Innocent 7: Katrina: The League of Worldly Wise Innocents, #7

By L. A. Zoe

Katrina falls for her rich, blond Viking boss.

After spending four years of her life getting a degree in Ancient Languages, she just wants a job. She doesn't expect Bronson the CEO of Cromwell eCOM Champions to fall for her brain.

Nor did she expect him to overwhelm her with his masculinity.

She doesn't have time for love and romance. She needs money, fast.

As Bronson teaches her online marketing, Katrina realizes a dark family secret drives his compulsive ambition.

Only she can heal him.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Love Conquers All Press
• Release date: Dec 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386139225

Book preview

Chapter One

The Job Interview

MR. GREYTHORNE SAT on the edge of his chair as though on the saddle of a war steed, just waiting to see the whites of Katrina’s eyes before charging, waving his war ax.

I am most intrigued, he told her, staring at the computer screen which presumably displayed Katrina’s resume. Summa cum laude, majoring in Ancient Languages. So, when I say something is Greek to me, you’ll understand it.

Despite the outside heat, the air conditioning ran super cool, and carried the aroma of a powerful but soothing essential oil. Lavender.

Only if it really is Greek, she said, thinking she just ought to leave, stop wasting her time and his. And ancient Greek at that.

His bright blue eyes flashed with delight. Not bad. Any others?

Katrina Manchester came prepared to interview with a typical HR manager. She wore her best navy blue business dress down to her knees. No fancy hairstyle, just brushed it back and held it in place with a clip. Tasteful makeup.

She looked nice and professional, so when Mr. Greythorne called her into the office and introduced himself, she’d been shocked, because from her online research she recognized his name as the CEO of Cromwell eCOM Champions.Latin, of course, Katrina said.

Of course.

Hebrew. And one year of Sanskrit 101. Barely enough to learn all the noun declensions and a few simple verb conjugations.

He grinned like a little boy discovering the gate into the playground had been left unlocked, and ran his fingers through his longish blonde hair, between Hulk Hogan long and Marine Corps shaved. Just shaggy enough to let everybody know he could grow it as long as he wanted, if he wanted. When he wanted.

I love verb conjugations, he said.

Dress professionally for job interviews? This CEO wore a black T-shirt with the word eCOMmander blazed across his chest.

Yes, his chest. Katrina found it hard not to stare at his chest. And broad shoulders. And the biceps bulging against the T-shirt sleeves. She was no expert, but would bet what little money she had Mr. Greythorne spent a serious number of hours in a gym lifting weights.

If she cut the interview short, she would have to leave, and couldn’t keep soaking in the sight of his hot bod.

Trying to suppress her panting.

Mr. Greythorne, leaned back, putting his hands behind his head, letting his muscles ripple underneath that tee. I suppose I should act all official and formal, and ask you what kind of online skills you have.Skills? Well, err, I do have a Facebook page of course.

Of course. And Twitter, I bet.

Oh, I talk too much to keep what I say under a hundred forty characters. I, er, use email. I thought about starting a blog.

How lame. As though everybody and their mother weren’t on Facebook. And everybody except her on Twitter. But to make sure of that summa cum laude, she had to study hard through all her finals. And then there was graduation. And Daddy getting sick. And here she was, halfway through June, and still looking for her first real job.

Still hanging on to her part-time gig as a waitress at the Sunshine Inn.

She couldn’t expect Mr. Greythorne to understand. After all, he had his company to run. He had to hire someone qualified.

Does your Facebook page have pictures of you throwing up during those wild college parties?

Excuse me? He didn’t really say that, did he? He did.Too bad. I know, they tell you to be careful about what you post online. You don’t want a real HR person finding one of those. Not that they didn’t throw up at parties when they were in college, just nobody back then carried cell phone cameras around to capture their friends’ most embarrassing moments. Even if they did, it would have been considered rude to circulate such pictures. Let alone post them online for the entire world to see.

What was with this guy? Would some really inappropriate sexual innuendo come next? Should she get a lawyer? Let it slide? It’s not like she was qualified to work for him anyway.

But she was fast discovering a bachelor’s degree in Ancient Languages didn’t qualify her for any jobs in the early 21st century world economy.

Not even teaching. She needed at least her Masters and an education certificate just to teach Latin to high schoolers.

If she could find a high school that still gave Latin classes.

To go on to a good graduate school, she needed money.

Hence, she needed a new job.

At least, working for this Mr. Greythorne character would be...um...interesting. To say the least. He could provide all the material she needed for her sexual fantasies for the next ten years.

All the more reason to just get up and leave. Thank him for his time, then make like a banana and split.

He sat sideways, using his ergonomic office chair like a jungle gym set. Are you a good team player?

Of course, she said. Team playing is all the rage now, isn’t it?

Let me do a translation for you, he said. In this company, being a good team player means you can tolerate working alongside a bunch of misfit geeks who work more hours in a week than most people in a month, who don’t care about anybody’s feelings especially their own and therefore have all the sensitivity and tact of a starving crocodile, all the political correctness of Rush Limbaugh, and have yet to reach the emotional maturity of your average two-year-old.

You really love your employees, don’t you? she said. Might as well get into the spirit of things, enjoy herself a little, before returning home to read a book while Daddy and Mother watched TV.

Don’t I just, though? He paused. And often they forget to sleep, bathe and eat.

Would I be expected to be a Big Sister to these little boys?

His eyes widened in horror. Did I say they were all boys? Well, maybe they’re all little boys at heart, but some are legally—even physically—female. No, you couldn’t tame them if you tried. I need somebody relatively normal who can talk to clients and come across as a real human being.

I hate filling out Captcha fields, she said. Why do they have to make the numbers and letters so difficult for real people to read?

Some of my employees, you talk to them, you’d get more convincing emotional reactions from a software bot, Mr. Greythorne said. With your background, you ought to find reading website Terms of Service fascinating.

I’d much rather read Homer. War. Adventure. Fantastic creatures. Romance. Gods and Goddesses.

Mr. Greythorne jumped out of his chair as though he exploded, too excited to remain seated. As he spoke, he paced back and forth like a newly caged lion, waving his arms and gesturing with his hands. Explosions of sheer, stunning electricity burst from him like solar flares.

The world’s changing, he said, almost shouting. Projecting his clear, deep voice as though speaking from the center of the baseball stadium. He was too big for one ordinary room. He needed an auditorium, a convention center.

We’re moving away from bricks and mortar. Shopping centers and retail malls.

He wore a pair of Wal-Mart blue jeans faded at the knees. Not pre-faded by the manufacturer, but worn thin by use. They outlined the ridges formed by his powerful thigh muscles. He bounced on his feet as though the floor were a trampoline.

Small businesses are going to go out of business unless they learn to change and adapt. How to partner with the big sites like Amazon and Shopify, how to drive traffic. Instead of selling to a few people in one section of Cromwell County, they can serve people around the world. From Japan to Saudi Arabia.

Hating herself but unable to stop, Katrina checked out his left hand. No rings. Good. She glanced around. No family pictures. No wifey and little Greythorne juniors posed for a professional session or at the beach.

But maybe he just kept his personal life separate from his career. But, it was his company. He didn’t have to bow down to anybody else. And, obviously, he liked it that way.

Businesses need help. They have websites but don’t know how to optimize them. Or how to run Facebook ads. That’s where we come in. We let them handle their widgets. We sell the widgets.

He didn’t slow down to let her comment, just continued raving about making money online. eCommerce. The future.

How his company was going to take over the world. Grow large enough to challenge Amazon, Google and Facebook.

What a conqueror. A Viking.

No, not fair, she realized. She thought of Vikings first because of his white skin, blond hair and blue eyes.

But put him into any time or place, in any color of skin, and he’d still be a conqueror.

A Roman general. A Japanese warlord. An Aztec warrior. A Maasai chieftain.

A dynamic, ambitious, charismatic leader men would follow to their deaths and women would lose the reputations to in bed.

He smelled of enemy blood, horse sweat and oiled swords.

Like a boot camp Marine ordered to halt, he came to an abrupt stop just in front of her.

Katrina almost saluted.

It’s your duty to make our clients rich, he said.

Duty?

That’s right. And to make me rich.

What about me?

You too, we succeed one percent of what I’m dreaming. You’re practically in on the ground floor.

Katrina didn’t know much about business online or offline, but everybody knew you could get massively wealthy from owning stock in a successful high tech startup. But most of them failed.

Can you keep learning? he asked.

Until I can read the Rig-Veda.

He gave her a blank look, for the moment confused.

The oldest literature of India, she said. Sanskrit. Can I learn to earn?You’ll earn while you learn. Obviously, you have the rare kind of sick, twisted mind I’m looking for.

To make a decent salary so she could help out Mother and Daddy and still also save up for grad school...she’d do almost anything.

When do I start?

Immediately soon enough?

What’s my job title, Mr. Greythorne?

Call me Bronson. We’ll figure the details out later.

Chapter Two

In Training

AS BRONSON APPROACHED the finish line of the sixth mile-long repeat, a vision of Katrina popped into his head.

So unexpectedly, he nearly lost his balance and fell to the Cromwell Athletic Club’s cinder track.

Just keep going. Hard. Harder. Come on, not long now, not far now. Just a little bit more.

Then Katrina would be his.

Like he used to do in high school.

Finish ten reps and Sandy would go down on him.

Press another ten pounds and Patti would let him put his hands down her panties.

Finish this wind sprint while wearing all his football gear in front of the other players, and Khris the head cheerleader would go all the way with him.

Yeah, right.

How childish.

He wasn’t so immature now, and yet he was, at age thirty-two, having the same fantasies about his latest employee.

And using them to push himself harder.

Gasping for air, pulse beating against the underside of his skull, he checked the Fitbit display history.

His pulse didn’t even hit the top of its training zone.

Yet he felt woozy deep in his guts.

Only two more, Dawane, his personal trainer said, staring at his stopwatch. Make them hurt. Ten more seconds.

Bronson took up a position behind a white chalk line on the quarter-mile track. Around him, other men and women—most of them doctors, lawyers and rising career executives accompanied by their own personal trainers—were running, jogging and standing around panting hard.

They wore brightly colored, expensive name-brand running gear.

Bronson didn’t have to impress anyone. He could afford to spend five hundred dollars on a running outfit, but a simple white cotton T-shirt and white cotton gym shorts satisfied him. With white cotton gym socks.

Only his Brooks Monster running shoes cost real money. Long ago he read in a book to buy the best shoes available, and run in whatever old clothes he could.

And the Fitbit of course. He had to have his gadgets.

Keep me motivated, man, Bronson told Dawane, his personal trainer.

Dawane kept his eyes on his stopwatch. I’m yelling hard, Bronson.

Harder.

Two. Pause. One...go!

Bronson took off at near top speed, then fell into a fast gait.

After the first 220 yards, he estimated he was going about eight miles per hour. Not bad for amateur hour, but hardly fast enough to suit him. So he picked up the pace.

The numbers popped through his mind as though exported straight from the spreadsheet.

At eight miles per hour on average it would take him 3 hours and seventeen minutes to finish a marathon.

Again, not bad by the standards of many people, but not good enough for him.

To finish a marathon in two hours and fifteen minutes, he’d need to run at the average rate of a mile every five minutes and 10 seconds.

He ran his first marathon just a few months ago, completing it in four hours, eighteen minutes and twenty-five seconds.

Not great, but he proved to himself he could finish that length.

And, of course, the real problem was, he wasn’t training for a marathon, but for the Badwater Ultramarathon. The Badass Ultramarathon they ought to call it.

One hundred thirty-five miles, not twenty-six point two.

Across a barren desert wasteland over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit by day and barely dropping at night.

Marathon length—the first twenty-six point two miles—was just a warm up for the grueling endurance test to come.

And it was an endurance test. How many people in the world ran ultramarathons for time? Not many. Even for the very best, just finishing was the goal.

Especially because you could not compare finish times. They didn’t take place on a smooth, level track. Contestants had to traverse rugged landscapes. Some deserts, others mountains and snow.

The Badwater Ultramarathon took place just late next month. He had barely five more weeks to train.

Of course, he was raising money for the Inner Power Not Drugs Campaign, not trying to set a world record.

The donors he lined up would make good on their pledges. So much per mile finished.

But he wanted to make them pay for all one hundred thirty-five miles. And he didn’t want to drag his ass in last, either.

He didn’t have to be first. Some of the world’s best distance runners—men and women who ran full-time instead of founding and growing ecommerce companies—would be competing there.

But he sure wanted to finish strong.

Finish respectable. No, scratch that, finish with dynamite. Finish awesome.

Finish to make Patrick proud.

To attract Katrina’s attention?

Even as his feet pounded the track, even as his heart pounded and his lungs gasped for oxygen, sweat poured down his face, one part of his mind could not stop thinking about his latest employee.

Her gorgeous face, discreetly made up to make her brown skin stand out with a faint orange glow. Nothing garish. Totally tasteful and professional.

Hair grooming also tasteful and professional. Nothing low-class or ridiculously complicated. No attached hair pieces. No dangling strands dyed yellow or orange or red. No weaves more incredibly intertwined than the graph of links of social media properties to optimize a website for Google.

Smelling of a healthy, earthy natural oil, not the eye-burning, throat-searing artificial chemicals most African-American women tortured their hair with. Maybe jojoba or mongongo.

He saw her notice the lavender essential oil he kept circulating in the air to keep his employees refreshed and emotionally smooth despite their frequent arguments.

Yes, tasteful and professional were Katrina Manchester’s main keywords.

Including the lightweight navy blue matching jacket and slacks, with a white cotton blouse.

A tasteful and professional business outfit that did its best to hide her slender but curved figure.

Succeeding enough to maintain her tasteful and professional image, but failing enough to tease his sex drive.

Oh, he wanted her in the worst possible way. Totally UNtastefully and certainly NOT professionally.

Third lap of the seventh mile.

But of course, that was ridiculous. He had a business to run, to grow into a giant corporation helping other businesses all over the world use the Internet’s resources to meet the needs of more people, thereby generating more revenue, making more money, supporting the world’s economy.

Advancing progress. Fueling scientific research. The development of new and even more advanced technologies.

Until no child on the planet ever went to bed hungry. Or with an untreated illness. Or dehydrated. Or too cold or too hot.  Or uneducated up to their age level.

Until nobody felt driven by poverty or fear or emotional emptiness to take any drug stronger than alcohol or marijuana.

Until the drug cartels and their wide networks of pushers and assassins went out of business from simple lack of market demand just as surely as did 8-track tape manufacturers.

Last lap of the seventh mile.

He felt the honor-bound duty to do his part to make that world a reality. A world of no more Patricks.

Through his company. And, more directly, through his fundraising for the Inner Power Not Drugs Campaign.

He couldn’t let a woman upset that. Just couldn’t.

Not that Katrina seemed like the kind of woman who would deliberately sidetrack a man from his duty. No, not at all.

Just the opposite, if anything.

And that’s what he liked most about her, from the short time he knew her—just a few hours!

That’s what attracted him.

Her mind. Much as her beauty caught his eye, her mind intrigued and teased him. Not deliberately, just by her being herself.

A summa cum laude in Ancient Languages.

Latin and Greek and Hebrew, oh my! Whoops, mustn’t forget the Sanskrit.

She obviously felt totally unqualified to help him market products and services online. She probably didn’t even know what Search Engine Optimization meant.

But, in Bronson’s experience, the kind of person willing to devote four years to learning totally useless but interesting subjects often made the best marketers