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I sighed. There was no use pretending. My little farce was painfully obvious. “Yes,” I said. “I thought maybe you’d be more talkative when you were tired.”
“You really want to get this interview right, don’t you?” he asked. “I expected you to ask to meet in the office a few times and call it a done job.”
“We made a deal. My job depends on making the interview sell magazines.”
Dominic looked like he wanted to say something, but he drew his eyebrows together and looked away suddenly. “Well, if you want to interview me while I jog, you’ve got some conditioning to do.”
With that, he stood and resumed his run.
I wished I could’ve caught up to him just to kick him in that perfectly toned ass of his. But I couldn’t, so I settled for glaring instead.
17
DOMINIC
Idrummed my fingers on my desk and tried not to let my eyes slide to the window. But the damn things slid, and there she was. She’d curled her short hair into loose waves today. It was Wednesday, and neither of us had spoken all day.
I still found myself grinning when I thought of her ridiculous little stunt at the park. She was wearing brand new shoes and workout clothes that looked just as new. This weekend, we’d had dinner at her parents and ice cream afterwards. Now she was trying to stalk me outside work hours just for the sake of her interview.
I had to admit I was impressed. She thought outside the box and was willing to go the extra mile for projects, and I admired that in her. I’d be damned if I admitted as much to her face, but there it was.
I was also a nosy, privacy ignoring prick, so I knew she’d been busting her ass on the piece from last week with no breaks. It was good, too.
I thought again about where our conversation had gone wrong at the ice cream shop. Why the hell did she care so much if I didn’t go for her pitch? Did she think I owed it to her to accept her pitch just because her last boss would have? That was how a change in management worked. Things were different. Goals didn’t stay the same. I shouldn’t have had to explain that to her. Sure, maybe some small part of me was stubbornly against the idea because it would also mean entrenching her atThe Squawkereven more. If I ran a weekly pitch from her, I’d need even more to justify firing her. And I sure as hell knew I needed to make that happen. Keeping Darcy around spelled trouble for me, and I couldn’t afford trouble if I wanted this operation to run smoothly.
Still, my dumb ass had also been second-guessing the way I’d worded my rejection all week. I was certain Darcy saw me as some kind of heartless troll, but the truth was I felt a pang of guilt about the way our conversation went. Watching her dad be such an asshole felt all too familiar, and then I’d gone and been just as much of an asshole right after playing the good guy.
Marcus interrupted me mid-scowl. He swung into the office with one hand on the doorknob and a smile on his face. His good mood only temporarily faltered when he saw my face. “Uh, hey. Didn’t mean to interrupt. My sisters are having a get together this weekend though. They told me to invite you and all the staff. I saved you for last.”
“Why would they tell you to invite the whole staff?”
His brows dropped. “Because they are nice? Ally is having them all over at her place and they are all excited for me with the new job and all. They want to meet everyone. I know–it’s a strange and unfamiliar impulse, but let me try to explain it in a way you’ll understand.” He raised both hands, gesturing as he talked slowly like I might lose him if he went too fast. “Some people don’t want to bash every new person they meet over the head with a club.Some peopleenjoy talking to other people. They even enjoy meeting new people.”
I sighed. “Why does everybody make me out to be some kind of barbarian lately?”
“Oh, no idea,” Marcus said. “But you know what they say. If everybody thinks you’re a barbarian, maybe you’re a barbarian.”
“Nobody says that.”
“They should. It really makes a lot of sense. So are you coming or not?”
“Yes, I’ll come. It wouldn’t look good if my whole staff showed up and I didn’t. Is Tristan coming?”
“Why? Do you want to make sure you two don’t wear the same dress? I think he was going with leopard print and black pumps, if that helps.”
“Get out of my office.”
Marcus gave a quick salute and then left.
I templed my fingers, glaring harder at Darcy than I had before. So far, I’d proven relatively capable of controlling myself at work around her. Sure, my eyes wandered, but I did a pretty damn good job of keeping my door between the two of us. Outside of work, my success rate was abysmal.
I rubbed a hand across my face and tried to focus myself back on work. I had a pile of submissions from the staff I still needed to go through again. Every week, about half of the pieces submitted to me ended up in the trash pile. I had a new standard for what passed inThe Squawker, and once my employees were regularly living up to that standard, I’d be able to move forward with Marcus and Tristan on further expansion efforts.
But at the moment, most of the pressure to raise the bar was on me. It meant I wasn’t sleeping great and I was practically living in the office. I would’ve killed for a fucking nap right at that moment, but I knew rest wasn’t in the cards–at least not until the weekend, assuming I was lucky.
I jolted upright when someone knocked at my door.
“Come in.”
