Her Secret Santa - Miley Maine Page 0,2

plus hours a week. He barely slept. He also did nothing for him or his health. He smoked like a chimney, and he drank like a fish. I don’t know if he ever saw the inside of one of these rooms. This was all my idea, my baby. I had revamped a lot of it in the years right before his death and even after when I had taken over as the CEO of Caplan Tech Industries. I loved what I did, but the business part of things was not really all that I was about. I made sure to keep time to pursue other things. I had to have some fun. I worked hard and I played harder.

It had been a huge burden having to curtail some of my activities and take over the company when I was so young. I’d only been twenty-five when I had become the CEO. It was in the cards that I would take over for my father Roy when the time came, but I never anticipated that time coming for a long time. And then when it happened, it all hit me at once. It was a pretty vicious blow to be dealt. I loved my father. I missed him all the time.

But I had managed. I had a great team who took me under their wing and showed me exactly how the business worked and then I applied my own skills to take things even higher. There was nothing out of our reach. I wanted us to become the biggest global company on the planet. I wanted our reach to stretch into everything.

I kicked a few rounds on the heavy bag and followed up with some speed bag drills to work on my punching technique. As usual, all the employees working out there kept watching me. It had to be weird having the boss there working out with you, but I’d tried time and time again to get them to relax with all that stuff. I’m a pretty normal guy. They didn’t need to fear me.

I finished my workout and then I hit the showers. I was ready to tackle the day. I could hardly wait to get started. It was Monday, which meant that I had a full week worth of fun and exciting events to get through. There were meetings, there were parties, fundraisers, public appearances, international conference calls, etc. It was never ending, and I loved it that way. I had been born into it.

“Hey, Tony,” Jill Mathers, my secretary said when I came through the doors. She let her eyes linger too long on me as she usually did, and I ignored it as always. Jill was attractive, but I had never really wanted to mix business with pleasure. I’d done so on several occasions, but it was not an ideal scenario for me. It was in fact downright dangerous, which might have been why it was so appealing.

I’m honestly not sure why I’d never asked Jill out for dinner. It was tempting and maybe one day I would do it, but it just didn’t feel right. Maybe she was too close to me. She was my personal secretary. That was kind of a sticky issue for me for some reason.

“Hey, Jill,” I said. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I walked by. I was looking good, even if I did say so myself. I was decked out in my three-piece Armani suit and my hair was combed back perfectly. I purposely stopped checking myself out in the mirror and directed my attention back to Jill. I really did not want to be one of those fucking vain weirdoes who were obsessed with themselves.

“You are here bright and early,” she said.

“So are you. The last to leave and the first to show up. I’m wondering when you sleep.”

She giggled. “I sleep just fine…”

I decided not to go near this line of flirtation. “What do you have for me today?”

“The first thing you should do is call Alan Eisler back.”

“Ah, ok. He is finally ready to talk.”

“It sounds pretty urgent. You have a few more minutes to catch him before he leaves the London Office for the day, I think.”

“Ok,” I said. “Anything else?”

“Yes, you have an eight o’clock meeting with the intern you hired,” she said. “Julie Ashby.”

I groaned. “I’m sure I can let someone else handle that meeting.”

“Yeah, but she is part of that program that you helped sponsor. You should probably do