A Billionaire's Love Read online

  LM Lovett

  A Billionaire’s Love

  The Brazen Billionaires: Book One

  Copyright © 2020 by LM Lovett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

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  Contents

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  I. PART ONE

  1. Maribel

  2. Maribel

  3. David

  4. Maribel

  5. David

  6. Maribel

  7. David

  8. Maribel

  9. Maribel

  10. David

  11. Maribel

  12. David

  13. Maribel

  14. David

  15. Maribel

  16. David

  17. Maribel

  18. Maribel

  19. David

  II. EPILOGUE

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Exclusive Sneak Peek: A Billionaire’s Folly

  Logan

  Natalie

  Logan

  Exclusive Sneak Peek: A Billionaire’s Impromptu

  About the Author

  Also by LM Lovett

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  My billionaire CEO boss, David Price, wants me.

  I can’t resist the siren call of his piercing blue eyes, commanding presence, and dazzling confidence.

  Maribel

  My billionaire boss is devastatingly handsome and oh so intimidating.

  I’m a twenty-four-year-old virgin, working an unsatisfying job as a customer happiness rep. I might have fantasized about Mr. Price before, but I never thought he even knew who I was. I never could have dreamed that he desires me.

  Then out of the blue, Mr. Price calls me in for a private meeting, He’s even more brutally handsome up close and personal.

  He demands something from me I can’t refuse.

  But I want more than a onetime dalliance.

  I want to be his.

  But am I willing to pay the cost?

  David

  Maribel, my prim and proper employee, has intoxicated me completely.

  When I discover that she’s been sending her steamy lingerie to be delivered to our office, I know I have to take matters into my own hands. She’s mine for the taking.

  I want her. I want her and I’m willing to pay the cost.

  But I realize quickly that this isn’t some quick and easy conquest. I need to possess her completely.

  What I discovered in my conquest changes everything.

  Author’s note: A Billionaire’s Love is steamy, sultry novella with a guaranteed HEA. This novella is a complete standalone with no cheating. It features sizzling scenes, a brooding billionaire, and the beautiful backdrop of San Francisco. Come along for the ride.

  I

  Part One

  One

  Maribel

  “…Not all those in the fog are lost.”

  -@KarlTheFog

  * * *

  The day dawns grey and ordinary, with no hint of that my life is going to change forever.

  I wake up in my solitary apartment.

  Grey is the color of Daly City, the slightly cheaper city to the south of San Francisco, that many flock to in the hopes of eking out a living in the impossibly expensive San Francisco Bay Area.

  Grey is the color of my apartment.

  Grey is the color of my life.

  Once, a long time ago, someone said, “the coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco.”

  Like many quotes, this statement has been attributed to Mark Twain, but can’t be verified as authentic.

  But whoever this person was, they get it.

  Fog sits on top of my neighborhood, an oppressive weight that permeates every aspect of living down here. Some call the fog “Karl.” He even has his own Twitter account - seriously.

  For someone who doesn’t live in the seemingly dystopian world of the Bay Area, the expensive living situation seems just short of insane. And trust me, I think about how expensive it is here constantly. If I lived somewhere else, I could actually save money. If I lived somewhere else, I could live in an apartment that is not just the size of a shoebox. If I lived somewhere else, I could start to thaw out from the weight of the ever oppressive fog and everything else that has happened.

  I’ve thought about relocating. I have, really.

  But I already relocated when I moved to Daly City. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Mission District. San Francisco runs through my blood.

  The truth is, I’m scared to move farther. I’ve dreamed of far-flung places. I’ve added pictures of Portugal to my Pinterest board. But I’m stuck in a malaise.

  People come from all over the world to San Francisco.

  Me? I’ve never left.

  So I’m here.

  See, depressing grey apartment.

  It’s time to go to work.

  Two

  Maribel

  I work at an enormous tech company. The company used to be described as “scrappy.” That was the early days - the days of grit, ambition, and industry disruption. Now, it’s an industry giant worth billions. It’s a…omnipresent social networking site. You probably know the one.

  I haven’t been here long. I finally landed my first big girl job a couple of months ago. Before, I have held a series of increasingly forgettable retail jobs.

  There isn’t anything wrong with working retail, trust me. It’s just that in the Bay Area, it’s a tough pill to swallow, commuting side by side with people wearing colorful badges from tech companies, knowing that they could be making ten times my salary.

  I’m a customer happiness representative, which means my fingers leap on the keyboard like typing is my Olympic sport. All day long, I respond to emails and chats from unhappy users. While the pay is more than I’ve ever been making, my rent eats up most of it.

  I like my coworkers. As much as anyone can like their coworkers.

  It’s just that I still don’t feel like I belong here.

  I’ve heard about imposter syndrome before.

  Maybe that’s what I have. I feel like there is someone breathing down my neck, telling me that I don’t belong here.

  See imposter syndrome.

  Even though my job isn’t exactly hard, I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t fit in. So I mostly keep to myself.

  Even tech companies, there is an underclass. My team is friendly, but I’m definitely invisible to everyone outside of the customer happiness wing.

  I keep my head down, like I’m waiting for some kind of change.

  But most of my days feel exactly the same. I break the monotony of job by availing myself to the extensive staff kitchen. That’s part is a serious perk; I’m saving a fortune on food.

  Right now though, work is wild. The big issue for the team currently is a breach of privacy that happened earlier this month. A large chunk of users had personal information stolen and the company is still learning how deep the breach goes. It’s been hectic. My supervisor Anna, an immaculately attired Amazon warrior of a manager, is sending us increasingly strident email dispatches at 2am.

 
; The unread tickets keep pilling up in our inboxes and we can’t seem to get a handle on things. We are completely inundated from messages from our users. So much so, that we’ve been called into an urgent meeting.

  We all shuffle into a large conference room nervously.

  I take in the enormous windows overlooking the San Francisco skyline. For all my griping, San Francisco has got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Sure I haven’t traveled much elsewhere. But the sweeping Bay views must be hard to top. Today, the sky is so clear you can see across the Bay.

  A couple of the higher ups stride into the room, ready to lay down the law. I see Anna, the head of our department, looking like she is frothing at the bit. She’s always revved up, even if on the surface she looks sleek and professional, like she strode of the pages of a fashion magazine.

  The silence deepens. The higher ups aren’t saying anything. They are watching each other and…waiting. My unease deepens.

  Then he walks in.

  David Price, CEO.

  The most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on.

  Each time I see him around, his beauty is like a punch to the stomach.

  I’ve never seen a human being with such perfect features.

  He’s impeccably dressed, as always. He has got a little scruff today, which maybe he decided to do to make himself look more approachable. I can imagine him staring into the mirror, strategizing how to make himself look just a hair more approachable to improve communication and end silos (that’s what he listed as an internal priority in last email missive).

  But the scruff makes him look more scrumptious. Scuffmptious? Focus, Maribel.

  I know I’m not the only one who gets distracted by his presence. It’s not just his perfect looks. It’s his total aura of command. I take in my coworkers, who I note are all in various shades of flustered. I’m glad I’m not the only one totally susceptible to his charms.

  He has the whole world watching him with bated breath.

  Five years ago, he dazzled the tech world after he made himself and his shareholders billions from our company’s public-trading debut. He’s imposing and confident. I might have his cover from Forbes billionaire cover stashed in my apartment.

  So I’ve stared at his photos hungrily. He radiates strength and power but even for his inner circle I sense that he is a mystery. Enigmatic would be putting it lightly. He rarely grants interviews, but when he does, he only focuses on his company and not his life. The man is a cipher.

  The man is also impossibly, outrageously, devastatingly handsome. In a sea of sloppily dressed techies, he is dressed impeccably in a suit, his broad shoulders and trim waist highlighted in his expensive fabrics. He looks to be in his early forties. He has the broad jaw, full lips, and piercing blue eyes of a model.

  He clears his throat and we all snap to attention.

  “As you know, we have a minor issue with the privacy breach. I understand that you’ve all been trying to stay on top of things with your dashboards. But I’m also hearing that you have not been able to respond to all messages within 24 hours.”

  He’s right. We’ve been totally flooded. And users are getting angrier.

  “Anna here,” he says, gesturing to our immediate supervisor, “has identified blockages in the process. Some team members’ processes need to be recalibrated. Anna will be spearheading a review of every team member’s effectiveness and efficacy in their response. With this review in place, our goal is to get everyone back to 100% efficiency so that every user issue is addressed within 24 hours.”

  His deep, firm voice is lulling him into some kind of haze. I see my coworkers eagerly nodding and some others scribbling down notes. Mr. Price continues to outline the new changes to our internal monitoring process, but there’s a thought itching in my brain.

  I’m not usually a person who speaks up.

  I can’t tell you how many meals I’ve eaten that I haven’t liked, simply because I haven’t wanted to offend people.

  I keep my head down.

  I don’t make much of a impression.

  I’m a fly under the radar type of person.

  But there’s something bugging me, getting under my skin, and with a shock of horror I realize I’m speaking. “I’m sorry, but I don’t hear anything about alleviating our understaffing or addressing the users’ concerns.”

  Every single person in the room is staring at me - Anna; in abject horror; my cubicle neighbor Dan, as if I had suddenly grown another head; and now Mr. Price, with a quizzical expression that is telling me no one from customer happiness has ever spoken to him before.

  I’ve completely lost steam and the gravity of what I’ve just done slaps me in the face. My entire body is flushed. I want to disappear on the spot.

  Anna butts in. “Mr. Price, what Maria is saying, well she doesn’t have the full picture. I’ve calculated the metrics and optimized customer reps will get back on track.”

  Mr. Price steeples his fingers together and he cocks his head towards me. “It’s Maribel, isn’t it?” he says, his eyes dark and unreadable. I am shocked to my core. How the hell does he know who I am? “Continue, Maribel.”

  I have no choice now. “There are only so many hours in the day. With the recent scandal, our company is on the front pages. Many of the users want to know how we are safeguarding their privacy and are not satisfied by the answers we are giving them. The boilerplate answer we’ve been directed to respond with doesn’t even take responsibility for the security breach in the first place. Plus, we are too understaffed to respond.” With complete clarity and a plummet into full-blown panic, I realize that Mr. Price is probably the one who developed the entire strategy, including downplaying privacy issues.

  I can feel everyone of my coworkers trying to lean away from me, to distance themselves from the now rogue element.

  “Interesting,” he says. I can’t read his face. I don’t see a single emotion streak across his beautiful visage. “Anna, clear the room. I want to talk to Ms. Flores privately.”

  Anna is attempting to telepathically communicate with me to retract every statement I just made.

  Everyone else runs out of the room.

  Mr. Price is known for being difficult. That’s more or less par for the course for all tech billionaires. He is known for being exacting and for driving his staff hard. He never interacts directly with customer happiness reps; we are too far below his paygrade.

  He stares at me so intently that I feel like he knows every bad decision I’ve ever made. Including the most recent one - speaking up in a meeting that I had no business speaking up in.

  “Ms. Flores -”

  “-how do you even know my name?” I blurt out.

  “You must think poorly of me as a boss if you think I don’t at least make an effort to learn my employees names.”

  Wow, keep digging myself into this hole, why don’t I. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I just feel like we aren’t really important.”

  “Au contraire, your perspective is most important. You’re right, I don’t get directly involved with your team. And yet Anna has told me the issue is with your team’s speed, not the message. And you are saying something different. How do I reconcile those two statements?”

  “I just don’t feel like our response is doing enough. Hundreds of thousands of users had their privacy exposed. And yet in our emails we minimize what happened.”

  I can see Mr. Price weighing each word carefully. “What happened was…unfortunate.”

  “I don’t even understand what happen or how it happened. I use the site too. So I get why people would be upset.”

  “Maribel,” he says with a sigh, “our entire upper management team, including our legal counsel, has recommended the current course of action. I wasn’t aware that your team was understaffed. And Anna seems to think it’s a quick fix. I vastly prefer her answer.”

  I nod curtly. I start to gather my things, wondering if I could leave early today. Or if I should
start packing up my desk. I’m cursing myself for being foolish and risking my job. But there’s a part of me that thinks my mom would have agreed. She was always one for speaking up. And she definitely would not be down with the murky privacy violations abounding at this place, like so many social networking companies in the Bay.

  “I prefer Anna’s answer because it is easier,” he says with a roguish smile, “but I’m going to confide something to you.”

  I resist the urge to check the room behind me for stragglers. Me?

  “For some time, the privacy issues have been weighing on me. Initially, our founding promise was to guard users privacy religiously and create an ethical online environment. My company has grown astronomically but I think I’ve lost sight of that original intent.”

  I really have no idea what he wants me to say. Billionaires are known to be eccentric, right?

  “Maribel, what do you recommend?”

  “I’m not qualified to speak on any of this stuff. I just started, I hardly know anyone here -”

  “- But you see, I’m not coming to you as an expert, although you are an expert in your work experiences here. I need a fresh set of eyes. Because along the way, I’ve lost track of some things.”

  “I don’t want to cause more of an issue with Anna. Well more than I’ve already caused.” I’m definitely on her shitlist now.

  “I will take care of Anna. Please, speak freely.”

  It seems wild, but I actually feel like I could trust him on this? He projects so much confidence that it’s hard to remain skeptical. And he seems so earnest and curious I feel compelled to speak.

  “Well, for starters, I would include more transparency about what happened. As a user, I would want to see a significant promise to make things right. And we need more customer happiness staff. We’ve been needing more ever since I got here.”

  The weird thing is that he seems like he is actually thinking through what I said. I can see him running my suggestions through my mind, evaluating weak spots, and calculating what needs to happen.