My Billionaire Boss Won't Let Me Quit novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Word

Magda resigns at dawn, throws her stepfather and stepsister out of her friend's building, and learns her boss has filed her resignation in a drawer; he offers a thirty-day marriage with no exit and says he wants her, and when she asks why her, he says not yet.

I wrote my resignation at six in the morning on Kit's couch, still in my gala dress.

I had a cold slice of pizza in my other hand.

It was four lines long.

I sent it to Lucas Gorski, his grandmother and the head of human resources before I could be sensible.

Kit leaned in the kitchen doorway in a Cubs T-shirt, with her red hair standing straight up.

"There's a clip of you kissing him," she said.

"It has four million views, and somebody put a drumroll on it."

I didn't need to watch it.

"I'm not marrying my boss," I said.

"Nobody asked you to marry your boss."

"His grandmother did.

"By Friday."

Kit took the pizza out of my hand.

"Is he a good kisser?"

"That is not the point."

"So yes."

Three hard knocks hit the apartment door.

I knew those knocks.

Kit looked at me.

"That's a man who bills by the hour," she said.

It was my stepfather.

Bogdan Kruszewski stood in the hall in a golf shirt, with a folder under his arm and his daughter behind him.

Clara had changed into a cream blazer and redone her lipstick.

She looked at my dress and smiled.

"Walk of shame," she said.

"Magda, sweetheart," Bogdan said, in the voice he used on waiters.

"It's about your mother's house."

That stopped me.

Joan Dombrowski left that house to me, with one rule in her will.

Bogdan could live there as long as he wanted, and nobody could sell it from under him or me.

I had spent four years letting him.

"There's a buyer," Bogdan said, and pulled a paper from the folder.

"You sign here, we split it seventy-thirty.

"Seventy for me, thirty for you."

"Dad, she's about to be famous," Clara said.

"She doesn't need the money."

She held up her phone.

The headline read: THE CEO AND THE MAID'S DAUGHTER.

"My mother was a head housekeeper for fourteen years," I said.

"She cleaned toilets," Clara said.

"Sign, Magda, or I tell everyone how you got into that building."

Nobody on that landing was whispering.

Kit's neighbor had opened her door with a coffee mug.

Two guys from the second floor stood on the stairs holding their laundry.

I took the paper from Bogdan and tore it in half, and then in half again.

"You're standing in a public hallway," I said, "in front of six witnesses, telling me to sign away my mother's house.

"Clara, you just called her a toilet cleaner.

"I'd like you both to leave."

"You can't talk to me like that," Bogdan said.

"You live in my house," I said.

"Be careful."

Kit stepped into the doorway beside me with her phone raised.

"I'm filming," she said brightly.

Bogdan looked at the mugs and the laundry and the phone.

Then he took his daughter's elbow and walked down the stairs.

The street door banged.

My hands were shaking.

Kit hugged me hard.

"I would marry that man just for the coffee," she said, into my shoulder.

"What coffee?"

She pointed over my head.

Lucas Gorski stood three steps from the door with a cardboard tray in each hand.

He wore a gray sweater instead of a suit, and I hadn't known he owned one.

"I was early," he said.

"I heard most of that."

I took a cup because I didn't know what else to do.

It was my order, with the extra shot.

I had never told him my order.

"I got your email," he said.

"I'm not accepting it."

"You can't refuse a resignation."

"Your contract has a ninety-day notice period," he said.

"I read it again at five this morning.

"Human resources has been told to file your email in a drawer."

"That's insane."

"It's a Gorski drawer," he said.

"Nothing comes out of it unless I open it."

Kit went to find a sweatshirt she didn't need.

Lucas stayed standing, which I had learned was how he looked when he was nervous.

It was also how he looked when he had already decided.

"Here's what's true," he said.

"I need to be married by Friday, or I lose the chair.

"The man who takes it would sell the hotels for parts.

"You need the story to stop.

"It's thirty days.

"At the end, we say we tried."

"No," I said.

"All right."

"I mean, not like that."

I took a pen from the coffee table and turned a napkin over on my knee.

"First.

"On day thirty I walk, and you sign every letter I've ever written."

"Day thirty," he said.

"Not before."

"I want a way out before."

"No."

"Lucas."

"You'll have it on day thirty," he said, "with my signature, if you still want it.

"Until then you work for me, you live with me, and you don't quit."

I should have walked out.

Instead I heard myself ask, "And second?"

"Second," he said, and took the pen.

"I'm not going to pretend this is only paper.

"I want you.

"I wanted you before you grabbed my lapels.

"If you want me back, you'll say so, and I'll be a real husband in every way there is.

"If you don't, I'll wait."

My face went hot to the roots of my hair.

I thought of the kiss, and of his hand at the back of my head.

"That's not a clause," I said.

"It's the only one I care about."

He wrote it at the bottom in neat block letters.

HUSBAND AND WIFE. WHEN SHE SAYS.

"Third," I said, because my voice needed something to do.

"When I ask you a question, you tell me the truth."

He looked at the napkin for a long moment.

Then he wrote under it.

TRUTH, OR "NOT YET." NEVER A LIE.

"Why that?" I asked.

"Because there is one thing I can't tell you today," he said.

"And I won't lie to you about it."

I should have said no.

Six years of reading what people leave out had taught me what a sentence like that was.

But he had said it plainly, and he had looked at me the whole time.

"Then answer this one," I said.

"Why me?"

Lucas held my gaze.

"Not yet," he said.

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