The CEO's Contracted Mistress

Microwaves and Marshmallows

Bobbie held her pen between her teeth and studied the screen in front of her and wondered whether her boss was high. She looked at his face on the video and tilted her head and pulled her pen from her lips. “Crack? Cocaine? Heroine?”

Her words made him laugh. “I’m not high, Bobbie.”

“Drunk then?” she saw his wife pass by the screen behind him and she was laughing at Bobbie’s words.

“He’s not drunk,” Everly’s face got closer as she peered over her husband’s shoulder, “but he could really use your help. We’ll be there too!”

“I haven’t been back to Houston in forever. The last time was before Christmas for the one night to get the signatures for the Hall-Quigley account.” Her desk faced the back yard and she looked out the window to where her kids were playing. She squinted, fighting, was more apt a description of their activities. She rapped on the window and swung her finger back and forth between them.

Grady immediately knew what she was doing, “come on Bobbie. The kids are bored and fighting already and it’s only the second week of summer vacation.”

She groaned and put her hands over her forehead frustratedly and pointed at him, “you hate Houston as much as I do.”

“Agreed,” Grady sighed with a wrinkle of his nose. “I’d rather chew nails. It’s why I moved my offices to Dallas.”

“Then explain to me again why we need to go to Houston? Why can’t we do this remotely?”

“Because Trace called me today to say he found a buyer. In this type of scenario, we need to be there in person for negotiations. It’s how it goes.”

“And it’s really going to take two weeks?” she grimaced in annoyance.

“It is.”

“And your mom and Everly don’t mind watching my mouthpieces?” she looked up to her window to see both of her kids with their mouths pressed against it, blowing, and puffing their cheeks out and then laughing uproariously. “My kids are really weird, Grady.” They were making faces on the other side and dancing with their hands in their ears.

“They’re no weirder than our little asshole,” Grady ducked away from his wife’s head slap as he grinned at Bobbie, knowing she agreed with him wholeheartedly. They’d had plenty of conversations about how children were a hell of a lot of work, especially strong-minded, independent feisty ones. “Lark will be thrilled to have co-conspirators.”

“The last time she came over for a sleepover, they blew up my kitchen with diet coke and mentos.” Bobbie grimaced, “took me two hours to clean it up with their help. I didn’t even know she had snuck the candies in. They found a bottle of diet coke in the pantry from God knows where and had been plotting the experiment for weeks. They’re going to be the death of us. I won’t have time to deal with the three of them and their shenanigans and work.”

He rubbed his forehead, mimicking her actions subconsciously, “listen, we’ll be at the offices all day. Mom and Everly will keep the kids occupied. The zoo, the aquarium, the hotel pool. I expect we might have a couple of nights where we work late but we can do it at the hotel with the kids.”

“Fine. I’ll book the flights and the hotels. When do we go?”

“I told them we’d be there on Monday.”

“Ugh, it’s Friday at four o’clock. The kids have swim lessons tomorrow and a scout camp out tomorrow night. Max will be pissed if he misses it.”

“I’m the Scout leader. We’re not missing it. We will fly out Sunday.” He paused, “one other thing.”

“Why do you look like you’re ready to deliver the news my cat died.” She glared at him through the screen. She wanted to punch him. She knew there had been a catch.

“The person buying Trace’s company is Gael Moreno.”

She sat back in shock. The name she knew from the one time she, Grady and Everly had gotten drunk and did an internet search. A myriad of expletives left her mouth as she turned away from the window, grateful her kids didn’t read her lips.

“Before you panic, remember, they’re estranged. They don’t communicate and I asked Trace whether the grandson was going to be part of the proceedings and Trace pissed himself laughing. It seems the internet stories are factual. There’s no reason to suggest…”

He trailed off as she lifted her index finger warning him to give her a minute to breathe. “He’s equally crooked. Not as crooked as trafficking his hooker but he’s crooked and dirty and corrupt. You can’t expect me to sit in a room with him.”

“No, we don’t. He hates Trace. Hates him with a burning passion. Trace stole his girlfriend in high school, married her and had a son, which he never got to have. He wants to take Trace’s company, but he doesn’t want to see Trace’s face. It’s going just be us lawyers in the room. I need you, Bobbie. You’re the best paralegal on the team and the best assistant I’ve ever had. Please.”

“I want a raise.”

“Done.”

“We leave Sunday?”

“Make it Sunday evening. It’s only an hour flight. The less time we actually have to be in Houston the better.”

“Fine,” she rolled her eyes, “I’ll get on it. The sooner we go, the sooner we get home. Stupid Houston.”

They shared a sad smile and then ended their video chat.

She pushed the frisson of fear down and took a deep breath, inhaling, holding it for a count of five and then exhaling slowly. She did it three more times until she was less frazzled and then shoved her glasses up her nose with annoyance.

If Grady had to go to Houston, the city he hated as much as Bobbie did, then she knew he was dragging her along because misery loved company. Between the two of them, the city was the place where their past needed to live. Nobody wanted to relive that kind of torture and yet, here they were, ready to embark on a trip to the city of nightmares.

Bobbie knew Grady had left Houston after his ex-wife and his best friend had not only had an affair, but it had been caught by a tabloid and the videos had been plastered everywhere. Grady came from a wealthy family of judges, lawyers, and million-dollar real estate brokers, and it had been a massive local scandal. While he wasn’t a billionaire by any standards, his reputation had been impacted by the scandal and being questioned frequently about the affair had made him decide to up and leave the city he’d grown up in. He had relocated to Dallas and within six months had met Everly and they had gotten pregnant.

Everly had been the owner of the temporary agency Bobbie had applied to with zero skills. Newly pregnant herself, Everly had at first used a pregnant Bobbie in the temp agency and taught her some skills and by the time Grady had been through six personal assistants, Bobbie was a last resort.

She and Grady had instantly clicked like a house on fire, and he’d made sure she had full benefits, protection and a job which paid her well enough to take care of the twins independently. She and Everly had their babies within six weeks of each other. Bobbie had been given the gift of working from home on many occasions, long before working from home was the norm.

Grady’s mom was a surrogate grandmother to her twins, and they called her Nana. She had vacationed with them more than once and they were, for all intents and purposes her family. She loved them. It’s why she knew if Grady needed her in Houston, she was going to Houston. She might kick, complain, and whine about it, but he was her family and she’d do it because he asked. She knew deep down he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t need her.

She had worked for Grady for eight and a half years and for the first two years, they had worked solely in Dallas. Eventually, Grady’s clients had requested more than once his presence to deal with legal matters in person and because he was a corporate lawyer for billion-dollar corporations, specialising in the oil, gas, petroleum industries and the refinery of products, while he had a lot of business from all over the state, Houston frequently called him home.

She went with him on occasion and they both grumbled the entire time, but rarely did they go for more than a couple of days. This time though, there was a merger between two large companies, and it wasn’t simply a few days having to go in with documents and make people sign off. It was negotiations and legal representation for their client.

Their client was selling their company and their shares, being swallowed up by a giant conglomerate and it was up to them to make sure they didn’t get taken advantage of. The CEO was ready to retire and had finally capitulated to sell off to a rival. She hadn’t realized until Grady spilled the beans the rival was the great-grandfather of her twins. They just needed to do their job and lay low.

He wasn’t someone she had ever met. It wasn’t like Olivier had ever introduced her to any member of his family. She’d been his w***e and nothing more than a w***e. Family was not something they’d talked about. She certainly hadn’t been woman he would have talked to his family about. A barista turned hooker was unlikely the kind of person one with Olivier Villeneuve’s wealth would have brought home to meet the folks.

As she began to do her job as a personal assistant to Grady Hoffman, she considered it would be busy, a good break for the kids giving them extra time with Lark, not as if they were often apart. They lived next door to each other and the fence which used to separate the yards had long been torn down. The three kids all went to the same private school, were all in the same grade and did most of the same extra curriculars.

When Darian had dropped her at the funeral home, the director had told her it would at least be a day before he could get things done. She wasn’t leaving without her sister, and she had walked to the nearest branch of her bank and had withdrawn every penny Olivier had deposited to her account, minus the five days of her contract she hadn’t worked. She often wondered if he were bitter about the money she had taken before he could realize it was gone.

Olivier had set up the account for her. Had given her the bank card. However, Bernard had said she had to forfeit the money because she hadn’t stayed with him. She had taken only what she felt was rightfully hers and, in a state where prostitution was illegal, Olivier was hardly likely to come chasing after her. She reassured herself was no need to worry about running into her past or having a man chase her down for the money they felt she owed.

She remembered with clarity the events of the day when she had decided she was taking what was hers. She had returned to hospice center, recovered the cheque she had written and paid them in cash from the nearly hundred thousand dollars. It totalled seventy-three thousand dollars in medical bills. It was the equivalent of approximately five weeks with Olivier. Sixty thousand dollars a month. He had deposited one hundred and twenty thousand dollars to her account. She took it all but fifteen thousand dollars. Then she had gone to the funeral home and paid the eight thousand for the services to cremate and put her sister’s ashes into a fancy little urn, in a fancy little box and promised to return the next day to get it.

She found a cheap motel to spend the night, hid the remaining money in the sock in the bottom of a backpack she had grabbed at a thrift store where she had purchased a change of clothes. The next day she had collected her sister’s ashes, made her way to the bus station, and bought a ticket to Dallas. When she landed in Dallas, she found a small bachelor apartment, found work in a diner, and lived frugally for a month. Then she had missed her period.

Everly had been the first customer she’d had the morning after she’d gotten her positive pregnancy test and she expressed her terror on how she was going to provide for a baby on a waitress salary. Everly had urged to come see her at the temporary agency and she worked there a whole month before Everly in pure desperation had sent her to Grady. Grady had already been head-over-heels in love with Everly and later they would find out he had fired all of the temps just to keep her talking to him.

Grady and Everly had been in the room with her when the twins were born. They hadn’t left her side since. One night, after the kids’ first birthday they had gotten drunk while Grady’s mom Prue had put the kids to bed, Bobbie had revealed the story of her short-lived but lucrative job as a paid escort. When she’d finally revealed his name, Grady had wanted to go for child support but when she had suggested the man was wealthy enough to pay her sixty thousand dollars a month for exclusive s****l privileges, there was significant risk the man would take the twins from her. Who wanted a guy who paid for hookers and traded them like a s*x trafficker raising their kids? She had expounded on her concern, perhaps it had all been an elaborate scheme. He made his targets comfortable with her choice as a hooker and then traded them off. What if he was a s*x trafficker and got away with it because he was obscenely wealthy? Everly had agreed with Bobbie and eventually so did Grady. After that night, they agreed to never look him up again.

They understood why she never wanted to go to Houston and as she looked up at the twins busting through the back door screaming, they were starved, she smiled at them. She would rather die than lose them, no matter how difficult the pair of them could be. There were days they made her lose her patience and she had already discovered a single recurring gray hair right at her widow’s peak. Olivia, known to everyone as Ollie, was mouthy and feisty and never backed down from a fight, physical or verbal. Max was bright and a pacificist for the most part, but he never backed down from a debate especially with his sister or Lark.

“Mom!” Ollie made wide eyes at her. “We need food.”

“You ate lunch an hour ago,” she turned back to her computer. Eight-year-olds’ had voracious appetites. “Grab an apple.”

“Apples are boring. We want rice cereal treats.” Max leaned on her desk kicking his muddy boots onto the mat, bouncing the mud up the wall.

“We don’t have rice cereal treats,” Bobbie focused on securing enough seats on a flight to Houston for seven. “Go get an apple.”

She heard them whispering but ignored it, clicking, and selecting the seats before putting in the company credit card information. She then set about securing a large suite for the Hoffmans and then a smaller suite on the same floor. She reserved an office room for her and Grady to work from when the family got sick of their shop talk.

She smiled with satisfaction when everything was arranged, tickets and reservation confirmations were received, Grady had sent her an email thanking her and then a ton of work to get done before Monday. She began the process of sorting through it all when high-pitched giggling in the kitchen caught her attention and she turned an ear to it. “What are you two up to?”

“Nothing!” the unified voice instantly sent chills down her spine.

She uttered a four-letter expletive as she rolled back in her chair and beelined for the kitchen just to see a set of blonde curls and dark spiky hair pressed tight together from their perch on a kitchen chair where they peered into the microwave. The smack of loud popping caught her ear and then the excited squeals of her offspring.

“What is going on?”

“We’re making rice cereal treats!” they exclaimed excitedly. Another pop in the microwave made all of them jump.

She pulled them away and pulled the door open and groaned. Marshmallow coated the inside of the microwave in a white gooey mess. “How many marshmallows did you put in here? Why didn’t you use a bowl?”

“We found two bags and the bowls were too high,” Ollie grinned at her reaching past her to swipe a handful of melted marshmallow. “It’s hot!” she blew around the mouthful.

She closed her eyes and then closed the door to the microwave to stop her grabbing another mitt full. “Olivia Rosamund Caron and Maximillian Olivier Caron you are going to clean this mess. This microwave will look exactly as it did before you dumped two bags of marshmallows into it on high heat.”

“Can’t we just mix the marshmallow into the cereal?” Ollie shook the box vigorously sending the tiny rice pieces flying. “Oops.”

“Clean that too!” she walked away from the kitchen rubbing her forehead. “Then when you’re done, go upstairs and clean your rooms.”

“Why? We usually clean it on Sunday and Wednesdays.” Ollie argued again, her voice chasing her out of the room.

“Mommy has to go to Houston for two weeks starting Sunday.” She responded as she made her way back to her desk knowing full well, they wouldn’t clean the kitchen to her standards, but she would clean it up better after they went to bed. For now, they were going to at least try.

Instantly both kids were at the back of her chair, “what do you mean? You’re going away for two weeks? Where will we go?” Max’s voice was panicked.

“You’re coming too. Grady and I have to work. Everly is going to work remotely. Nana and Everly will watch you while I’m working.”

“Is Lark coming?” Ollie jumped up and down clapping her hands.

“Yes.” She tried to keep a straight face as they got excited.

“Are we staying in a hotel?”

“Yes, and it has a pool with a water slide and a diving tower.”

As the kids jumped and squealed running around the living room Bobbie considered Grady was right. They were bored only two weeks into summer vacation. This would do them good. The chances of them running into a man she hadn’t seen in more than nine years was minute at best. She had booked the hotel on the far end of the city away from where she had stayed with Olivier. For all she knew, he had moved away from Houston as well. As the kids started arguing over who was going to sit near the window in the plane, she suddenly sighed loudly. They definitely needed the break from the house. They all did.