Babysitting the Billionaire
Copyright © 2012
May Reed was running late, as usual, and as usual, her boss was waiting for her. This time, though, Sadie stood in the reception area as she stepped off the elevator.
“Honestly, May, you only have to come in to the office twice a week. You might make an effort.”
“Sorry. Metro again.”
“Markus wants to see you.”
The Big Boss? The coffee she’d gulped down just before stepping in the door burbled threateningly in May’s gullet. “I’ll be on time, I swear it.”
Sadie’s eyes crinkled at the corners, though her mouth remained stiff. “It’s not that. It’s a special assignment. Actually, I’ll tell you all about it. He just wants to put the fear of god into you. We can’t mess this up.”
Mess what up? The resident artist for the Save the Penguins Foundation, May didn’t think anything she could possibly do would threaten the organization, such as it was. But she dutifully trudged behind Sadie up to the third floor.
Markus Edmondsson had made a name for himself by reaching both poles before his thirtieth birthday. He’d lost a couple of toes, and his political momentum, though, and at forty-something was the growly head of this less-than-groundbreaking organization. When Sadie knocked on his door, they could see him pacing, a caged tiger, through the tinted-glass of the window. He waved them in and went to sit behind his creepy desk of walrus skin, his skin as blanched as the hide. Sadie and May sat in the supplicants’ chairs facing him.
He stared at May a full count of twenty without even blinking, or so it seemed to her. Were his glacier-blue eyes like that before the expeditions, or had they been chipped away during the trek?
“This one?” He shifted his gaze to Sadie, who visibly fought not to squirm.
“You wanted anonymous.”
He flicked his gaze back to May. “And what do you do for us, young lady?”
Well first of all, old mister, I’m no young lady anymore. May was so mad she almost giggled, jangling already jangly nerves. “Sir. I do the artwork for web and print and assign the video editing for the site.”
“You’re Reed?”
“Right.”
He paused, and then seemed to decide something. “Good. This is it, then. We need you for a special assignment. It is mission-critical, but due to extreme circumstances we can’t give it to the people best trained to do it.”
He stopped, looking at her. Was she supposed to say something? What did good worker bees say to such a cryptic statement? “Well, I’ll do anything I can for the foundation. I love my job, and I believe in our mission.”
“And what is our mission, Miss Reed?”
The affront implied in his tone kept her anger on top of her nerves. She smiled sweetly, she hoped, and parroted the company line. “To ensure habitat for all penguins worldwide.”
“And this is how we plan to do it.” He leaned forward, palms on the dead-animal desk, icy eyes starting to blaze. “Another expedition.”
She wasn’t following. “You want me to go on an expedition?”
“God’s nose, no. I want you to handle our special case. A funder, who wishes to remain anonymous, but whom we’ve convinced to come to DC for this year’s gala so long as we keep his trip hush-hush. That’s your job.”
May looked at Sadie, in her DC gray power suit, silk blouse, and upswept blonded hair. She fought the urge to smooth out her own crinkled-cotton midi skirt. “Sadie and her team are the press people.”
“Exactly. So if he’s with them, the press will sniff him out.”
She was starting to follow. “And if he’s with me, no one will care.”
“Exactly. She is, indeed, smarter than she looks.”
May had heard that one so often she just let it go. Small price to pay for looking ten years younger than she really was. “What does this babysitting entail?”
“Sadie will fill you in. I just wanted to get you on board and emphasize. Emphasize,” he sliced the air with a hand, “how important this is to us. He’s agreed to fund the entire expedition, provided we find the funding for a video crew.”
“But that’s tens of millions of dollars.”
“Right again. So it’s critical. Critical,” he pounded his dead-animal desk, “that we keep him happy. Understand?”
May caught herself before she jumped at the sound, covering the move by crossing her arms. The man had a mean bluster. “You want me to have sex with him?”
“Great gods, no. We’d find him a pretty prostitute if he needs one. Sadie knows how to do that. All you need do is keep him on track, on time, and happy. As happy as a man like him can be.”