Boss I Love to Hate: An Office Romance(9)

What. The. Fuck?

He’d cut me off before I gave her an Apprentice exit, Trump-style.

I stared at his retreating, backstabbing back long and hard as he ushered the idiot out of our house, my nostrils flaring. I wanted to kill him. Damn him. I undid my tie and stormed to the fridge, reached in for a beer, and popped it open with my teeth, talented like that.

“Brad …”

“Don’t fucking Brad me when you let that girl off so damn easy. If you didn’t have the guts to fire her, I would have. I was going to until you cut me off.” I chugged the beer, feeling the cold liquid hit the back of my throat.

“What did you want me to do?” He exhaled a heavy sigh as though this were my fault.

I looked to the ceiling and around the kitchen, and then I opened my arms wide with my beer in one hand. “Hire someone else. Not. That. Hard.”

“We can’t.” His expression was pinched. “I just need until the middle of next week. Don’t you remember I’m flying to Ohio this weekend, and I won’t be back till Wednesday?”

I lifted an eyebrow as if to say, So? I swore. I could speak with facial expressions.

“Becky and Charles will be back at the end of the month. It makes no sense to hire someone new and retrain another babysitter,” Mason said. “It took me two weeks to feel comfortable with Annie after we trained her on the girls’ schedule. If we had to do the same with a new hire, Charles and Becky would be back in town by then.”

Felt comfortable? Yeah, right.

During Annie’s training period, Mason had followed her to school on the very first day that she drove the girls to make sure that she indeed took the girls to school and wasn’t going to sell them to sex traffickers.

“I’ll watch them.” Better me than that poor excuse of a babysitter.

Mason smirked and followed up with a peal of laughter. “You?”

My eyes searched the area. I looked left, then right, and then to the ceiling for an exaggerated effect as if there were someone else in the room. “Yes, me. Is there anyone else here?”

“No offense …” Somehow, I knew whatever was going to come out of his mouth would definitely offend me. “You’re the fun uncle.”

“And? State the obvious, would you? And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I scratched at my jaw and took my empty beer bottle to the recycling bin. The beer bottle that I had drained. I needed to eat something and cook something for Sarah and Mary because, apparently, they’d only had cotton candy for dinner.

“You can’t even take care of yourself. Remember the puppies?” Mason reminded me.

Dickhead. Will he always bring up the puppies? We were ten damn years old. And someone had left the gate open, and because I’d had the puppies last, I had been the one blamed when it clearly wasn’t my fault.

Mason strolled to the freezer, plucked out some prepackaged chicken breasts, and threw them in the sink. I guessed he had the same line of thinking, knowing the girls hadn’t eaten yet.

“I know I’m a selfish bastard, but when it comes to those girls …” I didn’t have to finish my sentence. Mason knew I would do anything for my nieces.

I guessed he was making chicken strips because he plucked out the breadcrumbs from the pantry. Me, being the cool uncle, got out the ingredients for mac and cheese, one of the few things I knew how to prepare for myself. And let’s get real; kids loved mac and cheese.

“She’s staying on,” Mason argued, using his work tone on me. “And, once I get back from Ohio, I’ll be able to watch the girls more closely.”

I tried hard not to shove him against the stove. This bastard would be the death of me. When he was in this type of mood, it was like trying to reason with a child.

With the set of his firm jaw, I knew there was no way I would win. He’d beat me down with words, and I would just want to throat-punch him because I couldn’t speak as fast as he could.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “But she messes up one more time, and she’s out.”

The smug, small nod of his head had me clenching my fists.

The safety of my nieces was nonnegotiable. “And, if anything happens to them, I’m going to blame you because I wanted her gone. You just remember that.” I pointed to him. “It’ll be your fault.”

When the smile faded from Mason’s face, I felt slightly vindicated. I’d won.





Chapter 3





Sonia





“I’m not going.” I slammed the door to my one-bedroom apartment, holding the phone in my ear and talking to Ava. “It’s not happening.” I adjusted my glasses on my face and cringed. I didn’t want to deal with any of this—my ex, the Replacement, or this stupid wedding.

Jeff had been the love of my life, the one I was supposed to spend the rest of eternity with. Also, the one who had broken my heart. And I was supposed to show up to this wedding and put a smile on my face, pretending to be okay when he was happily in love, and I wasn’t? Yeah. Not doing it.

“You kind of have to go. You’re in the wedding,” Ava reminded me.

“As a reader,” I reminded her right back.

Carrie could get another one. I plopped down on my brown leather couch, feeling the softness of the suede-like material under my knees as I curled into myself.