The Billionaire Boss Next Door(7)

“I feel like you might have exaggerated a bit there…”

“Nah.” I grin and shake my head. “I’m pretty sure that’s what you said.”

Emory rolls her eyes and laughs at the same time. “I’ll see you tonight at the party.”

She departs without another word—probably in an effort to avoid another smartass comeback or impromptu jazz hands—and leaves me to my own devices.

Once she’s gone, the interior designer in me kicks in, and my surroundings become my companion.

And let me tell you, she’s a real bitch.

The lobby is ostentatious in its design, and I’m practically offended by the maroon and green color scheme. Honestly, even Santa Claus would be offended, and that jolly mothershucker is all about the green and red.

The décor is more pretentious confusion than anything else. And if I have to come face-to-face with one more gilded sailboat painting or ornate statue, I swear on everything, I might puke.

Jesus. These people are never going to want me to do the design work for their New Orleans hotel. We have completely different tastes.

My style is what the design world would call comfortable minimalism. Not minimalism like Kim and Kanye’s morgue-like mansion, but warm light, rich textures, and clean lines. My designs revolve around making a space feel light and airy yet so warm and cozy you feel like you’re cocooned inside of a womb.

A space you not only want to look at, but you want to live in, be in, thrive in, too.

But this? This flashy and ostentatious gilded-clutter of a design scheme is giving me a headache.

If this space is a womb, I’m smack-dab in the center of Satan’s uterus.

Discouraged again, I head for the elevator, intent on ordering a hamburger the size of my face and devouring it like the classy lady I am—wearing nothing but a bathrobe while lounging in bed, mind you—when I get to my room.

When the elevator door opens, I step inside and turn around, only to realize I’ve been followed in by what must be a supermodel convention.

The five women are tall, slender, and artfully put together. Sexy heels. Sexy dresses. Perfect hair. Perfect nails. Perfect lashes and lips. They are ready to do it up New Year’s Eve-style in New York City.

And standing beside them is me—a woman wearing wrinkled clothes, who stinks of airplanes and bad news.

I’m basically the cover model for pathetic right now.

And it’s that bleak thought that sparks something inside of me.

Emory’s right.

If I have any chance of going into that interview in two days with an attitude even slightly better than the Grim Reaper, I need to shake it up.

Make different choices. Get some endorphins or whatever shit Elle Woods has, and give myself a chance to turn it around.

I have tonight and all day tomorrow to get myself in order. Get my mind right. Get my confidence up.

In terms of time, it’s not a lot.

You better get your ass in gear, girlfriend.

The elevator slows to a stop and announces its arrival at the twentieth floor, and I move past the flawless women, out of the cart, and toward my hotel room without looking back.

This isn’t a time to dwell; it’s a time to take action.

And my first New York action? Throw on some workout gear, figure out where in the hell the hotel gym is located, and get some damn endorphins all up in my bloodstream.

You got this, Greer.




It only takes five minutes inside the hotel gym to realize why my original plan was to eat a hamburger in bed.

I do not got this.

I’m not good at working out, I’ve never been good at working out, and I’ll never be good at working out.

I don’t know what to do with the equipment, and it doesn’t know what to do with me.

Clearly, it’s been designed for people with half a foot more height and fifty percent more muscle, and even on the lowest of settings, I fumble my way through biceps curls like an uncoordinated inchworm.

I can barely reach the handles, so I have to kind of stoop to get in position, but the newly formed curve of my spine makes me have to arch and wiggle to complete the curl. If it weren’t for my kick-ass Metallica T-shirt, I might start to worry that I look foolish.

The ten-pound weight clanks as I drop it the inch and a half I managed to lift it in the first place, and I stand up to find a different machine. Surely there’s something in here I can operate without having a special license.

I find some kind of seated thing with weights on one end and a padded face rest on the other. I sit, lay my face down, and attempt to slide my legs underneath the weighted bar. But it’s completely awkward and uncomfortable, and I start questioning what in the fuck this thing is even supposed to do.

Just before I give up completely, a throat clears deeply beside me, and I look up to see a far too muscular man staring down at me in confusion. “Uh…wow…I didn’t realize you could use it that way…”

Huh?

I nearly ask him what he’s talking about, but his actions answer any and all questions I might have.

He sits down on the machine beside mine—an identical machine to mine—and it’s then I realize the face rest is not a face rest.

It’s a seat. For asses.

A seat for sweaty, workout asses.

Jesus Christ. I shudder and disentangle myself from the machine.