Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 12

Chapter 12

KISAREL.

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“Here, Take this,” Noella said with that strict look on her face, like I was the one who had made her cancel all her weekend plans just to be here with me shopping for things I didn’t need and possibly couldn’t afford.

Once again, I gulped down the words that were forming in my throat.

Of all the places Noella could have taken me, she had to bring me to the kind of stores where one blazer costs $800, and a dress costs $1,500, and nobody blinks. And she’s not picking one outfit for me. She’s building an entire wardrobe from scratch because Mr. Stark said ‘appropriate‘ and Noella takes her instructions seriously.

“That one.” Noella said, pointing to a midnight blue dress on the far rack without breaking her stride. These aren’t even my style. But when I asked, she said that’s what the boss wanted.

The attendant retrieved it. I looked at the tag while her back was turned.

$3,200.

For one dress that I would wear to work in a building full of people who would probably not even notice it.

If I could do a rough estimate, we were somewhere north of $25,000 already, and Noella showed absolutely no signs of slowing down. She had a list an actual physical list that Mr. Stark had apparently provided.

How much was my monthly pay?

–

By the time we were done, the total sitting on that final receipt was $68,749.

I did the math quietly while the attendant folded the last dress into tissue paper.

My monthly take–home was roughly $8,000 after tax. And if Mr. Stark deducted even $2,000 a month toward this debt – which felt like the most generous estimate I could give a man who had never once done anything generously – I was looking at nearly three years of paying him back.

Three whole years.

For clothes I hadn’t chosen.

I pressed my lips together.

I was not going to cry in this store.

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Chapter 12

I loaded the bags into my arms and followed Noella out.

Noella flagged down a taxi and hopped in, “See you on Monday,” she said. “Don’t be late and don’t wear what you had on yesterday.”

Then she was gone.

I flagged down my own taxi, and the attendant helped me load my bag in the trunk.

I gave the driver my address and leaned my head back against the seat when my phone buzzed in my lap.

I looked down at it, expecting Jace, who had called twice already while I was in the third

store.

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It wasn’t Jace.

It was a text. From my boss. And for some confusing reason, my heart skipped a beat the moment I saw his name.

“Come to my house. Now.”

Then a second text immediately after was an address on the Upper East Side that I didn’t need to look up to know was the kind of neighborhood where the buildings had names, and the doormen knew everyone by sight.

My throat went dry.

–

His house? Not the office. Not the suite. His actual house – his personal space, the place

and he was texting me on a where he existed when he wasn’t being Ocean Stark the CEO – Saturday afternoon like this was a completely normal request.

There was no explanation or indication of whether this was work–related or something else entirely, which was the part that was making my heart do things I wasn’t going to examine too closely right now.

Sweet Lord. Why?

I pressed my lips together and typed back before I could think too hard about it.

“Should I go home and change first? I’m not exactly dressed for work.”

His reply came before I had even set the phone back down.

“My time is not negotiable, Miss. Harry. Be here in ten minutes. Don’t make me find someone who can manage a schedule.”

I leaned forward.

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Chapter 12

“Change of plans,” I told the driver immediately. “I need to go to-” I read him the address.

He nodded and pulled into the other lane.

***

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The car pulled up to a gate so tall I had to lean forward in my seat just to see the top of it.

Black iron. Custom–made.

Beyond it, a driveway that curved through manicured grounds so precise they looked architectural rather than natural, leading up to a house that I was already struggling to find. the right word for.

Mansion felt small.

The security at the gate didn’t stop the taxi. They didn’t ask for ID or make a call or do any of the things I had been mentally preparing myself for during the ride over. They just looked at the car – looked at me through the window – and the gate began to move, like they already knew my face.

I didn’t know what to do with that, so I filed it away and watched the grounds slide past the window as the driver followed the curve of the driveway up toward the entrance.

I reached for my bag, and my door handle at the same time, the moment the car came to a stop, and before I had done either, my door was already open.

A man in a dark suit was standing beside it.

“Miss Harry,” he said. “Welcome.”

“Thank you,” I replied, sounding unsure as I stepped down.

“Please, this way,” He gestured toward the entrance of the house with a small nod.

“Oh. I just need to-” I moved toward the trunk. “The taxi, and my bags, I should just—”

“Everything will be taken care of, Miss Harry.”

I turned around, and three other men had materialized from somewhere – I genuinely could not tell you where – and were already at the trunk, pulling out shopping bag after shopping bag.

One of them was settling with the driver before I had even opened my mouth to protest

further.

I stood on the driveway with my handbag and nothing else, watching strangers handle my things with more care than I had handled myself, and felt something strange move through

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me that I couldn’t immediately name. It was something closer to the specific disorientation of being treated like you matter. I didn’t get that often.

The suited man gestured toward the entrance.

I followed him toward the huge, imposing front door. I felt that strange, prickling sensation of being watched by a pair of eyes I couldn’t see. It was so intense that I instinctively looked up at the building and almost froze.

He was at the window. Second floor. Standing completely still with one hand in his trouser pocket and his eyes on me with an intensity that didn’t waver, even when I looked directly back at him.

His steel eyes seemed to swallow me whole, crawling over my body with an unhurried laziness, like he was staring right through me.

I forgot, for a full second, how to walk.

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The security man’s hand appeared at the edge of my periphery, a subtle gesture forward, and I pulled my eyes away, followed him through the front door, and tried to remember how my legs worked.

The living room was so large with furniture that cost more than my entire life’s worth..

I stood in the middle of all of it with my handbag held against my chest and my plaid shorts and my bleach–stained polo and felt, with a clarity that was almost funny, exactly how out of place I was.

I couldn’t even hide my surprise. I kept staring with my mouth slightly agape when the man politely called my attention.

“Mr. Stark has asked that you meet him upstairs,” he said. “Second door on your right.”

I looked at him. “What…” I swallowed, uneasiness slowly stepping in, “Upstairs?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The man’s expression remained completely, professionally neutral, whereas my heart was doing things that were not professional and not appropriate and not something I was going to acknowledge.

I pressed my lips together, smoothed my hand against my hip once, and walked to the staircase. Every step I took felt like a bad decision.

My heart was so loud by the time I reached the landing that I was genuinely concerned about what my face was doing. I found the second door on the right and stood in front of it and raised my hand to knock and told myself – firmly, clearly, with everything I had – that this was work. This was my boss. This was a professional visit that had a professional explanation that I was about to hear the moment this door opened.

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I didn’t even get my knuckles to the wood.

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The door pulled open with an urgency that was too quick for me to comprehend, as a strong hand gripped my arm and pulled me in so forcefully.

The door closed shut in the same beat, and my back hit the wall.

The impact knocked the air clean out of my lungs, and he was right there – filling every inch of space in front of me, one forearm pressed flat against the wall beside my head, his body so close that I could feel the heat coming off him through the fabric of my polo.

His grey eyes were dark in a way I hadn’t seen before.

Moisture stung the corner of my eyes when I caught the hard pines of his bare chest. He was shirtless.

“Your glasses.” He said in a deep, unhurried voice that sent goosebumps down my arms.

My hands moved on autopilot, and I slowly took them off.

For one long, suspended, absolutely unbearable moment, he just looked at me the way a man looks at something he has been trying very hard not to want and has finally, irrevocably, stopped trying.

“Took you long enough, Kiss.” That’s all he said before he seized my lips in his with a maddening hunger that left me both shocked and frozen.

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