Cruel Paradise

The narrator works as personal assistant to Ruslan Oryolov, a billionaire whose every whim she is paid to meet. She calls the job hell and him a bosshole. After one especially long day, she goes home and seeks relief the only way she can, with her thoughts still on him.

Her phone is squashed beside her the whole time. Afterward she finds a voicemail on it, 7 minutes and 32 seconds long, and the recipient is Ruslan. She throws the phone across the room, but the message is already sent.

Her plan is to avoid him and act as though nothing happened. A man that busy surely never checks his voicemail. Then he books a one-on-one meeting with her, set for exactly 7 minutes and 32 seconds.

The book is an office romance with a comic, embarrassed tone, told in the first person by the assistant. It is built on one mortifying mistake and a boss who may know every detail. What he plans to do with that knowledge is the question that drives the story.