Falling for the Boss (28 page)

Back at the hotel, he went into the gym and lifted weights for a long time, feeling the pain of the workout.  The weight lifting started to work.  He pushed harder, lifted more weights until his body just wouldn’t do anymore.  He was physically exhausted and he moved back to his room,
wondering what he was going to do next.  It was too early to go to sleep and he wasn’t hungry for anything. 

He wracked his brain, trying to figure out what had happened between this morning and the afternoon when she’d left the conference room. 
There had to be a sign or something he should have been aware of that would put the fear of him back
. 

He got back to his room and poured himself a brandy, needing the fire to burn his throat.  He showered and sat down in bed, then pulled the reports over to himself and
forced himself to review them and pushed Victoria from his mind as best he could.

The weekend came and Thomas declared that they would take a long weekend.  No one was more relieved than
Victoria
.  She hadn’t slept more than three hours
each night
, working herself to exhaustion each night and pushing herself harder and harder each day to satisfy Thomas who had become an ogre, never
pleased
with anything
she’d given him, no matter how thorough the report was
. 

Back in
Washington
,
D.C.
s
he reached her apartment
in record time
.  She
rushed off the plane as soon as it was safe to open the doors.  Without a backwards glance at th
e rest of the team, she
stuffed her suitcase into her car and drove off. 
She drove as fast as possible to her solitary apartment, amazed that she didn’t get a speeding ticket on the way.  As soon as the door
was closed behind her, she burst into tears.  She
yanked
off her suit, grabbed the first tee-shirt she could find and fell into bed,
crying
herself to sleep. 

By eleven o’clock the next morning, she was woken by someone banging on her apartment door.  She assumed it was Laci who had somehow found out she was home. 
Victoria
dragged herself out of bed and opened the door, not bothering to look back as she curled up on the sofa.  “I’m sorry Laci, I’m not sure I’m up for a shopping trip today,” she said and started closing her eyes. 

“Good, because I’m not either,” a deep voice said in response.

Victoria
instantly woke up and sat straight up on the sofa.  “What are you doing here?  I thought you gave us the weekend off.”

“You’re wearing my tee shirt.  I want it back.” He said.

Victoria
looked down at what she was wearing.  And sure enough, it was his college tee shirt she’d grabbed the night she’d spent the night with him that first night. 
“No.”

He walked up to her and gave her a hard look.  “I could take it off you.  I’ll bet you woul
d
n’t even fight it
,
”
he said softly. 
He watched her eyes turn to a mossy green as his suggestion sunk into her brain.  He chuckled when he noticed how her body responded to him.  “You need me just as much as I need you.  Tell me what happened and I’ll make it right,” he grated out, frustrated as hell at her stubbornness. 

She took a step backwards, wanting him to make things right so badly she actually ached to have him pull her into his arms.  But she knew he couldn’t do that. 
Victoria
had ignored the reality of Antonia for too long.  It was time to face up to it and break herself free of him.  The longer she stayed in the relationship, the harder it would be to walk away when he married that woman.
“Stop it, Thomas!”
Victoria
said and
turned around, putting a large chair between the two of them
.  The tears were already forming in her eyes and she shielded her face from his knowing gaze. 

“Fine.  Have it your way.  We’ll both suffer
,” he said through clenched teeth. 

“I’ll bring
your tee-shirt
back on Monday, washed and wrapped.”

“Forget it.  That wasn’t why I came by,” he said and dropped some papers on
her coffee table
.  “I need
you
to you redo this report.  It won’t work.  I need a new solution by Monday morning.”  He started to leave.

He was almost to the door when she answered him with a simple,
“No.”

Her word stopped him in his tracks.  “What did you say?” he asked and slowly turned around.

Victoria
noticed the fire in his eyes but didn’t care.  She was not going to cower in front of him.  “I said No.  The idea is good and I’m not going to revise it.”

Thomas walked over t
o stand directly in front of her
, his blue eyes turning almost black as he gazed down at her face
. 
H
er determination to not be intimidated
by him
flew out the window as she stared up at his angry demeanor.  “I said, it won’t work.  I want a new report on my desk by nine o’clock on Monday morning with you standing there to defend it.  Do I make myself clear?”

Victoria
could only nod but her chin went up a notch. 

“Good,” he said and turned around to head for the door.  “Have a nice weekend,” he said and
slammed
the door
closed
behind him
.

Victoria
picked up the report she’d done and threw it at the door, letting out a screech as she did.  Then she collapsed on the sofa and burst into
fresh
tears. 

“I hat
e
him!  I hate him!”  She kept repeating the line over and over again as she picked up the report from her entry way, wanting to shred the papers instead of just gather them up and re-order them.  Eventually, she would believe the line, she told herself as she curled up on her sofa, sobbing.

The phone rang and she picked it up absently, hoping it was her sister.

“Vic?  What’s wrong?” Laci said from the other end of the phone. 

“Can you come over?”
Victoria
asked, her voice barely audible after her last angry outburst
.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she replied and hung up the phone.

Victoria
was so glad that she had Laci right now.  She needed someone to talk to and couldn’t call her mother or father in
Florida
.  They would be worried and might feel the need to fly up here.  She didn’t want them to worry and she knew they didn’t have the money to fly up to
Washington
,
D.C.
on the spur of the moment. 

Fifteen minutes later, Laci knocked on the door.  As soon as
Victoria
answered it, she burst into tears and the two of them stood there, holding each other as
Victoria
cried her heart out
in the open doorway
. 

With difficulty,
Laci
moved them into the apartment then
guided her sister over to the sofa and sat her down, handing her a tissue at the same time.  “Okay, start at the beginning.  I can’t understand you.”

Victoria
took a deep breath
, trying to control her emotions
.  “It’s Thomas.  I broke up with him and now he’s being awful to me.”

“Oh,
Victoria
, why?”

Victoria
laughed, but it was humorless.  “Why did I break up with him or why is he being awful?”

Laci smiled at her older sister’s pathetic, tear stained face.  “I’m guessing the one has to do with the other but I’m not sure which came first.  Was it the break up or the emergence of an ogre that precipitated the other?”

Victoria
sniffled. 
“I broke up with him first.  Now he’s being awful to me.  He rejected an idea I had just out of spite
and demanded that I work all weekend to revise it.  When I told him I wouldn’t do it, he got even nastier
.”

“That doesn’t sound like the man you’ve been describing to me for the past eight months.”

Victoria
shrugged daintily.  “I guess I just didn’t know him, then.”

Laci smothered a laugh.  “Why don’t you start at the beginning
?
  Why did you break up with him?  I know you are in love with him.  I thought things were going along well.”

“How did you know I was in love with him?” she asked her little sister.  “Oh, never m
ind.  It’s irrelevant since it’
s over anyway.” 
Victoria
stood up and paced
her small apartment.  “I had to,” she explained, throwing her arms up in the air, tissue floating along the way as well.  “
I’d forgotten something
important
but it was brought up again and I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

Laci waited for her to continue.  When she didn’t, she prompted, “Are you going to explain that mysterious statement or should I start guessing?  I could you know. You remember how often I guessed my Christmas presents each year.”

The memory of Laci lying underneath the Christmas tree, shaking her presents and guessing what they were, usually correctly within two or three guesses
,
brought a smile to
Victoria
’s face.  She wished things were simple like that again.  It seemed that nothing was simple anymore.  Life was way too complicated now. 

Taking a deep breath, she admitted her awful situation.  “I’ve become the other woman, I guess is the easiest way to explain it.”

Laci gasped.  “Thomas is seeing other women?”

Victoria
shook her head.  “Not exactly, which makes it slightly worse.”

“Worse than cheating on you?”

Nodding,
Victoria
braced herself to tell her sister the whole story.  But she was still ashamed.  “He’s actually cheating on someone else with me.”

“No!”

“Yep
,” she said, nodding for emphasis
. 
“
I’m the other woman.  I’ve known about this person since I started working with Thomas.
  I’d heard him talk to her on the phone.  Good grief,”
Victoria
grimaced, “both Bob and Mike are even fighting over her.  They think she’s the best thing since sliced bread.
  But when things started heating up between us, I just conveniently forgot about her.”

“Sliced bread?” Laci could
n
’t resist teasing. 

Victoria
rolled her eyes.  “You know what I mean.”

“Sorry,” Laci said and smothered her smile. 
“Who is she?”

Victoria
shook her head.  “I don’t know who she is. I just know her first name is Antonia.”

“What an awful name,” Laci said, solidly in defense of her older sister.  “She’s probably an awful person and Thomas should dump her and be with you.”

“No,”
Victoria
said, inhaling shakily.  “She had him first.  I’m the one who needs to step out of the picture.  It’s the only fair thing to do.”

Victoria
fell onto the sofa next to Laci.  “I’m sorry to pull you into this when you are studying for your finals.”

Laci laughed.  “I
’
ve been studying for so long I’m tired of it.  Don’t worry about me.  I’m ready for these
exams
and wish they’d just be finished.”