In the Eye of the Storm / Catering to the CEO Read online

  Also by Samantha Chase

  The Montgomery Brothers

  Wait for Me

  Trust in Me

  Stay with Me

  More of Me

  Return to You

  Meant for You

  I’ll Be There

  The Shaughnessy Brothers

  Made for Us

  Love Walks In

  Always My Girl

  This Is Our Song

  A Sky Full of Stars

  Holiday Spice

  Shaughnessy Brothers: Band on the Run

  One More Kiss

  One More Promise

  Holiday Romance

  The Christmas Cottage / Ever After

  Mistletoe Between Friends / The Snowflake Inn

  Life, Love and Babies

  The Baby Arrangement

  Baby, I’m Yours

  Baby, Be Mine

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  In the Eye of the Storm © 2013, 2018 by Samantha Chase

  Catering to the CEO © 2013, 2018 by Samantha Chase

  Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover image © Bruce Ayres/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  In the Eye of the Storm

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Catering to the CEO

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  A Sneak Peek of Until There Was Us

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Emilie—thank you for encouraging me when I doubted myself and for helping me achieve my dream. I hope to someday be able to return the favor. XOXO

  In the Eye of the Storm

  Chapter 1

  “I could do without this rain,” Holly mumbled under her breath as she ran from the front door of her home to her little Toyota SUV in the driveway. “Two o’clock in the morning, and he feels the need to call me for help.

  “I mean, who calls their assistant in the middle of the night to come and pick them up with no explanation? It’s unreasonable! It’s selfish, it’s obnoxious, and it is so going to stop tonight!” Feeling better after her little pep talk, Holly drove off into the stormy night to pick up the man who was persona non grata at the moment.

  Stephen Ballinger. Just thinking his name made Holly grind her teeth in agitation.

  Checking her GPS and trying to figure out where exactly she was, she continued to stay the course down the highway for another twelve miles until her exit. The sky was illuminated with a steady stream of lightning strikes, and Holly shivered with the fierceness of it.

  “I could quit! I have money in savings,” she began. “It’s not like I’d starve to death or anything. Most companies would love someone like me.” Thinking she sounded a little smug didn’t stop her from continuing. “I mean, I am a hard worker, I don’t take frivolous amounts of time off, I’m never sick, I’m available almost 24/7 because I have no social life, and…”

  Having worked for Stephen for three years, Holly thought she had seen and done everything humanly possible that could be expected of a personal assistant. She wouldn’t mind so much if it didn’t all have to be done on top of the twelve-hour day she normally put in with Stephen at the office. But the extra work was becoming a problem. The call tonight had made her suddenly feel as if it were all coming to a head. That phone call—that stupid two a.m. phone call—was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

  The man had friends; why not call one of them? He had a personal driver! Why not call him? Why, oh why, had he insisted on dragging Holly out of bed at this ungodly hour—in the pouring rain, no less!—and making her come get him? It made no sense whatsoever.

  A strong wind shook the silver SUV, and Holly held the steering wheel a little tighter. The rain seemed to be coming down harder. What had the weatherman said on the news tonight? she wondered. Wasn’t this the outer bands of some tropical storm? Great, just what she needed: to be out in the middle of the night in a tropical storm, looking for a place that she was unfamiliar with.

  Pulling into the parking lot as directed, she pulled out her cell phone and texted Stephen to alert him to her arrival. Hitting the send button, she sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. With each second that passed, her ire grew. “What in the world?” she yelled to no one, slamming the steering wheel. Picking up her phone once again, she dialed his number and waited to hear his voice. The phone went directly to voicemail. Turning the car off, Holly threw the door open with a huff of frustration, pulled up the hood of her jacket, and hopped out of the car, cursing like a sailor the entire time. A strong wind nearly blew her into the bushes, and she screeched at the closeness of a lightning strike.

  Stalking to the heavy wood door of the bar, she yanked it open and stepped inside. She spotted Stephen practically slumped over the bar. Not really caring what kind of shape he was in, she stomped over to him and said his name. Loudly. The place was fairly deserted, but the eighties big-hair metal music coming from the sound system was a bit loud.

  “Stephen!”

  He stirred a little and lifted his head. It seemed to take a minute for things to come into focus. With a grunt of thanks toward the bartender, Stephen stood and threw a twenty do
wn on the bar before walking out the door straight to Holly’s car and climbing in on the passenger side. For a minute, Holly was too dumbfounded to move. She glanced at the bartender with raised eyebrows and questions written all over her face.

  “He drank. He fought.” The man shrugged. “He lost. Thanks for getting him out of here. Now I can close up.” With those few short words, the bartender turned his back on her and went about his business.

  “Thank you,” Holly mumbled and walked out the door. Climbing into the car, she fought off a chill from the rain. While her first instinct was to yell and rant and rave and demand to know what in the world had gone on tonight, her main need was to get the heat going in the car once again.

  Stephen’s head was turned away from her, and for a moment, Holly thought he was asleep. “Absolutely not,” she murmured and summoned all her courage to confront this man who had ruined her night.

  “Stephen,” she snapped and waited for him to face her. He finally did on the third try. “What went on here tonight?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really? So I had to come out in a monsoon in the middle of the night to a place I don’t know over nothing. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  He sighed wearily. “Look, if I had any other option, I would have called someone else—”

  “There are cabs,” Holly interrupted. “Then there’s your driver, George. I thought his sole purpose in life was to drive you where you needed to go! Then there’s Will and Derek, who probably would have—”

  “They were here earlier, and they are the reason I had no ride.” His tone was quiet, serious, and sleepy.

  “You fought with Will and Derek, and so they left you here? You are grown men! Why would they do that?” Her voice was raised, and she noticed Stephen wince at the volume. Clearly her brain was still not fully awake because none of this made any sense, and Stephen always made sense.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I need to go home and get some sleep.”

  The man had some nerve! “Oh, you want sleep?” Holly asked sarcastically. “Well, you know what? So did I. As a matter of fact, I wanted it so badly that I already was asleep, as is most of the normal population at two o’clock in the morning!” Taking a moment to calm down, she pulled the car out of the bar’s parking lot, unsure where they were going. If she could have, Holly would have avoided any more conversation, but she had no other option.

  “Um, Stephen, I know this is an odd question, but I have no idea where we’re going.”

  He punched the information into the GPS and then leaned heavily back against the seat, looking away from her again. “My house,” he said.

  “Well, I figured that much, genius. But you moved last month, and since I was handling all the stuff at the old place, I haven’t been to the new one yet. Geez.” A small chuckle had Holly turning her head ever so slightly to look at him. “Something funny to you?”

  “You’re not normally this snippy at the office,” he observed.

  “That’s because it’s never two thirty in the morning while we’re at work, and I’ve normally had a full night’s sleep. A full night’s uninterrupted sleep.”

  “Cute. Sarcasm. That’s never been an issue in the office either. This is a side of you I’ve never seen before.” He yawned and settled more comfortably into the passenger seat, clearly not having a problem with all the frustration Holly was feeling.

  “Wake me up in the middle of the night again, and you won’t have to worry about what is and what isn’t an issue in the office because I won’t be there,” Holly snapped.

  “What?” That got his attention.

  “You heard me, Stephen. You may be my boss Monday through Friday, but you know what? You have no respect for my personal time! Do you have any idea how inconvenient this was for me?” Before he had the chance to answer, Holly went on. “No, of course you don’t, because you don’t care who is inconvenienced as long as it’s not you. I mean, I would never call someone in the middle of the night unless it was a dire emergency and—”

  “It was,” Stephen tried to argue.

  Holly silenced him with a hard glare. “No, it wasn’t. You could have called a cab. You chose not to. Why? Because you didn’t think it was any big deal to wake me up in the middle of the night to jump through fiery hoops for you!”

  “Holly, it’s a drive in the car—”

  “It’s two in the morning, Stephen! And have you noticed the weather? Do not try to make it seem like I am wrong to have a problem with this.”

  “Fine, I’ll pay you for the time.”

  If there could possibly be the number one wrong thing to say in this situation, that was it. Holly jerked the car over to the side of the road, threw it into park, and turned to face Stephen, full of fury. “Seriously?” For a moment, it was a toss-up as to who was more surprised by what she said. “You think it’s okay to do something so inconsiderate and then throw money at me? What is wrong with you?”

  Rubbing his temples and finally snapping out of the stupor of the last few minutes, Stephen turned to face her. “Look, had I known this was going to turn into such a fiasco, believe me, I would have walked home!” he growled, full of frustration. “I didn’t think calling a friend was going to cause all this, for crying out loud, Holly! Stop being such a drama queen.”

  Drama queen? She saw red. Everything around her seemed tinged in a bright, fiery red. “How dare you! And friends? Friends?” she shrieked. “Since when are you and I friends?”

  “We’re not?” His voice was instantly calm, and he seemed perplexed by this knowledge.

  “No, we are not! I work for you. I work hard for you. Five days a week, fourteen hours a day at times, and that’s not including the weekends when you give me extra projects! We don’t pal around, we don’t socialize, and we don’t hang out outside of the office.” Holly realized she had some major anger issues going on and decided to take a moment to calm down. After a few seconds, she looked up, met his eyes, and said quietly, “We work together. You are my boss, and I am your assistant. I don’t know how to be friends with you, Stephen.”

  “Why? What’s so hard about being friends with me?”

  “Well, for starters, everything we have together at work is all about you. It’s your company. You are in charge. Everything we do is focused around you and your needs or the company’s needs. While we’re working, we’re talking about work. When we stay late and while we eat dinner, we still only talk about work and your plans about more work. You know nothing about me that wasn’t on my résumé, you never ask about me or my life, and you are rather inconsiderate of my personal time. That’s not friendship, Stephen, that’s being a boss. And an inconsiderate one at that! Do you know where I’m from? Do you know how many siblings I have? What I wanted to be when I grew up? Why I chose the college I did? What’s my favorite color? Or my favorite flower? Did you know that I have a fear of water due to a boating accident in high school? No! Because you do not care about my life. All you care about is Ballinger’s.”

  He stared at Holly for a long moment, barely blinking. When her green eyes had met his minutes ago, something weird happened. It was as if he was seeing Holly for the first time. His brows furrowed as he continued to stare at her. That was the most she had probably ever said to him at any given time, and other than the fact that he would have preferred a nicer tone, Stephen realized that he liked this interaction with her. People didn’t usually interact with him; they played to him, and they catered to him, even Holly. Until now. This was fascinating.

  “What?” she finally asked uncomfortably.

  “Nothing, it’s that you not only sound different but…look different.” He continued to stare at her as if he were seeing or meeting Holly for the very first time.

  Self-consciously, Holly ran a hand over her hair. “Well, it is two thirty in the morning. I don’t sleep in a suit with my hair p
ulled back, you know. I threw on sweats and ran out the door when you called. I didn’t realize I was expected to be in ‘personal assistant’ mode all the livelong day!”

  Holly knew she wasn’t beautiful—men didn’t normally give her a second look—but the way Stephen was looking at her right now made her wish they weren’t in this particular moment, fighting. Why couldn’t he look at her like that while they were at work? Or at one of those blasted charity events he was always dragging her to? Goodness, on those occasions Holly went crazy trying to dress in a way that would make Stephen see her as a woman, and apparently there weren’t enough makeup and sequins on the planet to do that. But sure, bring her out in the middle of the night in sweats with no makeup, and the man couldn’t take his eyes off her! Clearly he’d had too much to drink.

  Yes, her chestnut hair was down and longer than he would have thought it was, but there was something else. Studying her face, it finally hit him. “Your glasses. You’re not wearing your glasses.” Without them, he could see high cheekbones and a silky-smooth, creamy complexion. He stopped his hand from reaching out and touching her.

  “Oh, yeah, well…um…I don’t really need them,” she stammered, uncomfortable with the way he was watching her. “I mean, they have a tiny prescription to them, and I use them more for when I have some eye strain.”

  “You wear them every day,” he stated.

  “Yes, well, with the amount of time I spend on the computer, it makes sense to keep them on.”

  “Oh.”

  They sat in silence for a minute before Holly finally looked away, put the car back in gear, and headed toward Stephen’s house. Glancing at the GPS, she noticed how far away it was. “Thirty miles!” she cried. “Stephen…” Holly whined. She was ready to start arguing again but realized there was no point. She would get him home and get herself home—probably somewhere around five a.m.—but luckily it was Saturday so she could sleep all day if she wanted. Well, as long as he didn’t call her later with any work-related issues.

  “I’m sorry, Holly. Believe me when I tell you that this was not the way I saw the night going either.”