The Boss (44 page)

"How... diplomatic of you." Gabriella looked
amused at my answer.

"And is Elwood giving you any more problems?"
Jake asked. To his credit he sounded actually concerned. I had to
give him a bit of a break there; he didn't know Neil and I were
dating. From his point of view, he'd seen me come out of the boss's
locked office all shaken up and flushed and freaked out. Then I'd
gotten a promotion the next week.

Better to clear that up right away. "I never
had a problem with Mr. Elwood. I barely worked for him at all
before I was promoted, and that was on Gabriella's recommendation.
And thank you so much for that, Gabriella. It really meant a lot to
me that you thought me capable of the job."

She gave me a benevolent smile. "I knew you'd
do well there, Sophie. It wasn't a favor to promote you."

A waiter came over with menus, and I tucked
my hair behind my ear as I scanned it. Almost immediately, I
noticed Penelope's eyes light up.

Penelope and I had gotten along okay when
she'd been second assistant in Gabriella's office. Tall and willowy
with ginger hair and cat-like green eyes, she had often been
mistaken for a model in her early days at
Porteras
. But she
had a photographer's eye for detail, and she zeroed in now on the
pink sapphire winking in my ear. "What lovely earrings. Tiffany,
right?"

"Oh my, Neil Elwood must pay his assistant
editors much better than I did," Gabriella murmured, raising one
eyebrow and pursing her lips as her gaze flickered over the menu. I
honestly don't know why she ever bothered to look at the damn
things; any restaurant in New York would make her whatever she
asked for, and she knew it.

I ordered a cheddar and kale salad with baked
eggs. Gabriella had her customary salmon. Jake, having the totally
unfair metabolism of a dude, got eggs benedict with the muffins
swapped out for portobello caps, and Penelope stuck to water, since
she was doing a detoxifying cleanse. As we ate, we chatted amiably
about what Gabriella had been up to since leaving
Porteras
.

As much as working for her had stressed me
out, I did like Gabriella. I respected the hell out of her for
getting what she wanted out of life, and not allowing the usual
roadblocks of gender and stereotype to hold her back. And I had to
admire how quickly she'd gotten a new magazine organized and
staffed, even if their first issue wasn't due until February.

"It will be completely digital," she said
with languid pride. "I must admit, I've never liked the idea of a
totally paperless publication. I thought it cheapened the brand
when
Porteras
began offering a digital edition, but we just
weren't thinking outside of the box then. Jake has shown me that a
magazine can be beautifully presented, with quality content, and
transcend the limitations of print."

"Wow, Jake. I had no idea you were so
talented with the computer stuff," I said, truly impressed.

He smirked and lifted his water glass to his
lips, pausing before he drank to say, "Well, in my new role at
Mode
, I'm able to take some pretty big risks."

"You're welcome," Gabriella said easily. She
dropped her napkin on her plate. "Sophie, you could be taking those
risks, as well. How would you feel about... assistant creative
director?"

I was so grateful I didn't have a mouthful of
anything, because I would have sprayed it all over the table.

"Excuse me?" I looked from Gabriella to Jake.
Across the table, Penelope was smiling the benign smile of someone
content to wait for her day to come. "You're not serious."

"Totally serious, Sophie," Jake assured me,
looping one arm over my shoulders in a buddy-buddy gesture. "I told
Gabriella about the work you've been doing in the beauty
department, and how hard it's been for you guys to find worthwhile
products to feature. She picked up the January issue - "

"Ghastly," Gabriella said under her breath.
"Not your section, of course."

"And we agreed that with the parameters
you've been given, you exceeded beyond expectation," Jake
continued.

"Right, but there are two other people
working with me in the beauty department. It's not just my work
you're looking at. India does a great job - "

"India does a great job drinking during the
work day," Gabriella said, her gaze sliding slyly to Penelope, who
smirked and shook her head. "And we already have Jessica Nguyen
working for us in another capacity. Sophie, I'm not going to beg
you. You either trust me when I say that I know you can do the job
and accept the position, or you toddle out of here and go back to
Porteras
."

"She can't go back to
Porteras
,"
Penelope said, sipping her coffee. "You're getting fired, aren't
you?"

My stomach dropped. "How the hell could you
possibly know that? It just happened."

"Twenty minutes ago." She held up her phone,
displaying a text message. It said,
Scaife's out
.

"Who - " I shook my head. Who wasn't
important. Well, it was. But that would be important later. “I had
an idea I was getting canned."

"Because of your involvement with Neil
Elwood?" Gabriella asked quietly.

"What? No. I'm not involved with him." I
looked to Jake, because I couldn't handle the pointed stares from
the other side of the table.

He shifted uncomfortably and couldn't meet my
eyes.

"Jake tells me you had a locked-door
interlude with Elwood," Gabriella said, fixing me with her x-ray
vision that I swore would see right into my soul. "Your work
attendance changed drastically once he was installed. You took a
long lunch with him on the second day he was there, and you took
two half-days
and
a sick day..."

"I was a little shaken by the fact that the
boss I liked working for suddenly wasn't my boss anymore, and I
didn’t know how secure my job was," I said, as politely as
possible. "How do you know all of this?"

"Half the remaining staff at
Porteras
is still loyal to Gabriella, Soph," Jake said, looking utterly
baffled that I didn't realize this myself. "It's not like they're
unwilling to share this information."

How the fuck had this gone from a job
interview, no, a job offer, to a goddamned interrogation by the
Mean Girls
clique?

"And those are very expensive earrings,"
Penelope observed.

"No one is condemning you, Sophie. We're
simply concerned that your loyalties might not lie in the right
place." Gabriella studied me as though she were going to paint me
from memory later. "You understand, of course, that future
involvement with Mr. Elwood, or any employee of an Elwood and Stern
company, will be... discouraged, should you accept my offer?"

"There's nothing to discourage," I insisted.
Shit. Would she hire a private investigator to follow me? Or would
she just have one of her simpering sycophants do it?

That made me feel bad. Not too long ago, I'd
been one of those sycophants. How often had I done things for her
that had hurt my co-workers? Probably plenty, and without question,
because I’d wanted to be good at my job. My mind raced over all the
times she'd asked me to keep an eye on the elevators, to see what
time this editor or that assistant arrived to work. The times she'd
sent me on errands to fashion houses and asked me who'd been
waiting in the lobby with me. Probably all those times had been
about espionage more than errands.

Holy fuck, I'd been living in a freaking soap
opera and I'd never noticed. Because I had wanted the glamor and
the drama, or maybe I had thought I was supposed to want it.

I felt super dizzy. I gulped down some water
and hoped my face didn't look as red as it felt.

"It isn't that I don't want the job," I began
cautiously. "Obviously I
need
a job, since I'm unemployed.
But I really have to think about this. It's such a huge
responsibility, and I don't want to take it lightly. Can I let you
know tomorrow?"

"That's reasonable, right, Gabriella?" Jake
asked nervously.

She sighed. "I really had hoped for more
enthusiasm. But then, your cautious nature was one of the reasons I
hired you as my assistant."

We chatted a bit more, but it was clear that
as the point had been reached, the "interview" was over. Jake
offered to walk me out, and while I didn't want to be anywhere near
him, I couldn't refuse.

"Listen... is there anything going on with
you and Neil Elwood?" Jake asked. "You seem... off. And you didn't
exactly laugh at those accusations."

"Because they're not funny," I said firmly as
he hailed a cab for me. "I don't have to sleep around to be
successful."

"Fine, fine. I won't ask again." He held his
hands up. A taxi coasted up to the curb, and I reached for the door
as Jake continued, "Don't blow this, Sophie, that could be the
biggest mistake of your life."

"No pressure." I tried not to snap, but I bet
I sounded snappish. "I really am going to have to think about this.
It's a major decision."

"And you have to check with Neil Elwood?" The
corner of Jake's mouth lifted in a wry smile, like he had caught me
doing something I shouldn't have.

Okay, sleeping with my boss was something I
shouldn't have done. Getting into a relationship with him, that was
worse. But I didn't regret it for an instant, and no job was worth
losing what I had with Neil or hurting him further. My mind was
already made up, now I just wanted to get the hell away from these
people. "Goodbye, Jake."

I didn't look back at him as I got into the
cab.

* * * *

Meeting Neil for
dinner should have been refreshingly stress free. For the first
time, I wasn't worried about running into someone from work. In a
city of eight million people, it was strangely easy to get caught
by someone you least wanted to see when you were doing the thing
you least wanted to get caught doing. Tonight, we could honestly
say that we didn't work together.

I was at the restaurant, a cozy, intimate
place with soft lighting and a quiet dining room, for about twenty
minutes without any sign of Neil. Which was totally bizarre;
barring that one time I beat him to his apartment after work, he
was never late. I checked my phone. He hadn't called me.

That struck me as odd. Surely he couldn't
still be tied up at
Porteras
. Wouldn't he have let me
know?

I tried not to keep my eyes on the door, but
I spotted him the moment he came into view. He looked apologetic
and ashamed as he approached, but he looked tired, too. Definitely
not himself.

"I am so sorry." He slid into the seat across
from me. "We had a hell of a day, and I completely forgot we were
meeting for dinner."

"Ouch," I said under my breath. "How quickly
we go from 'I fucking love you,' to 'I forgot about you.'"

His face scrunched up as he realized how what
he'd said had sounded. "No. No, I'm sorry, that didn't..." He took
a deep breath through his nose, as though mentally wiping the slate
clean. "I'm sorry I didn't call. I’m not feeling right."

"Another headache?" I realized I was leaning
forward slightly, examining him, as though I could diagnose his
illness.

"I have to remember to schedule an
appointment to see someone." He reached across the table and took
my hand in his. His thumb brushed across my knuckles, and I drew a
shaky breath.

I was making the right choice, turning down
Gabriella's offer, wasn't I? A part of me was disappointed that
when the chips were down, when I had to make a really important
decision about us, charming, panty-melting Neil hadn't shown up to
dinner to make the choice easier. In his place, weird, stand-offish
Neil-with-a-headache had turned up. Another part of me was glad it
was playing out this way. Because the shine of a new relationship
wasn't going to last forever, and I needed to be able to make my
choice about this job - and Gabriella's ridiculous requirement -
with that in mind. Would I turn down the offer if I knew Neil and I
wouldn't be together in three months? Right now, where I was
sitting, after waiting twenty minutes for a no-call, no-show
boyfriend... the answer was still yes. I loved him, insane as it
probably was to love someone I'd only been in a relationship with
for a two months. But something about us just worked. I couldn't
imagine not being with him in three months. I couldn't imagine not
being with him in three years. It just seemed right that we were
together, and I suspected he felt the same way.

"Don't worry about it. You had a stressful
day." I shrugged. "It's not like we're going to always be
perfect."

He squeezed my hand before releasing it to
pick up his menu. "I had a stressful day? I wasn't the one
interviewing for a job. How did it go?"

"It went... not great." I wasn't sure how
much I should tell him about the reason it hadn't gone great.
Though Neil had agreed to let me make my own mistakes and not
meddle, it would be a lot easier for him to say he was going to
stop meddling than to actually do it. "She offered me a job, but
I'm not going to take it."

He set the menu aside, brow furrowed in
concern. "Why not?"

"I wouldn't want to work with them again. It
was uncomfortable for me, sitting there with them, being aware of
how important they found themselves. They're the center of their
own little world, still, and I was expected to fawn over them and
try to earn their approval. I guess when I worked for Gabriella
before, I got so used to that expectation that I didn't see
anything weird about it." I could have stopped there, but being
honest from the very start was better than trying to hide anything
from him. "And they are convinced I'm sleeping with you."

"You are sleeping with me," he observed.

I snorted. "But they have no reason to
believe that. They had all this supposed evidence, like the fact
that I took a sick day... it was just stupid, inconsequential
stuff. But their little spies had come to this conclusion for them,
so Gabriella offered me this job on the condition that I break
things off with you. Even after I lied and said we weren't
dating."