By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy Page 8

  “Do you have a problem?” I asked, enunciating each word.

  She shook her head. “Nope. No problem,” she finally croaked. Now she was looking everywhere but me. The carpet appeared to be quite fascinating. Her neck was turning an interesting shade of pink.

  “Try to pull yourself together before the meeting,” I suggested, brushing past her.

  Greta was waiting by her desk with my coat and briefcase. “Be nice,” she ordered.

  Ally snorted behind me.

  “I’m always nice,” I growled, shoving my arms through the sleeves of my coat.

  Both women shared a laugh at my expense.

  “You’re a funny guy, Dom,” Ally said, slapping me on the shoulder. She had apparently recovered from whatever seizure or psychotic break had rendered her mute. “Nice to meet you, Greta.”

  “Good luck, Ally,” Greta said with a traitorous wink.

  We didn’t talk in the elevator, each doing our damndest to pretend the other didn’t exist. But as more people crowded in, I found myself pressed up against her in the corner. What was this annoying electric buzz every time we touched? Even through layers of clothing, I was still keenly aware of her shoulder pressing against my arm.

  Hell, the guy from twenty-three was brushing my sleeve with his elbow as he played Tetris on his phone, but that contact barely drew my notice. There was a tension between Ally and me, wrapping itself around us and pinging back and forth.

  I didn’t like it.

  The doors finally opened like a reprieve, and we stepped out into the lobby. I led the way trying to get a few steps ahead of her so I could not smell that lemon scent that was messing with my head.

  “Hey, Ally! How’s it going?” A man wearing brown cargo pants and a cap that looked like it had once been a woodland creature shifted the half-dozen Dior bags he was carrying to wave.

  Ally beamed.

  I’d seen her smirk. I’d witnessed her annoyance. I’d even seen her laugh once or twice. But this was something else entirely.

  Her face lit up with actual joy. Didn’t she know joy had no place here? I wanted her to be as annoyed and uncomfortable by my presence as I was of hers. I wanted her unable to function.

  “Buddy! Doing a little shopping?” she teased.

  He laughed, a braying, donkey-like sound that was too loud to be dignified.

  “Yeah, right! Doing a little pickup for a fancy photo shoot,” he called. “You?”

  “Heading off to a fancy meeting,” she told him with a wink.

  “See you at lunch tomorrow,” he yelled as the elevator doors closed.

  She was still grinning when we climbed into the SUV.

  “Good afternoon,” Nelson said when he slid behind the wheel. “I took the liberty of getting you each a protein shake for the drive.”

  Nelson’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and I felt his unasked question. Before today, I’d never once asked him to make a special trip for food or drink before a thirty-minute ride.

  “Wow, thanks!” Ally said, making a grab for one of the shakes.

  I picked up mine, pretending like I wanted it. “Who was that guy?” I asked her.

  “Who? Buddy?” she asked, peering into the cup.

  I saw the way her eyes lit up, and as annoying as I found her and as much as I enjoyed our back and forth, the hunger I saw there made my chest tight. I wanted to ask her why.

  Why, when she had a full-time, decent-paying job, was she hungry?

  “His name is Buddy?” I asked instead.

  “I’m surprised you don’t know. Your mother hired him at the same bus stop she hired me. You know, after you got me fired.”

  “You got yourself fired.” I peered out the window at cold, wet Manhattan and wished I were somewhere hot and tropical. Far away from everything else.

  “Here’s a thought. Since we’re trapped working together,” Ally began, “why don’t we try this thing where we just agree to disagree.”

  I shook my head. “That never works.”

  “Okay. Fine. How about instead of mortal enemies, we make an effort to not be horrible to each other?”

  “I don’t feel comfortable making promises I can’t keep.”

  Her lips quirked. It wasn’t the full-on Buddy Beam. But I still liked it.

  “How long of a drive is this?” she asked with a sigh.

  “About thirty minutes, miss,” Nelson said from the front seat.

  “It’s Ally,” she told him.

  “Nice to meet you, Ally. I’m Nelson.”

  “Thirty minutes seems like a long time to be trapped in a car with a guy like Dom,” she mused to my driver.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners. “One gets used to it.”

  “So we can’t pretend to be friends, and you can’t promise not to be an ass,” she recapped to me. “How about we clear the air? We can tell each other all the things we don’t like about each other. I’ll go first.”

  She was joking. But the idea had merit. I didn’t like her. I couldn’t like her. We both needed to remember that.

  “Your attitude,” I said, launching into my own list. “Your shoes. Your eyes are too big for your face. You have issues remembering that you’re an employee and should act accordingly. And your hair constantly looks like you just rolled out of bed.” With a man.

  She blinked. Twice. And then her laugh filled the car. “You’ve put a lot of thought into that list for it to just roll off your tongue like that.”

  “I was just stating the obvious. I don’t sit around thinking about you, Maleficent.”

  Lies.

  She sent a cocky look in my direction. “Sure you don’t, Dom.”

  “Not only are you not my type. You’re so far in the opposite direction of my type you rank next to my great-aunt Rose.” More lies.

  I did, however, have a great-aunt Rose on my father’s side. She, too, was a horrible human being. There was something profoundly wrong with the DNA on that side of the family.

  Ally laughed. “Don’t start being funny, Charming. I like a man with a sense of humor,” she warned.

  “You’ll need to fight your baser instincts and resist me,” I grumbled.

  She reached out and actually patted my hand where it rested on my thigh. “Don’t worry, Dom. You’re not my type either.”

  I snorted to let her know I knew she was bluffing.

  She turned in the seat to look at me straight on. The movement made that stupid swingy skirt she had on slip a little higher on her thigh.

  “You’re callus, disrespectful, generally in a bad mood, and I’d guess that you have trouble taking anyone else’s feelings into consideration over your own.”

  Look at her hitting the nail on the head.

  “You’re a workaholic, which is fine. Work ethic is a good thing in my book. But you don’t like your job, so that makes you either too stubborn or too scared to make a change. And I’m not a fan of either.”

  My eyes narrowed, and I could feel my nostrils flaring. “You don’t know me.”

  “I know you’re not my type,” she said saucily.

  She wished I wasn’t her type.

  “You’re the type that waltzes into pizza shops and gets servers fired.”

  “I’d like to amend my list to add the fact that you’re incapable of letting anything go,” I said, pretending to be fascinated by the website traffic email that just came through.

  “I was depending on that job, Dominic.”

  “And now you have a better one. You’re welcome.”

  Ally growled. Actually physically growled. “There are consequences to our actions, Dominic Russo. And I’m going to make sure that one of your consequences is that you regret the day your mother hired me.”

  “Mission accomplished already. Why don’t you quit and go ruin someone else’s day?”

  “Please,” she scoffed. “I’m a tiny, little fish in your very big pond. You don’t even know I’m in the building.”

  Now she was the delus
ional one.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. I gave up on pretending to read emails and stared out the window at dreary, frozen Manhattan.

  “Tell me what got you to shut up for five full minutes upstairs,” I said finally.

  The abrupt question threw her off balance, and I noticed she skimmed her gaze over me again.

  Then her slow smile had my cold, dead heart doing something odd in my chest.

  She leaned in a little closer so Nelson wouldn’t overhear her. I knew many things in that moment. I didn’t like her. I didn’t want to like her. I had no intention of treating her as anything but an annoyance. Yet none of that quelled my desire to be near her.

  “I have this thing,” she began tentatively.

  My breath stopped. I didn’t want the hammering of my heart to drown out her next words. When she didn’t continue, I merely stared at her.

  “For vests,” she said, eyeing mine.

  “But I’m not your type,” I shot back.

  She smirked. “You’re only slightly less not my type in a vest. But don’t worry, Dom. I promise to resist you.”

  13

  Ally

  Friday afternoon traffic in Manhattan was stupid. Why anyone would choose to take a car rather than the subway was beyond me. Yet here I was, making money just for being stretched out in the back seat of a very nice SUV on some very supple leather.

  I could almost enjoy myself. Almost.

  The broody guy in the sexy vest next to me was short-circuiting my ability to relax.

  “I didn’t get much information from Zara. What’s this meeting about?” I asked, over the dueling horns of two cabs trying to get around a delivery truck. Middle fingers flew.

  “You really should learn to do your own research,” Dominic said. He was back to snarky, and I wished his crappy attitude would take his wow factor down a few notches. But my lady parts were steadfastly holding up their perfect ten scores.

  “Humor me,” I insisted.

  “Christian James is a designer who’s launching his own label. He was with one of the big fashion houses. Worked his way up the ranks. Put a new spin on the original designs that made them an industry name. And then he met my mother.”

  I perked up. “She’s mentoring him?” I guessed.

  Dominic nodded, glancing out the window like the conversation was boring him and he’d rather be anywhere but here. “She introduced him to the right people, the right suppliers, the right insiders. My mother believes in him. So Label is doing a spread about him, his career path, his designs.”

  “She sees potential in a lot of places,” I mused.

  “Not everywhere,” he said, giving me a pointed look.

  I laughed. “No, not everywhere. In my case, she saw righting a wrong. But she has wonderful instincts. Buddy, for example.”

  “I’m not convinced anyone named Buddy is cut out for high fashion. Even if it’s the mail room of high fashion.”

  “You are such a snob,” I sighed.

  He didn’t bother denying it.

  “I suppose you’re going to want to tell me why this Buddy is such a great addition to Label,” he said.

  “I suppose I am, even though I suppose you won’t care,” I said primly. I filled him in on the Buddy Highlight Reel. “Even Linus likes him.”

  “Linus doesn’t like anyone,” Dominic argued.

  “He likes Buddy. It’s impossible not to. I mean, for anyone who isn’t you. I’m sure disliking people comes very naturally to you. Buddy is the opposite. He likes everyone instantly and without requiring them to prove anything. His attitude is incredible considering what’s going on at home.”

  Dominic closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the seat. “I’m going to regret this. But what’s going on in Buddy’s home?”

  I told him about Buddy’s wife. Her accident. The insurance.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “And your mother took a chance on him. A stranger at the bus stop. It gives me goose bumps,” I admitted. “See?” I pushed up my sleeve and held my arm out to him.

  His eyes skimmed my skin, and a new crop of goose bumps arose as if he’d actually touched me.

  “You’re annoyingly sentimental,” he said.

  “Are you adding that to your long list of my faults?”

  “Maybe it would be a faster feat to start a list of things I like about you,” he mused.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be giving me so much thought,” I told him. “You might accidentally start appreciating me and enjoying my company.”

  He snorted derisively and didn’t deign to comment.

  * * *

  Christian James Designs was located in a trendy warehouse in the meatpacking district.

  We took a freight elevator up to the third floor, and the doors opened on glorious, colorful chaos.

  “Please tell me we’re shooting here,” I breathed. It was an eye-catching mess of texture. The brick. The scarred wood floors. The light pouring through tall, arched windows. “It’s so beautiful I want to barf.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Dominic demanded, shaking his head.

  I guessed that all he saw was the chaos.

  “Think about this. That dress right there,” I said, pointing to a long, slinky cocktail dress that looked as if it had been dipped in gold. “A model, dark skin so the dress pops, standing in front of one of those work tables buried in red and orange fabrics. The rough brick in the back. The sun streaming in from the side.”

  He was looking at me like I’d grown a second head and asked him to make out with both of my faces.

  “Oh, come on, Dom. Give me your phone so I can take some pictures.” I held out my hand.

  “I’m not giving you my phone,” he said. “Use yours.”

  I held up my bargain basement, pay-as-you-go, not-so-smart phone.

  “What the hell is that thing?” he asked. “A calculator?”

  “Oh, shut up. Hand over your phone,” I insisted. He produced it from his pocket.

  “Camera,” I said.

  He made a production of supreme annoyance, but he unlocked the phone and opened the camera. I took it and snapped a few shots. “You’d want to time the lighting carefully,” I said, snapping a few more. “I like the idea of fiery colors since it looks like he works in them a lot. And depending on when the article runs, you might want to play around with summer and fire and those themes. If it’s a winter thing, you could shoot a bunch of soft grays and navies in front of that white stucco wall.”

  I scrolled through the pictures, nodding. I accidentally went too far, and instead of a design studio, I was looking at a selfie of Dominic wearing an expression of annoyance and flipping the bird. Why in the hell would chilly, callus Dominic Russo have a funny selfie on his phone? I couldn’t quite cover the laugh that bubbled up.

  He gave me the side-eye. Innocently, I pretended to be engrossed with a rack of pantsuits.

  “Mr. Russo, Christian is just finishing up a phone call.” A woman in cargo pants and a chunky turtleneck sweater approached. Her long, dark hair was yanked back in a lumpy ponytail, and her glasses kept sliding down the bridge of her nose. “I’m Agnes.”

  “Ally.” I offered my hand.

  She was holding an iPad open to a calendar app. “Christian has an hour set aside for your meeting today before he needs to take a call with a supplier.”

  “What calendar app is that?” I asked, peering over the screen. I loved a good calendar.

  Agnes and I compared notes on organizational apps for a minute while Dominic ignored us both.

  Her phone buzzed an alert, and she wrinkled her nose. “I’ll show you two to the conference room,” Agnes said, her brain already moving on to her next task. She led us to a glassed-in conference room. Framed black-and-white prints of models and dresses and presumably famous fashion people leaned against still bare walls. The long farmhouse table held a cluster of succulents in the center.

  Dominic pulled out a chair for m
e, and I sat, carefully, suspiciously, in case he thought it would be funny to pull it out from under me.

  To my surprise, he sat next to me. For all his talk about being annoyed and inconvenienced by me, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get away from me.

  I unloaded my laptop and ignored his judgmental stare. Shame wasn’t a feeling I harbored regarding my financial situation. It was an obstacle to overcome. A challenge. And I had no intention of failing.

  “You really should consider the fact that you are representing Label,” he said when Agnes left the room.

  “I should, should I?” I challenged, keying in my login. This dinosaur took a good four minutes to lumber to life.

  “Appearances are what drive this industry.” His gaze skimmed my laptop and then my thrift store outfit.

  “If Label is so concerned with appearances, they are welcome to accessorize me or—here’s a thought—don’t send me out in public,” I said, exasperated. “There are plenty of more attractive admins capable of taking notes.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but we were interrupted by pure, unadulterated handsome.

  “Dominic, thanks for meeting me. And you must be Ally.” The man who entered the room was quite frankly delicious. His smile was warm enough to heat up the January chill. Bright green eyes framed by thick lashes and dark curling hair, cut short.

  He wore low slung jeans and a tight long-sleeve tee. And a vest.

  I beamed.

  Dominic gave my leg a nudge under the table with his own. “Try to control yourself,” he muttered dryly before standing and shaking the designer’s hand.

  Christian was an enthusiastic guy with big goals. As he personally escorted us on a tour of the facility, it became clear that everything he did came from a place of passion. Life to Christian James was color and texture and beauty and fun.

  It was easy to see what Dalessandra had been drawn to.

  I mean, besides the fact that he was insanely good-looking.

  Where Dominic was frowny and broody, Christian was dimpled and friendly. Where Dominic was cold, Christian was warm.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing at a mannequin wearing a pair of still-under-construction wide-legged pants.