Mr. Perfectly Wrong (Alphalicious Billionaires Boss Book 5) Read online

  She was always nice to me and everyone else whenever she came to the office or called or whatever, but I don’t think she was very nice to Adam most of the time. I’m not even sure why he put up with that or pined for her after. I’ve actually tried to tell him to get his shit together and move on and find someone nicer, but he won’t listen. He hears me, but he doesn’t really process anything I tell him. I’ve pointed out that people who love each other don’t say horrible things to each other—really damaging things. Wives shouldn’t, in my opinion, run up a ten thousand dollar a month salon bill and another fifty-odd thousand every other month in purses and shoes. I wouldn’t complain if my husband took me on a really nice vacation twice a year or bought me tons of crazy expensive things and a huge mansion. I’m just saying. But whatever Adam did for Stephanie, it was never enough. I overheard her saying some pretty nasty shit to him a few times. Things about him. And it hurt me to hear it. I can’t imagine how it made him feel.

  “Adam, you know that…well…you know what I think about Stephanie. I think she didn’t treat you very nicely, especially in the end. So, I’m not sure why you’re trying so hard to prove anything to her. She doesn’t deserve it. She should be left to rot in some dank, million-dollar hole with all that money she absconded with because the legal system is seriously flawed.”

  “Because it matters.” Adam takes a turn way too violently. The car tires literally screech. This isn’t anything new. Adam always likes to drive like he’s in a freaking race. I guess if the car fits…

  “I get where you’re coming from, Adam, but I really think it doesn’t matter. Not this much. This is going to be humiliating. I’m not a good actress. She’ll probably take one look at me and declare that you’re too hot for me, like way too hot and way too rich. She’ll then declare you pathetic for dating your secretary and announce that I’m certainly a gold digger.”

  “Stop.”

  “It’s true. It’s going to happen.”

  “I’m not too hot for you.”

  I slide a sly glance Adam’s way while he hits the freeway. My mouth suddenly gets all dry. I’m a little bit surprised. He’s never given me a physical compliment before. Why would he? That would be completely out of line. Plus, he’s never looked at me that way. I, on the other hand, have definitely noticed him.

  I mean, Adam’s gorgeous—six odd feet of pure muscly deliciousness. Women practically melt in his wake. I see it happen all the time, all those gooey, melting looks. I know for a fact that he’s definitely too hot for me. I’m not tall and busty and blonde like his ex-wife. I’m a brunette, barely five foot six, and I am built like a stick. My bras are A-cup, and I probably don’t even need that. I believe the correct term might be “waif-like.” Guys in high school used to make fun of me for being built like celery. That’s what they called me—Celery Stephanie.

  “Yeah, well, I’m still not rich.”

  “She wouldn’t call you a gold digger. We’ve known each other far too long for that.”

  “She’ll just declare me pathetic and you even worse, and she’ll start practicing her psychology bullshit on you, telling you all the reasons it’s wrong to get involved with your younger secretary.”

  “You’re thirty. It’s not that much younger.”

  I realize the time for protesting has already passed, and I only agreed to this because of the huge bonus for my roof and all that, but I still give it one last-ditch effort. “Adam, please. Let’s just turn around. It’s not too late to go home. We don’t even know how to put that tent up. We’re going to get eaten by bugs, and I don’t know how to build a fire. It’s also probably going to rain, and I don’t like swimming in lakes. There are fish and leaches and weeds. And…and…this is just going to be a disaster. It’s going to be completely humiliating.”

  “I’m not turning around, sorry. Plus, we already have a deal. You want the five thousand dollars, and in exchange, you lend me your sensual services for a few days.”

  “Sensual services?!” I nearly choke on my own spit. “Jesus. We agreed this is purely platonic. Acting only.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Whatever.” I cross my arms, sink down lower in the uncomfortable seat, and close my eyes. I’m not talking about this anymore. There isn’t any point. If Adam doesn’t want to help himself, then whatever. I can only do so much.

  And the five grand bonus for four days of this is going to be nice. I can probably make a couple more thousands by selling the stupid camping crap after since it’s all brand new, and I know Adam won’t want it. My roof is already leaking, has been since I bought the house. I figure I have a solid year before it caves right in. Not. Good.

  Maybe we’ll be lucky, and we won’t even run into Ex-Stephanie at all. I’ll still demand the five grand either way. And honestly, it wouldn’t be that bad spending some time with Adam. He might be my boss, but I could handle it. After four years of working for Adam, he’s kind of grown on me in a way. Okay, if I were to be really honest, I actually like him on a base level and respect him more than that. He’s not a skin tag. And the truth is, five grand aside, I don’t want to see him get hurt. I’ve seen too much of that already these past two years, and even before the divorce.

  The car picks up speed as we get close to an open stretch of road, and I start mentally digging my own grave. Because really, the universe isn’t into doing me any favors as of late. So, we’ll most probably end up running into Ex-Stephanie as soon as we get there.

  CHAPTER 2

  Adam

  Everyone remembers their first love. It’s something that sticks with you throughout your entire life. My schooling was different from most people’s. My parents wanted me to have as normal a life as possible. Instead of hiring private tutors or sending me to some fancy boarding school across the pond, they sent me to a regular school. By regular, I mean that they were still paying a crazy amount in tuition fees, and kids still had to wear uniforms, but other than that, it was actually quite down to earth.

  I had a couple of friends who got me through it, and I still keep in touch with them. At the time, I had been too busy being a guy with the guys and playing sports to actually care much about girls. Maybe that’s weird. I don’t know. I guess for me, that’s not what high school was about. It could also be that my parents are still, to this day, blissfully and happily married, and my dad instilled in me some pretty tough ground rules about treating women properly. Casual dating and the high school angst and heartbreak weren’t for me. I got through without a romantic scrape.

  That stayed true until I went to college. It’s where I met Ex-Stephanie. She’s the one I first fell in love with. It might sound incredibly clichéd and horribly cheesy, but I knew from the second I saw her that she was the one. She was it. I was so in love with her that it physically hurt. I chased the notion of perfect romantic love for years, and I wanted our relationship to be everything. To be the same kind of relationship my parents had, but…yeah…it never was.

  I can see that now, because, as they say, hindsight is twenty fucking twenty. We lost the romance first, and then love followed. Some people say that if you can lose love, you were never in love in the first place. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re not. How the heck would I know? Apparently, I don’t know anything at all, not even how to replace a lightbulb.

  I know Assistant Steph (obviously I have never called her this to her face) thinks I need to grow a pair of balls and move on. She’s probably right. And she’s right that Ex-Stephanie never treated me very well, at least not the past couple of years. She’s right that I was used like an ATM. I never minded because I wanted to give Ex-Stephanie the world, and I had the means to do so.

  And then there was the end. Her words are going to be imprinted on the soft, spongy, grey matter of my brain for the rest of my life.

  You’re useless. Worse than useless. If useless had a baby with extra-useless, it’s what you’d be. You can’t even screw in a lightbulb, and your whole life is that stupid c
ompany. Do you really think socks are so important to the world that you have to spend so much time perfecting them? It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. Your entire family is pathetic. You can’t do a single thing for yourself, and you’re not even a man because men do things. They have hobbies. They do manly things like fix shit around the house. They have calloused hands. They work hard. You’ve had everything handed to you your whole life, and I’m sick of it. You’re so entitled, it’s disgusting. Don’t stand there with that hurt look on your face. Don’t tell me you love me. You have no idea what loving someone even means because it’s work, and you haven’t worked for anything ever. Learn to put a lightbulb in place, and maybe then we can talk. Oh, wait. No. No, we can’t because I am so over this. I’m so over you.

  Okay, so maybe Ex-Stephanie wasn’t always that nice to me. Maybe Assistant Stephanie is right about that.

  I’ve pretty much been rehashing the past and drowning in my own self-induced misery the whole drive here that I didn’t even take the time to enjoy the view. Now that we’re here, through the park gates and into the campground, the time for enjoying beauty is over because even I have to admit, it’s less than impressive. Steph is always very direct, and she lets me know just what she thinks about it.

  “This is it? Oh my god. I can’t believe you booked us into this. It’s a square! A square surrounded by four trees. And there’s a fire pit that looks like it’s from the Stone Age. Dear lord, this is a shit idea.”

  I snap out of my self-pity, the same circle my mind always takes, and follow Steph’s gaze across to the campsite I just drove up to. Apparently, my autopilot works pretty well. Fuck that. I’ve never been to this campground before, or to any campground, period. My family didn’t do camping. My parents did weeks away on a Swiss mountain range in an exclusive cabin. They did the Caribbean islands. They did…well…not family-friendly campgrounds.

  “Technically, you booked it.” I stop the car and pull the e-brake. Stephanie stares at me in pure horror.

  “No! No way! This is…this is horrible! There isn’t even wood! What are we supposed to do? Cut down one of those trees?”

  “I think there’s probably a firewood pile around somewhere.”

  “Why did you tell me to book a regular site when there are cabins for rent here? Please, can we just go and ask if they have one of those?”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t even going to be the one doing all the work! You’re going to sit on your butt and watch me struggle.”

  “Are you serious?” Is that really what everyone thinks of me?

  Steph sighs hard, and just a little bit of her panic and fury drain away though her cheeks remain flushed. She’s actually quite beautiful. She’s petite with long, dark hair. Sweet. I guess guys would probably call her sweet. She’s cute, and her eyes are huge and dark. Her nose is sweetly curled at the end, and her lips are pink and full. She has flawless, creamy skin, and if she ever bothered with makeup, it would be redundant because her features are already so classically beautiful that they don’t need any help. There are a few errant freckles that stray across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

  I’ve noticed it before because I see her every day, but it’s never really meant anything until now. Until I offered her five grand to camp with me while pretending to be my girlfriend. Now it’s hard not to look at her and notice some of the things I missed because I wasn’t into checking out my assistants, coworkers, or anyone else.

  So what if I haven’t exactly lived it up post-divorce.

  “This is a terrible idea,” Steph says, switching tactics. Her eyelashes flutter as her eyes sweep the site through the windshield. It’s pretty barren looking. Just a patch of worn-out dirt where people park, a strip of grass beyond that, and some scraggly trees. Oh, and there’s also a picnic table that has seen some better days, and a barbeque pit—the kind they put at picnic sites for public use. “We could just go home and forget about all of this.”

  Right now, I don’t appreciate her directness so much.

  “I don’t want to leave, and I’ll help you set up the tent. That’s what this is about, right?”

  “What? Proving to yourself that camping sucks? Or maybe you’re trying to remind yourself why you love the city so much—gaining a new appreciation for it but doing the exact opposite of seeing and experiencing it.”

  I grind my teeth together. “You should try walking around with the stench of your failure and humiliation in everyone’s nose.” Well, that was dark. And completely not what I mean to say.

  “My bum bum, the sun in my entire universe, the joy of my life, no one thinks that about you.” Steph ridiculously bats her eyelashes at me, and it looks like her eyes are going to fall out of her head.

  “What?” I ask flatly.

  “Just practicing. You know, the fake girlfriend stuff.” She reaches over and brushes one of my hands with her fingers. A strange current zaps up my fingertips and hits me straight in the groin. It’s so unexpected that I make a startled sound, one that’s the equivalent to a snuffling rhinoceros. Steph steals her hand back. “And I also know there’s no way I’m doing this for five grand. Up your game, or I’m gone.”

  “What?!”

  “You heard me. Ten grand, or I’m going back to the city.”

  “What are you going to do? Walk there? Because I know you can’t drive stick.” I glance down at the car’s shifter.

  “Is it an allusion to the fact that I haven’t been on a good date in the past six months? Because I’m pretty sure this car is actually called a standard.”

  Only Steph would say something like that. She’s pretty private about her personal life, but me asking her to be my fake girlfriend seems to have upped the ante when it comes to the shockingly and brutally honest things she’s willing to say.

  “Jesus,” I huff.

  “I’ll hitchhike back. I swear, I will. Or I’ll call a private cab company and get them to drive all the way out here and give them your credit card number.”

  “You wouldn’t! I’ll cancel the card.”

  “Not before I can get to the taxi. Oh, and I have at least four others memorized.” She taps her head. “It’s nice to have a brain like a steel-trap.”

  “But that’s…you…you can’t just—”

  “We should have rented the cabin. I didn’t think it would be this rustic. Not only that, but you’re buying my acting skills, should the need arise. And I have no choice but to share a tent with you. There are bugs, spiders, mosquitoes, ants, and probably snakes too. You have no idea how much I hate camping.”

  I briefly wonder, if that, by Ex-Stephanie’s standards, makes Assistant Stephanie unmanly too. Fuck, why am I even doing this? I should move on. I should forget what she said. I should stop trying to prove to her—and to myself—that I’m worth it.

  God, that’s pathetic. Stop wallowing in self-pity and just get on with it. You’re only proving her right, and you know you’re not worthless. Are you for real? Get your ass out there, get the tent set up, and just enjoy yourself.

  It has been forever since I took some time off from work. Maybe this could be fun. Or at least, maybe it won’t be every version of fucking terrible that’s out there. Steph’s right. This actually could be what hell looks like.

  “Denver, here I come in five, four, three, two—”

  Steph already has her phone in her hand by the time she gets to two. My panic reaches an entirely new level. If she leaves me here, I’m screwed. I’d have to go back to Denver, and in the past few minutes, after my little internal pep-talk, this isn’t just about proving something to my ex-wife. Maybe it never really was. This is about proving something to myself.

  “Wait! Okay. Ten. Fine.”

  “I want it as a fair and straight up bonus. Ten after taxes. None of this underhanded crap that I could get arrested for or something.”

  “Fine.”

  “Really? Will you throw in another five? My whole roof needs to be replaced, and it’s not chea
p. You have no idea how much it’s going to cost.”

  “No.”

  “But, you could easily afford it.”

  “That’s not the point.’

  “Oh, I know it’s not. I just thought I’d ask. You know, just in case you were looking for a new charity case or a good deed or something.”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” Steph treats me to her sweet smile that isn’t rare at all. Come to think of it, she smiles a lot, and it’s always genuine. Not only is she a kick-ass assistant (I have no clue how she does half of what she does, and on top of that, she has to put up with me), but everyone likes her in the office. “Okay. Let’s get the tent set up,” she says, reaching for the door handle.

  “Just like that?”

  She rolls her huge, dark eyes at me. This is the first time I’ve noticed there are some green-gold flecks in the irises’ unique swirled pattern. “One can only hope, but I have serious doubts. I anticipate hours, tons of bug bites, and a lot of cursing.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Stephanie

  I’m not sure why I never really thought about Adam’s butt before. He has a really nice butt—nice and firm and toned like the rest of him. Hard, but not square. No, it’s round, but not a bubble butt either. I think those on guys are kind of nasty. Adam’s butt? It’s perfect. And in jeans, which I’ve rarely ever seen him in, it’s delicious. Not delicious delicious, just delicious.

  Right now, after unpacking the tent from the car by himself, Adam is bent over, staring at the layers of canvas and approximately eighteen million poles of all different sizes.

  I pull my phone out of my back pocket. I hardly ever wear jeans. Even when I’m at home, it’s usually casual shorts, comfy maxi skirts, sweats, leggings, or yoga pants. The jeans I’m wearing right now almost don’t count as jeans because they’re so stretchy and comfortable, and they have the added benefit of pockets.