The Boss (5 page)

This morning, that magnetic effect was
somewhat diminished by the tension between Neil and me, and we both
seemed to realize that Rudy had noticed it, as well. I hurried to
hang up the coats while Rudy looked with interest from me to Neil
and back.

"Did you enjoy your day off, Miss Sophie?"
Rudy had a soft voice and a faint, generic southern accent that I
was about seventy percent sure was a pretentious put-on. It was
obvious that the question was an admonishment, and I was supposed
to try and ferret out the right response.

"Yes, thank you for asking." I wasn't going
to make an excuse for my absence. Rudy Ainsworth could think
whatever he wanted about me, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings. I
was getting fired today, anyway.

"I'm glad you're here," Neil told Rudy. "Can
you come in and look at the budget they proposed for the handbag
spread?"

I was instantly forgotten, and the moment the
doors closed behind them, I dropped into my chair. I was almost
dizzy from whatever had happened between Neil and me, and my relief
at having been rescued from a potential labyrinth of
passive-aggressive conversation with Rudy.

Rudy was the least of my worries. Now that
Neil had left the room, I went off on an emotional bender, eyeing
our might-have-been confrontation from every possible paranoid
angle. Had he felt what I had? It had seemed so obvious in the
moment. Was he still going to fire me? Had I imagined it all?

I went on autopilot for the first forty-five
minutes of my day, answering the phone, falling back on the
comfortable routine I'd been in just a couple days ago. I'd thought
the magazine would come apart without Gabriella, but everything
seemed so shockingly normal. Maybe I could keep working here, after
all. Maybe I could snag a position someone else had vacated in a
huff yesterday. Life might actually improve.

For the first time in a very long twenty-four
hours, I started to feel like maybe my career wasn't completely
over.

At around lunchtime, Neil emerged from his
office and paused beside my desk. "I think you should join me for
lunch. We have some things we need to discuss. Ivanka will cover
any calls."

Have lunch with Neil? I had a vision of
barfing up my still-beating heart right onto my desk in front of
him. I felt a bit queasy as I got to my feet, which seemed to have
been encased in blocks of lead. I went to the closet and got our
coats, handing him his first. To my surprise, he moved to take mine
from my hands.

"I've got it," I said as pleasantly as I
could as I shrugged it over my shoulders. We were still at war,
even if I had come to a sort of uneasy peace about work.

I followed him through the lobby, preferring
to keep a few steps behind him, like I'd done with Gabriella. He
noticed before we even reached the elevators.

"Could you stop following along like Mary's
little lamb? You're my assistant, not my servant." He sounded a bit
irritated. At me or Gabriella? Or both of us?

Even though we only stopped twice on the way
down, I thought it must have been the longest elevator ride of my
entire life. I stood beside him, not saying anything, my gaze fixed
firmly on the numbers lighting up over the doors. I didn't want my
eyes to stray to my right for even a nanosecond, because I was
certain he would notice me looking at him.

Suddenly, I realized how men must feel when
standing at a urinal in a public bathroom.

We crossed the lobby, and I noticed people
stopping to stare. Not at me, but at Neil, and why shouldn't they?
The entire building was abuzz with the takeover of
Porteras
,
and people were eager to get a glimpse of the man who'd breezed in
and ousted the feared, fire-breathing Gabriella Winters.

From the hard set of his jaw, I guessed he
noticed the attention, too.

A car waited at the curb, a black and gray
Maybach 62, and Neil opened my door for me. I gritted my teeth.
When I reached for the handle to close it myself, Neil stepped back
hastily to go round the other side of the car.

A partition between the front and back seats
separated the car in two. Neil got in and used the intercom system
to speak with the driver about our destination. I was just grateful
for the center console between the two of us. It was nice to have a
physical barrier there; comforting like a podium at a public
speaking gig.

As we pulled away, I took a mental inventory
of the car. It definitely had a better TV than I had in my
apartment, and more real wood than all of my flat-pack furniture
combined. It was also an abnormally quiet ride, free from outside
noise, so the awkward silence between Neil and myself had been
sharpened to a fine point.

He seemed about as thrilled to be in the car
with me as I was to be with him. He leaned against the door and
looked out at the traffic, his mouth a grim line. When he finally
spoke, his voice was soft and pained. "I do remember you,
Sophie."

The words took the breath from my lungs. My
first instinct was to make some kind of quip to deflect him, but it
was finally in the open between us, and there was no sense in
running from it now. "You didn't yesterday."

"I've never forgotten you." There was a
bewildered quality to his words, as though he couldn't believe I
would think he'd let me pass from his memory for an instant. "I
just didn't realize it was you, until you said... For God's sake,
the Sophie I knew was going to go to Japan to teach English and
find herself. I never thought I'd see you again."

"Never thought, or hoped never to?" I tried
at a smile, to pass it off as a joke, and it all sort of fell
apart, so I looked away, out the window. There were millions of
people in the city I would trade places with in a heartbeat to
escape this moment, and yet...

I'd wanted this for six years. Even when I'd
been fuming mad and trying to use his money to buy a last-minute
seat on a flight to New York, I'd been more hurt and angry by the
fact that I would never see him again than I had been at the way
he'd left me.

"I shouldn't have taken your ticket," he
admitted. "I did it because you were so bright and being so
stupid... but it wasn't my place to prevent you from making a
mistake. I didn't even know you."

I sat back against the very comfy leather
seat. He was apologizing. I'd always imagined him apologizing; I’d
just never anticipated he would call me stupid while doing it.

"I'm glad you went to NYU."

When I looked at him again, the weighty
feeling between us was back. There was no mistaking that he felt
it, too. I took a shaky breath. "So am I. It got me a good job. Am
I going to keep it?"

He looked as though he would answer me, but
the car stopped and the driver spoke over the intercom. "We've
arrived, Mr. Elwood."

Neil exited the car, and this time he let me
get my own door. I had to admit, I was impressed by that, but it
was difficult to maintain any level of excitement when my job had
been left a cliffhanger.

The restaurant Neil had chosen for us was a
small brasserie with a sidewalk cafe still serving lunch outside,
despite the brisk fall weather. The hostess smiled as we
approached, and Neil mentioned a reservation.

"Not under an assumed name this time?" I
asked under my breath as we followed the woman through the mostly
empty restaurant.
No wonder he needed a reservation, this place
is hopping
, I thought snidely, and then I was somewhat
bolstered by the fact he hadn't taken me someplace super popular
and crowded. That would have been a flashing neon sign that I was
about to be fired. The hostess led us all the way to the back of
the building, past the restrooms and the kitchen, to a small
private dining room.

"This used to be a mob hideout," Neil said
cheerfully as he gave his coat to the hostess.

I unbelted my coat and worked on the buttons,
giving the waitress a skeptical look. "That's not true, is it?"

She shrugged with a friendly smile. "That's
what we tell people."

Neil moved to pull my chair out. I arched a
brow at him, and he held up his hands apologetically and took his
own chair.

"Mandy will be right with you," the hostess
said as she handed us our menus, one page of crisp tan paper tied
into a leather cover with neat black ribbon. Whenever I ate in a
New York restaurant, I guiltily remembered the laminated card stock
at all the restaurants in my hometown, and I could almost hear my
relatives telling me I was getting too big for my britches.

"Do you care for duck?" Neil asked, glancing
up from his menu. "They have a very good cold duck confit
salad."

I could have told him exactly what to do with
his duck. "Are we here because you're firing me?"

He didn’t look up this time. "No. I wouldn't
fire you just because we slept together in the past. I'm the
interloper here, you've been with
Porteras
much longer."

The tension in my work brain eased, and I
looked down at the prix fixe menu and weighed my options in
silence.

"Do you think you'd stay on?" he asked
casually as the waitress returned for our drink orders. I'm never
sure what I'm supposed to order for a business lunch, so I stuck to
coffee and water. To my surprise, he followed my lead. I'd thought
he would order some fancy expensive wine or something.

I considered his question. It would be insane
for anyone to want to work for someone they had a hot one-night
stand with. "As your assistant? I don't think that's something I
can manage."

"I completely understand." He set his menu
aside and sat back in his chair, one hand toying with the stem of
his water glass. "To be quite honest, I don't think I would feel
comfortable ordering around someone with whom I had a sexual
relationship. Had a past sexual relationship, that is." His quick
amendment brought a hot flush to my cheeks, and he cleared his
throat while we looked firmly away from each other. The waitress
came to our rescue, taking my order for a grilled calamari salad,
and his for moules marinières, which he pronounced perfectly.

He could have just said 'I'll have the
mussels,'
I sniped silently. What was the point of sitting
here, having lunch with him, if it wasn't going to save my job?

I realize I wasn't being entirely fair to
him. He'd apologized for stealing my plane tickets. He seemed
genuinely sorry that he hadn't remembered me. And it wasn't like he
could control the fact that our work paths had crossed. We were
both in a weird situation, here.

After the waitress left us, Neil began again.
"As I was saying, I wouldn't be comfortable keeping you on as my
assistant, but I see no reason for you to leave the magazine
completely. Your coworkers speak very highly of you and your
experience in the company. Would you consider accepting an
assistant beauty editor position?"

I was glad he asked me now, because if we'd
been eating, I would have been choking on squid for sure. "Excuse
me?"

"It's a bit of a leap, but Gabriella did put
your name down on the list of suggestions." He took a sip of his
coffee. "I won't pressure you into making a decision right away.
That's not what this lunch is for."

Gabriella put my name on a list? With other
candidates? Meaning, she didn't even see to my job security before
she left? I tried hard to disguise my annoyance. After all, she had
put me down as a candidate for assistant beauty editor. That was a
huge promotion for me, and a chance to actually use my degree.
"Well, I appreciate the time to think... but what is this lunch
for, if not to discuss work?"

There was that half-smile again, like a ghost
of my most private fantasies passing silently between us. "To catch
up. It's been six years, after all."

"Ah."
Well, after I couldn't get on my
plane to Tokyo because you stole my plane tickets...

I would have to let that go, or make my life
really difficult. Six years ago, I'd done lots of stupid things I’d
had no business doing. Six years from now, I'd probably be saying
the exact same thing. Clearly, Neil thought of taking my plane
ticket as one of those stupid things he’d had no business doing. I
could afford to be a little more forgiving.

"You know, we didn't really know each other
before," I began, not unkindly. It was just a fact we couldn't
ignore and still work together. "There's no reason we should feel
weird about this."

"I believe that's unavoidable." He laughed,
and the bubble of tension between us burst. I'd forgotten that; he
spoke so carefully and always seemed to know exactly what to say,
but laughed without a hint of reservation. The creases at the
corners of his eyes deepened, and his wide smile showed his
straight, white teeth.

The relief of the moment overwhelmed me, and
I laughed, too. And once I started, I couldn't stop. It felt good
to let down the walls I'd built up in the face of all my fears. I
had anticipated getting fired, and that wasn't going to happen, at
least not today. I'd thought that things between Neil and I would
be weird, and they were. But it wasn't the end of the world, and I
wasn't the only one suffering. That did a lot to ease my mind.

"Oh, Sophie." He shook his head, his smile
dimming just a little. "I've thought about you so much. I was such
a deplorable ass."

"Or Leif was a deplorable ass," I scolded,
and found myself somewhat shocked to be playfully teasing, rather
than truly angry.

"In my defense, Leif
is
my middle
name. I didn't pull it out of the air." His green eyes met mine,
and I didn't feel the uncomfortable urge to look away this time. He
lowered his voice. "Did I ruin your life? Taking those
tickets?"

No, he hadn't. He'd saved it, but I couldn't
tell him that. It would be too much like excusing him. "I had a
choice. You left me plenty of money. I could have waited for
another flight, and I didn't. I bought the ticket to New York. I
made my choice."