Page 25 of Dirty Boss

Failure was not an option. I would do everything in my power to make this deal go through.

“All done here?” the waitress asked, pointing to my plate. A few pasta noodles remained, but I nodded.

And I wished it was Alba standing at my table, because she’d know what I was supposed to do. Hell, maybe she’d even agree to be my date. At least then someone would know how to tie my tie properly.

I shoved that dangerous thought away. Alba’s contempt for me dripped from every word. She rolled her eyes at the sight of me. She’d never agree to coach me through some fancy charity event.

But there’d been that catch in her breath when she’d tied my tie…

The slap of cold air on my face when I finally stepped outside the restaurant brought some sense back into my thoughts. Alba would never agree to be my date, and it would be inappropriate to ask.

Besides, if she said no, I’d never be able to eat at Carmine’s again—and they made really good chicken.

As it turned out,I didn’t get to eat at Carmine’s for a while, regardless of Alba’s thoughts toward me. The Midtown job ground to a halt, with the subcontractors who’d had the faulty equipment walking off site when our quality assurance team flagged a few issues and demanded they rectify them. I was pulled into countless emergency meetings with my legal and procurement departments, trying to simultaneously bring the subcontractor to heel so they’d finish the job, and frantically searching for someone else who could if they didn’t.

Lunches were hastily catered sandwiches delivered to conference rooms, with crumbs brushed off draft letters of demand passed back and forth between me and the lawyers.

And maybe it was for the best. My custody week was coming to an end—Charlotte’s mother would then have her for two weeks—and the extra time in the evenings would allow me to rescue the Midtown job and hopefully save my company. A distracting blonde with a sharp tongue was the last thing I needed. I could use my hand to let off some pressure when I needed to.

That, and the small jolt of pleasure I got every morning when I saw a new note from my cleaning woman. It was perverse, to enjoy her attitude as much as I did—but then, I had a type, didn’t I?

She wrote me one evening:

Your guest chair is all wrong. It should be stiff and slightly uncomfortable to discourage your visitors from thinking they can walk all over you.

My response was a quick scribble below her neat handwriting:

Why should I take advice from a cleaning woman who doesn’t clean? The windows need a wipe, sweetheart.

And they did. I glanced at the wall of windows that let me see out into the hallway beyond, frowning at the smudges left by a dirty rag hastily smeared over the glass. My private bathroomhadn’t been restocked with hand towels or toilet paper in weeks, and I wasn’t sure she actually knew how to vacuum properly.

She was terrible at her job—but I didn’t want to have her fired. The notes she left me were one of the only things that felt honest about my life now, other than Charlotte. The cleaning woman’s attitude felt real the way Alba’s eye rolls had felt real.

When everything else in my life felt like chaos, I needed the tiny bit of grounding her notes gave me.

On Friday, after dropping Charlotte off at her mom’s in the early afternoon, I drove back to work and slumped into my office chair. My head pulsed with pain, and I could see at least half a dozen urgent emails about the Midtown job that I needed to respond to.

I always felt slightly emptier when I dropped Charlotte off with Tiffany, knowing I wouldn’t see her for two weeks, thinking about the empty townhouse, the lifeless rooms.

The thought of jumping right back into a crisis at work just made me feel tired. So, as the workday ground onward, I opened up my web browser—and hesitated.

I’d already decided I wouldn’t go see Alba. She was a distraction, and I needed a distraction like I needed a hole in the head.

But there was something about her that niggled at me. So she knew good clothes? Fine. That could be explained in a hundred different ways. But she also knew business, and she talked about Roger like she was familiar with his type. How would a waitress at a hidden gem of a semi-casual restaurant know that? I couldn’t think of an explanation.

Whowasshe? How did she know the things she knew?

So I typed the only thing I knew into the search bar—her first name—and decided that a few minutes spent prodding at my curiosity would allow me to refocus on work once I was done.

I was wrong.

ELEVEN

ALBA

Vaughn didn’t comeinto Carmine’s for the rest of the week. It disappointed me more than I cared to admit, but I wasn’t surprised. Why would he come in? Just to see me?

All I’d done was tell him his suit sucked, which anyone with eyes could have done. He didn’t owe me anything.