Beautiful Bastard (beautiful Bastard, #1)

The first installment in the Beautiful Bastard series, this contemporary romance follows an ambitious intern and her arrogant boss as their antagonistic working relationship ignites into a volatile sexual affair that threatens both their careers.

Chloe Mills has worked at Ryan Media Group (RMG) in Chicago for six years. She is four months from completing her MBA at Northwestern on a JT Miller scholarship, which requires a thesis project and attendance at a professional conference. Her internship places her directly under Bennett Ryan, the youngest son of RMG founder Elliott Ryan. Bennett returned nine months ago from years as a vice president at L'Oréal in Paris. Chloe finds him breathtakingly handsome and thoroughly insufferable, privately calling him "Beautiful Bastard."

The day everything changes, Chloe arrives an hour late due to a series of mishaps. Bennett punishes her with an unreasonable workload, including a mock presentation of the Papadakis account, a major marketing project that doubles as her MBA thesis. That evening, while she leans over the conference table presenting graphs, he places his hand on her lower back, the first time he has intentionally touched her. Despite her animosity, she does not stop him. He tears off her panties, lifts her onto the table, and presses her against the floor-to-ceiling window, bringing her to orgasm. When he asks her to reciprocate, she begins but walks out, leaving him stunned.

In alternating perspectives, the novel reveals both characters have suppressed mutual attraction for months. Bennett assumed sleeping with her once would end his obsession; instead it intensifies. The next day, Chloe drops a receipt on his desk for clothing he destroyed. He chases her into a stairwell, where the argument turns sexual. This time he deliberately withholds her orgasm as payback and pockets her torn underwear, adding it to a growing collection. Chloe resolves not to quit: She loves her job, values the Ryan family, and needs the Papadakis account for her thesis.

At a Monday executive meeting, Bennett's brother Henry finds two silver buttons on the conference room floor, remnants of the blouse Bennett ripped. Bennett taunts Chloe by implying the buttons are hers, nearly exposing their secret. In the elevator afterward, she warns him that he almost made her look like someone sleeping her way to the top. He is genuinely surprised, having never considered that the professional consequences would fall disproportionately on her.

Their encounters continue to escalate. Chloe wears a garter belt and touches herself to climax in Bennett's office while he is trapped on a business call. They have sex in a dressing room at La Perla, an upscale lingerie boutique. When Bennett opens an unlimited credit account there for Chloe, she is outraged, interpreting it as payment for sexual services. He chases her to the parking garage, where she slaps him. She admits she does not want to want him but cannot stop. They have sex in her car.

Bennett's mother Susan tries to set Chloe up with Joel Cignoli, a family friend's son, provoking a jealousy Bennett cannot name. He intercepts and discards a flower delivery Joel sends to Chloe. At the Ryan family dinner, Chloe flirts with Joel while secretly tormenting Bennett under the table. Sent upstairs to apologize for a rude remark, Bennett instead locks the bathroom door and has sex with Chloe against the vanity, making her watch Joel through the window while the dinner party continues below. When he opens the door, Henry's wife Mina is standing outside. Bennett calls what happened "a mistake," and the word wounds Chloe. She walks downstairs and gives Joel her phone number.

Chloe confides in her best friend Julia, a buyer for Gucci, who advises distance. She later spots Bennett at a restaurant with a blonde woman. He explains the woman is a colleague, not a date, and reveals he has not been with anyone else since their first encounter. When Joel calls and reveals delivery records showing Bennett signed for the discarded flowers, Bennett admits the truth. Chloe is furious but concedes she has felt similarly possessive.

A deeper shift occurs when Chloe learns her father in North Dakota needs tests for a mass on his esophagus. Bennett drops his combative demeanor and, with her permission, undresses her gently in his locked office, whispering that she is beautiful. The encounter is markedly more intimate than any before. She leaves to visit her father for two weeks. During her absence, Bennett cycles through five temporary assistants and begins appreciating her competence in new ways. Their brief texts gradually extend beyond strictly work matters.

At the JT Miller conference in San Diego, the relationship transforms. During the welcome reception, Chloe sees a woman slip what appears to be a room key into Bennett's palm. She walks up, places her hand on his arm, and calls him "Bennett" for the first time. He returns the key and says he did not come alone. In her hotel room, he asks for one night with no fighting. The sex that follows is unlike anything before: slow, face-to-face, fingers intertwined. Afterward, she whispers, "Don't go." She discovers a tattoo on his hip reading "Je ne regrette rien" ("I regret nothing"), and he whispers "Je suis à toi" ("I am yours"). Before leaving the room, he says he does not want to lose what they found. She replies that she does not want his career to swallow hers.

At the conference, Bennett leads a subcontracting meeting with Ed Gugliotti, an executive from a smaller firm, and Chloe sits in, impressing Gugliotti's team. On their last morning, Bennett tells Chloe he is falling for her. She cries with relief. Minutes later, outside the hotel, she overhears him telling Gugliotti that she is a "great kid" who "definitely needs some seasoning." He frames the meeting as a training exercise and dismisses Gugliotti's remark that he would hire her. On the plane, she confronts him. He insists he was protecting her from being poached. She counters that he has become worse than the old Beautiful Bastard: a condescending mentor who diminishes her accomplishments. She always knew he respected her beneath the bluster. Now she is not sure.

Back in Chicago, Chloe submits a resignation letter. Elliott and Henry confront Bennett, who confesses the relationship. Elliott offers Chloe a position under him, but she declines, needing to prove herself independently. She takes a job at Studio Marketing under Troy Julian, working on a modest pet food account. Bennett descends into weeks of heavy drinking and isolation until his family forces him back to work. Two months pass without him seeing her.

The night before Chloe's scholarship presentation, Julia calls Bennett and tells him to get his act together. He builds a slide presentation from Chloe's Papadakis work and intercepts her the next morning. She agrees to include the Papadakis materials as handouts but insists on also presenting her Sanders pet food campaign. He tells her she reeled him in and asks her to take him back. In the boardroom, she delivers both presentations. When the scholarship director asks how she managed two projects, Bennett explains that Ryan Media encouraged a short external internship and that his father wants to offer her a permanent position managing the Papadakis account. The board calls her work exemplary. After everyone leaves, Bennett tells Chloe he loves her and that her absence almost broke him. She says she does not want to be away from him again, pulls him against the conference room window, reversing the dynamic of their very first encounter, and kisses him. He calls her "boss."