Page 481 of Manhattan Bossholes

Her cheeks went red at the mention of the retrospective, and I wondered what she was up to. Clearly there was something going on there that she didn’t want me to know about. The woman didn’t have a good poker face.

“The first thing you need to do is go through the applications for Clint’s job. We’ve been getting a ton of them but obviously not everyone is qualified. Lorraine has been weeding through the ones that aren’t a fit at all and then forwarding to me the few that actually sound like they could do the job. In addition to that she was attempting to set up interviews with a few of the ones I liked.”

“Ooh, so you mean I get to help pick my next boss?” Natalie rubbed her hands together gleefully. “I could totally game the system to make sure the person I like gets through to you.”

“Well, obviously I want you to like whomever I pick,” I replied. “I want the whole team to feel good about Clint’s replacement. They had to deal with him for far too long. And you, even in that one week, suffered because of him. I won’t let that happen again.”

She paused and stared at me in her annoyingly intense way. I braced for impact.

“I think it’s important that you know that everyone seems to be okay with you leading the team. For now, I mean,” she said. “Kind of weird considering you have no design background.”

A backhanded compliment. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to effectively lead people. And what makes you think I don’t know anything about design?”

“Well, your brother was the—” She stopped abruptly and dropped her gaze to her hands.

I felt my jaw clench at the mention of Christopher. “My grandmother made sure everyone in the family had a chance to shadow every department, from quality control to sales support. And yes, even design. You might be shocked to discover that one or two designs in our archive have my name on them.”

Her eyes went wide. “Seriously?”

I chuckled. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Natalie.”

She hopped out of her chair and gave me a wicked grin. “Well, now that I’m your assistant I guess I’m about to find out your secrets.”

She had the gall to wink at me, then turned on her heel, and I watched her gorgeous ass sway out of the room.

Hopefully not all of my secrets.

11

NATALIE

“How am I supposed to plank when my phone won’t stop buzzing?” I complained to Steph from my painful position on the floor. “Maybe it’s a sign I should take a break?”

I glanced up at my tormentor with a hopeful expression as my arms trembled.

“Don’t you dare.” She scowled, looming over me. “You’re so close.”

My phone was blowing up with incoming texts, but I knew better than to stop before Steph allowed. She punished half-assed effort by adding extra sets.

“Three…two…one. You’re done, nice work,” she finally said.

“I hate you.” I collapsed onto my stomach with a groan. “I really hate you.”

“No you don’t. Admit it, you need this release. You aren’t having sex so you gotta get that endorphin high somehow.”

“Steph!” I squealed, reaching out to smack her foot.

“What? You know I’m right.”

I rolled onto my back and wiped the sweat from my forehead. “There’s no one I want to have sex with. I’m fine being a nun right now. Besides, work is keeping me too busy to even think about sex.”

Between my design work and being James’s beck-and-call girl, I felt like I was on a treadmill that wouldn’t stop cranking up. I’d managed to vet three potential candidates for Clint’s job and scheduled them for interviews with James, only to have him hate them all. The resumes for Lorraine’s position kept piling up but none of them came close to having the scope of skills that James required. I kept pushing him to at least consider someone who wasn’t one hundred percent perfect, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

“You sure about that?” Steph asked, plopping down next to me on the ground. “Because I seem to remember predicting a certain hate-fuck in your future.”

“Oh my God!” I felt my face go hot. “Absolutely not.”

“Hmf,” she said. “I don’t believe you for a second. You want your bossman, you want your bossman,” she sang out, poking me in my aching stomach.