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“How’d it go?” she asked, pulling it out and twisting to read my face.
I gave Liv two thumbs up, and she grinned. “Knew you had it in you, Davis.”
“Two years of underpaid labor just paid off.” I kicked off my heels and went to the refrigerator. She’d already set up our filtered water pitcher and put it on the shelf alongside a few salad dressings. Overall, though, the contents were pretty sad. We needed to go grocery shopping more than we needed to go out to a bar tonight. I poured myself a glass of water and leaned against the counter.
“Well?” Liv waved her hand at me. “Are you going to tell me everything, or not?”
Not.
“There’s not much to tell,” I lied. “I interviewed with Maureen O’Donnell, head of Brand Development. She offered me the job. I met the boss. I came home.”
Liv looked down at me skeptically. “You met ‘the boss’? You mean, your biggest crush ever?”
I almost choked on my water. “Oh my God, that was so long ago, I’m totally over it. Besides, he is my boss now.”
“Mmmhmm,” she said, looking at me as if she didn’t believe a word I said.
“I just don’t want to make a big deal about it.” I put my glass in the dishwasher and left the kitchen. I was heading for my room, but my apartment was small enough that it wasn’t like I was walking away. Liv could still hear me clearly even after I dropped my purse on the bed and started changing out of my interview outfit. “Besides, I don’t want people thinking I got the job because he’s my dad’s best friend, you know?” I said, raising my voice slightly.
“I get it,” Liv called back. I heard the clunk of spice bottles again and knew she was back to work. That was good. Nothing distracted Liv more than a good project. Grateful for the reprieve, I pulled on a pair of black shorts and a dark red tank top. It wasn’t hot here compared to how it could get in LA, but it was warm for Boston. I pulled my hair up into a high ponytail and threw myself on my bed. After three years of working my butt off at internships, it felt strange and decadent to have nothing to do in the middle of the day. I had a moment’s regret that this was my last lazy weekday, but I was too grateful to have a job to really be sad.
As I laid in bed, listening to the traffic outside, the voices floating up to our window as people walked by, I had a strange feeling. Something like hope. No, more than that.Anticipation. Here I was, twenty-five years old, finally getting a real start in life. I was paying my own way instead of relying on a relationship that I knew was doomed. I was finally on a rung of the corporate ladder instead of standing below, waving my arms frantically, trying to catch the bottom of it. I was a real adult, which meant this unbearable ache in my chest that looked like Aiden Cross was arealthing.
That was both exhilarating and terrifying. I rolled onto my side and stared at my pillow shams until they blurred into indistinct purple blobs. I didn’t have a lot of options here. I clearly couldn’t make myself fall out of obsession with my dad’s best friend. The best thing I could do was avoid it and hope it went into remission the way it had during my nearly eight years on the west coast. But there was no way I could give up the job with Cross Media, so avoiding him wasn’t an option. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Luckily, my job in the PR industry had prepared me for impossible choices. Should we advise the radio personality to admit what he’d done and face the consequences, or deny deny deny and hope nothing ever came out to prove otherwise. Generally, we went for a middle of the road approach. Admit half. Use vague language. Apologize. I’d take the middle of the road approach with Aiden, too. I’d take the job, but I’d do everything in my power to avoid him.
How hard could it be?
CHAPTER6
AIDEN
The meeting with the brand development team got pushed, kicked to lunch, and then after lunch, and finally, we turned it into a dinner meeting. I didn’t like doing shit like that–not because I had a family to rush home to, but I knew other people did.
“It’s fine,” Maureen assured me. “You know what our team likes more than their families? Family-style Italian and wine on the company dime.”
I snorted a laugh and made the reservation. We liked a place calledGiussepesdown the street that had big round, family-style tables with a Lazy Susan in the middle. We went there often enough that when we walked in, they already had the large bowls of pesto cavatappi and fettuccine alfredo and vodka campanelle. There were also baskets of breadsticks, hot and shining with butter. It was simple Italian, but the pasta was made fresh in house every morning and I’d never tasted better.
Our group of six fell around the table and the wine began to flow as the Lazy Susan spun and the sound of forks clinking against porcelain filled the air. We had a strict rule about not discussing business in the first thirty minutes. People needed to eat, to decompress, to drink, andthenwe’d get to Blake Morten.
Maureen was clearly itching to get to it though, because she set a thirty-minute timer on her phone and checked it more than once throughout the meal. I eyed her, wondering what was up. Maureen was an ace, but she wasn’t usually a workaholic. She liked to eat, drink, and decompress as much as the rest of us. When her alarm went off, her arm shot out and stopped the spinning contraption on the table in its tracks.
“Hey,” Joe complained, reaching in vain for the bottle of red that had been on its way to him.
“Sorry, Joe. It’s time to talk BM.” She held firm to the edge of the rotating disk even as Joe tried harder to get to the wine.
“Is that the best nickname?” Gloria wondered, ignoring Joe’s attempts to get her to hand him the bottle that was right in front of her.
“It’s the perfect nickname,” Maureen said flatly.
“Really? Because it makes me think of bowel–”
“Like I said.” Maureen cut her off. “Perfect.”
Andrew, who was sitting to Gloria’s left, lazily plucked the bottle of wine from the center and topped off his glass. Then, with a malevolent grin, he put it back further away from Joe.
“Assholes,” Joe complained, giving up and reaching for the bottle of white.
