You've got the job, kid.
Chapter 2
The following morning…
Roisin Fitzgerald sucked in a stunned breath as she stepped off the private elevator into the penthouse of the ornate, gothic edifice above Fifth Avenue.
Wow! Roisin, you've finally hit the big time. Now, don't muck it up.
Her stomach, still bouncing from the quicksilver ride up twenty-three stories, tangled with the nerves that had settled in yesterday after the call from Brett Charles at Morgan-King Enterprises.
You've got the job, kid. You start at eight. If you don't get the can your first day you get a $500 bonus.
It was four months since she'd arrived from Connemara, and having struggled almost as long to survive as a waitress/short-order cook/call center operator/mailroom girl and general jill-of-all-and-any-trades, she'd been about to head back to Ireland, an abject failure, when the agency had sent her to interview for this job. And she'd hit the mother lode.
She��d moved into the apartment downstairs half an hour ago, her packed rucksack looking very low-rent in the luxury two-bedroom space.
Maybe Mr. Charles had been kidding about the bonus—the COO had seemed much less stiff and formal than she'd expected. And after she'd signed an NDA, his instructions had been pretty sketchy too.
Nate needs a friend. If you can get him to eat a cooked meal every day and dynamite him out of that apartment, there's an extra five grand in it for you.
She stepped into the main living area, and her lungs squeezed again at the staggering panoramic view.
The boating lake stretched across Central Park to the Upper West Side in the distance, while the clean white curves of the Guggenheim dazzled in the summer sunshine just below them.
The room was sparsely furnished with signature designer pieces. But it seemed cold and empty to her. And there was no sign of its sole inhabitant.
Nathaniel King.
The billionaire recluse, who hadn't left his penthouse—as far as anyone knew—since he had returned from Italy. Her heart swelled into her throat.
She knew who King was of course. Everyone had seen the horrendous pictures of him, emaciated and exhausted, his long golden hair and heavy beard matted, after the SWAT team had dragged him out of a farmhouse cellar in La Marche in Northern Italy.
She'd read up on him last night on the internet after Mr. Charles's call and studied the pictures she'd found of him on the web before his kidnapping…
Heat glowed in her cheeks and throbbed in her abdomen, mortifying her.
Sheesh, Roisin, you need to get that reaction under control ASAP.
In the photos of him after his rescue, he had been unrecognizable from the strikingly handsome man who had gone missing six months before and had been presumed dead for almost as long.
She turned away from the staggering view. Time to stop gawping and get to work before he appeared. She had to make a good first impression.
The nerves subsided as she placed the loaded grocery bag in her arms on the marble kitchen counter. She unpacked the supplies she'd picked up at a gourmet market on Columbus Circle to cook her mammy's famous oatmeal pancakes.
After fixing the batter and hulling the strawberries, she whipped some heavy cream and placed the lot in a fridge the size of a meat locker. But there was still no sign of her employer.
Perhaps she should go find him and introduce herself? She certainly didn't want to surprise him, because that could get awkward.
She knew the bedrooms were on the top floor of the three-level penthouse. Entertaining and office space and a personal gym were on the middle floor. And there was a roof garden on top.
Taking the wide, sweeping staircase, which curled up the middle of the building, she headed toward the roof, but as she passed the top floor, a harrowing cry ripped through the stillness. Her heart punched her ribs.
What was that, now? It didn't sound like a person, the pitiful noise more like that of a trapped animal.
For a terrifying second, she hesitated.
But then the cry came again, jolting her out of her uncertainty. She raced down the hallway toward the heartrending sound.