Lucky Pet: A St. Patrick's Day Office Romance Read online

  Lucky Pet

  Copyright © 2019; All rights reserved.

  Jamie Knight –

  Your Dirty Little Secret Romance Author

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Maria

  Chapter 2

  Maria

  Chapter 3

  Ashton

  Chapter 4

  Maria

  Chapter 5

  Maria

  Chapter 6

  Ashton

  Chapter 7

  Ashton

  Chapter 8

  Maria

  Chapter 9

  Maria

  Chapter 10

  Maria

  Chapter 11

  Ashton

  Chapter 12

  Maria

  Chapter 13

  Ashton

  Chapter 14

  Maria

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  Sneak Peek of Office Pet

  Chapter 1

  Maria

  Ave Maria, full of grace,

  Ave Maria, full of grace…

  I repeated the prayer to myself, willing myself not to look too closely at the guy who was sitting on the other side of the desk. He was super hot. And, if all went right, he was going to be my brand new boss.

  So, I couldn’t let myself have these thoughts about him.

  Thoughts like how his green eyes and full head of brown hair and dimpled smile were so handsome.

  Thoughts like how ripped I bet he was under that expensive suit.

  And thoughts about how I wanted him to rip my clothes off and bend me over his desk and take me for my very first time.

  My face burned as I wondered what my mother would think if she could hear my thoughts. My mother was very Catholic. She named me Maria, for goodness sake. She taught me to be a good girl and do all the right things.

  And I always had. I was still a virgin, for goodness sake. And yet, something about this man was making me want to let him change that fact.

  I knew he had a name. It was on the letterhead, since the company he had co-founded just merged with McKenzie Technologies, this bigger company. I had researched it. And I knew he had introduced himself to me when I first walked into his office for this interview.

  And yet, I forgot what it was at that moment. All I could think about was how much I wanted him.

  I had a feeling he wanted me, too, from the way he peered at me over my resume, raised his eyebrows very seriously, and said, “So, what do you think you can bring to the firm, Ms. Herrera?”

  It wasn’t like he was flirting with me. Not even a little bit. In fact, he was rather reserved and distant – very professional seeming, and sophisticated.

  That demeanor didn’t line up with how I traditionally thought of in terms of what “flirting” was, but there seemed to be a sexual tension between us. It was as if he was holding back because he wanted me but didn’t want to let himself have me.

  Then again, perhaps I was imagining things. I did have a wild imagination that always had the tendency to run off on me.

  But the way he was looking at me.

  It was as if he was undressing me with his eyes.

  Ave Maria, full of grace… take these thoughts away from me.

  Remembering that he asked me a question and that I was supposed to be answering it, I cleared my throat.

  “I worked as a secretary for two years, before I had to leave employment temporarily, to take care of my mom,” I told him. “I have a lot of experience and I’m a fast learner.”

  I willed myself to act professional. To not think about having sex with him but instead think about working for him.

  I really needed this job. My mom’s round of chemo was over, and it looked as if it hadn’t gotten all the cancer like the doctors were hoping it might. She would have to undergo more treatment and the bills were piling up.

  They weren’t going to keep treating her unless we could pay some of what we owed for the previous treatment. Plus, I was trying to get her into some trial therapy programs that could have a better chance of curing her, but they were ridiculously expensive, if she even qualified.

  I had actually enjoyed being a secretary. I needed the steady routine of coming and going from office to work, of the clicking and typing and beeping and ringing, to keep me sane.

  Otherwise, I had the tendency to just sit around and daydream. I thought up story ideas I never wrote, or products I never invented.

  It was better to just go to work and type up pleadings or letters, to answer the phone and bring coffee and help out in a useful and practical way, instead of living in my head, doing nothing in real life. Some would say it was boring, mundane work, but it was easy, and it kept me grounded.

  For me, it was a good job. It had kept me busy and kept my mind off my mom’s illness.

  But I couldn’t work and take care of my mom. I had to stay home and take care of her and it was a depressing time.

  I couldn’t count the number of hours I had sat there daydreaming while she dozed off, with my only interruption being the brief periods of time that she woke up. Those times afforded me the opportunity to bring her some tea or some soup and try to encourage her to eat it, even though she never had an appetite. Once in a while, she was alert enough to watch her beloved telenovelas.

  But now that the chemo treatment was over, there was a lull in between rounds, where she was well enough to take care of herself. It was a good time for me to start working again, because she wouldn’t need me as much. Not to mention the fact, once again, that we really needed the money that a job could bring in, for the medical bills.

  Plus, St. Patrick’s Day, spring, and her birthday were right around the corner. The doctors said she still wasn’t out of the woods yet and they weren’t sure what would happen. I wanted to make sure that if this is her last birthday, it would be a good one.

  I wanted to pay for her sister to come visit her from Florida, as she had been saying she wanted to see her. It would be nice for them to be together for her birthday in April, as they were close growing up but were separated by time and distance in their adult lives.

  Now, the guy I’d already come to think of as Hot Boss because I was still too flustered to remember his name raised his eyebrows at me again. I shook my head slightly, telling myself to come out of dreamland – a dream in which I got this job and had money for bills and my aunt’s trip for my mom’s birthday – and back to reality, wherein I was needing to focus on what this sexy guy was saying if I wanted to have any chance to be hired.

  “Sounds like you could bring a lot to our firm and be a big help around here,” he remarked.

  Then he picked up the receiver of the phone that was sitting on his desk.

  “I’d like you to come meet a candidate,” he said into it.

  There was a pause. I couldn’t hear what was said on the other end. But Hot Boss rolled his eyes and shook his head in my direction, as if telling me it would be easier to talk to a toddler than to whoever was on the other line.

  Then he said, “Yes, now. I think this is a good one.”

  I wanted to jump out of my chair and hug him when he said those magic words. But I didn’t. I sat there saying my prayer to myself and trying to remain professional and patient.

  He wa staring at me. I swear that that stare could melt my panties off – my panties that were soaking wet right now, because of tha
t stare of his and all the things I wished he would do to me.

  I half smiled at him, hoping that whoever was coming would get here soon.

  Because I wanted this job.

  Not him, I reminded myself – correction: I lied to myself – just this job.

  Chapter 2

  Maria

  The man who walked through the door was rather handsome as well, but my Douchebag Detector automatically went off. Since I grew up in and still lived in the Bronx, I had honed a very good one of those, and it often came in handy. This time was no exception.

  He looked me up and down – in fact, he actually looked down his nose at me. I’d never really understood that expression, but now I did. He had a smug smirk on his face, like he thought he owned me.

  “Why, hello there,” he said, in a way that made no bones about the fact that he wanted to bone me.

  I thought that if this were 1972, there was no doubt that he would have added a “beautiful” at the end of that sentence. These days, that was not politically correct – in fact, I was pretty sure it could be grounds for a sexual harassment case – but he didn’t have to actually say the word to get his point across. His look and tone let me know exactly what he was thinking.

  “Hello,” I said, standing up to shake his hand.

  He held onto it too tight, so I made my smile tighter, and told myself to act pleasant and not to scratch him with my nails. Douchey Boss might have been one of the douchiest people I’d met in a while, but I still had to impress him to get this job.

  “Maria, I’d like you to meet Ben Winters,” Hot Boss said, and Ben and I told each other it was nice to meet each other, although it was pretty clear he meant it more than I did.

  “You two are the original co-founders of the Legal Solutions Company,” I said, nodding my head to show him I knew my stuff. I was glad I could remember that much from my research, despite my brain being flooded with hormones.

  “That’s right,” Ben said, with a semi-dramatic toss of his hair. “We have since merged with a couple other powerful companies, most recently, McKenzie Tech, of course, but it all started with the two of us. High school friends turned start up billionaires.”

  Hot Boss looked a bit annoyed, as he dismissed Ben’s boasting with a slight shake of his head.

  “We worked very hard to get to where we are,” he said. “Which is the largest legal technology firm in the country.”

  I started to tell him I’d read about them on the firm’s website, but he kept talking, so I shut up. Now was the time for him to show off, not me, I reminded myself.

  “If any lawyer wants to get up to date with modern technology, they call us,” he continued. “We handle turning their old-fashioned filing and processing system into one that is completely online and housed in the cloud.”

  He looked at me, as if to see if I understood what he meant by this, and I thought about letting him know that I did by rattling off, “like Dropbox or Google Drive or OneDrive,” but I didn’t. I just nodded, unsure which of my mother’s often-spouted advice to take: don’t act like a know it all, or be sure not to hide what I know when it matters.

  As if assured that I knew what he was talking about, Hot Boss continued.

  “We make and teach the lawyers or their paralegals software that helps them easily sort and store any document or pleading and then find them while in court, so they can bring them up to the judge or jury. If they want to highlight twenty-seven quotes from case law, our software can help them do it. If they want to learn digital advertising and get more clients on Facebook, we can help them with that, too. Ms. Herrera, do you think you could help us improve and grow our firm even more?”

  “I do,” I told him, with a solemn nod of my head. “I spend a good portion of my day online.”

  I swallowed, wondering if I should continue. Now, all eyes were on me – the pair belonging to both Douchey Boss and Hoss Boss. It was apparently my turn to talk, so I continued.

  “My mother is ill and I have researched her condition – a rare form of cancer – and put together the information in a way that allows me to show her doctors my findings and ask them about new treatments or experimental trials.”

  They were looking at me with interest – Douchey Boss in a creepy way and Hot Boss in an intrigued way – so I kept talking.

  “I sign up for informational seminars and events and organize the information electronically, so that when she is feeling well enough, we can apply for the treatment programs. Ironically, you have to be well enough to participate in them, so that has ruled her out most of the time, but now she’s in a slight remission period before undergoing further chemo, so, we can start looking into all the research I found, and putting it to good use.”

  I paused, wanting to kick myself for blabbing so much. At first, I thought, I was doing well. I didn’t know where the impulse to impress them with my online research and organizational skills came from, but taking care of her had been my only job for some time and I wanted to show I had put my talents to good use and learned something, too.

  I knew that gaps between employment on a resume looked bad, so I thought it was important to let them know that I had not gotten too rusty during my forced break from working.

  I could tell it was what they wanted to hear. Like I said, Hot Boss was raising his eyebrows at me, in an impressed rather than flirtatious way. And Douchey Boss was nodding his head with his lips pursed, as if assessing how he could use my talent for research and organization for his profit.

  But then I had gone on that tangent about my mother. I guessed my point was to show that I knew how to store and file information for easy access whenever I would need it in the future. But the part about her personal condition wasn’t relevant. I should have just shut up and stopped before I got to that part.

  No one cares that she can qualify for research trials now, I chided myself. Stop talking about personal things and instead talk about what you bring to the table for this job.

  I cleared my throat and continued, re-focusing what I was saying.

  “I have everything prepared in Evernote, based on tabs and projects, and I can bring up information to show the doctors or apply for the programs. So, I think I would be well suited for this job, since it sounds rather similar.”

  “It is,” Hot Boss said, giving me that stare again. “It is very similar.”

  “Yeah, I can see why you like this one,” Douchey Boss said to Hot Boss, pursing his lips again while he nodded his approval at me.

  He was looking me up and down again, and I could tell he didn’t just mean what he was saying in a professional way. He was openly flirting with me in a way that Hot Boss had not been.

  But I like Hot Boss’ subtle style much better. It was as if he was burning a hole through my clothes with his eyes, rather than saying a bunch of obvious stuff.

  “Go ahead,” Douchey Boss said to Hot Boss, shrugging and turning to walk out of the office as if he had better things to do with his important time than hang out with us for a second longer. “Hire her.”

  I looked at Hot Boss, almost not believing it was true.

  Do I have this job? Working for this super hot boss?

  “Miss Herrera, you have a job,” Hot Boss said. “If you want it, that is, of course. Can you start next week?”

  Was he kidding?

  If I wanted it?

  Could I start next week?

  Of course I wanted it!

  And I’d start tomorrow if he wanted me to.

  Heck, I’d start this minute.

  “Yes,” I said, very confidently, with an air that would make my mother proud. “I can.”

  She always told me I wasn’t confident enough. Of course, it was easy to be confident when I had just gotten the job. Still, though, I was nearly as proud of myself right now as I knew she would be.

  Thinking about my mom made me realize that I would have to arrange some in-home care for her now. She still needed a nurse to come give her her medicine and food
a couple times a day – to help her get dressed, or bathe her.

  I felt a pang of guilt, as if I should be the one doing these things. But I knew they could be easily done by an in-home caretaker that the hospital provided. And I needed to work. I needed money for us.

  And I need to not think of my boss as hot. I need to stay focused on this awesome job I just landed.

  Ashton Smith- that was his name. It was all coming back to me now.

  As I shook his hand and thanked him, he held onto it for a moment longer than I anticipated. But not in a creepy way like Douchey Boss. He did it in a stern, bold way, and as he did it, he said, “I look forward to seeing you on Monday morning.”

  And there went my panties, getting dripping wet again.

  Chapter 3

  Ashton

  Damn it.

  As my limo took me from my office in downtown Manhattan to my condo on the upper East Side, I couldn’t stop thinking, Why did that applicant have to be hot and perfectly suited for this job?

  From the moment I set eyes on Maria Herrera and her hot, curvy body, I wanted to date her, not hire her. And when I say date, let’s just take it for granted that I didn’t fucking do commitment. Relationships were for pussies who liked to be tied down. So, what I really meant was that I wanted to fuck her, of course.

  It would have been preferable to have met her on some random Tinder date or perhaps in some café while I was out for a dry-cleaning run. Not that I really did those myself, of course.

  I’d built this company up to where I was a billionaire, and so I had people to do my dry-cleaning runs for me. In fact, there was a company that came to the office and offered pick up and delivery service that I usually used.

  It had been so long since I’d been on a real date that I’d forgotten where people usually meet. But you get my drift. Maybe I’d be at some club while on some work retreat and I’d meet Maria while we were both a bit tipsy and I’d take her to my suite at the resort and bang her brains out.

  Instead, she had to be sitting across from me, reciting all the ways she could perfectly help out my company. She was the ideal candidate for the job. And now I was going to have to hire her, which meant resisting my very strong urge to fuck her.