Page 20 of By A Thread
I muttered a greeting, startling the guy so badly he sloshed water down the front of his checkered shirt.
“Oh, Mr. Russo, your mother is in a meeting,” the less terrified assistant—Gina or Ginny—said, rising as I reached for the door handle.
My mother laughed at whoever was sitting across the desk from her.
I frowned. “Who’s in there?”
“Uh. Um. A new hire,” the damp assistant squeaked, patting himself dry with napkins.
I hadn’t heard Mom laugh like that in a long time.
They were standing now, and I decided it was as good a time as any to interrupt.
“Speak of the devil,” Mom said when I stepped into her office.
The other woman turned around. She was smiling.
She was…here?
“No,” I growled.
I heard a thud behind me and assumed the nervous assistant had fallen over trying to eavesdrop.
“Oh. Yeah,” FU pizza girl said smugly.
“No,” I said again, shaking my head.
“Dominic, meet Ally. Ally is joining our admin pool. Ally, Dominic is our creative director here atLabel.”
“A word, Mother,” I said. She couldn’t just dole out jobs to people who were too rude to keep them. She’d already hit her quota with me.
“I’m sorry, darling. I don’t have time. Be a dear and show Ally to HR,” she said, picking up the phone. “Get me Naomi.”
We were dismissed. But I was going to have several words with my mother at her earliest convenience.
I stopped by the assistants’ desk and took a stab at her name. “Gina, schedule me an appointment with my mother at her earliest convenience. Tell her it’s a budgetary meeting so she doesn’t try to cancel it.”
She blinked at me. Her mouth opened and then closed.Shit. I should have gone with Ginny.
“Is there a problem?”
“You know my name.”
“Of course I know your name,” I snapped, secretly relieved.
“You’re a real man of the people, Charming,” Ally said dryly behind me.
I turned on her. “Don’t bother getting comfortable here,” I warned her.
“Or what? You’ll ruin another job for me?”
“You and I both know that you deserved to lose that job,” I insisted. “You can’t be that rude to customers and then be surprised when you’re called out on it.”
“Andyoucan’t be that rude topeopleand not get called out on it,” she countered.
“You started it,” I snarled.
“And you thought you were above the rules.”
