I’d avoided her since Tuesday just to prove that I could.
Just to prove to my stupid cock that it did not run my life. That I wasn’t a carbon copy of Paul Russo.
I didn’t know exactly what the hell was going on. But I’d wasted more brainpower on Ally Morales in the week and a half since I’d met her in that stupid pizza shop than on anything that actually deserved my attention.
That was a problem.
And I was the smart guy who decided that since I’d proved I could leave her alone, I next needed to prove that I could be around her… and not want to fuck her.
I’d requested her.
It wasn’t a big deal, I told myself as I glanced at my watch again. I’d requested admins before. Ones I knew would be less annoying or wouldn’t make weird nervous humming noises if I asked them a direct question.
Requesting Ally didn’t mean anything.
I wasn’t interested. Not in that way. I didn’t sleep with people who pissed me off and pushed my buttons. I was, however, curious about her.
What took a woman from being a semi-successful graphic designer in Colorado to a server living off bananas in New York? Her credit wasn’t great. The credit report noted a shit-ton of credit card debt in the last three months. But the street view of her home address—yeah, okay, so I’d looked up her address. I wasn’t happy about that either—showed a family home in a nice neighborhood in a decent commuter town in Jersey.
She didn’t own the house, but I’d stopped short of doing a totally legal property search to see who did.
I’d also stopped myself a dozen times from looking for her on social media.
I wasn’t an impulsive guy. This itch to learn more about her annoyed me. I didn’t even like her. But her company photo did make me laugh. I called up the picture again on my screen and smirked. Was she mid-sneeze?
There was a knock on my open door, and I jolted in my chair.
Ally was standing in my doorway with a coat draped over her arm and a backpack slung over her shoulder. “Ready to go, Charming? Or do you need a few more minutes with your porn?”
I closed her picture and rose.
Those eyes went wide, and her lips formed an O.
I glanced down, wondering if I’d forgotten to zip my pants or something.
Nope. Zipped. “What?” I demanded.
Silently, she shook her head.
I looked back down. No stains. My tie was still tied. My vest still buttoned.
“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 delusional 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.”
