some of his curiosity and see if she was, unlike most of the women he’d dated over the last few years, what she seemed to be.

  What kind of asshole would he be if he read it? If he used it to get her where he wanted her?

  The kind Ms. Anonymous readers think you are.

  Instead of succumbing to that temptation, he’d started watching the damn clock in the mornings, timing his arrival so it would coincide with hers. He tortured himself with fantasies while he soaked in her scent, occasionally giving in to harmless small talk to hear her voice until the elevator reached accounting and she left him.

  He never thought he’d come to loathe the non-fraternization policy he’d implemented the day he took the job. It was the one thing that held him back from pursuing her.

  That and the thought that she might not be what he’d imagined her to be. As interested in him as he was in her. As passionate as her swaying hips, rebellious curls and curious green eyes implied.

  But what if she was?

  Could he do what Henry advised? Break his own rule? Take a chance on dating again, one of his employees no less, and to hell with the fallout?

  Dean’s only other option—to maintain his personal and professional status quo indefinitely—was untenable.

  Something had to give.

  Chapter One

  The elevator was going up.

  That had to be the cherry on top of the most dramatic exit Sara had executed in her thirty years on the planet.

  “Well, hell.” She sighed and shifted the heavy box in her arms, uncomfortably aware of the raspberry soda drying down her back. She didn’t dare glance at the mirrored walls along the small moving room. It was one of those Fridays.

  Perfect.

  She could take comfort in the fact that today’s events would live on in infamy at the water cooler on the twenty-third floor of Warren Industries. At least until Monday afternoon.

  The Clown Catastrophe. That’s what they would call it. Mainly because Terry Anne, the woman who’d worked at the desk across from her since Sara started the job two years ago, had a thing for collectibles. Specifically clowns.

  Smiling clowns. Sad clowns. Bear clowns. Ballerina clowns. Scary, strange Stephen King clowns that followed you with their painted, beady eyes and plotted your demise.

  Sara had seen those damn things in her sleep for years and they’d been the start of all her trouble today. Or more accurately, accidentally knocking one of them on the floor with the stack of files she’d brought to her desk had started it.

  She’d already been in a mood. Her day had started without its usual pick-me-up, aka the company’s owner, Bossy McHotpants, joining her in the elevator. She’d spent ten floors wondering why she hadn’t seen him at all this week when she knew he was in the building, and the other thirteen chiding herself for thinking about him at all.

  Then she’d been passed over for the special projects spot she’d been angling for in order to escape life in the beige accountant cube, and given the workload of the two men who’d been assigned to the projects instead.

  Hence the pile of files set down a little too roughly, which cracked the clown and set her own personal Rube Goldberg hell into motion.

  When the collectible fell, Terry Anne had let out a scream that was impressive enough to belong in one of those late night horror movies. That terrifying noise was followed by the wail of a mother who’d just had her baby thrown out the window. She should have been an actress. And Sara, of course, was cast as the villain. Every accountant on the twenty-third floor stopped what they were doing and turned to watch the show.

  Sara closed her eyes and rehashed the episode in her mind. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything about the clowns or office space or professionalism. And perhaps she should have walked away to clean up when Terry Anne had gestured defensively with her open bottle of raspberry soda and coated Sara’s white blouse and neck with the sticky, sugary liquid, causing half the room to gasp with barely suppressed glee.

  And yes, she definitely shouldn’t have broken more of Terry Anne’s collection in response while telling her that she desperately needed to get laid and stay off the Home Shopping Network. That had been a mistake.

  She’d never been in a slap fight before. But when Terry Anne smacked her cheek with the palm of her hand, Sara’s had come up of its own accord to pay her back in kind.

  It was more satisfying than she’d ever admit out loud. Even under torture.

  Their supervisor had been no help. “These things happen” was one of his favorite phrases whenever a conflict arose, and today was no different. He hadn’t fired her or Terry Ann, despite the physical altercation. He hadn’t compared all the times Sara had worked late and her consistently stellar performance reviews to the weekly complaints Terry Anne lodged against her fellow employees and all the times she was late because her cats/aunt/cousin/cousin’s step uncle/favorite grocery store clerk was sick and declared Terry Anne had to go. Instead he’d offered a compromise—Terry Anne would pay to have Sara’s shirt professionally cleaned and Sara would replace the missing pieces of the clown collection. They would agree not to officially file complaints, would both apologize for the things they’d said, and then they’d go back to work, better friends than before.

  Her supervisor was a wuss.

  And Sara couldn’t do it. Oh, she could apologize, and maybe swallow her pride and go back to her desk for the day coated in pure cane sugar and raspberry food coloring…but she just couldn’t replace those damn clowns. She wouldn’t spend another two years feeling their accusatory stares as she hunched over her small desk across from them.

  The realization made her decision easier. Despite her supervisor’s panicked suggestion that giving two weeks notice would be the smart thing to do, she’d quietly found a box and packed the few personal things she kept at the office.

  Fuzzy slippers to wear under her desk. A small plant so she wouldn’t forget there was a world outside. A stress ball she could squeeze instead of Terry Anne’s head. Her collection of postcards filled with beautiful black-and-white photography that she’d sigh over when she had lunch in the building’s peaceful atrium, her second favorite part of the day.

  When she carried her box toward the elevator, she’d had the sensation of being in a scene from Norma Rae or Jerry Maguire. She’d half expected a slow clap to mark her epic exit, but she shouldn’t have. Accountants, as a rule, had no sense of humor. Everyone had simply watched with unblinking, mildly curious stares as she stepped inside. As the doors closed, no one even waved goodbye.

  She was so busy fuming she hadn’t noticed she was going up instead of down.

  Thirty-three.

  Thirty-four.

  There were only forty-two floors in the building. When she saw the number thirty-nine light up she started to panic. Quitting her job didn’t worry her, being labeled a clown killer didn’t worry her...but the sudden realization that she could be on her way to his office, where his secretary and assistant were usually stationed like guardians at the gate? It would be weird if she wasn’t a little tense.

  She’d only been there twice. Once when she’d been sent up to personally deliver a file after her supervisor screwed up and brought the wrong statistical analysis report to a meeting, and once for the annual review—which had given her hours of good, solid drooling-over-the-boss time. In both instances, she’d been seduced by the smile of welcome she’d sworn was in Bossy’s hazel eyes. Sh
e’d also managed to say something off color and inappropriate enough to earn a warning glare from the kind but formidable Mrs. Grandholm.

  Sara never knew when to keep her mouth shut. It wasn’t very accountant-y of her, but other than her obsession with numbers, not many things about her fit the mold. Maybe it was because she’d worked two jobs for so many years, as a waitress and then as a party host for a very lucrative sex toy manufacturer, while saving up to pay for school. Spending time with normal open-minded people gave her an affinity for things like colorful clothing, chaos and boisterous laughter. Spending evenings discussing kinky positions and demonstrating “marital aids” gave her an affinity for, and an admitted preoccupation with, sex.

  Accountants hated chaos and—at least in her office—rarely mentioned the S word unless it was about who was having it with their boss.

  She supposed it was a good thing she was going to miss this year’s review. In five weeks another accountant would be standing between the delicious Mr. Warren and his dragon lady, and that one would probably refrain from wondering aloud who’d created the unmistakably phallic statue in the lobby, or asking for a second piece of Mrs. Grandholm’s triple fudge decadence, which she’d brought for the review, because it tasted “like warm, rich make up sex in her mouth.”

  She adjusted her box so she could hold it in one arm while trying to straighten her stained, clinging shirt with her free hand—but it was pointless. She was a mess. And, unlike every other time she’d gotten on the elevator since the day she began working for the company, up was the last direction she wanted to go and he was the last person she wanted to see. Not when she looked like this.

  Dean Warren was the “he” in question, otherwise known as Bossy McHotpants. He was the second-generation billionaire, philanthropist and walking sex god of all of her wildest, raunchiest fantasies. The first time she’d seen him step into the elevator, she’d had the sensation of falling.