Blame It on the Billionaire

By Naima Simone

One night in a blackout leads to a fake engagement between an assistant and her boss in this Blackout Billionaires novel by USA TODAY bestselling author Naima Simone.

Executive assistant Nadia Jordan has long had a secret crush on CEO Grayson Chandler, but the start-up billionaire doesn’t even know she exists. When she falls into his arms at the Du Sable Gala, and the lights go out in a citywide blackout, one kiss leads to a night of soul-stealing passion. And what happens in the dark never stays in the dark...

Because Grayson sees his chance to evade his matchmaking mother by making a proposal Nadia can’t refuse—she’ll be his fake fiancée! As she steps into Grayson’s privileged Chicago world, will his mother and vengeful ex destroy her dreams? Or will her fake fiancé make those dreams a reality?

From Harlequin Desire: Luxury, scandal, desire—welcome to the lives of the American elite.

Don’t miss a single Blackout Billionaires novel!
Book 1 — The Billionaire’s Bargain
Book 2 — Black Tie Billionaire
Book 3 — Blame It on the Billionaire

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harlequin Desire
• Release date: Feb 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781488062698

Naima Simone

USA TODAY bestselling author Naima Simone writes romance with heart, humor and heat. Her books have been featured in The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly, and described as balancing “crackling, electric love scenes with exquisitely rendered characters caught in emotional turmoil.” She is wife to Superman, and mom to the most awesome kids ever. They live in perfect, domestically challenged bliss in the southern US.

Book preview

One

Honor thy mother and father.

Grayson Chandler smothered a sigh. With all due respect to Moses, but if he’d been stuck listening to Grayson’s mother nag on and on and about his lack of duty, loyalty and wife, the prophet might’ve asked God to nail down the specifics on that commandment.

Swearing. Out.

Muzzling. Out.

Faking a coronary episode to avoid her complaining. Gray area.

For a moment, a flicker of guilt wavered in Grayson’s chest. But at the moment, he was caught in his mother’s crosshairs. Pit bulls with lockjaw had nothing on Cherise Chandler. She didn’t let go of something—whether it was a project, a subject or a grudge—until she was done with it.

Which didn’t bode well for him.

He was thirty years old and president of KayCee Corp, one of the most successful global tech start-up companies in the country and he hadn’t been a child to be controlled long before he left his parents’ house. For years, he’d answered only to himself, owed no one else explanations or justifications.

Yet none of that mattered when it came to the crystal blue gaze that could make him feel like the little boy who’d been busted hiding a stray dog under his bed for a week.

Hell.

Parental guilt trips were a bitch.

Grayson, your stubbornness is becoming ridiculous, his mother said, a note of irritation in her voice. She shifted closer and a small frown marred her brow. "You’ve proven your point with this little business venture of yours and Gideon Knight’s. But your father needs you now, your family needs you. It’s time to stop playing at CEO, step up and take your place at Chandler International. It’s your responsibility. Your duty."

He clenched his jaw, trapping the vitriolic stream of words that scalded his throat. This little business venture. Time to stop playing. As if striking out on his own without the emotional or financial support of his Chicago old-money, well-connected family was the equivalent of a rousing game of Monopoly. With those few words, she’d dismissed years of his and Gideon’s hard work, relentless determination and resulting success.

He should’ve been used to this casual disregard. Of his accomplishments. Of him. As the second son, the oops baby of Daryl and Cherise Chandler, he’d been an afterthought from birth. But somehow, his skin had never grown that thick.

Another black mark in the Why Grayson Isn’t Jason Chandler Column. Right under rebellious. Selfish. And disloyal.

Didn’t matter that he’d had a hand in founding a tech platform that served major businesses and assisted them in tracking their shares with its unrivaled software. Didn’t matter that his business was one of the most successful start-ups to hit the financial scene in the last five years.

None of it mattered because it wasn’t Chandler International.

Dammit.

Grayson shoved his hands in his tuxedo pockets and glanced away from his mother’s scrutiny. Guilt and shame knotted his gut.

He was throwing a pity party, but at least he was alive.

Jason couldn’t say the same.

And because his mother had lost her son—her favorite son—Grayson imprisoned the sharp retort that weighed down his tongue.

I take my position at and ownership of KayCee Corp as seriously as Dad does with Chandler. I also understand my obligation to our family. But as I’ve told both of you, my company is my legacy just as Chandler is Dad’s.

Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Grayson. It’s not the same—

Mother, he interrupted, voice cold. Now isn’t the place or time for this conversation.

She parted her lips, but after a second snapped them closed. Oh yes. Only proper decorum and being potential fodder for gossip trumped getting in the last word.

Cherise, it’s so wonderful to see you again, a feminine voice intruded.

The pleasant, soft tone shouldn’t have scraped him raw, leaving an oily slide of disgust. He didn’t need to glance behind him to identify the woman. He’d be able to identify that dulcet tone, that light floral scent anywhere.

Identify it, then crucify it.

Adalyn, his mother crooned, a smile erasing her frown as she moved toward Adalyn Hayes with outstretched arms. Don’t you look beautiful?

Grayson shifted to the side, studying his mother as she warmly embraced his ex-girlfriend. The woman who’d almost become Mrs. Grayson Chandler.

The woman who’d stabbed him so deeply in the back he still had phantom pains from the scar a year and a half later.

She hadn’t changed at all. Still stunningly beautiful with oval-shaped green eyes, delicate features, pretty mouth and long sleek hair as dark as a raven’s wing—or as dark as her heart. A midnight blue gown that glittered as if stars had been sewn into it clung to her small breasts and willowy frame before flowing over slender hips to pool around her feet.

No, she hadn’t changed a bit. But he had.

That beauty no longer stirred desire inside him. Those embers had long turned to dust, incapable of being lit ever again.

Grayson, Adalyn purred, turning to him and linking her arm through his mother’s. I didn’t know you would be attending the gala this year. It’s wonderful seeing you.

Hello, Adalyn.

Damn if he’d lie just for the sake of pleasantries.

I’ve missed you, she murmured as if his mother had disappeared and just the two of them existed in the crowded ballroom of the North Shore mansion. We need to get together for dinner and catch up with one another.

I love that idea, his mother chimed in, patting Adalyn’s hand. We’ve missed you, too. I was planning a dinner party for next week. You and your parents are invited. I’ll call your mother to officially issue the invitation.

The conversation sounded benign, but something seemed...off. Too jovial. Too neat.

Too false.

Matchmaking, Mother? he asked, infusing a boredom into his tone that didn’t reflect the cacophony of distaste and rage roiling inside him like a noxious cloud. You don’t think this is a little beneath you?

Not when you insist on flitting from woman to woman, behaving like a male whore, she snapped, and no, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words.

Manwhore. Playboy. Embarrassment. But again, that damn not-so-thick skin. The barbed insult pricked him like the cockleburs that would sting his fingers when he visited his grandmother’s horse farm as a child. Back then, he’d plucked them off and rubbed away the nip of pain. Now, with his ex a witness to his mother’s disdain, those nips drew blood.

Deliberately curling his lips into a mocking smirk, he bowed slightly at the waist. Thank you, Mother. Now tell me what you really think because I sense you’re holding back.

She scoffed, returning her attention to Adalyn who watched him with a gleam in her eyes. A gleam that heralded trouble. For him.

You’re thirty years old and it’s time to put away such childish behavior. The future CEO of Chandler International needs a good woman by his side supporting him. The board will not endorse or accept a man whose name and picture ends up on those dirty little gossip websites as often as the business section.

He stiffened. The smile he gave his mother was brittle, felt close to cracking right down the middle.

Well then I guess it’s a good thing I don’t intend to be the future CEO of Chandler International. Which makes the board and my love life nonissues. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see several people I need to speak with. Bending his head, he brushed a kiss over his mother’s cheek. Mother. Adalyn.

Without waiting for the diatribe about his rudeness, he pivoted and strode away from the two women, the noose that had slowly been tightening around his neck loosening with each step.

He should’ve seen this coming. His mother had been less than subtle about her wishes for him to settle down and marry. Especially in the last six months.

Since Jason had died.

The thought of his brother lanced him through the chest, a hot poker that hadn’t cooled in the time since his death. With a thirteen-year age difference and the knowledge that Jason was the favorite between them, they hadn’t been close. But Grayson had loved his older brother, respected him. And the tragic randomness of a brain aneurysm had only made Jason’s death harder to accept.

But Grayson hadn’t had time to grieve before his parents had started pressuring him to leave the business he’d created and return to the family company. The Chandlers were American royalty, and with the heir now gone, the spare had to step up and perform his duty. Which meant helming Chandler International and, according to his mother, committing himself to a woman from a respectable background.

The knot that had started to relax around his throat tightened again, and he jerked at his bow tie. God, the thought of being back under his father’s thumb, having to answer to Daryl Chandler and the board full of men just like him... Of having his independence stripped from him... Of having to live by the constricting rules that governed being a Chandler, one of Chicago’s oldest and wealthiest families...

He was already suffocating.

Fuck, he needed air.

Charging across the ballroom, he didn’t stop until he exited the cavernous space filled with the glitterati of Chicago. They were supposed to be his friends, his business contacts, his people.

And all he wanted was to escape.

Escape them all.

Two

The last place Nadia Jordan belonged was this gorgeous North Shore mansion that wouldn’t have been out of place in the French countryside. And as the security guard skimmed a glance over her dark brown hair that no doubt looked like she’d been dragging her fingers through it—because she had been—and down her leather jacket and faded jeans to her tennis shoes, he no doubt agreed.

But in her defense, it was a Saturday night, and she’d been on her way back home from one of her brother’s travel league baseball games when she’d received the emergency call from her supervisor that had brought her here. As the older sister and guardian to a teenage boy, her idea of an emergency included a hospital, an asthma attack or broken limbs. But obviously she and her boss, the vice president of operations with KayCee Corp, had very different ideas of what constituted a crisis. His involved a high society gala, a white tuxedo shirt and spilled shrimp cocktail.

When she’d received the call, she’d wanted to tell him she was off the clock. He could button up his jacket for the rest of the night. But being a rural transplant from Tatumville, Georgia—and yes, it was as small as it sounded—she’d been lucky to land the job in Chicago as secretary in one of the country’s hottest tech firms. And with a brother who was involved in every extracurricular activity his new high school had to offer, as well as his college tuition bills on the very near horizon, she literally couldn’t afford to say no to her supervisor’s sometimes wacky requests.

Being a secretary hadn’t been her dream job. Nursing held that honor. But leaving for school and entrusting her brother to her mother’s seriously lacking maternal care hadn’t been an option. Nadia had cared for Ezra since their mother had come home from the hospital with him, even though Nadia had only been seven. Sacrificing for him so he could have a stable home and a chance at a successful future hadn’t been a hardship. She would do anything to ensure he had the opportunities she hadn’t.

Which explained why she stood in the foyer of an ostentatious mansion, holding a garment bag with a clean dress shirt, waiting for a black-suited security guard to grant her entrance.

Ma’am, your name isn’t on the guest list, he informed her, scanning the screen of the tablet he held.

She fought not to roll her eyes. No shit, Sherlock. She belonged in a world with linoleum and mass-produced light fixtures. Definitely not this alternate universe with gold and marble tiles and mammoth crystal chandeliers. I know. My supervisor, Mr. Terrance Webber, is the guest. I’m his secretary, and he asked me to bring an item by for him. She held up the garment bag, silently explaining the something.

He assured me he would leave a note with security so I could bring this to him. I shouldn’t be long at all.

A moment, please.

Sure. She forced her lips into a smile, when she really wanted to lament the fact that she could be curled up on her living room couch, covered from chin to toe with an afghan, settling in for an evening of campy B horror movies.

Several moments passed as the guard spoke into a headpiece, and she tried not to gawk at the over-the-top evidence of wealth surrounding her. A gilded staircase that could’ve graced any classic Hollywood movie set curved to a second level. Paintings that appeared old, and therefore expensive, were mounted on the walls and a huge fireplace inlaid with more gold damn near covered a far wall.

So this was how the one percent lived.

Enlightening.

And intimidating as hell.

Finally, the guard ended his conversation and glanced down at her.

Mr. Webber is currently in the first men’s room in the east wing. He instructed you to meet him there. He turned and pointed toward the rear of the foyer and a corridor that branched off to the right. If you’ll follow that hall to the end, make another right. The men’s restroom is the last door on the left.

Thank you.

Relief poured through her as she marched forward, ready to have her errand done so she could return to real life. Which didn’t include this uncomfortable tumbling in her stomach.

Well, her life in Chicago didn’t include it. In Tatumville, she’d been intimate with this feeling—this sense of not belonging, of not being worthy. When you were the daughter of the town Jezebel, who was also a drunk, people tended to stuff you in the won’t amount to much box. But when Nadia and Ezra left her hometown and started over in Chicago, she’d vowed never to let anything, or anyone, make her feel that insignificant again.

The music drifted away until she could barely hear it as she traveled down the hall. Her cell phone buzzed in her jeans pocket, and she paused to fish it out. A grimace crossed her face as she read the text.

Terrance Webber: Where are you, Nadia? I need the shirt ASAP. They’re about to serve dinner.

Inhaling a deep breath, she held it for several seconds, then slowly released it. Being snippy with the boss was a definite no-no.

Nadia: I just arrived. I’ll be at the restroom in a minute.

She typed the reply and started walking, tucking the phone in her back pocket. The sooner she got this over with the bet—

Oof.

The air barreled out of her lungs as she slammed into the wall that had just sprung up in the middle of the corridor. She stumbled back several steps, and the garment bag tumbled from her fingers. Big, strong hands gripped her forearms, steadying her before she could follow Mr. Webber’s shirt to the floor.

Thank you. I’m sorry about...that...

Her words dried up on her tongue as she met a unique gaze. Heterochromia, it was called. She’d looked it up soon after starting her job. One vivid, sky blue eye, and one forest green. Startling and beautiful. And only one man she knew possessed it.

Grayson Chandler. President of KayCee Corp. Her employer.

And the man she’d been secretly lusting after for over a year.

Oh, God. Surely You couldn’t be so cruel.

But as Grayson cocked his head to the side and skimmed his gaze from her face, down her body and back up, she had to admit that yes, indeed, God might have a mean streak. Otherwise, why else would He allow her to come face-to-face with this beautiful man while she looked like something that had been dragged over home plate a couple of times?

He bent down and snagged the forgotten garment bag from the floor. Standing, he offered it to her, a smile