One Fateful Night with My Boss novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Dad
On Francine's first morning as assistant to the new CEO, her son points across the lobby and calls him Dad; Nelson looks at the boy's face and then says he waited until noon.
"Dad!"
Percy's voice carried across the lobby of Holloway Group, and about forty people stopped walking.
I was holding his backpack in one hand and my brand-new visitor badge in the other.
It was 8:41 on my first morning as the CEO's assistant.
His daycare had flooded overnight, my sitter had the flu, and I had promised him we would be in and out in ten minutes.
He was pointing across the marble at a man in a charcoal suit by the elevators.
The man had dark hair and grey eyes, and he had turned at the word.
Then he saw my son's face, and he stopped being anyone.
"Percy," I said quietly. "Come here, baby."
"Mom, that's him," Percy said, and he pulled out of my grip.
"You said he had grey eyes like mine. You said his name was Nelson."
I had said that once, at bedtime, when Percy was three and asked the question for the first time.
I had never expected him to remember it.
The man by the elevators did not move.
The two executives beside him looked at the boy, then at him, then at me.
A woman in a cream suit stepped out from behind them with a tablet held against her chest.
She had a sleek blonde bob and a face that had decided what it thought before it saw anything.
"Who let a child into the lobby?" she said.
Nobody answered her.
"Security," she said, louder. "And whoever this is, she can wait outside."
"I'm Francine Kessing," I said. "I start at nine, as Mr. Holloway's assistant."
I had read the name on the offer letter forty times, and I had never once pictured his face.
The woman looked me up and down, slowly.
"The assistant," she said. "On her first day, with a prop."
A few people laughed, the nervous kind.
"He is not a prop," I said.
"He's a very convenient age to be a surprise, though."
She smiled at the room when she said it.
Percy's grip on my sleeve tightened, because he knows what that tone is.
I set the visitor badge on the front desk, very carefully.
Then I picked up my son, and I walked straight across forty feet of marble toward the man by the elevators.
Every head turned with me.
"Mr. Holloway," I said. "I'm sorry for the noise."
"He's five. He heard a name once, and he got it wrong."
I could feel my heart in my ears, but my voice stayed level, and I was proud of that.
"It won't happen again."
Nelson Holloway was looking at Percy and not at me.
His eyes went to the dark hair, then to the chin.
Then they went to the left cheek, where my son's dimple hid because he was too nervous to smile.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Percy Kessing," Percy said. "I'm five and a quarter."
"When's your birthday, Percy?"
"June ninth. I'm going to have a dog."
Nelson's lips moved without a sound.
He was counting backward, and I knew exactly when he reached the end.
The color left his face all at once.
"Mr. Holloway," the woman in the cream suit said, with her tablet already out. "Security is on its way, and I'll handle her."
"No," Nelson said.
It was one word, very quiet, and she stopped.
"Nelson, she's a stranger. You can't possibly..."
"Brooke."
He still had not looked away from Percy.
"Cancel security."
The lobby was so silent I could hear the elevator doors close behind him.
I should have been terrified.
I had two months of rent in the bank and nothing else.
I had just started a fight with the most powerful person on the fourteenth floor.
But I had walked out of worse rooms than this one with less.
"I start at nine," I told him. "It's eight forty-seven."
"I'm going to take my son to the break room, and at nine I will be at my desk."
"Unless you'd like to fire me in front of your lobby, which is your right."
Nobody breathed.
Nelson finally lifted his eyes to mine.
They were the same grey as Percy's, and I had spent six years trying not to remember that.
He knew me.
I watched it happen, a half second of plain shock.
"Francine," he said, very low, so that only I could hear.
"I waited until noon."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend