Page 14 of Dirty Boss

My suit? The wine? What the hell was she talking about?

I watched her disappear into the kitchen and looked down at the tag sewn into the side seam of my suit jacket. I pulled it across and squinted.

100% polyester. Well, damn.

Frowning, I picked up my knife and fork again to finish my lunch. When she came back with the bill, I met her gaze.

“Yes?” she asked, brow arched.

“Why was it a mistake not to order wine? I don’t drink when I have to go back to work in the afternoon.”

“That’s very responsible of you, but it sent the message that you don’t want to be part of his little club.”

“‘His little club?’”

“You know, the boys’ club. You told him loud and clear that you won’t play by his rules.”

“I just don’t like drinking during the day.” Not when I had to work—and not since I’d become a father. I didn’t like drinking in front of my daughter, and I’d vowed a long time ago that she’d never see me drunk. I’d watched my father buy bottles for men he tried to impress, watched him drink himself into a stupor whenever his latest business venture failed. I’d found it pathetic then, and I found it pathetic now. I wouldn’t become him. “I don’t see how that would have made him decide not to invest when he had the potential to make bags of money off me.”

“Men like that don’t only care about the money,” she replied, and I knew it was true. After all, I didn’t only care about the money. She went on: “They want to feel superior. It’s why he hit on me. It’s why his suit was probably bespoke, and his watch was worth forty thousand dollars. Everything he did was designed to make you and me feel inferior. Mostly you. I was just a bonus.” She said it casually, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then she grabbed the billfold and peeked inside. She obviously saw the tip I’d left her, and for some reason she looked annoyed.

“Were you expecting something else?” I asked, nodding to the leather folder.

“I don’t need your pity,” she shot back.

“Of all the things I feel about you, pity isn’t one of them.”

She scoffed. “Oh yeah? What do you feel about me?”

“Annoyance, mostly.” Sort of. Among other things.

“And yet you keep coming back.”

“It’s more fun than a punch in the face.”

“High praise.” She rolled her eyes.

I laughed. “I can take that back if you prefer,” I said, nodding to the tip I’d left her.

She snapped the billfold closed. “No. You keep coming here every day just to piss me off.” She lifted the leather folder. “This is the least you could do.”

The words echoed through me, and I frowned. The cleaner had said the same thing in her note. Before I could answer, Alba had walked away.

I gathered my things and headed back to work. I’d only walked through my office door when Jim knocked on the jamb. “Can you talk?”

I gestured to one of the chairs in my office and took a seat behind my desk.

Jim, a tall, lanky man, stood behind the chair I’d gestured to. He pushed his wireframe glasses up the bridge of his nose before moving his hand to the back of the chair. “We just heard back from Arlo Noble. He’s interested; he wants to meet.”

“The solar panel guy?”

“Solar panels, early cell phone components, dabbles in conductor parts... Bit of everything.”

“And he wants to get into construction?”

“He’s got money to burn.”

A flutter went through my chest, blood rushing to my extremities. Could this be it? The saving grace we’d been looking for? “Okay,” I said, “let’s set it up.”