Boss I Love to Hate: An Office Romance(12)

Shit. I really couldn’t blame Annie. I would’ve taken Mary to Great America, too. This girl would’ve gotten me to buy her the biggest stuffed animal and eat all the cotton candy in the world for dinner just by her look alone. Not one woman had that kind of hold on me. Mary did though.

“Only if you tell me which part of dinner was the best.”

“Your mac and cheese.” She grinned and rubbed her belly in an exaggerated effect.

She is good. This girl knows how to read and work people. Watch out, men of America.

“Right answer, kiddo.” When I reached her pink explosion room, I gently placed her on the ground.

She leaped up and down and jumped into her bed, kicking off its ruffled comforter. “Uncle Brad?”

“Yeah?” Fuck, she was so cute; my heart was melting all over the carpet.

“What’s protein? Uncle Mason kept saying that mac and cheese had too much carbs and not enough protein.”

I chuckled. “It’s nothing you need to worry about right now.”

I sat at the edge of the bed and pulled the covers up to her neck. She had the lightest blonde hair, just like her mother, Natalie. I wondered how Charles felt every time he looked at her—a walking reminder of his first love. Sarah, on the other hand, was the spitting image of Charles, but she held her mother’s personality, genuine without any pretense with her dark brown hair and eyes.

“But Uncle Mason kept saying I need to eat more protein.” She scrunched her nose, the way she did when she was worried about something.

I touched her nose with the tip of my finger, and she relaxed. “Uncle Mason worries too much.” If we were breathing clean air, if the water was pH-balanced, if our organic lotion caused cancer … everything. “Now, did you want to hear the story about the prince and his crown jewels?”

Her eyes brightened, and I began to tell her my life story. The PG version.





Sonia

My fingers tip-tapped against the keyboard, nonstop and relentless, getting this memo done for Brad, but my mind … my mind was on other things.

Carrie had called me—not once, but four times last night. Ava had probably told her that I knew, and she was trying to make amends. I was too angry to talk to Carrie, remembering how I’d cried for hours on the phone and at her place and in her arms as she tried to comfort me when Jeff and I broke up. How could she possibly do this after everything I’d gone through?

Ava had been right about one thing. When Jeff and I had first met, I had been madly in love. From the third date, I knew—or at least, I thought—we would last forever. And so I did what any girl in love would do. I’d integrated him into every aspect of my social and family life, introducing him to my immediate and big extended Italian family, double-dating with my girlfriends and their boyfriends, kissing up to his family. Wasn’t that what couples did when they were madly in love?

“Sonia …”

The annoying tone of the BILK echoed from his office.

Usually, I had a tolerance for Brad. I’d worked and slaved for this man for over two years. I knew when to stay away and when to smile and just shut up. I knew what he liked for breakfast and lunch, the type of girls he dated. How he wined and dined and screwed them.

I’d previously found a bra in his office. He had called me from his car phone, seemingly sheepish and embarrassed for once. He’d asked me to throw it out so that the cleaning staff wouldn’t see the evidence of his rendezvous.

Yes, he had the nerve. Brad had no shame. It was as though that one incident had broken the barrier, and I was just one of his buds like he was sharing stories with his new best friend. He told me everything now. Really, he liked to hear himself talk.

When that had happened, I had been offended to the max, but the next day, he’d bought me coffee and a box of doughnuts, and … well, it didn’t take a lot to make me happy.

“Sonia!”

I pushed off my desk, exhausted, and grabbed my iPad. I entered his office and slammed the door behind me. “Yes?” My tone was clipped, short, without its usual fake cheeriness.

He lifted his dark brown eyes to mine and tilted his head before speaking, “The meeting at Clarks has been canceled.”

“All right.” I swiped at my iPad and pressed delete on his ten o’clock. He could have called me on the phone like he usually did. I lifted an expectant eyebrow. “Is that it?” Then, came my smile. The forced smile that seemed like I needed to take a bad crap.

He twisted his pen between two fingers and then tapped it against the desk. The continual tip-tap of the pen against the mahogany wood grated on my nerves. “We’re meeting with Thomas at Titan Printing next week.”

“Oh.”

This was news. There’d been an article on Brad’s desk weeks ago that Titan Printing was going bankrupt. They were the biggest printing company that serviced the whole West Coast and also Brisken’s biggest competitor.

“Are you really going to buy out the company?” Since we’d crossed that boundary, I felt I could ask him these questions now and then.

“That’s the goal. If he wants to save his company and the thousands of jobs that could be lost, Thomas will need to make a decision. And we …” He pointed to himself. “… are his best bet.”

I made note of it on my iPad. “Anything else?”