All means

     

I threw the documents onto my desk and took three big strides, making my way over to one of the two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down on Washington D.C. The view of the East Front Plaza and the U.S. Capitol filled my vision. The view that many powerful men would kill for. The city sparkled under the morning sun, a perfect disguise for corruption and greed.

It was the reason my father bought this building. Power was important to him. At all costs. Though I couldn’t argue the benefits of it. He’d probably shit himself if he was still alive and could see how far I grew the Macklemore empire. He was always greedy for money and power.

It was the reason he almost bankrupted my mother’s inheritance and W&W before I took over. He decided to chase his dick at the expense of my mother and her fortune. When his affair and filthy methods got exposed, he put a bullet in his own brain. It was the easy way out for him while the rest of us were left cleaning up his mess.

Coincidentally, all the dirty laundry of our family happened at the same time I got out of the military to find the company almost bankrupt and my ex cheating. With my best friend.

The door to my office swung open and Byron Ashford sauntered in. As the oldest legitimate son of Senator Ashford, Byron was practically a celebrity. He hated it and preferred the shadows, which his corrupt father definitely didn’t approve of. Not that Byron gave a fuck. In fact, none of the Ashford brothers seemed to care much for their father. The only thing the Billionaire Kings, as the press loved to call them, cared about was their little sister.

Byron and I were the closest in age, him being slightly younger than me, but we had a lot in common. Starting with asshole fathers and ending with serving in the Middle East together. We’d always had each other’s back.

“By all means, don’t bother knocking,” I grumbled.

I had been more tense and more agitated than normal. My last administrative assistant got herself a boyfriend over two months ago. She swore he’d propose. Delusional woman. Unfortunately, it ended my mutually beneficial and pleasurable side arrangement I had going with her and she moved on to another position in the company. So here I was scouting for a new administrative assistant. I needed one that was efficient, smart, and emotionally detached. And wouldn’t get fucking serious with a man.

I walked over to my desk to take a seat in my chair. I had another stream of candidates to go through and delaying it wouldn’t do me any good. Even with my friend here.

“I won’t,” Byron grinned as he sat in the chair opposite of me and leaned back, placing his ankle over his knee to rest.

“Don’t you have some shit to do?” I muttered as I skimmed through the first paper and immediately dismissed the candidate. Byron’s cold, blue eyes stared back at me as he shrugged. He was close to forty, five years my junior. “Ensuring your father doesn’t become our next president and burn this country to the ground. Our forefathers wouldn’t approve.”

He scoffed. “Our forefathers wouldn’t approve of most of these fuckers.”

He had a point there. Washington D.C. was a mecca for corruption.

For a moment, we both remained silent and lost in our own thoughts. I had no idea where his ventured but mine were going through the applicants of eager and hopeful women who only aimed to crawl into my bed, my money, and my heart. Except, there would never be room in my heart for them. Nor my bed. I didn’t take women into my bed. I fucked for the release and moved on to the next task to be handled.

“Are you still looking for a personal assistant?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“Maybe dating would be easier,” he suggested.

“Women need promises and time I don’t have. Besides, I don’t see you fucking dating.”

He leaned over and grabbed a cigar from the case. “Fuck you. I don’t need to date.”

“But you need a fuck,” I pointed out.

“For that, I go to a club.” He lit up a cigar and inhaled deeply. It was a good thing it was past seven at night and Kimberly, my long time secretary who used to work for my grandfather, was gone. She fucking hated the smell of cigars and didn’t hesitate to snark about it. “How is your cousin Sophie? The doctor?”

I shrugged. “She’s good. And no, she still doesn’t care to date you. There aren’t enough praises that would make her change her mind.”

He snickered. “You’re not saying the right things.”

“You mean, I’m not lying.”

Sophie, my much younger and only cousin, dated Jonathan, my ex-best friend who fucked my wife. Needless to say, it hit her differently than me.

“Why don’t you go to the club?” Byron suggested, changing subjects back to our original topic. We went a few times. It was an exclusive club where anything and everything goes, as long as both parties were willing. I didn’t see the appeal. Or maybe I was just getting too fucking old.

“It’s more convenient when it’s right here,” I smirked, though by the look he gave me, I suspected he guessed.

“Yeah, some days it is exhausting to go,” he muttered. Then his eyes softened at the corners. “You should date my sister,” he suggested. It wasn’t the first time.

“Thank you, but no thank you,” I scoffed. “First, I have no desire to test my fighting skills from our military days each time your sister comes running home to her four brothers. I’m too old for that shit. And second, you never mix pleasure and friends.”

“You're gonna make me choke up,” he snickered. “It's the first time you called me a friend.”

“Get out of my office,” I grumbled. “I still have work to do and you’re wasting my time.”

“You don’t want to hear why I’m here?” he drawled. “And I brought you a potential candidate.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “For?”

You never knew what kind of shit Byron would come up with. “For your personal assistant.”

I pushed my hand through my hair. “I’m not interested in hiring your sister as my personal assistant. Isn’t she a bit busy being a special agent or whatever the fuck she does?”

He chuckled. “I got her tucked nice and safe behind a desk. She’s in New Orleans so she can’t be your assistant. Someone else.”

“So you actually had a purpose for coming here?” I snickered. “And here I thought you came just to annoy the fuck out of me.”

“An old high school friend called. Noona Walker.” I shrugged my shoulders. The name meant nothing to me. “Her friend’s looking for a job and is aware of your special requirements.”

“Really?” It wasn’t every day you ran into a woman who was okay with an arrangement like this. For most of them, it was hard to accept no emotional attachments or that it would never be more than sex.

Unfortunately for all of them, I’d never take a woman into my bed. It had been over sixteen years since I had allowed one into my bed and my heart. I should have known love was a fool’s errand. After all, I had a front row seat to my parents’ marriage. The man that married a woman just for her wealth and my mother let him run it to the ground, all the while he was ruining our family’s reputation.

Love made you stupid and blind. Plenty of evidence to support that statement. Starting with my mother. I couldn’t believe my mother let my father run her into the ground. I loved her but the way she blindly trusted my father was lunacy. When I took over the family business, it was basically a shell of a company, on the verge of collapsing and bankruptcy.

I almost fell into the same trap with my ex-wife. Never again. There would be no exceptions to my rule of no emotional detachments. Ever!

“Yes, really. According to Noona, Lilly Walker is not interested in relationships. She just wants a job and understands the occasional extra responsibilities.”

If you’d told me twenty years ago, I’d be one of the richest men on the planet and my personal life consisted of a contract arrangement with a personal assistant of my choosing, I’d tell you to fuck off and laugh.

And here I was. Not laughing. At. All.

“What’s the catch?” I inquired.

He shrugged his shoulders. “None that I know. I looked into her briefly. No flags. Widow. Three children. Active mom, not much of a social life.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “How old is she?”

“Early to mid-thirties.”

I watched him pensively. “Kind of unusual for a single mother to go for this kind of arrangement,” I muttered. The idea of doing this with a young mother didn’t sit well.

Wonderful, I mused silently. Suddenly, I grew a conscience.

Pushing my hand into my hair, I had to admit to myself that this was becoming a damn pain in the ass. Byron was right. It would be easier to date, but the idea of pretending to care for a woman and entertain her notion of a future together that would never happen felt nauseating.

A cold, upfront arrangement with rules was much better.

“Fine, send me her info,” I finally resolved.

If this single mother was fine with it. So was I.

Chapter 2