The Boss (21 page)

"So, do you want to go to lunch? I can cover
things here," Deja offered.

"Great, thanks." That would give me a chance
to grill Holli about her naked sushi times. I would never pass up a
chance to hear about rock stars eating sushi off my best
friend.

“So,” Deja said, her eyes wide, her smile
carefully neutral as she looked from me to Holli. “I’ll see you
around some time?”

“Next Friday, right?” Holli made
intentionally cheesy finger guns at Deja, who laughed and
nodded.

“Definitely. Definitely,” she agreed, backing
away in the direction of the office doors.

Holli turned away first, and I followed suit,
not looking back to see if Deja was still watching her.

Holli is totally open about her sexuality –
which I’m not sure fits into any easy classification. She's been
with both guys and girls, and for a while, in college, she'd had
this three-way relationship going with a married couple. For about
six months in 2010, she was in an unrequited love affair with the
George Washington Bridge. She's pretty delightful that way. I know
that any time I talk to her about sex stuff, she's going to either
have tried it, or at least have an opinion on it.

I didn't know how open Deja was about
herself, though, and I am
so
not in the market to out
people. I kept the conversation safe on the ride down.

"It's cool that she remembered you," I
commented as the doors closed.

"Yeah, she's really nice!" Holli hit the
lobby button. "I invited her to the party."

"I gathered that.” I raised an eyebrow. “What
happened to ‘no work people’?”

"I figured this one exception would be okay."
Her eyes widened. "Why, did I do something wrong? You didn’t invite
him
, did you?"

“I don’t think it’s really
his
scene.”
I felt a little bad for being relieved by that. I wanted to keep
him as separate from the rest of my life as possible. We weren’t a
couple, and it was weird enough working in the same place as the
person I was fucking. I’d decided I would draw the line at casual
recreation with my friends.

"You start in Beauty tomorrow, right?" Holli
asked as we stepped off the elevator and into the lobby. “Why on a
Friday?”

“Because I’m driving Mr. Elwood insane.” I
preemptively grinned at her. “Not in the way you’re thinking. Deja
is there to ‘train’ and she doesn’t really need any training. There
isn’t much for me to do in the office but clean. Apparently, he
finds my cleaning style ‘obsessive’ and ‘pathological’.”

“You’re going to do so good at this job,
Sophie,” Holli said, and the pride in her voice warmed me like a
cup of really good hot chocolate.

A frisson of excitement tingled all the way
down my arms. "Actual assistant editor job. It's going to be a huge
change.”

Just as we reached the doors, my phone
chirped. It was Neil. "Hang on, I have to take this."

We stepped outside- because unbelievably, the
traffic on Broadway in lower Manhattan is quieter than the
building's super echo-y lobby- and I answered the call.

"Yes, Sir?" I assumed he could hear my coy
little smirk through the phone. But when he spoke, I could tell it
wasn't time for flirting. He sounded utterly overwhelmed, his words
clipped. "I've been called away. I'll be leaving within the
hour."

"Do you need me to come back?" I held up one
finger to Holli, Jake's cryptic remarks floating through my mind.
Had something gone wrong with the deal? Was it even possible at
this point? I knew absolutely nothing about how the company had
changed hands or why.

"No, it's nothing work related." The tension
in his voice was apparent. "I'm going home to London. My mother has
been hospitalized; they think she had a stroke."

"I'm so sorry." I couldn't imagine what I
would be going through if my mother were in the hospital an ocean
away. "Do you need me to do anything for you?"

"As of tomorrow morning, you're not my
assistant anymore, Sophie," he reminded me. "I wasn't calling you
for a favor. I wanted to let you know before I left, so you didn't
think..."

"So I didn't think you were breezing out of
my life again?" Uncomfortably, I had to acknowledge that the
thought would have occurred to me.

"Yes, exactly." He sounded sheepish at my
quick reply.

While we were keeping things as no-strings as
possible, if he ran off on me again the way he had after LAX, I
wouldn't just be pissed. I would take an emotional bruising. I
hoped that when our relationship ended, it would happen with mutual
respect, but I couldn’t entirely trust that yet.

He cleared his throat. "I was going to ask
you if you wanted to go out and celebrate your promotion with me
tomorrow night. Now I'm afraid I can't, and I'm not sure I'll be
back in time for our weekend, either."

"This is way more important, obviously. Don’t
worry about things with me, okay? Things are fine." I hesitated
before I added, "Look, if there's anything you need, call me."

"I will. Thank you." The keen edge of emotion
in those four simple words made my heart ache. "I'll call you when
I get back."

I hung up with him, feeling oddly empty that
I wouldn’t see him again before he left. Then I felt shitty and
selfish. He was obviously in crisis mode, and I was worried about
myself.

"Is everything cool?" Holli asked, frowning
at me.

I shook my head. "No, he has to go to
London." I omitted the part about "going home" to London. That
bothered me, and I didn’t want to admit it. "His mom had a
stroke."

"Holy shit, his mom is still alive?" Holli
grimaced, and I knew she was imagining the Crypt Keeper or
something.

I ignored her. "He'll be gone for a while, I
guess, but he didn't want me to think he's taking off permanently,
like last time. That's a good thing, right?"

"I guess." She shrugged. "I thought it
wouldn't really matter, anyway. You're just in it for the sex."

I opened my mouth to protest, but found it
strangely difficult. I stammered a little bit. "I- Yeah. Right, but
I would miss the sex."

She raised an eyebrow at me.

"What?" I demanded, and she just shrugged and
smiled. I shook my head and walked past her. "I thought we were
going to get some food."

She just laughed as she followed me down the
steps.

* * * *

It was totally
bizarre to return to work the next day and not go to my

old desk. It felt even weirder not to see
Neil. I'd gone home the night before and immediately called my mom,
like bad mom health was catching or something. We’d chatted about
work and friends, but I’d deftly avoided her wheedling inquiries
about my love life. She would not be okay with hearing about my
casual D/s relationship with a guy older than she was.

After that, I'd lain awake half the night,
trying to calculate the length of a flight from New York to London,
wondering where Neil was. He'd left the office while I'd been out
to lunch, but I had no idea how long it took to get through
security or whatever he’d had to do. Deja had mentioned that he'd
taken a private jet, so I supposed he wouldn't be standing in some
TSA line with his shoes off, worrying about his poor ailing
mother.

It amazed me when I walked into the building
and everything hadn't ground to a halt. To the contrary, when Rudy
had taken over running all of Neil's meetings and appointments the
day before, it had felt a little like Gabriella was with us again.
Caught up in everything that had been going on with regards to my
job, I hadn't noticed how terrified everyone was of Rudy.

When he stopped me on my way through
reception and said, "Good luck today, Sophie," I noticed the looks
that got me, and I held my head up a little higher as I crossed the
main office floor.

India Vaughn, senior beauty editor, sidled up
next to me as we walked. "Sophie Scaife, I think you just got the
seal of approval."

"Don't be too intimidated," I quipped. "He
doesn't really like me all that much."

She shook my hand, which is actually pretty
tricky to do when walking side by side with someone. I was
impressed at how professionally I pulled it off.

Let me tell you about India. India had been
the office Brit before Neil came to
Porteras
. She has black
hair and light eyes, and looks like she could play a president's
wife in a movie. She knows more about nail polish than any other
human being alive. I once went to a Christmas open house at her
apartment, and I swear to god, she had an entire walk-in closet of
just beauty products, like she’d taken a little slice of Ulta and
slotted it into her home.

She was also an incredibly demanding boss by
reputation, and I really wanted to impress her.

"Don't be nervous," she reassured me, but I
didn't mind being nervous. It helped me stay ahead of the game.
"Gabriella had nothing but good things to say about you."

"Did she?" My mind spun. Gabriella had said
things about me to India? Before she'd left and put my name on that
list? Did that mean... "Was Gabriella considering me for this job
before
she left?"

"Well, yes... didn't she tell you?" India
blinked at me as she pushed through the doors to the beauty
department. The room was amazing, with lighted vanities and
worktables covered in cardboard USPS boxes overflowing with samples
of the latest cosmetics. In one corner there was a light box and a
digital camera on a tripod. A girl with green-striped black hair up
in a messy bun leaned over the light box, drizzling sparkly nail
polish onto a piece of glass.

"Jessica?" India asked, and the woman
straightened. She was wearing the coolest rectangular glasses I'd
ever seen, and had gorgeous brown eyes. "This is Jessica Nguyen,
our other assistant editor."

"Yes!" I remembered her from the short-lived
online makeup tutorial series she’d done for the magazine’s
website. I shook her hand. "I really liked the spring pinks last
year."

She beamed at me. "I never thought that would
fly. You know Gabriella and petal pinks."

"I had faith in you," India laughed. Then she
addressed me. "Look, I know that working for Gabriella was
extremely challenging. But you stayed on for two years, so I know
you can handle this job."

A phone rang somewhere in the office, and
India excused herself to answer it.

"So, favorite lipsticks. Go." Jessica's eyes
twinkled at the very mention of lipstick, and I realized I had just
walked into my dream job. Weird, I’d always seen myself more like
Jake, making a big deal over important clothes and designers.

When I had been a teenager flipping through
fashion magazines, the only things in the pages I’d been able to
afford on my meager allowance were the cosmetics. I’d saved for
weeks to buy Clarins eye shadow quads and Bobbi Brown tinted
moisturizer. So, I knew my shit where product was concerned.

"Illamasqua 'Flare'," I ticked on my
fingertips, "YSL 'Rose Boheme,' and of course MAC's 'Please Me.'
Did I pass?"

Jessica was about to say something when India
hung up and headed straight for the door.

"What's up?" Jessica asked, and her concern
made me a little worried.

"It's Rudy." India pronounced his name with
great disdain, stretching the syllables in her working-class
accent, like
Roo-dee
. "It sounds like I'm about to be
scolded."

"Scolded?" I asked after India left. "What
does she mean?"

"Well, ever since Elwood took over the
magazine, he and his little henchmen are instituting all of these
bullshit policy changes." Jessica rolled her eyes at Neil's
name.

"Ugh," I pretended to sympathize. "What
dicks, right?"

"You know Rudy Ainsworth nixed four really
good pictures from that Versailles spread?" Jessica's jaw dropped
dramatically before she continued. "Because they had fur in them.
They're trying to 'cut back' on the use of fur."

"In
Porteras
?"
No, dipshit, in the
other magazine you work for.
"That's never going to work."

Jessica nodded in agreement "Tell me about
it. Come on, let me show you around."

I have to admit, I was only half paying
attention to most of what Jessica was telling me.
So
not
smart on my first day in a new job, but I couldn't stop thinking
about what a colossal mistake it would be to cut fur from the pages
of
Porteras
. It wasn't that I was pro-fur. Dead animals
squicked me out, but anti-fur designers were thin on the ground.
Fur was a battleground that Neil would lose on, and besides, where
was the line? First fur, then leather? At least we could still run
non-fur pieces from designers who used fur, but when would that
end?

Without the support of the designers and
advertisers,
Porteras
really would flame out, and fast.

Jessica was showing me how to photograph a
good swatch of wet polish - and finishing the project my arrival
had interrupted in the process - when India came in, completely
crestfallen.

"We have to start the issue over." She
dropped a printed, stapled list onto the center worktable.

“February?” Jessica chirped, alarmed. “We
just got all the sample requests in.”

“January.” India dropped into her chair, her
head in her hands. “We have to start over on the January
issue.”

"Start over?" Jessica's tone indicated she
couldn't even conceive of the idea. "But we'll be like eight days
behind schedule."

India looked up, her perfect black brows
lifted. "Well, then I suppose we should clear our schedules."

"What's wrong with everything? Mr. Elwood
loved the proofs at the meeting- ”

"Neil Elwood is a horse's ass," India
snapped, and it was so blunt I couldn't help my horrified burst of
laughter.

"Sorry," I muttered, covering my mouth in
shame.