Semua Bab My New Boss Is the Man I Had a One-Night Stand With: Bab 1 - Bab 10

Three years later."Breakfast! Now or never!"Sloane set the last of the six bottles on the kitchen table, stepped back, and braced herself.The bedroom door exploded open.Six children hit the hallway at full sprint, a stampede of tiny feet and shrieking voices, and Sloane had approximately two seconds to regret every decision she'd ever made before they were on her."Mom—""Mama—""I got here first—""That's my seat—"Dash, her smallest and most dramatically inclined, launched himself at her hip, missed, and rolled three full rotations across the kitchen tile. He came to rest against the cabinet, blinked at the ceiling, and looked deeply betrayed by physics.Meanwhile, Cole and Cassidy had claimed her arms. The twins — Jax and Juliet — were wrapped around her midsection like barnacles, and little Ava had planted herself directly on Sloane's left foot and was riding it like a parade float.Five babies hanging off her body. One on the floor questioning his life choices. Sloane stood i

The second the revolving doors of PIERCE Tower spat her back onto the sidewalk, Sloane tipped her head toward the gray Chicago sky and let out a breath that was one syllable away from a scream.What have I done?She'd just accepted a job — been hand-picked — by the man whose DNA her six children were currently running around her apartment on. The most powerful CEO in Illinois. The stranger from the elevator she had spent three years convincing herself she would never see again.Okay. She gripped her portfolio and started walking. Don't panic. Think.Could she call tomorrow and decline? She could say the commute was too far. Say she'd received another offer. Say literally anything that wasn't I cannot work twenty feet from you because together we accidentally created a set of sextuplets and I'd very much like to keep that information on a need-to-know basis forever.She was so deep in her own head that she almost walked past it.Almost.The shouting cut through the Loop noise like a bl

Nobody warned Sloane that the front desk job would slowly murder her feet.Six hours in. Heels on. Smile locked. Spine straight. Stella — the bright-eyed receptionist who'd been stationed beside her all morning — had rattled through the unofficial orientation with the cheerful efficiency of someone who had long ago made peace with standing eight hours a day.Answer before the third ring. Mr. Pierce's calls go straight up, no screening. If someone doesn't have an appointment and looks like trouble, they probably are.Sloane had nodded through all of it, cataloguing every detail, because this job was temporary and that was fine and everything was absolutely fine and she was not going to think about the fact that somewhere above her, forty-two floors up, the father of her children was probably sitting behind a desk the size of a small country.She was doing great.At 11:47, the energy in the lobby changed.It was subtle at first — a sharpening in the air, like the pressure drop before a

Marcus Holt's face went the color of a stop sign."Excuse me?" The word came out strangled, like she'd physically reached into his chest and squeezed.Sloane held her ground. Chin up. Heart hammering. Every survival instinct she owned was screaming at her to backpedal, apologize, smooth it over — and she ignored every single one."You heard me," she said quietly.Then someone laughed.Not a polite, muffled laugh. A real one — short, sharp, involuntary. Like it had escaped before the owner could stop it.Marcus spun toward the sound, fury already reshaping his face into something ugly. "Who the—"He stopped.The color drained out of him so fast Sloane could actually watch it happen.She turned.Declan Pierce stood at the far end of the corridor.He hadn't made a sound. Hadn't announced himself. He was simply there — tall and dark and devastatingly still, one hand loo

He was still there.Every single executive had filed out. Kai had closed his laptop and gone. The room had emptied the way rooms do when powerful people have somewhere more important to be.But Declan Pierce hadn't moved.He sat at the head of that long mahogany table — perfectly still, perfectly composed — and those black eyes were locked on Sloane like she was the only thing in the room worth looking at.Her pulse went haywire.Why is he still here? Why is he looking at me like that? What does he want?She gripped the presentation remote so tightly the plastic edges cut into her palm. She was staff. She was invisible. She was supposed to be furniture, and furniture did not get looked at like this — like it was something he recognized. Something he'd been turning over in his mind for a very long time."Close the door." His voice dropped into the silence like a stone into still water — low, ma