The Boss Project by Vi Keeland

Merrick shook his head. “Spit. As in hock-choo. Coughed it up and all.”

“And she still works for you? Is that because she has a contract?”

“All of my employment contracts have an insubordination clause that allows me to terminate anyone for being unprofessional or disrespectful.”

“So why didn’t you fire her?”

“It’s complicated. At the time, emotions were running high. She was close with my ex and didn’t know all the facts about what was going on. Trust me, I wanted to fire her. But what she did had nothing to do with business. It didn’t even happen at the office, so I waited to see how she acted when I saw her at work the next time. I wasn’t sure she’d show up the next day. But she did. She was frosty, but did her job, and she does her job well. And I was too caught up for months in other things to let it bother me much. By the time I had my head screwed back on, Colette and I had fallen into a speak-when-spoken-to relationship and mostly ignored each other. There’s always been a management level between us at work, so we don’t need to interact one-on-one much anyway.” Merrick paused and looked down for a long time. “My ex, Amelia, had an accident. She was in the hospital for a long time. Colette didn’t agree with some of the decisions I made as time progressed.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I heard she was in an accident. But I didn’t know any of the details. That must’ve been tough.”

Merrick nodded and gulped back the rest of the wine in his glass. “Do you want some more?”

“No, thanks. I actually had two on the flight. I’ll wind up with a headache in the morning if I have any more.”

“Lightweight.” He smiled and got up to refill his glass.

When he sat back down, it looked like his mind was elsewhere. He stared off at nothing in particular with wrinkles in his forehead. Eventually he drank down half of his new glass of wine and turned to face me. “You want to know a secret now?”

I rubbed my hands together. “Absolutely. I love secrets. My mom always teases that it’s the reason I became a therapist.”

Merrick smiled. “Well, don’t get too excited. My secret isn’t that thrilling.”

“I’ll take it anyway.”

“I may have been biased against bringing on a therapist at the office for more reasons than I originally indicated.”

“Oh?”

“Amelia and I were having some problems before her accident. We went to a therapist a few times. It didn’t go well, so I might’ve been prejudiced by that.”

“Wow. Okay. Well, that makes sense. If you didn’t have success with it, it’s no wonder you thought it was a waste of time.”

Merrick nodded.

“Thank you for sharing that with me.”

He smiled sort of sadly. “Thank Kitty.”

“She encouraged you to tell me you’d been to counseling?”

He looked down into his glass. “Something like that.”

There were so many questions spinning in my mind. Like why did they go to counseling? What decisions didn’t Colette agree with after Amelia’s accident? But I wasn’t sure how long Merrick’s openness might last, so I chose to ask the question I’d been most curious about, just in case it was the only question he answered.

“I hope you don’t mind me being nosy, but could I ask how Amelia died? What kind of an accident was it?”

Merrick rubbed the back of his neck. “She died after a plane crash. She was taking lessons to get her small-craft pilot’s license.”

“Oh my God. That’s awful. You weren’t with her, were you?”

He finished off his second glass of wine and was quiet for a long moment before setting the glass on the table and shaking his head. “No, I wasn’t with her. The other guy she was sleeping with was.”





CHAPTER 19

Merrick



Three years ago



“When am I going to see my little Amelia Earhart in action?” I wrapped my hands around Amelia’s waist. She was getting dressed to go to the weekly Sunday flying lesson she’d started a few months ago.

“You’ll make me too nervous.”

I frowned. “I’m going to call bullshit on that. You’re missing the nervous gene.”

Amelia wiggled out of my arms and grabbed a baseball hat before walking over to the mirror to position it on her head and pull her ponytail through the back. “You’ll be a distraction, and I need to focus.”

I could have argued, since we both knew she was full of shit. Ever since we’d moved in together last year, it felt like Amelia had taken up a half-dozen hobbies, none of which included me. Before flying lessons, it was sky diving and rock climbing, and before that she was flying all over the place on the weekends to play in poker tournaments. She’d always been a daredevil and an adrenaline junkie, but nothing like this.

“Don’t pout.” She walked back over and grabbed two fistfuls of my shirt. “Why don’t you do what the couple’s therapist said and get your own hobby?”

“Why don’t you do what the therapist said and spend a little time with me?”

She rolled her eyes. “We spend eighty hours a week together at the office, and we live together.”

“That’s not spending time together. It’s working and having a roommate.”