By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy Page 22

  Everything was falling apart, and now it was the worst-case scenario. My poor dad. I’d failed him when he needed me the most.

  My work cell phone buzzed in my hand. The little pop-up alert on the screen caught my eye. I blinked rapidly. It was an email from HR department with the subject: Temporary promotion and signing bonus.

  Hope aggressively took flight.

  “Excuse me a moment,” I said, holding up a finger—not the one I wanted—at the woman gleefully telling me she had no problem shipping my father off to a nursing home that had been cited by the health department three times in the last eighteen months.

  Ms. Morales,

  You’ve been chosen from our admin pool for a sixty-day placement as a personal assistant to one of our executives. This move within the company includes a pay raise as well as a $5,000 signing bonus, which has been wired into your account. Stop by on Monday for the details of your new assignment. Congratulations!

  “Sweet and sour chicken,” I breathed. My eyes closed in a relief so palpable, the heartless robot across the desk from me asked if I was all right. Five thousand dollars? Five THOUSAND dollars? Five thousand DOLLARS?

  I ignored Deena and toggled over to my bank app. Well, holy mother of last-minute saves. There was $5,000 sitting there in my checking account.

  I shot out of my chair and pumped my fist into the air. “I have the money! I’ll write you a check.”

  “A check?” Deena snorted ungraciously. “Ha! You expect me to accept a check from you? “

  I shoved the phone in her face. “Is this good enough for you?”

  She harrumphed while I triumphantly dug out my checkbook.

  Sometimes good things happened to pretty okay people. My father was safe for another month. And with a raise, maybe I could take a few weeknights and weekends off to fix up the house. My eyes were swimming in unshed tears. This anonymous executive had just saved everything that was important to me in this life.

  I was going to do this. I was going to make it through. I was going to be okay.

  I signed the check with a violent flourish, spent an hour having breakfast with my dad, who thought I was one of his high school students, and then cried for ten minutes in the parking lot, letting the February wind freeze tears and industrial strip club eye makeup to my cheeks.

  Fate had just saved me from a downward spiral from which I had no way of recovering on my own.

  I was going to be the best damn PA she or he had ever had.

  37

  Ally

  “There has to be a mistake,” I croaked, looking at the non-disclosure agreement the HR rep—a nicer, more pleasant one than the first—handed me.

  “Oh, no, Ms. Morales. It’s all there. You’ll be stepping in for Mr. Russo’s admin, Greta. She’s taking a two-month European tour. Isn’t that exciting?”

  “Exciting,” I parroted as my head spun.

  Pride warred with poor.

  As soon as I woke up this morning, I’d checked my bank balance and danced a boogie in bed when I saw my paycheck had officially landed. There was money in my account. Enough to actually catch up on some bills, buy another box of drywall screws, and maybe even get myself some real groceries.

  I’d already spent all of the signing bonus on Dad’s late fees and the good faith payment. I couldn’t afford to turn down the job and give it back.

  But I could afford to be a complete ass to Dominic Russo.

  He manipulated me into this. He hadn’t been able to force me out of the company from a safe distance, so now he was going to try it up close and personal.

  Well, Charming had another thing coming. I had staying power. A stubborn streak wider and deeper than the Pacific Fucking Ocean. I’d sink my claws into this job and him. Maybe I’d make him quit.

  “You’re so lucky,” she whispered conspiratorially. “He’s so good-looking it hurts to look directly at him.”

  Yeah? Try looking at him after getting him off and then replaying those primitive grunts and growls for forty-eight hours straight without busting out the vibrator because you suddenly have principles.

  I wisely chose not to share that sentiment.

  See? I had self-control. I could do this. I could do my job, ruin this man’s life, finish the renovations on my dad’s house, and when it was sold, when Dad was safe for several years, I’d get that gosh darn mango margarita. Or at this point, maybe it was better to just go straight for an entire bottle of tequila.

  “And here’s the employment contract,” she said, cheerfully handing over another piece of paper that would require part of my soul. “You can read it if you like. It’s pretty straightforward. The only new requirement is Section J.”

  I flipped to Section J.

  “The employee will not pursue outside employment during the term of the contract.”

  That sneaky motherfucker.

  I had a brief but entertaining fantasy of taking these papers and shoving them up Charming’s ass, making sure he got paper cuts. But then I started thinking about his ass. Fortunately for all involved, the compensation section of the contract caught my eye and convinced me that my dignity could indeed be purchased.

  I signed the papers, my hand gripping the pen so hard it cramped, and then forced a cheery smile as HR Lady gave me directions I didn’t need to my new personal hell. I already knew the way.

  My first instinct was to go in blazing hot. But that would give him the satisfaction of knowing he got under my skin. If mystery bothered him so much, this son of a bitch—wait, no. His mother was a lovely human being. This alphahole was going to suffer. I’d make sure of it.

  Mr. Alphahole was not currently in residence.

  But just looking through the open door into his domain had me feeling a little lightheaded. I guessed it was a combination of righteousness and lack of cheese.

  I stood there, glaring at Greta’s empty desk for a long minute. I would be mere feet from the man I wanted to avoid for the rest of my life. All day, every day, for two months. One of us was bound to crack, and I really, really didn’t want it to be me.

  “Admin Ally moving up in the world.” Linus appeared, slapping a stack of red-inked proofs against his palm.

  I resisted the urge to grab Greta’s trash can and vomit into it.

  “It appears so. I didn’t know Greta was planning a trip.”

  He shrugged personal trainer-sculpted shoulders. “Sounds like it was a surprise anniversary trip,” he said.

  “Some anniversary.”

  “Are you all right?” He peered at me through his tortoiseshell glasses. “You look even pastier than usual.”

  “Fine,” I croaked. “Everything is fine.”

  And then it wasn’t. Because Dominic Russo was striding toward me in a goddamn vest with his shirt sleeves rolled up, looking like he owned half the world. I might need that trash can after all.

  “Ally,” he said gruffly.

  I just stared dumbly and cursed my lady parts for bursting into an angels’ chorus as they recalled Friday night in vivid detail. The feel of his fingers as they dug mercilessly into my hip. The sound he made, that long, drawn-out groan when he came. The warm, wet spread of his orgasm under me. The sandalwood scent of his body wash.

  “Linus,” Dominic said, nodding at the man next to me.

  Record scratch.

  “Good morning?” I said. It came out like a question because Linus was looking back and forth between us as if there was an invisible tennis match going on. If tennis were played with a ball of loathing that was slapped by rackets of angst, then we were in the middle of Wimbledon.

  “These are for you from on high,” Linus said, handing over the proofs.

  Dominic dragged his evil, alpha, stupid, blue-eyed gaze away from me and glanced down at the papers.

  “Much fewer red marks this time. Consider it a win,” Linus said.

  Dominic nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Well, I’ll just let you two get back to… whatever hot mess
this is,” Linus said before hurrying away.

  We were back to staring at each other. The air between us vibrated with all the things we weren’t saying. I had so many conflicting feelings that I wondered if I could actually implode from it. Then I spent an obscene amount of time pondering how long it would take to clean imploded body parts out of the carpet.

  It would probably be easier to just redo the entire floor, I guessed.

  “Come inside, Ally,” Dom said, leading the way into his office.

  I nearly bit my tongue in half but did as the shithead commanded. See? I could pretend.

  He gestured toward one of the chairs in front of his desk. I expected him to sit behind his desk. Keeping large objects between us had been his MO to date. So I knew I was in trouble when he leaned against the front of his desk instead.

  No barriers.

  In a defensive move, I stepped behind the wingback chair.

  His lips quirked, and he crossed his arms.

  I tried not to look at the sexy ink on his forearms. Dressed-up and classy on the outside, but dig down a few layers, and Dominic Russo was a primal, rough-around-the-edges sex god.

  “Thank you for filling in,” he said.

  I blinked and shook my head, certain I hadn’t heard him correctly.

  “Filling in?” I repeated.

  “She speaks.”

  The man just couldn’t go five seconds without pushing my buttons.

  “It’s not going to work,” I told him haughtily.

  “What’s not going to work?” He had the sheer stupidity to look amused.

  “I’m not quitting. Do your worst, Charming. But I’m sticking it out. No matter what strings you pulled to get me here when I expressly told you I never wanted to see your stupid face again—”

  “You think I just what? Sent Greta off for a two-month vacation?” he scoffed.

  “You hand-picked me for this ridiculous farce of a job.”

  “I did,” he admitted.

  I’d expected more of a denial and had to scramble for the next point in my argument. I came up dry.

  “You’re the only one I trust.” He said it as if it were a normal thing to say.

  “You trust me? What kind of fucked-up relationships do you have, Dom?”

  “We’ve shared several intimate… moments,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “And you’ve never once divulged that information or used it to gain an advantage over me.”

  I was suddenly and overwhelmingly exhausted. My shoulders slumped as gravity increased its pull on me.

  The observant bastard caught it and pushed away from his desk. “Sit down. You’re dead on your feet, and it’s only Monday morning.”

  He manhandled me into one of the chairs. I put my face in my hands and focused my energy on slow, calming breaths while he made some kind of a racket in the corner of the room.

  “I’m not doing this to make you quit,” he said quietly.

  “You’re doing it to control me. I saw the outside employment clause in the contract. If I work a bar shift or decide to take another stab at amateur night, I’m fired for breach of contract.” I wanted to believe in my bones that he was doing this as some stupid mind game, that he got off on playing puppet master with my life. But deep down, I was worried that it was something much, much worse.

  Dominic Russo was trying to take care of me.

  “You can still teach dance,” he said.

  That controlling, caring, manipulative son of a bitch.

  “I can, can I? How magnanimous of you.”

  “Do you want the job or not?” He was in front of me again and pushing a cup and saucer into my hands. The man made me tea and was paying me an astronomical amount of money to manage his calendar and pick up his damn drycleaning. And all I had to do was sign over my soul.

  “The job? Yes. Your pity? No. Your thanks for dry humping you to orgasm? Definitely no. Being at the mercy of your whims to fire me? Hell no.”

  “It’s your choice, Ally.” He wasn’t joking. He was leaving it up to me. I could take the job and leave my pride at the door. Or I could walk out of here with my head held high… and go pack my father’s things because no admin salary, number of bar shifts, and dance classes were going to keep him where he needed to be.

  And then the worst thing that could possibly happen happened.

  My eyes got hot and wet. I forced a sip of tea down my tight throat.

  “Don’t,” he said harshly.

  “Don’t what?” I rasped.

  “Don’t fucking do it, Ally.”

  “What? Cry? Why the hell not? I’ve done nothing but humiliate myself in front of you up to this point. I don’t see why either one of us should expect anything else.” I gave a pathetic, watery laugh.

  Though my vision was blurred like a downpour on a windshield, I could tell Dominic was on the verge of panic.

  He reached for me, then thought better of it and stuffed his hands into his pockets. One immediately freed itself and swiped over his face.

  “You’re stronger than this, Ally. Act like it.”

  That douchey, high-handed reminder was enough for me to heroically rein in my emotions. It took a long minute of staring at the ceiling and not blinking to reabsorb the moisture into my eyes. But I did it.

  Dominic looked relieved.

  I stood, still clutching the teacup because the tea was annoyingly fabulous and he wasn’t getting it back. “Don’t fuck me over, Charming,” I warned.

  He made no promises. Just gave me a brisk nod.

  “I will be the second-best assistant you’ve ever had. But there’s no going back to the way it was. You can trust me to keep your secrets, but I’ll never trust you with mine.”

  His eyes were stormy. More gray than blue now. He looked like he wanted to say something. “About Friday night,” he began.

  I held up a hand. “Never bring up that night. As far as either one of us goes, Friday night never happened.”

  “And it will never happen again,” he said sternly. “Your contract doesn’t allow it.”

  I swore an imaginary blood oath on the spot that I would make this high-handed asshat rue the day he ever walked into George’s Village Pizza.

  “Order me some breakfast. Get yourself something, too. You look pale. We have a meeting at ten.”

  38

  Dominic

  She ordered me plain, steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast.

  On Tuesday, she instituted an email-only communication rule. When I handed her a bagel from the bakery down the block on Wednesday, she dropped it straight into the trash. Thursday she had a barista spell out “ass” in the foam of my chai latte when we were out of the building for a meeting.

  As the days wore on, it was both a relief and a horrific kind of torture to only have to look through my open door and see Ally. We’d made accidental eye contact so many times the first day that she moved her computer monitor to the opposite side of her desk and sat with her back to me.

  On Valentine’s Day, I got every assistant on the floor a flower arrangement just so I could give her something. I signed her card “From Linus” so she’d keep the fucking flowers.

  As the first week wore on and bled into the second, she remained icily professional toward me. We avoided each other as much as possible. There were no antagonistic emails or flirty texts. If I needed to sign something, she sent an intern into my office. If I needed to ask her a question, I cc’d half the team.

  I kept my hands off my damn cock. It felt wrong with her right outside my office. Every night, I relived the lap dance, but I still didn’t touch myself. Nothing but Ally was going to cut it. Not after she undulated and ground her way up my dick like it was her personal sex toy.

  I was ruined and found a certain relief in accepting it.

  But it was the silence, her complete withdrawal from me, that started to put the cracks in my facade. By the third week, I was a fucking wreck. I couldn’t work with this kind of tension. I needed to develop a drink
ing problem stat.

  The only thing that kept me hanging on was the fact that the dark circles beneath those honey-colored eyes were fading. The hollows in those cheeks weren’t as noticeable either. Ally still packed her lunches, but they passed for actual food now. However, there was a new mystery to be solved. She was showing up to work with odd bruises and bandages.

  What was she doing in her time off? My brain obsessively turned the problem over and over. Was she a submissive? Was she taking care of a large, clumsy dog? Had she taken up totem carving as a new hobby?

  I wasted hours of my day thinking up questions that I was never going to get to ask her. I made up excuses to linger near her desk. Every night, I watched her leave without a word and wished she were going home with me. I didn’t know what was worse, seeing her all day every day and not speaking to her or watching her leave and not knowing what she was doing.

  I had no idea how I was going to get through the event tonight.

  Christian James, the designer who dared flirt with Ally, was launching his new line and we, as in a very large part of the Label team, were invited to the show and afterparty.

  I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon than watch Ally, dressed to the nines, parade around a party. But I also wasn’t going to let her go by herself. Not with a playboy designer toasting himself with champagne and flashing ridiculous dimples at her.

  Speak of the devil. The woman who haunted my every waking moment hovered in the doorway.

  “Yes?” I snapped.

  My temper didn’t seem to have the right effect on her. It only emboldened her.

  She strode into the office on new gray suede stilettos that peeked out from under the wide cuffs of her red pants. I was grateful that she was facing me, so I didn’t have to pretend not to admire her ass.

  “These are from Dalessandra,” she said, dropping a stack of proofs on my desk.