Contract Marriage with My CEO Boss (Kylan and Katrina)
Chapter 1

Katrina Morgan woke to the familiar sounds of sirens and the distant pull of loud city life filling the crowded street below. Rolling over onto her back, she sighed and rubbed the sleep away from her eyes. She felt around in her duvet for her phone, finally replaceing it after a

minute of lazy searching. She checked the time, relieved to see she had actually woken up before her alarm, for once.

She went over the schedule for the day in her head, calculating how much time she had to get ready before her boss's driver would be pulling up to her building to collect her. Three years into working for Ross Corporations, she still wasn't used to being picked up for work that way. It was essential, though. With the amount of work her boss had her handle on a daily basis, both of them needed to be driven around. It wasn't practical for her to have her own car, not in a city like this one.

She stood from her bed, taking a moment to stretch before she stumbled to the blackout curtains covering the massive window on the far wall of her room. She pulled them back, taking in the view from your thirteenth-floor apartment. Regardless of the workload her boss gave her, or how completely impossible he was to work for most of the time, Katrina was always thankful for a view like this one.

With a small smile on her face, she hurried to take a quick shower. As soon as she was done, she wrapped a towel around her body and walked to her closet to choose an outfit. She decided on a black pantsuit, with a white button down, and a pair of red heels. She coupled the outfit with a pair of sheer nylon socks.

As soon as she was dressed, Katrina headed back to her bathroom and applied an appropriate amount of makeup. She curled her hair into loose waves, and then she brushed her teeth. With one more glance at her reflection, she left her bathroom and grabbed her briefcase from atop her dresser.

She finally turned her phone off to silent mode, and it instantly rang. Just like it did every single morning, for the last three years.

"Good morning, Sir," Katrina said with as much cheerfulness as she could muster on a Wednesday morning.

"I need a new phone," came the brisk reply from her boss.

She wasn't at all surprised that he didn't return her polite sentiment. She sighed, willing herself to remain patient.

"I just bought you a new phone last week, Sir," she reminded him through mildly clenched teeth.

"What the f*ck does that have to do with anything? I need a new one," her boss quipped at her impatiently.

She swallowed and pinched the bridge of her nose. He was in one of his moods, it seemed. He was always curt, and always impatient, but every so often, he'd really lay it on thick. On those days, she had no choice but to hold on for dear life and ride the mood swings with as much grace as she could muster.

"There's a lull in meetings today between twelve and three, I'll go and get your phone then," she told the boss while she closed and locked her front door. "Oscar is here. I'll be at the office shortly with-"

"With my tea, I trust. Make sure they don't steep it for longer than three minutes this time, Katrina," her boss interrupted, his voice icy and thin.

Oh, he was really in a mood today. She could handle it just fine. Katrina was more than used to it by now. But she felt bad for any unsuspecting intern that would have the misfortune of crossing paths with her boss today.

It was no secret that the turnover rate at Ross Corporation was remarkably high as of late, especially. Not for the least of the reasons being the boss and his... Well, his complete inability to have a single nice conversation with anyone.

Kylan Ross was, by all accounts, an asshole. A bastard, really. He had gone through fifteen assistants, since the inception of his company seven years ago. Remarkably, she had stuck around, despite his open hostility to almost every single person.

She did everything for him. From his dry cleaning, to balancing his books, to making his appointments and scheduling his doctor's visits... She was, quite literally, Kylan's lifeline for most things. It was overwhelming at times, to say the least. But where Kylan intimidated most people, he didn't bother her as much. Where others got offended when Kylan was practically a robot, with only two emotions in his arsenal: Angry, and angrier; she never took it personally. And Katrina never asked why he was the way he was, either. Though she was half convinced he came out of the womb being eternally grumpy.

Katrina took people for face value, and Kylan was no different. So, while she often had to bite her tongue at the ridiculous requests her boss would throw at her daily, she also knew how to talk to him. She knew how he worked, and she knew where to avoid pushing him, in order to avoid an all-out nuclear level event from happening. Most of the time, anyway. When he was in a more unpredictable mood than most other days, it was a little bit trickier to gauge his next move.

"I'll make sure. Anything else, Sir?" Katrina asked Kylan, while she opened the front door of her apartment building. She quickly found Oscar, right where he always was. The sleek, black SUV he drove around, was impossible to miss. It stuck out like a sore thumb among the sea of yellow taxis that littered the streets of the city.

"Is the stock meeting with Ryan today, or tomorrow?" Kylan asked with an annoyed sigh.

Katrina climbed into the back seat of the car with a silent thank you to Oscar, and then she moved her phone away from her ear, promptly putting it on speaker. She opened her calendar, so she could look at the schedule.

"It's today at four o'clock," she told Kylan, buckling her seat belt, while Oscar did the same in the front seat. He pulled out into traffic and headed in the direction of the coffee shop she went to every morning. It was the one place left on Kylan's list of shops that didn't brew his tea "all wrong". She wasn't sure what she would do if, and really inevitably when, he deemed this shop unworthy, too.

"Fuck. I'm sick and tired of these weekly meetings," she heard Kylan grumble through the speaker of her phone.

Since he couldn't see her doing so, Katrina allowed herself the satisfaction of rolling her eyes at his words. "Sir, you know the stocks have been dropping rapidly over the last few months. We need to come up with a course of action to rectify the situation. The press are-" "The press? Don't make me laugh, Katrina. You know I don't give a shit what the press thinks of me," Kylan snapped at her.

Katrina bit back a sigh. "I understand that. But while you don't care what they think of you, that doesn't mean that the average person echoes your opinion on journalism," she reminded her boss gently.

Kylan released a string of impressive swear words, and she listened silently. This is how conversations like this always went with him lately, ever since the stocks for Ross Corp. had begun their steady decline. As soon as he was done filling her ear with his favorite vulgarities, he hung up without another word.

She locked her phone and put it in the side pocket of her briefcase. She closed her eyes, rubbing the sides of her forehead, willing herself to replace a shred of patience to make it through the day ahead of her.

"You should get an extra shot of espresso in your coffee," Oscar suggested with a friendly glance at her in the rearview mirror of the car.

Katrina laughed without any humor. "I don't think that'll be enough today, Oscar," she admitted with a shake of her head.

Oscar nodded sympathetically, and a few minutes later, he pulled over to a curb near the coffee shop. She got out of the car and walked inside. She ordered her usual, foregoing the extra espresso shot, and then she asked for Kylan's order.

Katrina watched meticulously as the barista crafted Kylan's black tea, counting how long she steeped it. She didn't know how Kylan knew if his tea had been steeped for too long or not, but he always knew. And she was always the one who got the brunt of his annoyance, were it made incorrectly. She wasn't in the mood to deal with the fallout today, so she continued to watch the barista carefully. Katrina ensured they didn't add even an ounce of sugar or milk, and then she paid for the drinks and headed back to Oscar.

"How can you make it through a day without coffee, Oscar?" she asked her boss's driver, not for the first time. Oscar was nearing his fifties, but he was in immaculate shape and still retained most of his hair.

Oscar chuckled from the front seat. "Gummy worms," he answered her with a coy smile.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "That's actually fantastic," she laughed, taking a long sip from her coffee. Her chest filled with warmth, and she immediately felt slightly more human.