Chapter 4- Going Home

Grace Lim, where the hell are you?

Answer the bloody phone, Grace!

The report needs revision. Asap!

Three messages were waiting for her when she checked her phone on the way out of the hotel suite of the billionaire James Grayson. What the hell happened back there was beyond embarrassing and insane. 

It would be amazing if she could remember what happened.

After all, he had had a hold on her since the first time she held her gaze at the beautiful man. He sucked her in with his elegant stylist's good looks and little-handsome grin. That gorgeous grin, all crooked and dimpled and full of the otherworldly promise of earth-shattering sex.

Grace mentally shook her head. She was just happy that the billionaire had left her alone as she enjoyed a lovely, luxurious bath and when she was through. Grayson was nowhere to be found, so she grabbed her dress and dashed out the door. Yes, she was being cowardly, but what else could a woman like her do but flee?

However, her phone had been pinging the whole way down. They were all from her soon-to-be ex-boss, the CEO of Hudson Hotel. And although the emotional progression from pleading to pissed off didn’t go unnoticed. She found herself fixating on his nonsense demands. The hotel was doomed to fail, and it wouldn't be long before they were all out of work. It had been a week since she had completed the final financial report submitted by the accounting department, and her boss was now waiting for her to submit it. Nonetheless, Grace was worthy of better. She was working as hard as everyone else in the executive department. Her boss, a middle-aged widow, an old British arsehole, wasn't the most colourful crayon in the box. He was so dependent on her that he left everything up to her.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. The old man was whip-smart about some things. Like golf—seriously, the man could pull stats out of his ass, even ones dating back to the sixties. But book smarts were not his forte. Stellar boss doesn’t quite make his list of strengths either, at least not in recent months. He had been waiting for his retirement like a future vacation and all, but Grace couldn't blame him either. The man needed a break and was dying of his stage three cancer.

She glanced at her phone again, her wariness climbing like the ivy on the building behind her. What does he want to talk about? Can he not wait for her to submit the final report on Monday? Jesus, today is Saturday and the man has been killing her with emails already? 

They discussed everything they needed to say yesterday in the meeting before her colleague invited her to the farewell party, where she ended up drunk and had a one-night stand with the billionaire. She couldn't stop shaking her head in disgust.

Besides, she was done. She was done babysitting her boss. It was their seventh meeting in less than a week. Grace couldn't keep doing this to herself, this twisted cycle of excitement, disappointment, and anguish. She sighed and ignored her boss's messages. He was a pain in the ass anyway, yet she was disappointed, especially when the boss she was supposed to be helping was determined to hold her back. Damn! She worked like a lunatic. She had been in the office for over 12 hours a day, if not more, and yet she was still going to be unemployed soon.

She knew the hotel couldn’t be saved anymore unless some stupid wealthy mortal was willing to risk their millions to buy the hotel that was doomed to fail.

In her 23 years of existence, Grace spent three years as a secretary. Fresh from university, she was nothing but a friendly, smart, and hard-working employee. No boyfriend since birth, she had become a prodigy in the Hudson Hotel's executive department and was very good at. She was so focused on building up her career and naive at the same time. No wonder her boss was relying on her for everything.

Even so, her heart hurts. She had been working for three years. In fact, it was her first corporate job, and she had learned to love it. Yet it was hard to let go of something that had been such a big part of her life for so long. 

It was even harder when that job refused to let her go.

Sighing, she hurried down the steps toward the cobblestone path that winds through her neighbourhood. Usually, she takes the time to admire the scenery—the gorgeous old buildings, wrought-iron benches, and massive shade trees—but this morning she just wanted to sprint back to her small apartment, pull the covers over her head, and shut out the world. Luckily, she could totally do that because her roommate, Honey, was away this weekend, which meant she wouldn't be around to lecture her about the emotional perils of wallowing in her misery.

Yes, she had done much drinking last night, though. Damn, meeting and sleeping with a billionaire was way creepier than the Saw movie, not to mention her newly acquired tattoo and... damn! Those beautiful kisses were to die for.

Nope, she wouldn't think about James Grayson any longer. What she needed to do was step up to the plate and knock the naive-innocent-ever role out of her own imaginary wall. She had to live like it was her last day on earth. She needed to have a freaking hot boyfriend with eight abs!

OK!That was over the top, but... damn! How she wished she could remember the sexy part of last night with James. All she had was a little pain in the groin area... God, thinking about him made her wet and aroused at the same time.

"I have to stop thinking about him!" She grumbled under her breath and sighed. There were more pressing problems that mattered. She needed a job soon. She couldn't just leave her grandmother with her medical expenses alone. The old woman’s little restaurant in Notting Hill couldn't be trusted to gain more than what her medical expenses needed.

So she needed a job soon. And right now, she was just thankful that Honey was not there waiting at their apartment, because she knew the moment she’d walked through the door after leaving the office, Honey would be waiting in their small living room with a carton of ice cream, a box of Kleenex, and two bottles of red wine, and she would proceed to stay up half the night passing her tissues and listening to her babble incoherently. Or maybe Honey would give her a high five for giving her virginity to a stranger.

One-night stands suck. She felt like such a failure. No, she felt like a stranger. The last piece of advice her mom gave her was to never give up on love. Actually, she’d drilled that into her long before she’d ever gotten sick. But what the hell happened to her? The first time she got drunk, she had a one-night stand with a stranger. Damn! How could she? That was stupid.

Her mother would be very disappointed, even though she was left alone and only had her grandmother as an immediate family member. It felt like she had let them down. Thanks to the gods, her grandmother was an hour away from her apartment. Otherwise, she would definitely earn some nasty words from the old woman. After all, she never knew her father or the man existed. Not that she cared... She doesn't care anymore. So right now, all she had to do was die trying to remember the supposed to be mind-shattering sex she had from last night.

Her phone buzzed when she was five minutes from the apartment, where she shares a two-bedroom room with Honey.

Bloody hell. Another text from the boss

And it's even worse because it says:

I swear I'm going to make your life harder.

Damn it, Lim, stop ignoring me! I need the report now. We have some issues to resolve before announcing the bankruptcy of the hotel.

A second text pops up: Coming over, Lim. We’ll talk or you are fired.

She rolled her eyes.

As if.