“Now I’m very suspicious.”
“Just go and don’t fall on your face,” he instructed.
“Aren’t you going?” I asked.
“Like this?” he scoffed, waving a hand over his impeccable black-on-black suit.
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Can’t. Kids have a school thing.”
“Kids? You have children?”
“Why is everyone so surprised by that?”
He pulled out his phone and gave me a five-minute slideshow of little Jasper, Adelaide, and Jean-Charles.
I was still reeling by the time I got downstairs. One thing that I really liked about this job was the car service. It wasn’t Nelson but a female driver who opened the back door for me. And the backseat was occupied by a very stylish Dalessandra.
“I thought we’d ride together and we could chat,” she said, patting the seat.
There are moments in everyone’s life when they stop, breathe, and wonder who the hell’s life they’re actually living. Cruising through Midtown in a limo with one of the fashion industry’s most influential icons next to me in a design that had obviously been made just for her was one of those moments.
“You look lovely,” she said. “That dress.”
“Me? Look at your dress.” Even seated and in the dim interior light, she stunned. The gown was layers and layers of silver and gray and cream arranged like swan feathers. Slouchy suede boots that I would have sold an ovary for peeked out from the hem.
“Perks of the job,” she said, waving away the compliment. “Now, how are things?”
“Things are fine,” I fibbed. My neck started to itch.
“Fine? Everyone you’ve met. Everyone you’ve talked to on staff. They’re all fine?”
I was not mentally prepared for this conversation. No, what I’d spent all day girding my loins for was seeing Dominic outside work.
I would not inappropriately touch my boss tonight.
I would not inappropriately touch my boss tonight.
I’d repeated the mantra all damn day.
The past two weeks had been an exquisite kind of torture. Every morning when he arrived and walked past my desk, I smelled that body wash of his and was immediately transported back to his home, his shower, the reason I’d been in his shower.
And then I had to remind myself why I was barely speaking to the man.
“What about Dominic?” Dalessandra asked, pursing her red, red lips together.
“What about him?” I hedged.
She slid a knowing gaze to me. “You two are close.”
I shook my head vehemently enough to have a hairpin fly out and land in my lap. “We’re really not.”
“You are,” she insisted. “Is he happy? Does he hate me for what I’ve asked of him?”
I cleared my throat and felt disloyal to a man who hadn’t officially earned my loyalty. “I don’t think anyone would say that Dominic is a happy man,” I ventured.
“But you see beneath all that bluster.” Dalessandra made the statement like it was a fact. “Is he really unhappy? Did I ask too much of him in stepping in to clean up his father’s mess?”
I considered gnawing my lipstick off but then decided it wasn’t worth the tongue lashing I’d get from Linus if he saw the pictures.
“I don’t know exactly what happened last year,” I said with a sigh. “Hell, nobody seems to except for you and Dom. And maybe that’s part of the problem. But no, he doesn’t hate you. Beneath all those sexy vests and grumpy snarls, he’s a caretaker. He wants you to be happy. He wants to make you happy. And I think you know that. I also think you should be having this conversation with him.”
“We Russos don’t have conversations,” Dalessandra said with a sad smile.
Tell me about it.
“Maybe you should give it a shot. Especially if you’re proud of the work your son is doing for you.”
“Dominic knows I’m proud of him,” she said stiffly.
“Just like everyone in the office knows that whatever mysterious thing that went down last year will never happen again because you have their backs and will never let anyone take advantage of position and power again?”
The emerald on Dalessandra’s hand winked as she tightened her fingers into a fist in her skirt.
“I have a reputation to protect,” she said coolly. “Airing dirty laundry isn’t how one survives in this world.”
“Reputations can’t be built on sweeping things under the rug,” I reminded her. “They’re built on stories. You’re in control of your story and how it’s told… or not told.”
“You’re not seriously suggesting that I bare my soul to the world about how I was stupid enough, blinded by ambition enough, to not notice what was going on in my own office, my own marriage?”
“Even if you were stupid or blind—which I certainly don’t think you were—you aren’t anymore. And that’s what your people deserve to know.”
“My people,” she repeated to herself. “What if my story isn’t only mine to tell? What if there are others who might not want their parts shared?”
“I think that’s where those conversations come in to play,” I said, patting myself on the back for the callback. I was nailing this sage advisor thing tonight. It was probably the dress.
“You certainly have a lot of opinions,” Dalessandra mused.
“So I’ve been told. By your son. On multiple occasions.”
“Speaking of my son, he likes you very much.”
“I feel like it’s more accurate to say I infuriate him very much,” I corrected her.
“I’ve asked a lot of him,” she said.
“You have.”
“I hope he doesn’t assume I’m asking him to put his life on hold for me, for this job.”
Tread carefully, I warned myself.
“I don’t think you’re the Russo who’s keeping Dom from living his best life,” I said cagily.
Dalessandra studied me quietly in the dark.
“Have you spelled out any more messages for him with his food?” she asked, changing the subject.
“As a matter of fact…” I pulled out my phone to show her the ass foam.
40
Ally
Dalessandra and I parted ways so she could walk the red carpet at the trendy gallery while I ducked in behind the action.
I’d been in this neighborhood a few times. It was funny how a few feet of sidewalk could be dotted with old chewing gum and discarded fast food bags by day and transformed by night with a broom, a few sawhorses, and some red fabric.
Money could temporarily transform anything.
I checked my coat, thrilled that I no longer had to cringe at the thought of tipping later, and followed my nose to the bar.
The gallery was a wide expanse of concrete floors, high, industrial ceilings, and temporary walls. The current exhibit was some kind of modern art that I didn’t get. Slashes of color, silly string glued to canvas, and a particularly confusing sculpture that looked as though it had been created by a daycare class on Play-Doh day.