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I can hear the frantic babble of a panicked explanation from the other end. I’d feel sorry for the man on the receiving end of Dmitri Egorov’s anger if it were anyone else but Jackson Mitchell. As it stands, the guy’s a condescending prick with hands that start wandering inappropriately every year at the company Christmas party. So no, he gets no sympathy from me.
“… And you think you’ve accomplished that, have you?” Dmitri asks tersely. “Well, if that were the case we wouldn’t need to do a fourth round of revisions, would we?” He scowls and listens for three more seconds before he interrupts again. “I’m not interested in excuses, man. I want solutions. If you have to do a fifth mockup, I’m taking you off this project.”
With that mic drop moment, he hangs up. “Incompetent idiots,” he mumbles. Then he turns to me, his gaze softening considerably. “Sorry about that.”
It’s still strange to me, this new version of Dmitri. The polite, thoughtful, caring version. The one who says “sorry” and means it. It’s strange, unsettling… and very, very sexy.
“Don’t worry about it,” I squeak. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a new project for a big client and it’s not getting off the ground. We might lose her at this rate.”
“Her?”
“Madison Montgomery.”
My eyes fly open. Everyone and their mother knows Madison Montgomery. Fashionista, heiress, absurdly gorgeous it-girl with a brand new line of designer bridal wear that’s already got every American female between the ages of sixteen and sixty frothing at the mouth.
“You’re joking,” I say. “Really?”
Dmitri nods. “She wants to open a bridal boutique here in Chicago. She loved the space we got her so much that she wanted us to design the interior, too. Except Mitchell keeps fucking it up.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, of course he does. Mitchell has no vision. He’s a copycat artist. The man doesn’t have an original thought in his head.”
“And you’re telling me this only now?”
I smirk and slide in behind him, draping myself over his shoulders. “You never asked.”
“Did I have to?”
“Duh. You were the boss. I was the lowly assistant. And you didn’t exactly encourage free-flowing dialogue between the two of us.”
He chuckles and encircles my wrist with his fingers. “Fair point. Now, tell me how to—mmm, whatever the fuck you’re doing to my shoulders, don’t stop.”
I increase pressure and he sighs again. It gives me a fierce sense of pleasure to be able to do something for him. It scratches some primal itch to preen and primp and just touch him in ways he’d never let anyone else close enough to do.
“What did you want me to tell you?”
“Can’t remember.”
I swat him lightly on the back of the head. “Try harder.”
He laughs as he closes his eyes and sags back in his seat. It’s so strange to see all the tension erased from his face. To hear a soft moan of satisfaction as his lips part and that ever-present furrow in his brows vanishes.
Without opening his eyes, he gestures towards the stack of mockups on his table. “Tell me why Mitchell is so fucking useless.”
Suppressing a smile, I continue with my shoulder massage. “For starters, he gets his best ideas from Delia and Connor. They have far less experience but much better design sense. Mitchell’s good with spaces and property deals, but he sucks when it comes to turning those spaces into something special.” I bear down on a rigid knot of tension in Dmitri’s neck. “Also, he’s too egotistical to take into account what the client wants. He ends up making it all about him. Thirdly, he lacks charisma. Fourthly and most importantly, he’s a creep.”
“A creep?” Dmitri repeats, swiveling around to face me and cracking one eyelid open.
“He has this way of undressing you with his eyes,” I admit. “He’s done it to me countless times—and no,” I say quickly when his eyes go wide with possessive anger, “he never touched me or asked me out or anything like that. But he does makes comments that can easily qualify as sexual harassment.”
“Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?”
“Because you didn’t care,” I say bluntly. “Nor would you have if I had been the one to tell you.”
He grinds his teeth together, then exhales wearily. “Fair.”
I wave a hand in his face and turn to the mockups on his desk. “The designs aren’t horrible,” I acknowledge. “But there’s room for improvement.”
