By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy Page 7

  Our eyes met and held over the gigantic laptop screen several times.

  No messages passed between us. No “fuck you”s. No thinly veiled insults. Just long, shared looks. Her eyes looked more brown than gold in this lighting. Her hair, even though it was tied back in a short tail, still had that just tousled by a man’s hands look with the waves escaping around her face. And those lips seemed to be permanently quirked as if always ready to smirk or smile.

  I didn’t trust smilers.

  She stuck her tongue out at me.

  Ever so casually, I raised my hand and rubbed at my eye with my middle finger.

  She was definitely smirking now.

  “Excuse me a minute,” I said, interrupting an editor. “Do you mind typing just a little quieter? It sounds like you’re trying to stab your way through the table.”

  Everyone turned to stare open-mouthed at Ally.

  She looked up. Smiled. And I suddenly couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next.

  “So sorry,” she offered sweetly.

  I was disappointed.

  Momentarily.

  As soon as the table returned to their debate whether peach or rose was a better background, Ally mashed her keyboard in an obnoxious crescendo.

  Linus looked like he was about to swallow his tongue. Shayla cleared her throat and stared at the ceiling. The rest of the team around the table scooted their chairs as far away from Ally as possible as if they didn’t want to get caught in any crossfire.

  “Would someone see about getting Sausage Fingers here a quieter way to take notes next time?” I said to the room in general.

  There were actual audible intakes of breath.

  “And if someone could see about getting Charming here a nicer personality that he could try on for meetings, that would be great,” she shot back.

  Linus choked on his gum, and the rest of the room was turning blue holding their breath.

  “Moving on,” I said, feeling marginally more cheerful.

  Conversation began again. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but everyone seemed a little more relaxed.

  Next on the agenda was a beauty brand that was jerking us around, demanding prime product placement after backing out of an advertising deal.

  I nearly fell out of my chair when a junior beauty editor asked me, “Do you have any suggestions, Mr. Russo?”

  I took a breath and looked her dead in the eye. “Call me Dominic. Please.”

  She blinked rapidly several times, looking stunned.

  As a matter of fact, I did have a suggestion. This was my area of expertise. Risk assessment. Managing inflated egos. Applying the right pressure at the right time. I had plenty of personal experience with that.

  “Tell them we’ve decided to go in another direction. Name drop Flawless,” I said, mentioning another skincare company.

  “We’ve had a relationship with La Sophia for years,” Shayla reminded me. But she didn’t sound like she hated the idea.

  “Maybe it’s time to break up,” I said.

  That got me an honest-to-God smile out of the woman. She’d looked at me with contempt, barely controlled her eye-rolls when I made stupid suggestions, or just frowned outright when we passed in the halls.

  But this was a look of approval.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” she confessed.

  “Then I’ll leave it in your hands,” I said.

  “Do you want me to reach out to Flawless or just say that I am?” she asked.

  “If there’s a brand you want to work with that you think would be a good fit for our readers, do it.”

  Shayla’s smile got a millimeter wider, and I felt my Proof of Asshole score drop a few points. Not bad for a Tuesday.

  A surprisingly spirited discussion broke out around the table about how best to illustrate the results of the magazine’s online polls rating what readers looked for in spring jackets.

  “Why don’t you put them in motion?” an annoying voice from the far end of the table piped up.

  “Because this is a print magazine. That means it’s on paper,” I said heavy on the sarcasm.

  Ally rolled her eyes. “Your sarcasm is noted, Dom. But I was talking about linking the print graphics to an animated one online. You want more crossover traffic between your print and digital content, right? You do something cutesy like this…” She stood up and walked to the whiteboard.

  I divided my attention between two things. The way those pants hugged the curves of her ass and the competence with which she drew. She sketched out a rough trench coat with arrows pointing to parts of the construction and then another version mimicking motion.

  It was fucking charming. That annoyed me.

  “Then down here, you put a custom smart label that your reader can scan with their phone, and it takes them to the website. Link it to a cartoon or actual videos of models wearing each of the products, and break down the construction, best ways to wear them, where to buy at different price points.”

  Linus was pursing his lips and polishing his glasses, his tell that he liked an idea. “That’s…”

  “Not a horrible idea,” I filled in.

  “Thanks,” she said dryly.

  “Can you do a mockup of the illustrations for me?” Shayla asked her. “Something in that style?”

  Ally shrugged. “Yeah. Sure.”

  We wrapped ten minutes late. A first. Usually my meetings ended early because everyone was in a hurry to not be in the same room as me.

  I took a moment to scroll through messages on my phone and purposely walked out behind Ally.

  “Sausage Fingers?” she hissed at me.

  I didn’t like her. But sparring with her made an otherwise interminable meeting slightly more interesting. Plus, there was something…enticing about that fresh lemon scent.

  “You type like a Clydesdale.”

  “You know, you’d be a lot prettier if you smiled once in a while,” she mused, fluttering her lashes.

  No wonder women hated it when men said that.

  “I don’t have time to smile.”

  “I don’t have time to smile,” she mimicked in an annoying voice.

  “Your maturity peaked in preschool.”

  “Aww, did Pouty Man Face get his feelings hurt?”

  “You’re fired, Maleficent.”

  “Good luck with that, Charming.” She headed off in the direction of the stairs.

  “Don’t bother getting comfortable here,” I called after her.

  I didn’t realize until a makeup artist gaped up at me and then walked straight into a glass door when I passed her that I was actually smiling.

  11

  Dominic

  The admin pool was a place I generally avoided. It was loud, disorganized, and it had been my father’s preferred hunting grounds for employees to harass. He’d most likely seen them as powerless and pretty. The perfect victims.

  I saw it as a series of potential landmines. Busy women who did the dirty work for everything that happened inside and outside our offices. One false move and I could piss off the entire backbone of our company. It was safer to avoid them, to let them do their thing, rather than remind them that there was another male Russo in residence.

  It was Ally’s lunch break, but I hadn’t seen her in the cafeteria. Not that I was looking. Or that I’d checked her calendar in the system for her schedule. Okay, so maybe I had.

  I absolutely refused to think about my motives for personally dropping off a legitimate research request. I always had Greta email them, keeping the lines of communication clearly defined.

  But if I dropped off this request in person, I reasoned, I could also see if Ally was ready to quit yet.

  I tapped the folder in my hand and surveyed the space. Most of the cubicles were abandoned, but I spotted her and that pink sweater across the room. She had headphones on and was rhythmically shimmying her shoulders, lips moving to unheard lyrics.

  I tapped the folder agai
n. Debating. What the hell. I had a few minutes for an argument.

  She was still swaying in her chair when I walked up behind her. My dick inexplicably took notice of her proximity, which pissed me off. I was forty-four years old. Not some pimple-faced teenager at a pool party. And unlike my father, I had self-control.

  I peered over her shoulder, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Crap on a cracker, Charming!” She yanked her headphones off but got them stuck in her hair. “Ow!” She pulled harder.

  “Stop it,” I said, making a grab for the headgear and slapping her hand away. “You’ll give yourself a bald spot.”

  I unwound her hair from the earpiece.

  “I’d say thank you, but it’s your fault I’m now balding.”

  “I see you’re doing personal work on company time,” I said, looking at the screen where she seemed to be in the middle of designing several versions of a logo for a butcher shop.

  She picked up her phone—one of those knockoff smartphones that looked like it was ten seconds away from disintegrating—and showed me the countdown on the screen. “I’m on lunch, Mr. Sunshine. On my own laptop.”

  “You’re on my Wi-Fi. And where did you get that poor excuse for a phone?”

  She gave me a look that said why don’t you go kick yourself in the balls before turning back to her dinosaur of a computer and disconnecting the internet. “Happy now?”

  I was. I liked fighting with her. At least she didn’t go cry in a corner if I looked at her wrong.

  I glanced at her desk. There was a banana sitting next to the phone. “That’s your lunch?”

  “Yes. It is. Now, is there anything else you’d like to judge me on—maybe my outfit or perhaps I’m breathing too loudly—or can I get back to my lunch break?”

  “A banana isn’t lunch.”

  I’d been around the fashion industry long enough to know how rampant eating disorders were. But I’d seen the woman polish off two cranberry muffins during the meeting this morning.

  “It is when you’re newly and temporarily poor.”

  “Newly and temporarily poor,” I repeated.

  “Don’t worry, Dom,” she said, dryly. “It’s not contagious.”

  Dom. Not only had she used my first name. She’d given me a nickname… one that wasn’t mean.

  “Did you need something, or did you just decide to spread your cloud of doom to another floor?” she asked.

  “Most new employees at least pretend to show a modicum of respect to management.”

  “Most new employees didn’t already lose one job in the past week to management,” she shot back.

  “So you’re blaming me for being newly and temporarily poor?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You just managed to make me a little poorer.”

  “Is that banana really all you have to eat?” I asked.

  “Do I really need to converse with you when I’m off the clock?” she asked, reaching for the banana and peeling it.

  As if the gods were smiling on me, her phone timer dinged, and I smirked. “Looks like you’re back on the clock.”

  She sighed, hit save on her laptop, and closed it.

  “What can I do for you, boss?”

  “Just keep being your belligerent self, and sooner or later, my mother will realize she made a terrible mistake.”

  “I don’t know about that. She kept you around.” Ally took a deliberate bite of banana, and I was instantly, stupidly aroused.

  I was back to being pissed off. This was ridiculous. I’d never gotten a hard-on from a conversation with a coworker. Clearly my self-imposed celibacy had gone on a little too long if arguing with a woman while she ate fruit turned me on.

  I leaned in. “Quit.”

  “Make me.”

  “I fully intend to.”

  “Great. Now that that’s settled, how about you scamper off to whatever ring of hell you came from and let me earn my paycheck?”

  I turned to leave and nearly ran into someone.

  Malinda? Matilda? The blonde with the Real Housewives lips was standing too close. She’d been one of the few who accepted the settlement and decided to stay. She’d also been one who had enjoyed my father’s advances.

  “Hi,” she said, her voice all babydoll breathy.

  If she called me “daddy,” I was going to puke.

  “Excuse me,” I said briskly, trying to step around her.

  “Is there something I can… do for you?” M-something asked, planting herself directly in my way. Her gaze skimmed up my body, lingering on my crotch.

  Ally mimed a creditable dry heave behind her desk, and I may have telegraphed a “please help me” in her direction.

  “No,” I said to… Melissa? Magenta?

  She took a step closer. I was bent so far backward when her finger trailed down my tie that I could have won a limbo championship. “Anything at all. Anything,” she repeated.

  I backed into the cubicle divider, gritting my teeth. I was not my father, and the fact that she thought I was made me physically ill.

  “Hey, Mal, why don’t you try sexually harassing men on your own time?” Ally piped up, leaning over her wall. “Some of us are trying to eat here, and your praying mantis routine is nauseating.”

  Mal… inda shifted from “put a baby in me” to “dragon lady” in the blink of an eye. The look she shot Ally was so full of contempt I willingly put myself between them. Sure, Ally’s mere existence pissed me the fuck off. But that didn’t mean she should have to die by psychotic coworker while protecting me.

  “I don’t need anything,” I said again. Colder this time.

  She seemed to get the hint. Raising her chin, the woman sauntered away, a crocodile slithering into a swamp.

  “That was a close one,” Ally observed, taking another bite of banana. “She almost took your balls with her.”

  “Yeah. After ripping your face off to get to them.”

  She blinked at me and then snickered.

  Fuck me. “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean your face would be anywhere near…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Fuck. Five minutes in this room and I’d gotten a hard-on and suggested that an employee put her face near my balls. This was not who I was.

  She laughed again, harder this time. “Relax, Dom. You might be an asshole, but you’re not trying to get into my underwear.”

  I dropped the folder to cover what was now a raging erection because of course I was picturing her underwear. I hated myself.

  “Now that Malina? She’s going to try to crawl into yours. So you might want to consider a chastity belt or shark repellent,” she suggested.

  “Maybe you should get back to work,” I muttered and then left the room as quickly as I could without running.

  Back at my own desk, dick under control—mostly—I put in a request to HR.

  While I waited for the paperwork, I buzzed Greta.

  “Do me a favor and have some kind of snack sent to the admin pool this afternoon.”

  “Some kind of snack?” She repeated it like I was speaking a foreign language.

  “Yes. Food. Something with protein maybe?”

  “Enough for the whole department?” she asked. I could hear the curiosity.

  “Enough for everyone. Use my card,” I said. I spotted the research request on my desk. The one I hadn’t bothered delivering. “Oh, and can you put a research request into the system for me?”

  Five minutes later, I settled back in my chair to read everything there was in Ally Morales’s file.

  12

  Dominic

  I’d avoided her since Tuesday just to prove that I could.

  Just to prove to my stupid cock that it did not run my life. That I wasn’t a carbon copy of Paul Russo.

  I didn’t know exactly what the hell was going on. But I’d wasted more brainpower on Ally Morales in the week and a half since I’d met her in that stupid pizza shop than on anything that actually deserved my attention.

  That was a pro
blem.

  And I was the smart guy who decided that since I’d proved I could leave her alone, I next needed to prove that I could be around her… and not want to fuck her.

  I’d requested her.

  It wasn’t a big deal, I told myself as I glanced at my watch again. I’d requested admins before. Ones I knew would be less annoying or wouldn’t make weird nervous humming noises if I asked them a direct question.

  Requesting Ally didn’t mean anything.

  I wasn’t interested. Not in that way. I didn’t sleep with people who pissed me off and pushed my buttons. I was, however, curious about her.

  What took a woman from being a semi-successful graphic designer in Colorado to a server living off bananas in New York? Her credit wasn’t great. The credit report noted a shit-ton of credit card debt in the last three months. But the street view of her home address—yeah, okay, so I’d looked up her address. I wasn’t happy about that either—showed a family home in a nice neighborhood in a decent commuter town in Jersey.

  She didn’t own the house, but I’d stopped short of doing a totally legal property search to see who did.

  I’d also stopped myself a dozen times from looking for her on social media.

  I wasn’t an impulsive guy. This itch to learn more about her annoyed me. I didn’t even like her. But her company photo did make me laugh. I called up the picture again on my screen and smirked. Was she mid-sneeze?

  There was a knock on my open door, and I jolted in my chair.

  Ally was standing in my doorway with a coat draped over her arm and a backpack slung over her shoulder. “Ready to go, Charming? Or do you need a few more minutes with your porn?”

  I closed her picture and rose.

  Those eyes went wide, and her lips formed an O.

  I glanced down, wondering if I’d forgotten to zip my pants or something.

  Nope. Zipped. “What?” I demanded.

  Silently, she shook her head.

  I looked back down. No stains. My tie was still tied. My vest still buttoned.