Page 44 of Faking It With My New Boss

“If you will have me,” he said.

“Does it mean we get to do this all the time?” I asked.

“As much as you want,” he said, laughing.

“Does it also mean I get to keep my job?” I joked, which got a deep laugh from him.

“You can keep it until I can find a replacement,” he said. “I wonder if the woman that was originally supposed to be my assistant to begin with is still available?”

We both laughed and I nuzzled his neck. He kissed my head and we dozed together in the darkness, happily curled up into each other’s naked bodies.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bryan

I arrived at the office on Monday morning a few minutes behind when I usually got there. Technically I was still early, but I was so used to getting there early enough that I could go to the gym that going later than that felt weird. Still, getting there before clock-in time was impressive as it was considering my workout had been done before I left the bed. I wasn’t exactly itching to leave it either.

All my good mood and excitement drained out of me when I opened the door to my office and saw my grandfather sitting in one of the plush leather chairs in front of the desk. He sat cross-legged, facing away from me toward my long oak desk, but I could tell it was him even though his face was obscured by the chair. He always sat the same way when he was waiting, which was rare. It was the sitting stance of a man who felt personally attacked by being made to spend time waiting on another.

I was incredibly unexcited to see him. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since Courtney stomped out of the offices at the new hotel and I saw that he heard her. I could only imagine how he was going to react to the spectacle that was the event itself. Bringing attention to oneself the way I did was something I knew he abhorred, and I was preparing myself to receive a long, drawn-out lecture about how I had sullied the family reputation by making our lives so public.

Not to mention what he would say about the revelation he had heard.

He was going to fire me. I knew that much. No matter what the lecture was going to sound like, at the end of it, I would be fired. It only made me less enthused to hear what he wanted to say because it would just waste my time before he got to the end.

I took a deep breath and realized I didn’t really care. It hit me hard, but it was true. I didn’t care if he fired me anymore. As long as I had Courtney, I would figure it all out. We would figure it out. Together.

With a new sense of confidence, I marched across the room and took my seat at the desk. There was no point addressing his presence. He would speak first. He always did. I would sit, make eye contact and the lecture would begin.

But as I reached the desk, he moved. It was unlike him. Usually when he was preparing to give someone the rundown on how terrible they were, he stayed impossibly still. Like a statue, he would perch where he was and calmly, viciously eviscerate a man until there was nothing left of his pride. But as I sat down, he had not only uncrossed his legs, but he had scooted to the edge of his chair, leaning forward with his hands clasped in his lap.

I looked up and made eye contact with him and was shocked not to see the simmering anger looking back at me, but a genuine, genial smile. It surprised me so much that I suddenly felt out of sorts, like someone was playing a trick on me. I instinctively looked around to see if there were assassins or cameras waiting around behind the curtains.

“Hello, Bryan,” he said. “I need to speak with you before I get going for the rest of the day.”

“I figured,” I said, still concerned as to where this was all going. “Is this about the event?”

He nodded and I settled back in my seat. Maybe he was just extremely happy to finally tell me off.

“When I was twenty-nine, I was the youngest CEO in our industry. I know you know that because it is in every press release and biography we do. But did you also know that I was single at that time?”

“What?” I asked. “You and grandma were together since high school. It also says that on every pamphlet we send out.”

“It does,” he said. “It’s also a bald-faced lie. Thankfully there aren’t many around who remember, but the truth is your grandmother wanted nothing to do with me.”

I was in stunned silence. No one had ever told me this before, and my mind was racing.

“Clara was a wonderful woman, Bryan. Smart. Beautiful. Empathetic. It was true we met when we were in high school, and we dated, but it was never serious. Not that I didn’t try,” he said, waggling a finger, his eyes misting over as he dove into his memories. “But, she often told me I wasn’t ready. I was still too wild, too undependable. She made me want to be a better man.

Then, when I started this work, I thought it would convince her I had changed. We hadn’t seen each other in three years, or spoken in two, when I reached out to her six weeks into this job. I hated it. I hated the work, I hated the lifestyle, I hated the loneliness. That was what killed me. The loneliness. I would work all day and come home to an empty mansion.”

“So, when did she come back?” I asked, now fascinated.

“I called on her and she didn’t respond immediately. It took another month before she wrote me back. She said she wanted to know if I had grown up,” he said, laughing. “I wrote her back telling her that I had. That I didn’t want to carouse or party or any of that anymore. That I wanted a partner. And the only person I could imagine being with was her. That she was in my thoughts every morning I woke up alone.

She came to visit me the next week and she never left. We were married three months later. Not a month after we were married, our business boomed. I was convinced it was because I had finally found my own peace. My own balance.”

“So that’s why you wanted me to get married so bad,” I said.

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