Page 4 of Accidental Dad's Best Friend

She is young and very off limits.

So I swallow a sip of my kitchen cleaner and move on.

“You could have just asked for what you like,” she says and I nearly choke.

“Sorry?”

Her eyes point at my glass. “Your drink. You’re a whiskey man. Bourbon neat if I remember right.”

“You are right,” I can’t help my smile now so I sit up straight and clear my throat. “I thought I’d be adventurous today. And I was hoping you’d consider the same, Izzy.”

I say the name she asked me to use. Every letter of the word ripples over her nerves and a blush pink travels from the swell of her breasts to her cheeks.

But Izzy blinks it back, taking a long sip from her glass, not bothering with the straw anymore.

I go on. “How’s work going for you?”

“Don’t be an ass,” she snaps and goddamn I wasn’t expecting that. I also don’t hate it.

I put up two hands, feigning innocence. “No offence intended.”

Izzy snorts a laugh. This woman truly is a cocktail of personality traits. Salty, sweet, sexy, cute. “I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“Have I?” I swirl the glass in my hand.

Izzy gives me a deadpan look. “Please. Everyone in the magazine world heard.”

She’s not wrong. Izzy was recently kicked to the curb by Slay, Denver’s most successful fashion magazine. That sentence in its entirety is an oxymoron to me. Fashion and success, it’s ridiculous that people pay to read about what other people are wearing. All that aside, I know this because I work at Next Big Thing, the top dog of Denver’s business magazines as editor in chief. The only person above me per say is Liam Sloane, Izzy’s dad, the CEO of the magazine. While he owns NBT, I would argue that I run it. Every article, every topic, every photo and interview run through me, the only exception being when Liam gets a wild hair to slip an article in that tastelessly yet tactfully rips the seams of another magazine’s good name in a cockfight way of keeping our name on top.

And that’s why we are here.

“You were fired,” I say flatly, setting my glass on the table. “From what I heard, and correct me if I am wrong, you wrote an article that shamed size-two girls forselling their bodies and souls to become the nuts and bolts of an industry designed to destroy real women for the sake of fashion.”

“So you not only read about my demise, you read the article,” she says with a hint of something. Surprise? Or is she impressed?

“I did. And it was a damn good article, Izzy. Even if it did have you escorted from the building by your coattails.”

Izzy’s smile drops and her eyes heat up. “You find it funny that I lost my job for skinny-shaming a bunch of robots and calling out my bosses for feeding the monster that is the fashion world?”

Abso-fucking-lutely.

“Of course not.” I flag down the waiter and order a bourbon neat and another Negroni for Izzy. “A move like that takes guts.Something not a lot of people in our industry have. You took a chance because it was ethically the right thing to do. And I admire that. Which is why I asked you to meet me today.”

Izzy’s brow scrunches in confusion. “I’m not following.”

“Your dad is a tycoon.”

“And?”

“He’s not the editor. Hell, the man doesn’t even write articles anymore. He just walks around with a name tag, looking over shoulders and passing to eighty-sixing articles with the wave of a hand.”

“You say that like I don’t know how my father is,” she says as we receive round two. Izzy isn’t finished with her first and shoves the second aside. I take a sip of my bourbon and suck the air between my teeth as the sweet liquid calms every nerve in my body. “He’s egotistical, judgmental, harsh, cold and a bit of a narc.”

“Ah so you know him.” I joke. She’s not smiling. Tough crowd.

I get to it. I lean in on the table, close enough she has to look right at me. Close enough that I can smell her honeysuckle perfume and that our knees are smashed together under the table in forced proximity. She swallows hard and I can hear it.

“Your father is a snake.” I say, my voice low and gritty. “I’m sure you know he enjoys shooting other local mags out of the sky with his low-blow articles that discredit them by digging up dirt on their journalists.”

---