Bad Boss by Stella Rhys

17

SARA

“What kindof assignment is this? You’ve had a thousand deadlines, Sara. You would still always text back,” Mom pointed out.

The fact that I couldn’t hear her moving around the house doing a million different things while on the phone was unnerving. My mother never ever stayed still, not even while watching TV. If she was actually sitting down to give this conversation her undivided attention that meant she was still on high alert.

She knew I was lying about something.

And I was. I’d yet to tell her about quitting June Magazine. I still couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“It’s… a very complicated assignment, Mama,” I said, suppressing my sigh at my desk.

“Tell Robin you can’t work any more Sundays. Tell her that will put less pressure on you, and you’ll have more energy,” Mom said, referring to my boss at June. My ex-boss, rather, and the woman who had smiled coldly and told me I’d amount to nothing on the day I quit. The sound of her name made my teeth clench.

“I’ll talk to her about it,” I said just as I saw Julian coming up the stairs from his lunch break. He had the jacket of his three-piece suit off, giving me a better than usual view of that tapered torso. Glancing down at his Rolex, he then looked up at me, wearing a slight frown that asked why I hadn’t left for lunch yet. He knew I was starving, but I’d been stuck on a long conference call with Colin and the people at the resort before, so I wasn’t able to leave.

Then once I was, my mother called.

“Listen, Ma – Robin’s coming by, so I gotta get off the phone,” I said hurriedly under my breath, but I knew Julian heard me because I caught the quizzical tilt of his head before he disappeared into his office. “Yeah. Okay. I promise I’ll call you tonight to talk longer. Okay, will do – bye-bye.”

I hung up and sat frozen with my hand still on the receiver, listening to the footsteps of Julian coming back outside, hands in his pockets as he stood in front of my desk. I lifted my eyes off his shiny belt buckle, trailing them slowly up the buttons of his fitted grey vest till I was smiling back at the teasing look he had on for me.

“I’m almost certain my name isn’t Robin.”

“Yes. It’s not. It’s just, um…” I cleared my throat. “The thing is that – ”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain if you don’t want to,” he said earnestly despite his look of sheer amusement. “I only came out here to see if you wanted to join me for lunch.”

My eyes fluttered. “I thought you just had lunch?”

“I spent it in poor company. I’d like to do it over.”

“Oh.” I took my hand off the receiver and sat straight. “Is this so we can discuss the Biarritz itinerary?” I asked.

“No. Remember, we’ll be doing that with Colin at three in the conference room. I reminded you this morning.”

“You did, I just – ” Wanted to see if this was a business lunch or a… lunch-lunch. “Never mind,” I gave him a smile and grabbed my purse. “Let’s go eat.”

* * *

Creamy leather chairsand walnut tabletops graced the enormous dining room of the restaurant Julian chose for our power lunch. Upon sitting, I was unsurprised to find that like the maître d’, the servers knew Julian by name. A little more surprising, however, was the fact that he remembered all of theirs.

“Do you come here often?” I asked once we finished ordering.

“Not as often as other places. Why do you ask?”

“You know everyone’s names.”

“I try to remember names once they’ve been given. It’s only ever been helpful to me, especially when it comes to running a business.”

I lifted my brows. “That makes sense. Is that the trick to owning the empire that you do at your age?”

“One of several,” he smiled. “It also took a fair amount of sleepless nights and busting my ass. Nothing you don’t know about though.”

I grinned at the way he sat back and let his eyes settle on me. I wasn’t sure what I had done or what I was doing to deserve the way he looked at me, but I didn’t question it.

“Yes, of course, all your ass-busting led to where you are now, whereas mine was apparently all in vain,” I said with a wince. “I don’t know why I put so much time into that company when they treated me like shit.”

Actually, I did know why, and I prayed to God Julian wouldn’t press me for details on why I stayed. He didn’t.

“I take it you don’t want me to get you your job back there when our contract is finished.”

“No, actually. I don’t,” I laughed, realizing that only just now.

“Are there any other magazines under Hoult Publishing that you’d like to work for?” he asked.

“Several,” I answered so fast and vigorously it made him laugh. I blushed a bit. “Actually, one magazine in particular is the reason I even switched majors to journalism in college.”

“Really?” He leaned forward with interest. “Which?”

“Una Magazine,” I replied. “I think your company acquired it two or three years ago.”

“Four.”

I blinked. God, he never stopped being on top of it.

“Right. It’s named after The Una, which was one of the first women’s periodicals back in the day.”

“The eighteen hundreds, correct?”

“Eighteen fifty-three,” I said slowly, cocking my head at him. “You keep knowing more than I think you would.”

“Thank you, I’m sure.”

I laughed. “It’s a compliment. But anyway, that’s pretty much my dream magazine. It had a very significant impact on me during my most formative years, and if I could work for them and help change even one other girl’s life then I’d be incredibly grateful.”

Julian nodded as he studied me. We were briefly silent as a vested bus boy came by to refill our waters. When he was gone, Julian sat back.

“I’ll be sure to find you a position there when we’re done with the Roths.”

I choked on nothing. “Really?”

“Did I not promise you that when you first agreed to work for me?”

“You did, I just…”

“Didn’t believe me.”

“I’m pretty sure I believed you, but I really didn’t know you at all at the time, and I wasn’t entirely sure anything coming out of your mouth was true.”

The ends of his lips remained curved as his brows pulled together. “That angers me.”

I bit my nervous grin. “It’s not meant as a slight toward you, Julian. I just didn’t know you at all back then. I still don’t know that much about you now.”

“What do you want to know?”

His intensity was briefly daunting as I searched myself for the answer. But I had too many.

“What don’t I want to know is probably a more appropriate question,” I replied with little shame, returning the crooked smile to his lips.

“Start small.”

I inwardly rejoiced at the two-word invitation, but smoothing my napkin over my lap, I kept my poise.

“Okay.” I leaned back to let two servers gracefully set down our first course. “You mentioned you have a brother. Tell me about him.”

“Emmett? He’s the one who barged in on us the night we met.”

“You’ve mentioned that before,” I teased. “And with deep irritation, might I add.”

“He lives to irritate me deeply, so that would make sense,” Julian said, quiet for a moment as he watched me take a bite of my Nantucket bluefin. “He’s five years younger than me, and were it not for the fact that we share many of the same features, no one would believe we were related.”

“Now I’m curious to see a picture,” I said, smirking at the look Julian gave me. He held it even as he reached into his pocket for his phone.

“I don’t have many pictures,” he warned when he started scrolling. “This is about the best you’re going to get,” he said, handing his phone across the table. I took it carefully, cradling it in both hands as I looked down at the photo.

“Wow. Look at that smile,” I said, beaming myself at the unbridled joy on both Julian and Emmett’s faces. They did in fact have the same eyes and lips, even the same smile, but otherwise, they didn’t look very similar. “You look so happy. When was this?”

“Last year, when the Empires won the American League pennant. First time since the eighties, and the first time in my era of ownership, so that was nice.”

I glanced up to catch him smiling wide down at his phone in my hand. I looked back down fast so he’d feel free to keep grinning.

“And who’s this?” I held the screen up and pointed at the white-haired woman he and his brother posed with. She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, but she was holding and drinking from her own bottle of champagne. Julian’s eyes crinkled adorably as he laughed.

Lord, I thought to myself, noting that I hadn’t seen that particular laugh before.

“That’s my grandma. Rosemarie Hoult,” he answered with a glimmer of pride in both his voice and his eye. “She immigrated from Germany when she was eighteen, and the first thing she did when she arrived was go to a baseball game. She said it felt appropriately American.”

“Sounds about right,” I said, already charmed. “I’m going to assume it was an Empires game.”

“Absolutely. She was hell-bent on learning every detail of the game, and her sisters were very much disinterested, so she went alone, and eventually, my grandfather spotted her. He was an usher, and the day she sat in his section – according to him – he decided he had to marry her.”

“Oh God, that’s too cute.”

“It is.” Julian crinkled his nose. Another new one! I thought with delight, mentally collecting all his new expressions this afternoon. “Needless to say, we grew up an Empires family.”

“And now you own the team.” I shook my head. “If that’s not the happiest story I’ve ever heard, then I don’t know what is.”

His expression faltered slightly. “Yes, well, there’s certainly a lot that happened in between, but ultimately, it’s a happy story,” he said, a bit less enthused than he was a second ago.

My expression fell as I watched all shreds of joy or excitement leave Julian’s face. Damn it, what did I say? I lamented Julian’s smile when it faded fully back to his neutral look. I touched my neck, wondering if I was pushing it to ask if something specific had happened in between to make this anything but the perfect American dream story. I touched my neck unsurely.

“Was there… something that – ”

“Tell me about your family,” Julian interrupted. The stern look on his face was my confirmation that he didn’t want to delve further into the topic of the Hoults. He took a drink of water. “You told your mother my name was Robin.” I was relieved by the teasing look in his eye. “If you’d like to explain that now, I’m all ears.”

I grimaced as I took my own slow drink of water to stall.

“Robin was my last boss. I said her name because my mom… doesn’t know I quit June Magazine yet.” I stared into my water as I wrung my hands in my lap. “She sees that place as my miracle job – prestigious, decent pay, full health benefits. So, I’ve been acting as if I still work there.”

“Why can’t you tell her you now work for Hoult Communications? I imagine that would sound even more prestigious.”

“Well, because my contract with Hoult Communications ends within a few months, sir,” I said, enjoying the way Julian so hated that word from my mouth. He lifted his gaze from my lips to my eyes and gave a smirk.

“I’m glad you’re so pleased with yourself.”

“Getting reactions out of you is fun.”

“I hope you and Emmett never meet,” he said before going back to our original topic. “Can you not tell your mom that after this contract is over, you’ll be with Hoult Publishing?”

I let out a sigh. “Again, this is no slight to you, but I would rather not tell her anything like that until a contract has been signed, and everything is solid. She is absolutely paranoid and untrusting when it comes to me, and she leaves no stone unturned when questioning even minor changes in my life.”

I could tell Julian was confused because while he frowned only slightly, he was quiet for several seconds. I knew he had to be wondering whether my mother was just paranoid by nature, or if I’d given her some reason to be this way. I braced myself for a question about it, but instead, he changed the subject.

“Una Magazine is based near Columbus Circle. Is that close to where you live?”

“No, but I can take the D train from Broadway-Lafayette. I live on Mulberry Street. I’m a downtown girl.”

“I prefer downtown myself.”

“Oh? Where do you live?”

“TriBeCa.”

I rolled my eyes with a smile. “Of course. I’m sure you own entire buildings in TriBeCa.”

“No. Just one. But I have others nearby in SoHo and DUMBO.”

“I was just teasing you,” I snorted. “But thank you for reminding me of the full extent of your wealth. Meanwhile, I’m just hoping I can afford to buy a five hundred-square-foot studio in this city before I turn thirty-five.”

“Well, I hear Una Magazine compensates well, so you’re in luck.”

“Oh yeah?” I cocked an eyebrow. “What else do you hear about Una, since you know so very much?”

He answered without a hint of my playfulness.

“I know it’s a women’s magazine that deals specifically with mental health and trauma.”

I coughed as my water promptly went down the wrong pipe.

Crap.

How the hell did I not realize what I’d revealed about myself before? The magazine I pined to work for was famous for being one of the first publications to talk frankly about women’s struggles with things like depression and abuse. While it offered the usual content like fashion, social and world news, it was most famous for its monthly pieces that shone unabashed light on everything from post-partum depression to trauma from sexual abuse. It was an incredible magazine.

But it had just exposed me to Julian Hoult.

“Um.” I thanked God for the waiters returning to exchange our plates for the second course. It gave me time to think of a response. Whether or not I used that time was a different story.

“Why did that particular magazine influence you so much?” Julian asked, giving me little time to recover.

Jesus Christ. Go for the jugular, why don’t you?I held up my finger as I chewed on my food. He took a drink of water as he waited for my answer.

“Reasons,” I finally said, enjoying his unamused look.

“I’m not sure that constitutes as an answer.”

“Why isn’t your purchase of the Empires a happy story?” I countered.

He sat back. “Touché. How’s your paillard?”

“Very good.” I cut a bite. “And your steak?”

“Excellent.”

We exchanged little smiles to acknowledge our little standoff just now, and then without missing a beat, our conversation carried on smoothly.

From lunch, Julian left directly for a meeting in the Financial District, but he made sure to call me a car. When it arrived, he started off the sidewalk to help me with the door, but swiftly rounding the vehicle was the driver to hold it open for me.

Leaving Julian and me standing on the sidewalk, standing close and just looking at each other.

We wore the same little smiles we had after our little standoff before, but unlike that one, this one ended with a minor hitch.

“Okay, I guess I’ll see you…” I trailed off as I watched him take a step closer to me. His hands hooked in his pockets, he tilted his head down at me, eyeing the way I nervously wet my lips. Then he gazed so directly into my eyes I felt heat in my face and pressure buckling my knees. “Okay, later. Bye.”

I rushed into the car after my inexplicably awkward exit, and I wanted to yell, “Shut up!” out the window when I spotted Julian chuckling to himself on the sidewalk.

Jesus, Sara.

Sexually, the man had done everything to me thus far, but apparently, I couldn’t hold it together for a non-corporate goodbye after lunch. Even the driver laughed as I shook my head in my hands and kicked my feet in the backseat, trying to get rid of the embarrassed tinglies all over my skin.

It took a good two minutes to overcome, but it started up again when a text buzzed in my phone.

JULIAN:Yes, I was going in for a kiss. You should let me next time. See you at 3.