She ordered me plain, steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast.
On Tuesday, she instituted an email-only communication rule. When I handed her a bagel from the bakery down the block on Wednesday, she dropped it straight into the trash. Thursday she had a barista spell out “ass” in the foam of my chai latte when we were out of the building for a meeting.
As the days wore on, it was both a relief and a horrific kind of torture to only have to look through my open door and see Ally. We’d made accidental eye contact so many times the first day that she moved her computer monitor to the opposite side of her desk and sat with her back to me.
On Valentine’s Day, I got every assistant on the floor a flower arrangement just so I could give her something. I signed her card “From Linus” so she’d keep the fucking flowers.
As the first week wore on and bled into the second, she remained icily professional toward me. We avoided each other as much as possible. There were no antagonistic emails or flirty texts. If I needed to sign something, she sent an intern into my office. If I needed to ask her a question, I cc’d half the team.
I kept my hands off my damn cock. It felt wrong with her right outside my office. Every night, I relived the lap dance, but I still didn’t touch myself. Nothing but Ally was going to cut it. Not after she undulated and ground her way up my dick like it was her personal sex toy.
I was ruined and found a certain relief in accepting it.
But it was the silence, her complete withdrawal from me, that started to put the cracks in my facade. By the third week, I was a fucking wreck. I couldn’t work with this kind of tension. I needed to develop a drinking problem stat.
The only thing that kept me hanging on was the fact that the dark circles beneath those honey-colored eyes were fading. The hollows in those cheeks weren’t as noticeable either. Ally still packed her lunches, but they passed for actual food now. However, there was a new mystery to be solved. She was showing up to work with odd bruises and bandages.
What was she doing in her time off? My brain obsessively turned the problem over and over. Was she a submissive? Was she taking care of a large, clumsy dog? Had she taken up totem carving as a new hobby?
I wasted hours of my day thinking up questions that I was never going to get to ask her. I made up excuses to linger near her desk. Every night, I watched her leave without a word and wished she were going home with me. I didn’t know what was worse, seeing her all day every day and not speaking to her or watching her leave and not knowing what she was doing.
I had no idea how I was going to get through the event tonight.
Christian James, the designer who dared flirt with Ally, was launching his new line and we, as in a very large part of the Label team, were invited to the show and afterparty.
I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon than watch Ally, dressed to the nines, parade around a party. But I also wasn’t going to let her go by herself. Not with a playboy designer toasting himself with champagne and flashing ridiculous dimples at her.
Speak of the devil. The woman who haunted my every waking moment hovered in the doorway.
“Yes?” I snapped.
My temper didn’t seem to have the right effect on her. It only emboldened her.
She strode into the office on new gray suede stilettos that peeked out from under the wide cuffs of her red pants. I was grateful that she was facing me, so I didn’t have to pretend not to admire her ass.
“These are from Dalessandra,” she said, dropping a stack of proofs on my desk.
They looked as though they’d been massacred by a very sharp red pen. There was a note in the margin of the first page.
See me.
I’d been summoned.
Any progress I’d been making before moving Ally up here had vanished because I was too busy trying not to lust after my assistant to focus on the job at hand.
I swore quietly.
“Problem?” Ally asked.
She hadn’t bolted for the door yet. I assumed she was hoping for a front-row seat to my meltdown, and I was happy to oblige.
“Problem as in singular? No, Maleficent. I have several. Including the fact that I can’t stop thinking about my Frosty the Snowass PA or seem to do my job anywhere near the standard my asshole father set.”
She stared at me for a long, heated moment, then rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Stay there.”
Ally left the room and fuck it, I stared at her ass.
She stomped back in, holding a folder and scowling. “I’m pissed off that you’re making me do this, by the way.”
“Do what?” I was so pathetically happy that she was speaking to me in multisyllabic words I would have let her slap me across the face with the folder.
“This is an inside spread on incredibly hideous winter coats from two years ago. Your father signed off on it.”
I glanced at the layout. They looked like sleeping bags in beiges and grays. Models slumping oddly inside them on a dingy gray background.
“Here’s one of yours,” she said, pulling the next layout from the folder. Similar to the first, this was winter boots. The models were in the studio on a set built out of square, wooden platforms. It was one of the first layouts I’d spearheaded after taking my father’s position.
“What’s your point?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’re not pretty enough for that,” she shot back. “You can tell that yours is better.”
“I had Linus and Shayla in my ear,” I insisted.
“Did you have them in your ear when you got dressed this morning or when you decorated your townhouse?”
“No,” I muttered.
“Look at how much better you, Linus, and Shayla made this,” she said, tapping the spread I did. “You’ve been doing the job, Dominic. Your father had shit taste and thought he was great. You have great taste and think you’re shit.”
“I’m relying on the opinions of others to do my job.”
“Who said it was supposed to be a dictatorship? You should be relying on the experience of others. You’re making it a team effort rather than an ego trip. And it works. Look at the next page.”
It was a spreadsheet tracking brand sales of the featured products. “Your layout outsold your father’s by more than double.”
“Our readership grew since he was in charge,” I argued.
“Look. If you want to have a pity party, have a pity party. But sooner or later, you might as well get used to the idea that you can do this job. Your father ruled with poor taste and an iron fist. Your mother let him. Just because you’re doing the job differently doesn’t mean you’re not as good, if not better.”
I flipped to another page. It was traffic stats on some of the web content I’d been in charge of. The video of Brownie French kissing me was one of the most popular videos we’d posted in the last twelve months.
“Why do you have these compiled and ready to go?” I asked, baffled.
“I told you I was going to be the second-best assistant you ever had. What kind of an assistant would I be if I didn’t have a ‘Stop Freaking Out, Boss’ file?”
She started for the door.
“Does this mean you’re speaking to me again?” I asked.
She didn’t even stop. Simply raised a bandaged middle finger over her shoulder. “Nope. Get back to work. Your pouty time is cutting into my to-do list.”
