Not So Nice by Emma Lyon

2

Ryan

“Earth to Ryan. What the fuck, Ryan.”

I blinked and looked up across the table. By Ethan’s impatient look, he’d been trying to get my attention for a while. “What?”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “What’s with you today? You’ve been in la-la land since we got here.”

I dipped my salmon roll in the wasabi-and-soy sauce concoction Ethan had mixed, which meant it was going to be too spicy. I didn’t care. It had been my turn to pick the restaurant for lunch, and sushi was my comfort food.

Not that I was down, exactly. I’d actually been thinking about Slake. I’d put off responding to the pictures he’d sent, which I realized made me an asshole-by-proxy, but Slake deserved more than a random response from a PA. Not that I knew Slake, other than from his texts. In fact, I kind of hated him.

That was the kind of thing I tried not to think about too closely.

“Just work.”

The pained look Ethan got whenever I mentioned work appeared. He thought Graham took advantage of me. He wasn’t wrong. Then again, Ethan wore skinny jeans and a t-shirt with an octopus on it on a workday for his fancy think tank job, so his understanding of corporate life was a little skewed.

“Does he need you to drive halfway across the city to get his laptop for him again? In the middle of your grandmother’s birthday party?”

I’d made the mistake of telling Ethan that story. My Nana hadn’t cared, though my mom had had a few choice words. She didn’t like Graham either. No one should have that much money. It’s obscene. She wasn’t swayed by the fact that some of that money was used to pay two members of her family.

“Actually, I’m trying to figure out how to break up with Graham’s latest fling.” I pulled out my phone and found a public photo of Slake—I wasn’t going to violate the guy’s privacy by showing him the ones he’d sent to Graham’s fuck phone, as I’d taken to calling it—and held it across the table to Ethan.

Ethan took my phone. His eyes widened. “Wow, he’s hot.”

I snatched my phone back. Slake was hot, but maybe I’d secretly wanted Ethan to scoff and lie and say I was way hotter. I closed the picture and stashed the phone away. I really needed to stop obsessing over Slake’s pictures.

“Have you considered that your boss asking you to break up with his one-night stands is really fucking inappropriate?”

I shrugged. “I’m his PA. That’s my job.”

“Is it?” Ethan asked skeptically.

“It is if I want to keep working for him.” That was the bottom line, really. I could quit anytime I liked, but I’d already sunk a year and a half into this job. Putting up with Graham now was the price to pay for it eventually leading to something better.

Besides, I’d known exactly what I was getting into when I took the job. Or rather when my Aunt Lindsey had called to ask if I was interested. “His last assistant just quit,” she’d said. “You have the right temperament to handle him. He can be…difficult.”

Difficulthad seemed an understatement, by the horror stories I’d heard, most of them relayed by my aunt. I didn’t know what she meant by right temperament, either. Despite what my friends and family seemed to think, I could get annoyed. I just usually didn’t. People were interesting, not annoying.

It didn’t mean I didn’t have limits. I had a stubborn streak, or so my family liked to tell me. I wasn’t a pushover.

I didn’t think.

Anyway, I’d known Graham’s reputation going in. He was an ass. He was heartless. He was ridiculously, filthy rich. He was also brilliant, even his detractors admitted. People either loved or hated him. The media mostly loved him, because he was the right degree of polarizing to make news no matter what he did.

After eighteen months, I could say unequivocally that all of those things were true. And I…didn’t actually hate working for him.

That was another thing I tried not to think about too closely.

“Can we stop talking about Graham?”

Ethan held his hands up in a peace gesture. “I just don’t like seeing him take advantage of you. Do you even have a social life anymore?”

“I’m having lunch with you now,” I pointed out.

“That doesn’t count. I mean, you haven’t dated anyone in the last eighteen months.” He eyed me meaningfully. “And I know you spent two hundred dollars on your last haircut.”

I touched my head self-consciously. Two sixty-five, to be exact, and I still couldn’t get the damned cowlick above my ear to settle. I’d never had that expensive a haircut in my life. It wasn’t like I was trying to impress Graham, exactly, it was just that between him and the ridiculously gorgeous models he hooked up with, I was starting to feel…dowdy. Undesirable. Overlooked.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Ethan shrugged. “I’m just saying, you shouldn’t have to get a two-hundred-dollar haircut for your boss to notice you.”

That was easy for Ethan to say. Everyone noticed him. Blond, blue-eyed, the kind of masculine pretty that made for Instagram stars, Ethan never had to work to get attention. Not that Ethan cared about that. And now that he’d found his new hot buff boyfriend, he was settled in his skin in a way I noticed only because I’d known him so long.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was, Ethan was barking up the wrong tree again.

He had this crazy idea I was in love with Graham. Which was ridiculous. I couldn’t be in love with Nathan Graham, because not even I could be so self-sabotaging as to be in love with someone who could never, ever love me back.

As if summoned, my phone buzzed with a text from Graham asking where I was. Really, it was a shock I’d made it through my lunch hour without a dozen from him wanting something.

I texted back that I’d be in the office soon, and he asked a follow up question about his social media feeds, which I monitored for the rare times Graham showed interest in something other than himself. I told him I’d check them when I got back. Which got another query about when that would be.

I barely kept myself from rolling my eyes. Or smiling. Sometimes I couldn’t help but find his extreme self-centeredness endearing.

I looked up to Ethan’s annoyingly smug expression. Apparently I hadn’t been successful in hiding my smile.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Ethan said innocently, plucking the last tuna roll from his plate and dipping it in soy sauce.

“I’m not in love with Graham.”

“Uh-huh.”

I shook my head, knowing I’d never convince him. “Whatever. I should probably go.”

“Of course,” Ethan said, still annoyingly innocent. I flipped him off before calling for the check.

Ethan’s smug expression followed me the short Metro ride back to the office. It wasn’t like I’d never thought about it. Graham was fearless and brilliant and brash. He took on challenges like they were candy. He had a confidence I found exciting and appealing, because I’d never been able to find that kind of confidence myself. It was hard not to get swept up in the whirlwind that was Nathan Graham.

He also only ever thought about his own needs. He cared about other people only in how they were useful to him. He did what he wanted without regard for the consequences.

Like last night. He’d woken me up to ask for something that could have waited until the morning, and had showed zero regret for it. Yet all I could remember was the warmth in my stomach and stupid smile on my face at hearing his voice in my ear. The sense of pleased self-satisfaction that I was the one Graham called when he needed something.

No doubt a therapist would have something to say about that.

So yeah, I’d thought about it. I’d even spun the occasional fairy-tale fantasy. But it was just that: a fairy tale. I knew exactly what romance with Graham looked like. The string of texts from rejected one-night stands, Graham’s utter indifference to them. The flowers and fake apologies that Graham never delivered himself, because as far as he was concerned, he’d already moved on.

Because Nathan Graham? Was no one’s Prince Charming.

I knew that better than anyone.

* * *

“Ryan, can you come in here a moment?”

I’d been back from lunch for five minutes when his voice carried through the open door of his office. I’d only just started sifting through his social media feeds. I went around my desk to hover in his office doorway. “I’m not done with—”

He interrupted me with a wave of his hand. “This is about something else.”

With a sigh that hopefully wasn’t audible, I went through the doorway and approached his desk.

Even after eighteen months of working for him, Graham’s sheer presence still swept me off my feet. Deep brown eyes so dark they looked black. Equally dark brown hair I always wanted to run my fingers through to see if it really was that silky. He’d draped his suit jacket over the back of his chair and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, and the sight of those tanned, perfectly muscled forearms made my stomach flutter.

You’d think I’d be over how hot Nathan Graham was by now.

He frowned, but in the way that he was thinking about something, not the way that meant he was displeased. I was an expert in most of his facial expressions by now. “I have a project I could use your help with in Ithaca.”

“Really?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. Graham never had me travel with him. That had always been a source of disappointment, actually. When I’d first taken the job, I’d thought it would involve a bit more jet-setting and glamor, but the reality was a lot more mundane. “What is it?”

He looked like he was about to say something, then changed his mind. “I’ll run through the details when we get there. I assume working this weekend won’t be a problem?”

I hesitated as it sunk in that I’d be spending the weekend with him. My pulse raced even as nerves set in. “No, that’s fine. Is there anything in particular I should bring?”

For some reason, Graham looked me up and down before answering cryptically, “We can sort that out later.”

I blinked. “Okay.”

“I’ll have the car pick you up Friday morning for the airport. Oh, and,” he added. “Dig up what you can on Gabriel Lorde.”

“Who?”

“A game developer who’s had some moderate success lately. There’s a business deal I’d like to close with him at the summit. So far he’s proved unamenable to my offers. I’m hoping that in a different environment, he’ll see the benefits of what I’m proposing.”

“Like this conference.”

“Summit,” Graham corrected. At my questioning look, he said, “Anyone can attend a conference. Summits are by invitation only.”

I absolutely did not roll my eyes, though it was close. No doubt that was the only reason Graham was deigning to attend. Though as far as I knew, until the other night he hadn’t planned on attending at all. Graham wasn’t much for making nice with the competition.

“Is—”

“That’s all.” Graham waved his hand in dismissal, apparently done with the conversation.

I retreated back to my desk, wondering what that was all about.

Whatever the reason Graham wanted me with him in Ithaca, it was more responsibility than making his travel plans or monitoring his social media feeds or breaking up with his one-night stands. Maybe it was a sign he thought I was ready for something more.

And sure, I’d be lying if I said that my heart didn’t beat faster at the thought of spending the time with him. It would be one harmless weekend of wallowing in my crush on him.

Not that I had one.

I opened up a tab on my browser, typing in Lorde’s name. A number of links and images came up. I wasn’t much of a gamer, but two of my housemates were, and I’d seen his SandBox company logo on the living room TV a few times.

I clicked on the first link—a long interview with him from Out, because Lorde was apparently gay and married. In the search results there’d been a link to a society mag about their wedding.

In the Out article was a picture of him. Early thirties, good-looking in a geeky sort of way, with confident eyes. He didn’t look like the sort of man who did anything he didn’t want to.

He was also headquartered in upstate New York, so the conference—excuse me, summit—would be home base for him. Not that it would shield him from how utterly relentless Graham could be in going after what he wanted. It wouldn’t surprise me if Graham wore Lorde down this weekend with pure grind.

I almost felt sorry for him.