Page 4 of Billionaire In Vegas

She had a point but I wasn’t going to tell her, and then she sweetened the deal. “I heard he gives bonuses.”

I kept my expression as impassive as I could before saying, “Oh really? Cash bonuses?”

“His previous personal assistant made an extra five thousand a month on top of their salary.”

“Five thousand dollars?”

Kadija nodded, now looking smug. “So are you in? If so, I can arrange a meeting later today.”

“That would be great,” I said, relenting. Beggars can’t be choosy, as my aunt would say, and hey, I needed the money.

Kadija clapped her hands together like a gleeful toddler and thanked me. She then slid a card over to me. I took it curiously and realized that it was a hand-written card with an address and a code on it.

“What’s this?”

“Mr. Foster’s address and security code. He’s expecting you.”

I still felt a little hesitant, but then I thought back to my bus ride to the temp office. There’d been a guy on there who kept insisting on singing to me. And when I’d blatantly ignored him, he had tried to spit shine my shoe. Or at least, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was trying to shine my shoes and not necessarily trying to spit on me. Yeah, I needed a new car. I needed Mr. Foster’s money.

Kadija was nice enough to call me a taxi and less than thirty minutes later, we pulled up in front of Mr. Foster’s estate. There was a security guard out front who beckoned for us to pull up.

He lowered himself to our line of vision and said through the window, “Are you Miss Cabbage?”

“Cabot,” I corrected tightly, blushing ever so slightly. I didn’t think my last name was that difficult to pronounce.

He gave a self-deprecating laugh and shook his head. He scratched at his long beard and said with a little smile, “Sorry about that Miss Cabot. I’m terrible with names. I have two daughters and I mix them up all the time! And their names sound nothing alike.”

I smiled slightly at his attempt to be friendly and told myself to stop being so uptight. “It’s okay. It happens.”

He then surprised me saying, “Miss Cabot, ummm cars aren’t allowed on the property. You’ll need to walk to the entrance.”

“Walk?” I said looking down dubiously at my feet. I wasn’t exactly wearing walking shoes.

The security guard looked apologetic as he opened the door for me and I slid out. I paid the driver who watched the entire exchange wordlessly before driving off.

“How far away is the actual estate?” I said unable to tell since the large gate was covered in ivy and I couldn’t see through the bars to the house on the opposite side.

“About half a mile,” the guard said, and my mouth fell open.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I mumbled. I wasn’t the athletic type. My idea of working out was lifting a spoon full of ice cream to my face to shove into my mouth. I was lucky I had skinny genes, because I was a lazy glutton to be completely honest.

“Maybe it’s only a quarter mile—”

“That doesn’t sound much better.”

“Okay. Well, it’s definitely less than ten minutes.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Could be worse,” the guard said with a smile. He then walked to his little office and hit a button, the gate opened and suddenly I felt nervous. What was I getting myself into?

“Just follow the path straight up... you can’t miss it.”

“Sure. Great. Thanks, ummm—” I realized then that I hadn’t asked his name.

“It’s Peter. Peter Nguyen. You can call me Pete. Everyone does.”

“Nice to meet you, Pete. And please, call me Lacey.”