The Seduction of Jac Frost (by Tatienne Richard) novel Chapter 4

Called Upstairs

“What the fuck was that?”

Jacqueline was mumbling under her breath as she flung her bag onto her chair again. Cursing loudly, she realized she’d forgotten her coffee upstairs on the boardroom table. She was not going back up there to get it and prayed that Percy had enough brains in his head to bring it to her.

Original composition by Tatienne Richard exclusively for My Fiction. If you’re reading this elsewhere it has been stolen from the platform.

She looked around the office and noted it was unusually quiet, murmurings from one cubicle at the far end of the hall where everyone was circled around a desk made her curious as to what was going on but not curious enough to engage. She had a presentation to tweak if she was going to accompany the CEO, though she wasn’t sure she was going now. It was clear she’d not passed whatever the test he’d just thrown at her was.

Who the fuck tells an employee he is a fairy and she is too and they were mated? What the hell did that even mean? She could picture in her mind’s eye the bunch of men upstairs now in the board room laughing at her and her reaction. Assholes. She contemplated calling HR, but she really wanted the chance to land this account.

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She looked down at her hands as she yanked her laptop out and plugged it into the power supply on her desk. Blue. They were still blue. She was still furious. She dragged her compact from her backpack and looked into the mirror and grimaced. Even her face had a mild tint. She needed to get her shit together.

The sound of laughter and then a hissed, “shh, be quiet,” made her shoot an annoyed glance down the corridor to the gathering of her office mates. It wasn’t she didn’t know how to intermingle and get along. She did. She thought she had a decent relationship with her colleagues, but they tended to enjoy gossiping and talking too much and often it made them behind schedule. They always said they were bouncing ideas off one another but often their conversations were deeply personal.

She thought back to when one of the girls in the office gave a full–on recollection of a bad date with a guy whose pubic hair extended up over his belt buckle. She made a face of disgust at the horrifying memory and began working away.

“It’s definitely her.”

The words followed by a snicker and more whispering made her side–eye the group and she wondered what the hell they were talking about.

“I’m asking her.”

she booked sideways and saw the team admin, Shelly, ming at6

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her purposefully, holding a phone in her outstretched hand.

“Is this you?”

“What?” she turned her head sideways, a flicker of irritation on her features. She had too much work to do to be dealing with office gossip.

“Is this you? Did you go to the coffee shop this morning and yell at a barista?” she wiggled the phone at her.

Jacqueline felt her heart plummet to her toes as she looked at the screen. Shelly pressed play and sure enough, another customer in the coffee shop had taken video of her exchange with the barista. She stood up and grabbed the device from Shelly, “shit.”

“Yeah. I guess this guy zoomed in on the logo on your backpack and tagged Vaughn Professional Corp and now it’s getting tons of views. We’re at a hundred k already.”

She couldn’t breathe as she looked at the comments.

Who treats a barista like that?

All that hard work and she left the cup there to insult the girl.

poor

Minimum wage workers deserve respect too.

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Where is her sense of humor?

Vaughn Professional Consulting needs to remind their employees about what good PR is.

That last one stung.

“Are you fucking kidding me? The woman roasted me, literally roasted me in front of an entire coffee shop and I’m the one who looks like an asshole?”

“You were kind of harsh. You called her lady.”

“She wasn’t wearing a nametag, or I’d have called her by her name!” Jacqueline was livid. She’d never felt so angry in her life. She’d gone viral over something as innocuous as standing up for herself.

“It was just a joke. You can’t even take a joke?” one of the guys, Clint, was standing behind Shelly with his arms folded.

“Are you kidding me? I ordered a coffee. I had an important meeting. All I wanted was to take my coffee and get to the meeting I had scheduled, and this barista stood there pointing out all the different ways she wasted her time at work while getting paid by drawing cartoons on a cup. I would have dumped it into my travel mug either way. It’s why it was with me, clean and ready to go.” She threw her hands up in the air,

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“look at the way in the video she is holding my cup away from me. She was fucking holding it hostage.” She wanted to punch something.

“Uh, your hands are turning blue.” Clint pointed to her fingers gripping the phone.

“It’s a medical condition having to do with oxygen and breathing when I’m pissed off.” She waved it off. “It’s been like that since I was a baby.”

“No shit. That’s kind of cool,” Clint commented.

She did not feel it was cool as her body betrayed her in the worst way and she tried to ignore it.

“Do you want us to spin this for you?” Clint offered as he waved around the office, “I mean it’s kind of what we do here. Fix images.”

“Ugh. It’ll blow over. It’s not like I’m tagged personally.”

She looked up as Percy stepped off the elevator and walked towards her.

“Mr. Vaughn wants you in his office now.”

“Aren’t you working on the –”

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“He got a call, said it’s urgent then he cut our meeting short and told me to send you up. Go.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Oh, come on. It’s just a video over coffee. He isn’t going to fire her over that, Percy.” Shelly commented seriously. “Is he?”

A thought occurred to her, “he’s not going to fire me over the video is he? Do I need HR with me?” she asked considering how weird the CEO had been in the elevator and now this video was out it could get odd in the room.

“What video? I don’t know anything about a video. A call came in on the kid. You’re the one riding shotgun with the big guy so he wants you up there stat. Move it. Leave your shit here. You won’t need it. Just get up there.” He looked around at the group. “What is everyone doing standing around? Do we have nothing better to do on this floor?”

She beelined for the elevator grateful it was still there from when Percy exited moments ago. She nervously punched the button to the top floor and saw the entire group of her colleagues watching her as the doors slid closed. Concern etched

all their faces.

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Fiction. If you’re reading this elsewhere it has been stolen from the platform.

She rolled her eyes. Clearly they all thought Wilder Vaughn was going to fire her for getting them unwanted publicity. As if. He probably wanted to apologize for his weird behavior and to discuss the plan to meet with the Wraith Fairchild. Percy had said he wanted to talk about the plan, so it definitely wasn’t going to be about the stupid video.

A hundred thousand views though? She growled angrily at the voice in her head.

“It has to be about the project, not the video. He was meeting with you when the video was circulating, dummy. There is no way he knows of it. Even Percy seemed surprised. This is only about the project and maybe he’ll apologize.”

By the time she got to the door, she was feeling better and was telling herself if he cut short the meeting with Percy then something must have come in about the college kid. Lifting her hand up to knock on the door, she paused when she heard chatter on the other side.

“You can’t all be in here.”

Wilder’s voice serious and frustrated filtered through the closed

door.

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“All?” she wondered. “Who was in the office with him?” She

looked around and noted his assistant was not at their desk and she raised her hand again to knock thinking perhaps the assistant was in his office.

“She is going to freak out if you’re all here.”

Again, his voice, in her opinion, sounded strained and stressed, opposite to everything she thought she knew of the man. She’d been obsessively stalking him on social media, news sites and even the company training videos since she joined the company five years ago as an intern. She was confident she was not the only woman in the building who had rubbed one out to the Wilder Vaughn “Welcome to Vaughn” onboarding video which she kept saved on her laptop. The man was charisma and sex appeal wrapped up in billionaire clothing. Damn it why was she thinking of masturbating to his training videos while she was getting ready to knock on his door?

She schooled her features, took a deep breath and knocked.

The voices on the other side of the door were muffled, rushed and then the sound of feet crossing the floor and the door was flung open wide.

“You’re here.”

“Percy told me I needed to come up now to discuss the plan for Wraith Fairchild.”

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“No. Yes. Come in.”

She stepped into the room and was stunned to see that it wasn’t his administrative assistant in the room but rather it was three people she did not know and who were most assuredly his family. One of them though was staring straight at her and she froze in her steps. Her eyes swung back to Wilder. The two men had identical faces. He was a twin?

“Hi. If I’m intruding I can come back.”

“No way gorgeous,” the twin grinned at her and then looked at his brother. “She’s hot as fuck.”

She blinked at the comment. “Um, this is my workplace?” She looked at Wilder, “is it a twin thing that you’re highly inappropriate to women at work?”

She let her eyes flip between the two men. One in a button–up shirt, suit trousers and shiny black shoes and his hair slicked back without a hair out of place. The other man had shaggy hair which brushed the collar of his leather bomber style jacket, jeans which appeared to have been painted on thick muscular thighs and a pair of black boots she was sure he’d simply slipped his feet into. Twins but somehow she knew they weren’t the kind of twins who lived copycat lives. Why she knew, she did not know but she knew.

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The twin walked to her, his grey eyes focused, his hand extended, “my name is Rafferty Vaughn. I,” his words trailed off as he grabbed her hand and just as it had in the boardroom with Wilder, a golden rope of as energy encircled their hands and a current of electricity sizzled along her arm straight to her heart and time seemed to freeze. “Mate.”

She blinked in horror and then yanked her arm away. “What the hell?” She turned on her heel in an attempt to run to the door. Not again.

“What the fuck?” Wilder’s hiss of rage echoed through the room. “No! How? Why? She is mine!” the roar echoed around the

room.

The other man in the group leaned against the door barring her exit, “sorry Princess but we need you to stay.”

She stared at the man against the door as he tilted his head as if intrigued by her reaction. “What is happening?” she was hyperventilating as she looked over her shoulder at her boss and his brother.

The twins were glowering at each other, chest to chest, puffed up, fury etched on their features and nostrils flared.

“Well, for the first time in eons,” the man against the door gave a laugh, “two men were given one mate.”

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“Not you too? You believe this mate stuff?” she made wide eyes at the man.

He nodded, “not only do I believe it, that lady right over there is my mate. We too have a golden bond. They are quite rare. Most have red or green bonds, but gold is special.”

“Right. Next you’ll be telling me you’re a fairy?” she looked at the large, broad–chested man and he quirked one eyebrow up. “No! This is insane. You’re all insane.”

“Jacqueline, perhaps we should all take a step back and take a breath.” The other woman in the room spoke softly. “Come take a seat. We can work all of this out.”

“Who are you?” her eyes narrowed on the woman cautiously.

“She’s my mom,” Wilder said softly. “Her name is Fawn Vaughn.”

“It rhymes.”

Fawn gave a gentle smile, “it does. My mother thought it charming. I went through a phase where I hated my name. I’ve grown to like it.”

“Well, Mrs. Vaughn, are you a fairy too?”

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She was having some kind of fever dreamed. “That barista laced my coffee. I know she did,” she bit out through clenched teeth to herself. “I’m going to sue her, the coffee shop and the whole damn chain.” She paused, “and whoever took that video too.

Fuckers.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about baristas,” Fawn said gently, “but I do know you are also a fairy, and I think I know exactly who you are. Can you be open minded, Jacqueline or are we going to have you take you back to the palace and make things complicated?”

“I vote for the palace,” Rafferty said with a shrug. “I would prefer to have my mate away from the noise of the city anyway.”

“She was my mate first.”

Fawn moved to stand between the boys, “they never were good at sharing. I don’t envy the rest of your life, child.” Fawn moved closer to Jacqueline and reached for her hands. “I promise I can explain everything. Come sit with me or would you rather we take you home?”

“I can go home?”

“Not your home, Princess. Ours.” The man against the door commented dryly.

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They were going to take her to their home. Holy shit she was going too be kidnapped by crazy people who thought they were fairies.

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