Page 9 of The Boss

I stood up and came around to stand in front of her, leaving barely enough room between us to be appropriate for employer / employee.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

She didn’t look up at me, but she didn’t look down either. Instead, she stared at the center of my chest. “No, sir. I am not.”

I took a half-step forward, crossing into almost-inappropriate territory. I was toeing a line here, and I knew it. I had grounds to fire Flora for the way she was talking, but I’d only suspended her. If I suspended Ashlee without cause, and she reported it to HR, she might have a case for wrongful dismissal, especially if I kept going the way I was going.

But I wasn’t done with her yet.

“What about what you were doing? Will you tell me that?”

“I was working on the assignment Ms. Lamas gave me.”

“Which was?”

Her eyes flicked up, then back down. “Find viral videos online and make notes. Basically.”

That sounded plausible. Part of A&R was finding new talent. It made sense that Stu and Suzie would have their assistants searching the internet. I’d never required them to do their work any specific way.

“So, you were doing your work, but your friend was talking about me?” I made an educated guess and took her silence as affirmation.

She wasn’t intimidated by me.

I’d never met anyone like her before, and it intrigued me. It’d been a long time since I’d been curious about anyone, especially a woman. It made me uncharacteristically reckless.

“Do you know anything about an event we’re having this weekend?”

Her head came up, confusion written on her face. “Yes. I handed off Unraveling’s requests to Mr. Hancock this morning.”

I remembered Finley saying something about Zed and perks. “Unraveling had requests?”

She seemed relieved that we were veering away from the original topic. “Yes, Mr. Lexington. There was a message left for A&R last night.”

Curious to know how well she did her job, I asked the question even though I already knew the answer. “Who left the message?”

“Mr. Hipwood,” she said. “Mr. Hancock said he planned to speak with you about it.”

I nodded. Stu was a good employee. If he said he’d talk to me about it, he’d do it. I didn’t need to worry about it. I could turn my attention to something else.

“I have a…proposition,” I began. “I…lost my plus one for the event, and I need someone to accompany me. If you do that, I’ll forget that you were a part of a conversation that caused one of your co-workers to be suspended.”

Her jaw dropped. “I wasn’t part of that conversation.”

I shrugged. “I don’t care.”

Seven

Ashlee

Wasmy boss seriously blackmailing me into going on a date with him? I had to be misunderstanding him, right? Because this was Nate Lexington, millionaire CEO and co-owner of Manhattan Records. The man who routinely dated the hottest women in the world, discarding them one right after the other.

He could literally walk into anywhere, snap his fingers, and have a dozen beautiful women ready and willing to do whatever he wanted.

Why me, and why like this?

My confusion was only part of what I was feeling. The rest was anger.

Who thehelldid he think he was? That sort of thing might’ve been the way things worked as little as a couple years ago, but the age of free-for-all sexual harassment and manipulation was over. People who did things like that didn’t get a free pass anymore. Even if the HR department here wouldn’t listen to me, I had options. If nothing else, I could take to social media.

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