Paying My Debt in the CEO's Bed

My desk was six feet from Elliot's.

Not outside his office. Not down the hall with the other assistants. *Inside* his office, close enough that I could hear him tapping his pen.

"This is a joke," I said.

"It's efficient." He didn't glance up from his monitor. "You'll be in every meeting I'm in. Saves walking."

"Your old assistant sat here too?"

"No. She sat outside."

"Then why—"

"Because she quit." He finally lifted his eyes. "And I learned my lesson."

---

By noon, I had sat through three meetings and understood maybe a third of them. Hedging. Liquidity ratios. Words that sounded like a foreign language spoken very fast.

But numbers were numbers.

At two o'clock, I was reformatting a vendor report when a line item snagged my attention. Then another one, eight pages later. Same amount. Same consulting firm. Same date range.

I walked it over and dropped the pages on his desk.

"They billed you twice."

Elliot scanned the highlighted rows. His brows pulled together. He flipped back. Flipped forward.

"Sixty-two thousand dollars," he said slowly. "Finance signed off on this."

"Finance didn't read page fourteen."

He picked up his phone, spoke two clipped sentences to someone, and hung up. Then he leaned back in his chair and studied me.

"Not bad, Bellamy."

"I'm aware."

"Still doesn't cover the suit."

I had been waiting for that. I pulled a cheap plastic calculator from my blazer pocket and punched in numbers right in front of him.

"I'll pay you three dollars a day," I announced. "Starting today. Until you retire."

He blinked. "Three dollars."

"You're twenty-seven. Say you retire at sixty-five. That's roughly forty-one thousand dollars total. You'll actually make a profit." I clicked the calculator off. "You're welcome."

For a second, he just stared.

Then the corner of his mouth twitched. "You brought a calculator to work."

"I brought a calculator to *you*."

---

It became a habit, the bickering. He criticized my email formatting. I told him his handwriting looked like a seismograph. He drank his coffee black and complained mine smelled like a candle shop.

The problem was the closeness.

He kept leaning over my shoulder to check documents. One hand braced on my desk. His sleeve brushing my arm. Cedar and something warmer underneath it.

Every time, my brain served up the hotel room. His mouth on my collarbone. My fingers in his hair.

"Column F is wrong," he murmured near my ear.

"Column F is fine." My voice came out an octave too high.

"Your face is red."

"The heat's on too high."

"It's sixty-eight degrees in here, Delaney."

I scooted my chair two inches sideways. He followed it with one inch, like he was testing how far I'd run.

---

Near six, the floor emptied out. I was stapling packets for the evening meeting when the question slipped out.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You will anyway."

"In college, you couldn't pay for housing. I remember you sleeping in the library over winter break." I set the stapler down. "Now you own this building. How?"

He was quiet long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer.

"Four months after graduation, my dad got drunk and walked across Route 9." He said it flat, like reading a weather report. "Driver never saw him."

My throat closed up.

"My mom got sick the next year. Complications from her diabetes. She was gone by spring."

"Elliot." I reached over and touched the back of his hand. I didn't plan it. "I'm so sorry."

He gazed at my fingers for a moment. Then he turned his hand over, gave mine a single brief squeeze, and released it.

"It's fine. It was a long time ago."

It didn't sound fine. It sounded like a door he'd shut and locked years ago.

"After that, there wasn't anything else," he went on. "So I worked. Built two financial products nobody thought would sell. Traded the patents for equity. A few years later, I was the majority shareholder."

"Just like that."

"Nothing about it was 'just like that.'" He tilted his head. "Your turn."

"My turn for what?"

"The Bellamy heiress. Carrying drinks at the Meridian." His tone stayed easy, but his eyes didn't. "What happened?"

I picked the stapler back up. *Click.* "Career change."

"Delaney."

*Click.* "I wanted to try the service industry."

"Someone drugged your water."

*Click. Click.*

He let the silence stretch. Then, softly: "Is your mistake named Derek?"

My hand froze on the stapler.

I turned and gave him my sweetest smile. "Is your mistake named minding other people's business?"

He laughed. A real one, low and surprised. "Fair."

"Fair enough."

"Get your coat," he said, standing. "We're late."

---

The merger meeting was at a private conference floor across town. Some fund wanted to sell off a tech subsidiary, and Asteron wanted to buy it cheap.

I walked half a step behind Elliot, holding the folders against my chest.

The doors opened.

Derek Lorne sat at the far end of the table.

Navy suit. Gold cufflinks I recognized because I'd bought them for his birthday. He was laughing at something the man beside him said.

Then he spotted me.

The laugh died. His face went blank, then sharp. His gaze slid from me to Elliot and back again, adding things up.

He recovered fast. He always did.

"Well." He leaned back in his chair. "Didn't realize the Meridian let waitresses tag along to business meetings now. Is that a new hospitality package?"

Two men on his side snickered.

My fingers dug into the folders. Heat crawled up my throat.

Elliot didn't react. He pulled out the chair on his right, took his tablet from his own bag, and placed it directly into my hands.

"Sit here," he said.

Then he turned to the table.

"This is Delaney Bellamy, my executive assistant. She'll be taking notes and reviewing your financials." A pause. "Carefully. She found a sixty-two-thousand-dollar error in ours this morning."

Nobody snickered after that.

I sat. My hands only shook a little.

Derek's jaw worked. He smiled anyway. "Of course. Welcome, Ms. Bellamy."

---

Forty minutes in, Elliot's phone buzzed. He checked the screen and rose.

"Excuse me. I need to take this."

The door clicked shut behind him.

Derek waited until the others drifted toward the coffee station. Then he moved into Elliot's empty chair, so close his knee bumped mine under the table.

"Cute," he said quietly. "Secretary."

"Executive assistant."

"Does he know what you are? A girl with half a million in debt clinging to the first rich man who'll have her?"

I kept my eyes on the tablet. "Are you done?"

"Not even close." He leaned in. His cologne was the same. It made my stomach turn. "You know who holds your family's debt now, Delaney? A fund under Langford. My firm's parent company."

My stylus stopped moving.

"One phone call," he whispered, "and those loans get called in. All of them. Tomorrow. You lose everything you haven't lost yet."

I finally turned to face him.

He was smiling.

"So whatever Carver's planning for this deal," Derek said, "you'd better not help him. Or I'll bury you."

Behind us, the door handle turned.