The CEO's Contracted Mistress

Smart and Beautiful

Bobbie was on her way back from the office room they had rented in the hotel for their two week stay later in the evening, grateful she hadn’t run into Olivier after returning from the kids themed restaurant. She stopped at the lobby and grabbed a bottle of water from the lobby counter and twisted the cap as she slowly made her way to the elevator. She was tired.

The kids were all asleep and Prue was sitting with them until she finished making several adjustments to a few documents and had finished printing them in the work center. She held the cool bottle against her neck and sighed.

It had been a long evening and while she hadn’t told anyone about Olivier being in the hotel, she was praying it had been a fluke. He couldn’t possibly be staying here, regardless of the fact he’d punched the penthouse suite in the elevator.

Suddenly her arm was gripped, and she was hauled through the lobby back to office she had just exited.

“What the actual hell?” she yanked her arm away from Olivier’s grip and glared at him. “Get your hands off me. Who do you think you are?” Her bottle of water rolled across the floor of the room as she wrestled away from him. He grabbed the folder and dropped it on the table behind her.

“What are you doing here?” he stared at her incredulously. He was staring as if he’d hallucinated her.

“Working,” she made a face. She looked him up and down and realized he must have just come from being out some place fancy with his polished shoes, his perfectly fitted slacks and the dress shirt and jacket. He looked good. Too good. She had to be an i***t for finding a s*x trafficker sexy as hell. She concluded she must be a fool.

“What do you do?”

“Are you kidding me?” she tried to step past him, but he blocked her exit from the room. “Olivier, let me pass.”

“Roberta, this is so weird. I saw Darian just this morning.”

“Who?”

“Darian.” He waved his hands expressively, “the security guard.”

She made a face and then closed her eyes, “ah, my white knight. I forgot his name was Darian.”

“I’m so sorry Roberta.”

She grimaced at him, “for trafficking me? What do you want Olivier? You want me to keep my mouth shut? It’s shut. I don’t have any intention of going to the police. I promise.” She felt the first glimmer of fear since he’d dragged her to the room. “Can I please go?”

“No,” he protested. “I never trafficked you.” He shoved his fingers through his hair frustratedly, “I thought you left me with Darian.”

“What?”

“Darian told me today what happened that night. For the last almost nine years I thought you two ran off together.”

“You thought we ran off together?” she shoved his chest hard. “Your friend had our contract and showed me where you signed me over, where you traded me off. Darian protected me from being raped and trafficked and you have the balls to stand here and tell me you thought I ran off with your security guard?”

She started to storm past him, but he grabbed her and spun her around. His hand was tight on her wrist and though she tugged he wouldn’t release her.

“Would you listen to me?”

“No! Why the f**k would I listen to a creepy s*x trafficker.”

“I didn’t traffic you!” he cursed in French under his breath, “Chérie, I would not have done --.”

She cut him off with a flailing of her wrists, “I knew the drill,” she threw a few of the last words he’d ever spoken to her back at him. “Let’s be honest, a more experienced w***e would have been thrilled to sign off for another month and get the big pay cheque.”

“You weren’t a w***e!”

“What do you call a woman who gets paid to f**k?”

He closed his eyes as if he was trying desperately to control his temper, “You didn’t take all the money,” he said suddenly. “Why?”

“Short five days and enough to cover Bernard the Bastard’s peas he would have needed for the kick to the balls.”

“There’s a fitting name if I’ve ever heard one.” He bit out.

“Look, I promise, I have kept my mouth shut for all this time. I’m not going to talk to the police.”

“I don’t give a s**t if you talk to the police! I would very much like for you to talk to me.” He sighed suddenly, “tell me where did you go? You ran away from Bernard. Where did you go?”

“None of your business.”

“Chérie,”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Fine, Roberta.”

“The name is Bobbie, asshole.”

“Why are you so antagonistic?”

“Why did you transfer my contract to your friend? I think I have the right to be antagonistic!”

“I didn’t transfer the god damned contract. f**k I hated that contract. I hated everything about it.” He threw his hands up in the air, evidently as frustrated as she was. “I would very much like to sit down and talk.”

She stared at him, hating herself for considering it for a half second. “No, I have nothing to say to you. You need to leave me alone.”

“Roberta,” he tried again. “Please, come join me for a drink and we can talk. If after we talk and you never want to see me again, then I will let you walk away without question. I only want to reassure you; I had no involvement in Bernard and Cleo’s actions from back then.”

“I don’t believe you,” she looked away from the intensity of his stare. What did it say about her when she desperately wanted to believe him? To throw herself at him and hug him and ask him if he’d cared for her at all back then? To tell him he had two children sleeping five floors above and to ask him if he wanted to meet them.

Suddenly her phone rang, and she grabbed it quickly grateful for the interruption, “Nana Prue. Everything okay?”

“Demons are all asleep in your bed. You almost done down there? You work too much.” Prue Hoffman was blunt.

“I’m done. I’ll be up shortly.” She flicked a glance at the man openly eavesdropping on her conversation from where he retrieved her water bottle. She grabbed it from him furiously.

“Or you could take your time, go find a hot sexy man and get laid. You’re uptight. What was it Max said today? Put the p***s in the v****a like the monkeys.”

“Oh my god,” she groaned and put her hand on her cheek in mortification. “He’s incorrigible and I know where he gets it, Nana Prue.” She accused the woman blatantly. “Stop giving the boy ammunition to embarrass us.”

“You’re too uptight. Get laid.”

“I’m here to work.” Bobbie grimaced as she looked at the floor.

“Then at least get drunk and do something stupid. You’re twenty-nine not fifty-nine. I’m sixty-seven and I get laid more than you.”

“You’re awful. I’ll be up to the room soon. My work is done. I’m just tidying up the mess I made in the office space.”

“Prude.”

“Hag.”

A voice in the background made Bobbie wince, “who’s awake?”

“Lark. She needs to pee.”

“Fine, I’ll let you go deal with her. I’ll be up soon.”

She hung up the phone and sighed deeply. The woman was as trying as the kids were some days.

“She sounds like a handful,” Olivier was laughing at the conversation. “Who is she?”

“My boss’ mother,” she shook her head. “She’s a pain in the ass.”

“She thinks you’re uptight and need to get laid. Need help?” he smirked at the offer.

Why was her body begging to agree? “No,” she slapped at him as he reached up and tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Don’t touch me.”

“Nana Prue thinks you need to be touched.”

“If she knew I was here with you, she’d be down here pulling me out after she kicked your ass.”

“Why?”

“Because my family knows what you are.”

“What I am?”

“My John. My trafficker.”

He groaned with frustration, “I’m not a f*****g s*x trafficker and you were never a hooker.”

“What would you call our arrangement?”

“I wanted you at my disposal. It meant you had to quit your job. I simply covered your expenses while you were available for me.”

She rolled her eyes. “And the part where your friend took over the contract and said I had to f**k him or lose my earnings?”

“He f*****g lied. I got back to the room on Sunday and found the room trashed and you gone. I found his lighter on the sofa and I paid him a visit and he told me he went to see me to offer me a job and when he got there, found you in bed with Darian. He said he knew I wouldn’t have had just any girl in my hotel suites so figured out you were my girlfriend and threw you both out for betraying me. He said Darian had gone ballistic at being found out and potentially losing a big pay day and tossed the place.”

“Never happened.”

“I should just believe you?” he stared at her pointedly.

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not a stupid man Olivier. An arrogant bastard. Yup. Selfish and self-serving, hell yes. Demanding and pushy. God yes. Stupid? Nope. You miss nothing. If I’d been screwing around with Darian, you would have known. You don’t miss a trick.”

“Yet, I missed it.”

“I didn’t sleep with him!”

“Doesn’t feel good to not be believed, does it?”

At his words she gave an impatient shriek.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your sister?”

At his question she paused and swallowed deeply. “There wasn’t anything to tell.”

“You took the money to pay for her medical care. You should have told me. We could have tried to find her better care.”

“It was already too late. Even if she’d had a transplant the day we met, she was unlikely to live. I needed to keep her comfortable. That was it.”

“You should have told me.”

“We weren’t exactly sharing emotions and family history, Olivier. I was a hooker. It wasn’t like I was Julia Roberts living the Pretty Woman dream. I was working. When it was over, I was going to be on my way. As you said, I knew the drill. I knew when you were coming back on Sunday at best it was for one last night at worst, I was going to leave Sunday.”

“What makes you say this?” he leaned against the table in the room folding his arms over his chest.

“You extended the contract the first time after the second week. We had five days left, you didn’t extend it and you weren’t coming back until the day it expired. I knew it was done.”

He sighed, “you’re right. It was not my intention to extend the contract.”

“Nope, just trading me off to your buddy.”

“Bernard is not my buddy and no, for the hundredth time, I was not trading you off.”

“So, you say.”

“Just like you say you weren’t f*****g Darian.”

“I take it back,” she shrugged. “I was. We had a torrid affair. If you believe this, can I go?”

He threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. If this is the narrative you want to stick with, so be it. I saw you come into the hotel today and thought it was fate. What could be the chance the same day I find out the truth and you hadn’t run off with Darian, that I see you again? I thought it was a sign to be able to let you know I found out what Bernard had done, and I was looking into the situation, and I was going to make him pay for hurting you.”

“Make him pay?” she threw her head back and laughed. “What? Are you some kind of mob boss?”

He leaned forward and gently kissed her cheek. “Roberta, it was a pleasure to see you again. I hope you’re well and I hope your life is exactly as you hoped it would be. I won’t bother you again. Take care, ma chérie.”

She closed her eyes against the ache his words made in her chest. It shouldn’t hurt to hear him say goodbye. Not after nine years. Not after knowing what he had done. But he’d denied it. Swore it never happened the way Bernard had stated.

She pulled a chair out and sat in it, her fingers trembling. What if he had been telling the truth? What if he had never traded her? Her cheek burned from the feel of his kiss and her nose was filled with the scent of his cologne.

She forced herself out of her chair, collected her water and the manila folder of documents and then made her way to the elevator.

She slowed her footsteps as she saw Olivier and another man standing there waiting for the elevator. The other man held the doors waiting for her and she smiled politely and got in. She leaned past to push her floor and Olivier used his key card for the penthouse and the other man hit a button for the seventh floor.

“Working late?” The man was chatty.

“Yes.”

“What do you do you’re working so late at night?” he looked to the folder in her hands.

“Paralegal,” she smiled benignly.

“Ah, beautiful and smart.”

She tried not to roll her eyes at his comment and just nodded. She noted Olivier lifting an eyebrow at her from behind the man.

“Cat got your tongue? I’m just being friendly.” The man tried again.

“I apologize. It’s been a long day,” the doors of the elevator opened, and she moved to step out and the man reached out and grabbed her arm.

“We should exchange numbers.”

“No thank you.” She tried to pull his arm away, but he was holding tight.

“Why not?” The man was getting aggressive.

“She said no,” Olivier interrupted.

“It’s none of your business,” the man argued with him.

“It is my business,” he retorted bluntly. “I own the hotel. If my guests are being accosted in the elevators by assholes, then it most assuredly is my business.”

The man blanched at Olivier’s words. Olivier reached out and peeled the man’s fingers off Bobbie’s wrists. He shoved him back into the elevator and pulled his cellphone out. He nodded at her as she exited the elevator and as the doors closed the crack of the other man being punched echoed in her ear.

She walked briskly toward her room and swiped her key card for the room.

She found Nana Prue sitting at a table, playing solitaire with a deck of cards nursing a tumbler of bourbon.

She looked up at her and frowned, “are you okay?”

“Not really,” she whispered and noted the three kids sleeping in the bed. “Ran into a blast from the past.” She looked to the twins tellingly and Prue’s eyes widened.

“What?”

“He just saved me from an aggressive fella in the elevator.”

“Holy s**t,” Prue walked towards her with her arms open. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine but only I would book us into a hotel he owns. I thought he was a banker. Why does he own a hotel?” She stared wide-eyed, “and pretty sure he punched the guy as soon as the elevator doors closed on me.”

“He owns the hotel?” Prue dragged her into the bathroom away from the sleeping kids.

“Apparently.” She made a face. “At least, it’s what he just told the jerk in the elevator.”

“Bobbie, if he’s dangerous,” her face paled as she considered what Bobbie had revealed about the man.

She rubbed her forehead against the ache at revealing more. “I was with him when you called.”

“What?” Prue grimaced. “No!”

“He swore the guy from back then lied. Said he came back on the Sunday to find the hotel room trashed and Bernard said he caught me in bed with my security guard. He’s spent the last nine years thinking I was fooling around behind his back.”

They were whispering in hushed voices in the dark bathroom but the panic in both of their voices was evident.

“What are you going to do?” Prue leaned out and looked at the kids. “Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. What do I do?”

“We’ll talk to Everly and Grady tomorrow. For now, I’m going to suggest you get a stiff drink into you and then try to sleep.”

“How am I supposed to sleep?”

“I don’t know but you need to try. You still have to work and deal with the kiddos and if we have to move hotels, it’s going to be a headache.” Prue rubbed her forehead, “he really owns the hotel?”

“I guess so,” she sighed. “Where’s the bottle of jack?”

“Come on, I’ll pour.”

Thirty minutes later she was sliding into the second queen sized bed in the room, next to Nana Prue who had drank three glasses in the time Bobbie had finished one. The woman was snoring loudly, and Bobbie was staring at the ceiling.

Had he told the truth tonight? If so, had she made a terrible error in judgement in not letting Grady find him all those years ago? Worse, what would Olivier do if he found out she’d kept his children hidden? The thought kept her up all night.