Falling for Your Boss by Emma St. Clair

Chapter One

Zoey

Come on, Taylor Swift. Don’t fail me now.

Today, more than ever, I need her pep and sassy boldness. Because I’m about to walk into work and give my two weeks’ notice. I promised myself I would quit before my twenty-fourth birthday, which is tomorrow.

But as one of my favorite pop star’s anthems plays through my car speakers, I don’t feel the usual confidence building in my chest. Maybe I need to go back to the early Taylor days, when she was trying to break into a music industry that only wanted her songs, not her voice or her face. Country Taylor. The Taylor who wouldn’t give up and worked and elbowed and fought her way into the Nashville elite.

I pop in a new CD—yes, I still listen to CDs, thank you very much—and skip forward to one of her earliest hits. She sounds soft-voiced and twangy here. Sweet. Little did people know the lion of a woman underneath. They know now.

Sometimes, I miss this early Taylor. I’ve given long thought to the fact that the world doesn’t seem to allow for both. Pick a lane—strong or sweet. At least, if you’re a woman. Men seem to get a free pass on this.

Take my boss, Gavin, for example. He is somehow able to be a total alpha male when it comes to business, but thoughtful and kind outside the conference room. He wears both hats well, switching seamlessly depending on the occasion. I’m not even sure which one I find more attractive.

Both are ridiculously, should-be-illegal levels of hot. Which is, at least in part, why I’m quitting.

Meanwhile, I am one note. Firm, professional, dependable Zoey. According to the other women in my office, who all hate me, Robot Zoey.

At least on the outside, my inner voice says and laughs maniacally. There’s definitely a quirky, wild side to me, but I picked my lane long ago. No sense swerving now. I’d probably end up right in the path of oncoming traffic the minute I took my hair down. Figuratively speaking. Though my hair is almost always, literally, up.

My phone begins buzzing in the cupholder where I have it charging. I forgot to plug it in last night.

“Hey, Abs,” I say.

“Uh-oh. You’re Swifting again,” Abby says in lieu of hello.

I roll my eyes. I wonder what my best friend would say if she knew that I Swifted (as she calls it) every morning before work.

“Stop being such a hater. You know what they say about haters,” I say.

“Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” we chorus at the same time.

I grin. Maybe I needed to start calling Abby in the morning for pep talks rather than listening to the same rotation of CDs.

“Is today the day?” Abby asks. “You’re finally going to quit or tell Gavin you’re in love with him?”

“I’m not in love with him. It’s a crush.”

“Uh-huh. Crushes don’t last two years. Just throw yourself across his desk and ask him to kiss you. See what happens!”

I shake my head at my best friend, who is also my total opposite. “What happens is I would get fired.”

“Wouldn’t you get a severance package? Win-win! And then you’d get your own chapter in Sam’s book.”

“Nope.”

That’s the last thing I want. One of our best friends and roommates, Sam, secured a book deal, writing as her famous (and secret) persona, Dr. Love. For the past few years we’ve helped supply her with real (and sometimes fake) fodder for the popular dating advice column. But the book chapters are longer, more involved, and I have no desire to have any relationship of mine be immortalized like that in print.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Abby says. “You read what she wrote about me and Zane. It was very respectful. And the names were changed.”

“It’s not going to happen. Anything romantic with Gavin or having Sam write about it. Moving on.”

“Fine. What should I get Zane for his birthday? Your brother is impossible to shop for.”

I wrinkle my nose, glad we aren’t FaceTiming. I love Abby. I love my twin brother. I even love them together.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not sometimes hard to stomach their sickeningly sweet love-fest. I’d also be lying if I deny feeling the tiniest bit jealous that the two people closest to me in the whole world now hang out all the time … usually without me.

“You can always get him another tie. He loves his ties.”

“Ugh! I’m not getting Zane a tie. Are you serious right now? I’ve just gotten the man to loosen up a little. A tie sends the wrong message. You know, you could loosen up a bit too, Zo. It’s been good for Zane.”

It has been good for him. Abby has been good for him. She upended him completely, and I couldn’t be happier about it. My brother had been closed off tighter than a hyperbaric chamber. When he fell for Abby, I could almost hear the hiss as the doors opened, letting Zane breathe real air. He seems healthier now, and definitely happier.

But that doesn’t mean I need to change. I’m just fine. And like I said, I’ve picked my lane. I know the speed limit and I know the destination. I’m on cruise control. No need to so much as tap the brakes.

“I’m not my brother.”

Abby sighs. “Fine. Back to gifts. Help!”

“Maybe something for his house,” I suggest. “Weren’t you helping him decorate?”

“Boring. I was thinking about a puppy.”

I blink. “You want to get my brother a dog?”

“Is it a bad idea?”

“Pets make terrible gifts. I mean, I know Zane’s working less now that he’s not full-time at the startup. But at his core, my brother is a giant workaholic. Who’s going to take care of the puppy? I don’t even know how much he likes dogs.”

We’d never had a dog or any pet growing up, probably because of my dad. He spent years in the military, and I suspect he irons his socks and underwear, though I’ve never actually caught him doing so.

The idea of pet hair in his house? No. Slobber? No way. Potty accidents? God forbid. Zane might have loosened up, but I have a feeling he would be the same way. I can almost picture him, following a puppy around with a vacuum cleaner and a damp rag.

“Fine. You’re no help,” Abby says. “Question: Is this thing you call ‘music’ supposed to help you muster up the courage to quit? Because I don’t get it.”

“I don’t need to defend Teffy to you. Her awards and album sales speak for themselves.”

“Teffy, huh? Is that her new nickname?”

Teffy is what Taylor Swift’s brother calls her. It predates the names her fans and the media call her. But Abby, a staunch hater of pop music, doesn’t deserve to know that fact. She can google it.

I eye the clock on the dashboard. “Speaking of quitting, I’ve got to get into work.”

“Before you go, one more thing.”

I can tell by the tone of Abby’s voice that I’m not going to like whatever this thing is.

“Zane invited me to your birthday night. But I don’t want to come if you feel like that steps on your toes or something.”

I swallow back the hurt. It shouldn’t matter. The tradition that Zane and I started back in high school was that on our birthday, we’d go mini golfing at the iconic Peter Pan Mini Golf and then treat ourselves to Sandy’s frozen custard. If that’s not an Austin cliché, I don’t know what is.

It’s our thing. We never even invited our dad.

“Of course I don’t mind. You’re my best friend.” I find myself squeezing the steering wheel with my free hand, hard enough that my knuckles turn white.

“Yay! I’m excited! Okay, gotta run. Computer code is calling. Love ya!”

She hangs up before I can respond.

Now I have a new reason to need cheering up. Groaning, I dial up the volume and lean my head against the steering wheel.

Is it ridiculous that I am sitting in my car outside work, trying to apply meaning from Taylor Swift’s life to my own? Maybe.

But ever since my mom took me to one of her concerts the year before she died, the singer has become my spirit animal. Maybe it’s because Taylor Swift reminds me of one of the best last times I had with my mom. Or maybe it’s simply because Taylor is awesome, no matter what Abby says.

Either way, I need to channel some of her grit before walking into the offices of Morgan-Beckwith, boutique marketing firm. Taylor had the music industry to fight. I have an office full of catty women, my ridiculous crush on my boss, and a resignation letter I haven’t had the courage to turn in yet.

Gavin is both the reason I’m resigning and the reason I’m struggling with it so much.

No one has any idea the amount of self-control it takes to look uninterested in Gavin day after day. It’s like wearing a corset on my emotions all day long, the laces squeezing tighter, tighter, tighter until I can hardly breathe from the effort.

Crushes are supposed to die. They’re like a fire running on only lighter fluid and no good fuel. They burn bright, they burn hot, and then they fizzle into ash. At least, they’re supposed to. But the feelings I have for Gavin simply refuse to go the way of the dinosaur.

It’s like a Night of the Living Dead Crush. I beat it back, thinking I am safe, and it pops right back up again when he smiles or says my name or just breathes in my general vicinity. There is a reason Gavin tops a list of the most eligible bachelors in Austin, a title once held by Texas’s favorite naked bongo player, Matthew McConaughey.

Gavin is wealthy, successful, and hotter than a flamethrower on the Fourth of July. If I could find a flaw in Gavin, I would have latched on to that thing like it was my only lifeline.

But to Abby’s point, I’m not in love with him. I mean, that thought is ridiculous. Silly. Completely untrue.

Probably.

I turn off my car, the silence feeling somehow loud after Abby’s bright voice and the music I’ve been blasting. With a sigh, I grab my purse, lock the car, and head into battle.

* * *

“If the proposal needs tweaking,I can do that,” Roxana says, her voice a throaty purr that would rival any 900-number phone operator. “I have so many ideas.”

Gag me.

It’s a good thing I have practice keeping myself walled up behind a mask of cold professionalism. In my head, I’m rolling my eyes so hard. I watch as Roxana reaches out to touch Gavin’s hand—a bold move, especially when he’s in full-on fierce serious business mode. He casually picks up his coffee, avoiding her touch without being rude.

Score one for Gavin. More like score one hundred, because Roxana has been flirting that hard during this meeting. Honestly, it’s more than a little embarrassing. I think Roxana is trying to distract Gavin from her awful proposal for a local auto shop rebrand.

Gavin is clearly not interested. In her or the proposal. But that hasn’t slowed Roxana’s roll. Not even a little. She’s like a cartoon skier who becomes a bigger and bigger snowball as she rolls head over foot down the mountain. I almost smile at the mental image.

She doesn’t let his brush-off deter her in the slightest, shuffling the folder in front of her, as though that’s what she was doing, not trying to stroke Gavin’s hand with her French-tipped fingernails.

Suuuuure. You’re a consummate professional, Roxana.

Usually, her ideas are brilliant, but today, it’s a hard pass. I’m shocked Gavin hasn’t thrown her out yet, telling her to start over. I’ve been hoping he would. Partly because that growly voice when he’s all serious and bossy makes my insides quiver like a Jell-O mold balanced on a jackhammer.

Gavin frowns. Why do I like even his grumpy look so much? Maybe it’s the way his brown eyes flash or his full lips become almost pouty.

Focus, Zoey. And not on Gavin’s mouth!

“I don’t know what to say,” Gavin says, finally. “This isn’t what I was hoping for.”

I force my body not to outwardly show the shudder inside at the low rumble of his voice.

Roxana shrinks in her seat. I would almost feel bad for her, but I suspect she’s the one who drew the cartoon of the Zoey-Bot on a napkin and hung it on the fridge in the break room.

Plus, I don’t have the emotional bandwidth for sympathy right now. It’s taking all my energy to keep focused on these meetings with the marketing directors while my resignation letter is burning a hole in my bag.

Will Gavin fight for me to stay? A big part of me hopes he will. Okay, maybe I’ve fantasized about it.

He’ll tell me that I’m indispensable to him and an asset to the company. He will offer me what I really want—a position as one of the marketing directors, not his exec assistant—and then we’ll make out in his office until I’m breathless.

“Zoey? Do you have any thoughts?” Gavin asks.

Like the ones I was just having about you and me making out in your office?I feel a brief flash of panic, then realize he is asking me to weigh in on Roxana’s proposal.

Do I have any thoughts? Me? The lowly assistant?

My mouth drops open a little before I force it closed, adopting a neutral expression. Switzerland of the face, here I come. I can’t say the same for Roxana, whose cheeks are a mottled red. Gavin always has me sit in on his meetings with the marketing directors but hasn’t ever asked what I thought. Because I’m not a marketing director; I’m his executive assistant.

Gavin’s brown eyes pin me to my chair. “You hear the same number of proposals I do in a given week, which makes you as qualified as anyone to poke holes in a proposal. What do you think?”

It’s a challenge. It’s also a high compliment that Gavin is even asking me to weigh in. I want to bask in his praise. To roll around in it like a dog in grass on a sunny day in spring.

He’s going to be sorry he asked if you don’t say something, dummy.

The problem is that, like Gavin seems to, I hate Roxana’s proposal. And it has nothing to do with the way she’s been aiming her cleavage at him through this whole meeting, flirting throughout the presentation, or the way she’s currently looking at me with acid in her eyes. It’s just a bad idea.

Roxana is brilliant. All of the women in this office are. Juliet, the original owner who sold the business to Gavin when her elderly parents needed more care, dreamed of a whole office full of talented, smart women, making deals and taking names.

But whether Roxana is having an off-day or losing her edge, I can’t pretend the idea works. It doesn’t. I also don’t want to make her hate me more.

“Well,” I say, channeling a confidence I don’t yet feel, “I’m not sure about the print part of the campaign. I would cut that budget and shift the money toward the social media and influencer aspects.”

“No surprise that the barely out of college graduate doesn’t want to consider print.” Roxana raises her eyebrows, giving me a clear challenge across the table.

Gavin makes a low rumble, like he’s about to correct her for the dig, but I don’t need him to be my defender. Even if I love the idea that he wants to stick up for me.

I lock eyes with Roxana. “I’m not against print, when there’s a need. But the last few campaigns we’ve run for brick-and-mortar businesses lost money on the print side.”

“I’ve run the numbers,” she argues. “They’re solid.”

“I’m sure you have. But an all-digital campaign would make better use of your money and increase your reach. Consider the last campaign we ran for Blaze Auto. No print. All digital. The most effective part was utilizing Instagram influencers. It’s not what I would normally think of, but it worked. We can pull the numbers if you need a reminder.”

There’s a beat or two of silence. I keep my expression smooth and my gaze up. I see the moment that Roxana knows I’m right, and the struggle as she tries to figure out how to respond while saving face.

Gavin has been silent this whole time, and I’ve seen his frown deepen from the corner of my eye. I’m always simply aware of him, like my body has a Gavin-radar constantly tuned into whatever he’s doing.

“What will this do to the cost projections?” he asks. I’m shocked when he looks at me, not Roxana.

“It shouldn’t do much to the bottom line,” I say. “If you look on page three, where Roxana outlined the overall budget, we could cut the ads in the local magazines. We could use half that amount on influencers. You might even save a little.”

“Interesting idea,” Gavin says. “Roxana, what do you think?”

Roxana blinks down at the papers in front of her, then smooths out her expression and looks at Gavin. “It’s a different approach, but one that doesn’t fall far outside my original proposal. I think it could work.”

Gavin nods, then smiles at us both before standing. It’s lunchtime, which means the clock is running down and I need to give Gavin my resignation. But it’s hard to think about that now because Gavin asked for my opinion. Gavin likes my idea.

Maybe Gavin will finally promote me? Except then I have to stay here, fighting my crush and feeling out of place in this cold, cutthroat office. Juliet may have amassed a group of smart, capable women (Roxana’s performance today notwithstanding), but the vibe here is not warm. We’re not one big happy family. Everyone around me always feels like they’re trying to claw their way to the top.

“I’m happy with where we landed on this,” Gavin says. “Roxana, get me an updated proposal by the end of the day.”

“Of course.”

Before he leaves the room, Gavin turns, flashing those brown eyes at me, his expression hard to read. “Can you meet me in my office?”

Why does that sound like a summons to the principal’s office? And yet, my crush-drunk heart is stumbling over itself in excitement. I get to go to Gavin’s office! Alone!!

Where I need to tell him I’m leaving. Ugh. That thought is a total buzzkill.

I’m halfway out the door when Roxana calls out, “Hey! Robot.”

I grit my teeth. “Yes?”

“That was a good call.”

“Thank you.” My words are automatic and cover my shock. Roxana actually said something nice?

She heads for the door, then calls, “Maybe you’ll get good at this—once you go through puberty.”

And … there it is. The insult I’d been expecting. With a smirk, Roxana disappears. I wish it were into a puff of smoke, but she just vanishes into the main office.

I’m not going to sit and stew in her words. I refuse. There was a compliment buried in there somewhere. I think. But I have better things to occupy my mind. Like whether or not right now is a good time to hand Gavin my resignation. Just in case I can work up the nerve, I stop by my desk and pick up my bag.

Nancy smiles at me as I approach her desk, which is just across from Gavin’s closed office door. She is a bright spot in the office with her easy smiles and grandmotherly persona. But today she seems a little too bright. Her cheeks look flushed, and her eyes are glassy.

“Are you okay, Nancy?”

“Oh, yes. I’m fine. Mostly. I didn’t sleep well last night. I started watching Pride and Prejudice and just couldn’t stop.”

I smile. “The mini-series?”

She looks down at me over her bifocals. “Like that newer one could compare. You can’t cram Jane Austen into a two-hour movie. It’s insulting. And I don’t care what the big fuss is about some hand gesture.”

I know exactly what hand gesture she’s talking about. I’m pretty sure anyone who has seen the movie knows exactly what hand gesture she means. There are blog posts and memes and Reddit threads all dedicated to the way Mr. Darcy flexed his hand after the first time he and Elizabeth Bennet touch.

“Plus,” Nancy continues, “that Colin Firth is hard to beat.”

“I don’t disagree with you there. But I have to say that I’m one of the people who loves the hand gesture.”

Nancy clucks her tongue and opens her mouth to speak, when a voice interrupts us. A deep, rich voice that has a direct line to some primal part of me. It’s a voice that makes me think of chocolate and dark coffee and warm kisses.

“What kind of hand gestures are we talking about here?”

Oh. My. Holy. Crackers.

Even my inner monologue is too thrown off to make sense. For sure, my mouth isn’t about to answer Gavin.

“Just having a little debate about men,” Nancy says with a wave of her hand.

No.

No, she didn’t.

My horrified gaze flies to Gavin, whose mouth tips up in a half smile. The kind that makes me want to press my mouth to the corner, just to see how it would feel against my lips. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the doorway.

“Enlighten me. What kind of debate about men involves discussing hand gestures? I’m curious.”

“Not real men,” I manage to say. Which, of course, sounds even worse. Gavin’s brows shoot up. “Mr. Darcy. We’re discussing which edition of Pride and Prejudice is better.”

“And what’s the verdict?”

I glance at Nancy, who is chuckling. I can see mischief glittering there. Or maybe it’s fever? Because she definitely looks unwell.

“Depends on which one of us you ask,” she says. “Maybe you should be our tie-breaker. Have you seen either one?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Well,” Nancy says, sliding a look my way. “Maybe you two should remedy that. Together.”

Nancy definitely has to be feverish. That’s the only reason I can imagine she would say something like that. I don’t think she knows about my feelings for Gavin. She’s certainly never tried playing matchmaker before now. Suggesting we watch Pride and Prejudice together? I’m not sure I would survive with my heart intact. No, I most definitely would not.

Gavin’s eyes flick to me, and I swear, for a brief moment, there is a smoldering heat in his gaze. Just as quickly, it’s gone, and his next words are like my own personal version of the ice bucket challenge.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Business Gavin is back, and I wish that I didn’t like both versions of him so much.

“Nancy, hold my calls for the next twenty minutes or so. And, at the risk of being rude, are you feeling okay? You look flushed.”

“I am feeling a little hot,” she says, fanning herself with a magazine from her desk drawer.

“Why don’t you head home for the day? Put a call in to your doctor. I’ll stop by to check on you later.”

The tenderness in his voice only makes the flame of my crush burn brighter. Because who can resist a man who cares that much for his personal assistant? He treats her more like family than an employee, and it’s heart-squeezingly sweet.

“You don’t need to do that,” she says, smiling weakly.

“I know,” he says. “But I will. Zoey? Follow me.”

“I hope you feel better!” I tell Nancy.

And then, it’s time. No more stalling. No more putting this off. My letter of resignation is in my bag, and I’ve practiced the speech while looking in the mirror at home. I’ve already had a few interviews, with a follow-up next week at a company that seems perfect. It’s time.

But first, I need to survive being alone in a room with Gavin, pretending like his presence doesn’t make me want to spontaneously combust.