By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy Page 21

  I brought my hands to my face and shoved them through my hair. “You are driving me in-fucking-sane, Ally. I just want to talk, but I need to get out of these pants.”

  “Why do I have to go with you?”

  “Because the second I turn my back on you, you’re going to make a run for it. And it’s cold, and I’m tired, and I don’t want to have to chase you down the block in the middle of the night.”

  “Fine. Lead the way, boss,” she said. She was trying to be snide and sarcastic, but it was the exhaustion and resignation that came through.

  I poured two glasses of water and handed her one. “Come on.”

  My bedroom was on the third floor. Brownie raced past us on the stairs only to zoom back down twice to make sure we were still coming as we plodded along.

  I noticed Ally peering over the railing at the second floor. “That’s the main living space,” I told her. “TV, fireplace, library.”

  We arrived on the third floor, and I led the way into my bedroom at the back of the house.

  There was a king-sized four-poster bed in the center of the room facing a fireplace I’d never used. The bed certainly hadn’t seen any creative entertainment in the last year.

  “Sit,” I said, gesturing to the bed. Brownie jumped up and arranged himself on the pillows.

  It got a smile out of both of us.

  Ally perched gingerly on the edge of the mattress, her gaze taking in the room. Something on the nightstand caught her attention, and she leaned over to pick it up. She held up the copy of Pride and Prejudice accusingly.

  I shrugged. “It’s for decoration.”

  “There’s a receipt for a green tea dated last week being used as a bookmark,” she challenged.

  “I’m not the one who owes answers tonight.” I ducked into the dressing room and grabbed two pairs of sweats and two t-shirts.

  “Here,” I said, handing her one set.

  Her eyes went wide. “I’m not staying here, Dom.”

  We’d see about that. “Fine. But wouldn’t you be more comfortable yelling at me in these rather than a thong and pasties?”

  “You have a point.”

  She took the clothes. I pointed toward the door. “Bathroom’s through there. You can shower if you want.”

  She glanced down at the glitter halo she’d shed on my bed, then longingly toward the bathroom. “You don’t mind?”

  “As long as you wait around long enough after I shower to have this out.”

  “You won’t come in while I’m in there?” she asked softly.

  Something twisted in my gut. I hated that she felt like she had to ask me. “I won’t come in,” I said quietly.

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  “There’s a lock on the door,” I told her.

  She nodded again and got up. When she closed the bathroom door, I waited to hear the snick of the lock, but it never came.

  At least she didn’t think I was that big of a monster.

  I sighed and headed back into the dressing room. I stripped out of my vest and shirt and shucked off the ruined underwear, the pants with the half-frozen jizz explosion in the crotch.

  The water in my shower turned on, and I tried not to imagine what was happening in there. But being a gentleman didn’t come naturally to me. And instead of thinking about anything but the naked woman in my shower, I was thinking about how she’d looked as she’d ridden me to climax in the club. Her eyes hooded, lips parted. The stupid, primitive part of me wanted to see just how hard I’d come inside her, raw and bare. Pumping away until…

  And now I was fucking hard again.

  I needed to see a doctor. This wasn’t normal.

  I dragged on my sweat pants, shoved my head and arms through the t-shirt, and returned to the bed where I sprawled out and waited for her.

  She came out a few minutes later, fresh-faced, hair damp. My clothes hung on her frame. The urge to pull her to me and hold her was overwhelming and pissed me off all over again.

  So I picked a fight instead.

  “How did you get into a financial mess bad enough that tonight was your only option?” I asked. “Are you that irresponsible with money?”

  “Oh, good. I’d worried you’d turned human on me while I was in there,” she snapped. She climbed onto the mattress and sat cross-legged in the corner farthest from me.

  I wanted her closer. I wanted to hold her and run my fingers through those wet curls and promise her that I’d fix everything. And I couldn’t do any of that.

  “I saw your face on the roof and on that stage. You didn’t want to be there. You didn’t want to do it, but you did it anyway.”

  “I had to.”

  “Why?” My frustration was loud and clear.

  “Label messed up my paycheck. It didn’t get deposited, and it couldn’t be fixed until Monday. I needed the money now.”

  “What’s the money for?”

  She gave me a long, stony look. “Bills.”

  “What kind of bills?”

  Ally said nothing for a long beat. Bored, Brownie belly-crawled over to her on the bed.

  “Why does it matter to you?” she asked me finally. She stroked a hand over Brownie’s head and down his back. Long, slow strokes. I wished it was me she was touching.

  “I care about you.”

  “You’re so lucky I’m exhausted because I would love to tell you how absolutely stupid you’re being right now,” she said.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I insisted.

  She shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “You say you care about me. You’re obviously attracted to me. And as much as you bitch and moan about me ruining your life, I think you actually like me. But not enough to want to be with me. And because of that, I can’t trust you, Dominic. I’m not going to open up and share my life story with you. You haven’t earned that access.”

  I pinched my nose between my finger and thumb. “I’m trying to do the right thing here, Ally.”

  “I don’t understand what right thing you’re going for.”

  “There are rules,” I said. My frustration was rising again. Why couldn’t she just give me what I wanted?

  “I know, Dom,” she said gently. “What I don’t know is why those rules mean so much to you. Because where I sit, you don’t seem like the kind of guy who would let a piece of paper tell you how to live your life.”

  “Those rules are there for your protection,” I snapped.

  “I don’t need to be protected!”

  Brownie lifted his head up and gave her a doofy, confused look.

  “Sorry, buddy,” she said gently. Appeased, he flopped back down on a groan.

  “I’m saying I can’t take these games anymore, Dom. I don’t want to play. I have too much going on, and it’s not good for me to let you toy with me. It hurts me.”

  I closed my eyes. “I don’t mean to hurt you, Ally.”

  “You showed up on my date. You showed up at the club. You say you don’t want to want me, yet it was your idea to get to know each other better. You wear vests just to mess with me. Then you tell me to quit the job that I desperately need so you can feel better about wanting to fuck me.”

  “I’m an asshole.” There was no other way to cut it. I was a selfish, out-of-control monster.

  She scooted closer, and when she took my hand, I felt like the worst human being in the world.

  “Listen to me before you go into some shame spiral. You didn’t force me onto that stage, and you didn’t force me into that room with you. I wanted to dance for you. I wanted to make you feel the frustration you make me feel. I wanted to make you come and feel bad about it. You didn’t make me do any of that. The only thing you forced me to do was not wait for a bus in freezing temperatures. Okay?”

  I squeezed her hand and closed my eyes. “I can’t seem to leave you alone.”

  “You’re fighting this mutual attraction really hard without giving me a real reason. An
d if you can’t trust me with your why, then I can’t trust you with mine.”

  I hated that. I hated myself. I wanted to tell her why. To tell her everything. How it was all my fault that my father had free rein to inflict the damage he’d done. But I couldn’t unpack that. Not to her. Not to anyone. Russos didn’t air their dirty laundry.

  I could only try to atone for it.

  As if sensing my dip into self-loathing, Brownie crawled over to me and rested his head on my stomach. Having a dog was pretty great. However, having Ally in my bed was too much of a temptation. I needed to get her out of here before I broke.

  “How much do you need?” I asked briskly, pulling my hand free from hers.

  “How much what?” she asked, confused.

  “Money. Tell me how much money you need.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I had cash in the safe and a checkbook in my desk. I’d make it go away.

  “I’m not taking your money,” she said.

  “You were willing to take money from strangers. You didn’t know it was me in that room, and you walked in there willingly. You were going to take that money from someone. Why not me?”

  She rose up on her knees on the mattress, looking like the goddess of war. I was mildly surprised when flames didn’t shoot out of her eyes to incinerate me.

  “Because I’m not going to owe you a damn thing. Not now. And not ever.”

  “Yeah, well, I owe you for the dance. You earned it.” Offense was my default defense.

  “Consider it a parting gift from me,” she said, getting off the bed.

  I stood up, and we met halfway to the door. “What do you want from me, Ally?” I asked coldly.

  “The truth,” she spat out.

  “The truth? Fine. I’ve never not wanted you. I only want you. I’m no better than that dickhead you went out with. I don’t want a relationship with you. I want a quick, dirty fuck to get you out of my system. But we both know it won’t be enough. You’ll get your hooks into my soul and—”

  “Oh, shut up! I’m not some magical siren, you jackass! I’m not casting a spell and seducing you.”

  I grabbed her by the arms and squeezed. “Yes, you fucking are,” I said through clenched teeth. “You dry-humped me in a strip club until I fucking came in my goddamn pants. I have no control around you, and you think it would be nice to have a fun little off-the-books fling? Then what?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  I was grateful for the soundproofing in the walls.

  “What does it matter now? I’m not on the table anymore,” she said, quieter now.

  “You mean the pole,” I said bitterly.

  Her brown eyes filled with fire.

  “What in the hell possessed you to do that? If you need an advance on your paycheck, just ask. I’ll give you whatever you want. Don’t get up on stage and take your clothes off. Have some goddamn self-respect.”

  Oh, shit.

  I’d said something so irresponsibly stupid I wanted to punch myself in the face. For a moment, Ally looked like she’d do it for me. But I still had her arms, so the best she’d be able to manage is a gut shot, which I deserved.

  “I have nothing but self-respect,” she said, her voice low and shaking. “Nothing.”

  “Why is that? Why don’t you have anything? Why were you so desperate for money that you’d dance for strangers?”

  With shaking hands, she peeled my fingers away from her skin. “Just like everything else regarding me from now on, that’s none of your business,” she said coldly.

  “Ally—”

  “Here’s what happens now. I don’t want you to ever speak to me again. I don’t want my name to ever pass your lips again. If you need something from the admin pool, you call every other person in that room. Because we’re done. No more flirting. No more getting to know you. No more ‘I want you, but I can’t have you’ games. It’s finished. When you see me in the hall, you will avert your eyes and walk in the opposite direction.”

  “And if I don’t?” Cold licks of dread settled in my gut.

  “I’ll tell Malina that you had a sex dream about her. Now I’m going home. So if you have anything to say to me, this is your last chance.”

  All the things I should say, the whys she deserved to know, the feelings I had for her, the way I thought about her at night when I was alone… it all hovered on the tip of my tongue.

  “I’ll call you a car,” I said.

  36

  Ally

  Front Desk Deena pounced on me the second the automatic doors whirred open.

  The woman had an entire wardrobe of holiday-themed catalog wear. Today was a Valentine’s Day sweater with lopsided hearts placed directly over her generous breasts.

  “Ms. Morales, a word,” she said sternly.

  Reluctantly, I followed her buxom figure into the Pepto-Bismol pink office she shared with the much nicer, much flatter chested Sandy, the nursing supervisor.

  I thought about running. I thought about that lap dance and Dom hauling me into his car, his home. I thought about the gigantic diamond rings on Deena’s left hand. Mr. Deena must be a boob man to put that kind of hardware on her hand. I thought about a lot of things in the twenty seconds it took for Deena to settle herself behind her desk and take a judgmental sip of tea.

  “Your father’s account is past due,” she said, assuming the role of Four-Star General Obvious.

  “I realize that,” I said, reaching into my backpack.

  “Now what are we going to do about it?” she asked with a smile so phony her lips didn’t even curve.

  Nursing Supervisor Sandy, the woman unlucky enough to share an office with Deena, rolled her brown eyes heavenward at her desk.

  “If you can’t produce exactly…” Deena swiveled to her computer monitor. The screensaver was of alternate universe Deena beaming at her lap full of grandchildren who weren’t regarding her as an evil, shrewish monster. “$5,327.94 today, then I’m sorry, but we’ll be forced to begin the eviction proceedings against your father.”

  She didn’t sound sorry at all.

  Sandy shot me a sympathetic look, and I wondered how many of these meetings she’d sat in on.

  “I understand,” I said. Sending up a prayer to the goddess of lotteries and cash-windfalls, I reached into my bag and pulled out a check for every cent I had in my bank account and a stack of crumpled, glittery bills.

  Faith had dropped off my first-place winnings—was it weird to be proud about that?— along with two bottles of really good red wine and hot wings that we reheated in the oven at four in the morning.

  She also brought a check for the private dance. I didn’t accept it. But I did accept the loan. Because of course my best friend walked around with a few hundred dollars in cash.

  Between the rehashing of my scene with Dominic and my half-drunken declarations of “I love you” and “I’ll pay you back,” Faith had dragged the story out of me. And then told me I was a stupid, stubborn, prideful idiot.

  “I’ve got it all here.”

  Deena’s eyes narrowed at the stack of cash I pushed onto her desk. It couldn’t be more obvious where it had come from. Plus, I was still wearing half of my eye make-up from the night before. Faith’s club makeup was industrial grade, sweat-proof, shower-proof, and grind-proof product.

  “What?” I asked. “It’s not like I robbed a liquor store for it.”

  Deena’s laugh was mirthless. I took the time to rudely notice that one of her canine teeth was crooked.

  “We don’t accept cash, Ms. Morales. We’re not that kind of business. Just because your father is a favorite among the staff—” She sent a withering glare in Sandy’s direction as if it were a crime to treat their residents well. “—doesn’t mean we’re running a charity home.”

  “I don’t expect charity. It wasn’t my fault that there was a problem with my direct deposit. I have cash. Enough cash.” I pushed it closer to her.

  She steepled her fingers like a Bond villain
.

  “Well, it’s certainly not my fault. If you can’t pay all of your late fees in an appropriate manner right now and make a good faith payment on this month’s bill, I’ll have the staff start packing your father’s things.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  But Mean Deena didn’t kid. She threatened. She ruined. She destroyed. But she didn’t kid. “I am not responsible for your inability to read the intake forms and contract. We do not accept cash payments.”

  “Then I’ll go to the bank and deposit it. I’ll write you a check now, and you can cash it Monday.”

  “That’s not how this works,” she said with evil glee.

  It was then that I realized this woman did not want my father here.

  “Where will you send him?” I asked, trying to buy time. Trying to come up with some solution. Trying to decide between bursting into tears and grabbing one of Deena’s solid gold bracelets and shoving it up her nose.

  What was the annual salary for an evil accounts receivable rep anyway these days?

  “The state has facilities for patients who didn’t plan for their futures.”

  “None of this is my father’s fault,” I insisted. I’d definitely go for the nose bracelet.

  “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? Without the full amount due right now, your father must leave the property today. Our waiting list is full of patients who are willing to pay their bills on time.”

  And there it was.

  “Do you get something for harassing patients’ families? Is there some kind of incentive system for avoiding late payments?”

  Deena blinked owlishly and then adjusted her gold bracelets. Busted.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied primly. “Now if you don’t feel like taking him home, we’ll transfer him to a state facility outside of Trenton.”

  There were so many things I should have done differently leading up to this exact moment. So many decisions I’d made based on pride when in reality I couldn’t afford to have any.

  And now my father was going to pay the price for it all.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck.

  I wanted to throw up. Or throw a temper tantrum. I wanted to record Front Desk Deena behaving like a soulless banshee and then personally show her grandchildren what an asshole Grandma was.