The Boss (2 page)

"By ten?" He didn't want it fifteen minutes
ago? Wasn't he going to snap his fingers at me?

"Is that not enough time?" He raised an
eyebrow, and I was sucked painfully back to that night in Los
Angeles six years ago. Even the way he lifted a brow was ingrained
in my memory, and he didn't know who I was. Just another in a long
line of airport conquests, I supposed.

"No, it's plenty of time." Way more time than
Gabriella would have given me. "What would you like?"

I noticed a subtle shift in the room. One of
the men who'd come in with Neil - I hadn't paid much attention to
them, since their arrival hadn't thrown me into an
oh-god-we-fucked-before panic - coughed into his hand, and another
openly rolled his eyes.

Neil, on the other hand, didn't react at all,
waving me off with a, "Bagels would be fine, get enough for all of
us."

"Coffee?" I asked, mentally calculating
whether I could walk or if I would need a cab.

"Do they not have coffee makers here?" the
eye-roller asked with a "tch" of impatience. I resisted the urge to
glare at him.

"Of course we do." I hoped I sounded cheerful
and helpful. "Do you prefer Bolivian, Columbian, we have a great
dark roast from Chile that was profiled last month – "

Neil took a step toward me, his hands pushing
back his jacket as he slipped them into his trouser pockets. "I
know that Gabriella was very particular about things around here.
I'm not saying that I won't be particular about your work, I will
be. But I'm not going to fire you if you bring me the wrong
coffee."

"Very good. Bagels and coffee." I was fairly
certain my frozen smile had irreparably damaged my facial muscles.
Once I was out of the office, I rubbed my aching cheek.

It might seem odd to complain about a boss
who isn't picky, but when you're someone's assistant, it really
helps if that person is high-maintenance. Coffee and bagels? What
kind of coffee? Cream? Sugar? Mug or disposable cup? If disposable,
should it be 100% recycled material? My job was made so much easier
by Gabriella's very specific demands. Without them, I had to make
independent decisions, which went against every one of my
subordinate instincts.

Okay, so I knew I wasn't going to be a
subordinate forever. Someday, I was going to get promoted into a
job I really wanted, and probably even have an assistant myself.
But that's the food chain of the working world. You bring someone
else their ridiculous coffee order until the day you can order
someone to bring you ridiculous coffee. It's like T
he Lion
King
but without animal hair on everything.

If he wanted bagels, I could get him bagels.
And I hoped he choked on them.

I stopped on the seventh floor, and I was
unsurprised to find it entirely empty and dark. Which meant the
shoot had been cancelled, and Holli had probably gone home. I got
back in the elevator and headed down to the lobby.

I spotted Holli as soon as the doors opened.
She’s not hard to spot. 5’10”, magnificently, naturally blonde, and
wearing the most ratty, just- rolled-out-of-bed clothes that had
ever graced the lobby of my esteemed workplace, she stood by the
security desk, frowning down at the iPhone in her hand.

"Holli!" I ran at her, then remembered I was
at work and slowed my steps. Gabriella might be out, but I was
still her assistant, and I couldn't be giving people the impression
that it was time to panic.

Holli frowned. "You spilled something on
yourself." I brushed at the front of my jacket. "Way bigger
problems. I really have to talk to you, like right now!" Holli
followed me out of the building and onto the street.

We hurried down the block and into a small
coffee shop most of the
Porteras
staff wouldn't be caught
dead in, because the drinks weren't expensive enough. We slid into
one of the high backed booths.

"What the hell is going on upstairs?" Holli
half-whispered as she scanned the menu. "Yesterday it was all,
'don't be a minute late or you'll be punished' and then I get there
today and it's cancelled. No call to my agency or anything."

"Gabriella is fired," I whispered back. What
had once seemed like the most important detail of the situation
seemed insignificant in the face of my mortification. "Something...
worse has happened."

I took a deep breath, ready to spill all the
sordid and very personal details to my best friend, but the
waitress stepped up to take our order. I waited with barely
disguised impatience as Holli ordered the lumberjack breakfast with
a side of pancakes. All I could think of was the rapidly gelling
salmon I’d left on Gabriella's desk. I ordered a cup of coffee.

"Do you remember the guy I told you about,
the one I met on my way to NYU?" I waited for the flicker of
recognition to pass over Holli's face. Her huge eyes opened even
wider. Holli’s face is like, ninety-five percent eyeballs.

"You mean..." She held up her hands, roughly
ten inches apart.

I nodded miserably. "Well, he's Gabriella's
replacement. He's Neil Elwood."

"Neil Elwood, as in,
Men's Style
Quarterly
? As in,
Who? Magazine
? That Neil Elwood?"
Holli's voice rose as she listed off the Elwood & Stern
publications. "Oh my god, Sophie? You slept with Neil Elwood?"

"I didn't know he was Neil Elwood then!" I
flapped my hands frantically to shush her. I didn't even know Neil
Elwood or his stupid company existed until I'd gotten serious about
fashion journalism. And yeah, I guess the pictures I'd seen of him
since then had reminded me a little of the guy I'd slept with six
years ago, but somehow I'd convinced myself that they didn't look
that much alike. "Keep your voice down. That's not the worst part,
okay? The worst part is that he doesn't remember me."

The waitress returned with my coffee and
Holli's soda, and Holli toyed with her straw wrapper as she leaned
forward. "How could he have forgotten? I thought it was like, the
hottest night ever."

"It was." Wasn't it? Six years later and I
was still thinking about him while spending quality time with my
vibrator. But I'd also learned the painful truth, in those
intervening years; that two people could have sex together and have
two completely different experiences.

"Well, I thought he sounded like kind of a
dick." Holli sipped her cola. "He stole your plane ticket,
Sophie."

That... was true. And I often overlooked that
crucial point, not because hot sex excuses theft, but because it
turned out to be the best thing to have ever happened to me. In a
way, I felt like I should thank him. "If he hadn't stolen my plane
ticket, I wouldn't have gone to NYU. I wouldn't have met you. We
wouldn't be living this super fabulous life."

"I wouldn't be so quick with the 'super
fabulous life' stuff, if my boss had just gotten fired," Holli
pointed out. "What are you going to do?"

That was the million dollar question, wasn't
it? I sipped my coffee - it had a greasy sheen on top - and
grimaced. There wasn't exactly an agony aunt column that could deal
with this kind of shit.

I couldn't drink the rest of the coffee. I
couldn't even sit still. "I have to bail, Holli. Are you going to
be around tonight?"

She nodded as she swallowed. "Yeah, in all
evening. Don't stress out today, okay?"

I couldn't agree to that, and Holli knew it.
We said our goodbyes and I headed out onto the street. The sun was
shining and the sky was blue. A beautiful October day in Manhattan.
I hated when the weather refused to match my mood.

As I waited in line at some no-name deli to
pick up the bagels, my mind drifted over and over that night six
years ago. I'd met Neil - or Leif - while waiting for my plane to
Tokyo out of LAX. I was supposed to have gotten on a plane to New
York, to start college at NYU, but at the last minute I'd chickened
out, and charged an international flight on my emergencies-only
credit card.

He'd been forty-two, super duper old by my
naive, eighteen-year-old standards. But he'd had the two things
going for him that I most desired in a man. He was older than me,
and he had an English accent. When our flight got cancelled, I
spent the night with him, doing things I had only read about on the
internet. In the morning, I'd woken up to find him gone, my ticket
to Tokyo with him, and four thousand dollars wrapped up in a note
that advised me to get the next plane to New York. I'd been
furious, and yeah, six years later, I was still pretty peeved about
it. He'd had no right to change the course of my life that way. He
hadn't even known me. But if he hadn't done that, I wouldn't be
where I was now.

That realization made me furious all over
again. Where I was now was soon to be jobless and working for a man
who'd fucked me once and didn't seem to remember me. In a single
morning, everything had gone from great to horrible.

In my ride up to the office, I made a
resolution to not think about that night. Obviously, Neil hadn't,
so why should I? I would not remember the sound of his voice, low
and close to my ear, telling me all the things he was going to do
to me. I would not remember his hands on me, or the feel of his
naked skin. I would not remember my hands tied behind my back, or
ice cubes on my -

I might as well have thrown the bagels in the
trash and headed straight to the unemployment office, if that was
my strategy. There was no way I would forget any of that,
especially working with him every day.

Every day until you train your
replacement
, I reminded myself as I passed my desk. Penelope
still wasn't in. Had someone tipped her off? Had Gabriella tipped
her off? Why wouldn't she have called me?

I rapped on the half-open door. He was
already on Gabriella's phone, talking confidently about the May
issue. I wondered if I would still be here then, or if I would see
it on the newsstand and start crying right there in front of the
box I would be living in. Neil glanced up, then away again as he
motioned me in. The eye-roller was looking through a rack of
sequined miniskirts, stopping occasionally to pull one out and drop
it on the floor. He looked up at me with pursed lips.

Oh, so we're going to play the "I don't know
you, but I hate you already" game? That was fine by me. I wasn't
best friends with everyone in the office and I wasn't about to
start now. I raised my chin as I strode to Neil's desk and dropped
the bag of assorted bagels and condiments neatly on the desk.

He covered the mouthpiece of the phone with
his hand. "Thank you, Sophie."

I nodded and stepped back before turning away
from the desk. I frowned at the eye-roller, who pretended he wasn't
keeping tabs on me. Then it struck me where I had seen him before.
In the pages of
Vanity Fair
, always at some party or another
in the Hamptons or a trendy TriBeCa loft. He was Rudy Ainsworth,
costume designer for the Metropolitan Opera, among other
illustrious companies. What was he doing pawing through Michael
Kors minis?

That mystery held my fascination for about
thirty seconds, until I had closed the door to Neil's office behind
me. Then it hit me. He'd said, "Thank you, Sophie."

And I hadn't given him my name.

Chapter Two

Remember that
promise I'd made to myself, that I wouldn't think about how I'd had
sex with Neil? Yeah, after I decided that he was just pretending
not to recognize me, that promise flew right out the window.

We assembled in the main office for the big
announcement. Elwood & Stern had purchased
Porteras
from
our former parent company, but the format and the styling would
stay roughly the same. Neil addressed everyone briefly then let
members of the new management team take over. While they talked
about gradual changes to policies and procedures, Neil looked
around the room, clearly assessing each employee he’d
purchased.

All I could think was,
I bet everyone can
tell I've had sex with him
.

Of course they couldn't possibly know that,
but I knew it. And that was enough. I went through the morning in
an insane state of hyperawareness and total paranoia. When Jake
stopped me on my way through reception to ask what I thought about
the new boss, I practically shouted, "I don't think about him!"
before I could stop myself.

"He's not Gabriella," I said, because it was
a safe answer, and true in every context. Neil had spoken to
everyone in a natural, unthreatening way. If Gabriella had been
there, she would have eviscerated him with lasers from her
eyes.

"Did you hear he's nixed the Versailles
shoot?" Jake swore under his breath. "I know it's shitty to
complain about losing an all-expenses-paid trip to France, but that
was supposed to be my crowning achievement here. I might have
gotten a book deal."

For over a year, Jake had been orchestrating
a massive photo shoot at the Palace of Versailles. Designers had
submitted special pieces. It all had been meant as a framework to
showcase Jake's essay on pre-Revolution French fashion and its
influence on contemporary design.

"What?" I took him by the arm and pulled him
aside, so we didn't block the flow of traffic as the office resumed
normal operations. "He's cutting it?"

"No, he's not cutting it." Jake leaned his
shoulder against the wall. "But we're not going to France. His idea
was to shoot on a set, with the models in Baroque frames. 'The
flavor of French nobility, without the expense of French nobility.'
And I can't really say I blame him. I mean, if the magazine is
doing poorly - "

"How poorly?" I interrupted. It was something
I was dying to know. If
Porteras
was going down, why hadn't
we heard rumors about it? People were consistently rooting for us
to fail, because we were, without a doubt, the top.