Dominic Russo was trying to take care of me.
“You can still teach dance,” he said.
That controlling, caring, manipulative son of a bitch.
“I can, can I? How magnanimous of you.”
“Do you want the job or not?” He was in front of me again and pushing a cup and saucer into my hands. The man made me tea and was paying me an astronomical amount of money to manage his calendar and pick up his damn drycleaning. And all I had to do was sign over my soul.
“The job? Yes. Your pity? No. Your thanks for dry humping you to orgasm? Definitely no. Being at the mercy of your whims to fire me? Hell no.”
“It’s your choice, Ally.” He wasn’t joking. He was leaving it up to me. I could take the job and leave my pride at the door. Or I could walk out of here with my head held high… and go pack my father’s things because no admin salary, number of bar shifts, and dance classes were going to keep him where he needed to be.
And then the worst thing that could possibly happen happened.
My eyes got hot and wet. I forced a sip of tea down my tight throat.
“Don’t,” he said harshly.
“Don’t what?” I rasped.
“Don’t fucking do it, Ally.”
“What? Cry? Why the hell not? I’ve done nothing but humiliate myself in front of you up to this point. I don’t see why either one of us should expect anything else.” I gave a pathetic, watery laugh.
Though my vision was blurred like a downpour on a windshield, I could tell Dominic was on the verge of panic.
He reached for me, then thought better of it and stuffed his hands into his pockets. One immediately freed itself and swiped over his face.
“You’re stronger than this, Ally. Act like it.”
That douchey, high-handed reminder was enough for me to heroically rein in my emotions. It took a long minute of staring at the ceiling and not blinking to reabsorb the moisture into my eyes. But I did it.
Dominic looked relieved.
I stood, still clutching the teacup because the tea was annoyingly fabulous and he wasn’t getting it back. “Don’t fuck me over, Charming,” I warned.
He made no promises. Just gave me a brisk nod.
“I will be the second-best assistant you’ve ever had. But there’s no going back to the way it was. You can trust me to keep your secrets, but I’ll never trust you with mine.”
His eyes were stormy. More gray than blue now. He looked like he wanted to say something. “About Friday night,” he began.
I held up a hand. “Never bring up that night. As far as either one of us goes, Friday night never happened.”
“And it will never happen again,” he said sternly. “Your contract doesn’t allow it.”
I swore an imaginary blood oath on the spot that I would make this high-handed asshat rue the day he ever walked into George’s Village Pizza.
“Order me some breakfast. Get yourself something, too. You look pale. We have a meeting at ten.”
38
Dominic
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.”