Sincerely, Up Yours: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy, page 4
I was watching Dominic from the back when he turned and caught me looking. I expected him to glare, but there was something else in his expression. He looked almost… frustrated. He peeled his eyes from mine and stormed back through the office toward the elevator with anger radiating from every step.
I amused myself by trying to guess what was up his butt now. Maybe when he picked up his coffee this morning, he didn’t manage to make the barista cry? Or maybe he hadn’t come across any babies or puppies to kick on his way into work?
Whatever his problem was, I decided it was a good thing. A man like that deserved to be frustrated. If the universe wanted Dominic to be annoyed, I’d happily do everything in my power to help, too.
6
DOMINIC
My newly renovated office was more my style. I had the beige drywall clad with posters replaced with wood paneling. A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf now dominated the wall across from my desk and the floors were covered with thick, Turkish rugs. I ran my palms across my new desk, appreciating the smooth, unblemished finish.
Then I sighed as the damn image floated into my mind again. I pictured her from a few days ago sitting at her work station with her skirt zipper down just enough to show me that she was wearing a red thong. I’d already taken more of a look at her tight ass as she’d walked off toward her desk than I should have. The vision of the thong completed my mental image, and all I’d been able to do the rest of the day was fight off the fantasies of teaching her who was really the boss here by having her come to me on her knees. I pictured that tight ass of hers from above with nothing but the thong on as she looked up at me with her big eyes.
I’d cup her chin and lift her eyes to mine. Then I’d tell her to do her fucking job and suck her boss’ cock.
But even in my ill-advised fantasy, I couldn’t completely picture her as submissive. In my fantasy she talked back all the way to my cock, even stopping to bust my balls before sliding me deep between her lips.
I pinched my nose and brought a fist down on the desk.
Focus, asshole. This wasn’t like me. I wasn’t the creep who developed sexual fantasies about his employees. Why should I be? I could’ve gone out into the city as soon as I got off work and found a woman at a bar if I wanted to get my dick wet.
Sex was fine, but it didn’t drive me. It never had. I was driven by the desire to prove myself. I wanted to make this business hum like a well-oiled machine, no matter what my dad thought. If not for the scandal three years back, he would’ve happily kept me from any real responsibility within his company. He needed me for now, and I knew this was likely my only chance to grab my share of power. Eventually, I’d be out from under his thumb, and The Squawker was my only ticket to that future.
But deep down, I knew why Darcy was distracting me, and that was exactly why this was pissing me off so badly.
Darcy was haunting my thoughts because she wasn’t anything like those women I’d find at the bars. They were always like sheep–ready to come with me after nothing but a crook of my finger. Darcy was the prey that didn’t just run from me, she would lie in wait and try to ambush me. She’d fight back.
Apparently that was all it took. Something about her rebellious glares and the amused curve of her lips had me obsessed. All I wanted was to have my hands on her–to show her how I could wipe that smug look from her face with nothing but a single fingertip. I wanted to feel that control over her. I wanted to hear what it sounded like when she moaned.
And I also knew I could never do anything of the sort. Darcy McClain was my employee, and my fantasies needed to stay in my head. Better yet, I needed to find a way to be rid of them–to be rid of her. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I had to endure her presence for much longer, so I needed her gone. I needed her to slip up.
My office door opened and Tristan came in. His dirty blonde hair was trimmed short on the sides and pushed back on top in a single swoop. “Good news,” he said. “We’re going to be on more shelves. I worked out a deal with New York’s biggest grocer last night. I’ve got meetings with a handful of big bloggers today. The Squawker–is that name permanent? Should we try to change it to something less ridiculous?”
“Maybe,” I said with a sigh.
“Anyway, I’ve got people working on a web structure. We’ll have a subscription service and I’m recruiting bloggers to put the word out when it goes live.”
“Good,” I said. “Did Marcus work out that thing with the newsstands?”
“What thing?”
“They heard about the acquisition and they’re trying to stage a sort of boycott.”
Tristan nodded knowingly. “Because of the thing with IntelliCorp?”
“Yeah,” I said. Three years ago, my father acquired a tech startup just as they were about to launch their big funding push to investors. He had inside knowledge of the product and also knew the men and women they were going to pitch to. So he went to the investors, confirmed the money to be made, and made an aggressive buyout. One of the founders of IntelliCorp didn’t want to sell, even for the seemingly ludicrous price, but his two partners folded. My father took over the company and fired everyone as quickly as he could. It all made him a fortune, but the press caught wind when IntelliCorp’s original founder told his story.
Basically, the Lockwood family was on public notice. We’d gone from relative invisibility with the average person to public enemy number one in many circles. It was partly why my father decided to put me on this project. On the one hand, I hadn’t been in any kind of public spotlight before taking this job, which meant I was far less hated. On the other hand, I’d studied journalism and business at Columbia and this sort of project was right in my wheelhouse.
Either way, I knew I had to be more careful than he’d been with IntelliCorp. That meant I couldn’t just fire employees at a whim. They had to give cause that would stand up under scrutiny. Of course I planned to fire most of the staff here eventually, but I needed to wait for them to slip up so I could bring my own people in.
I was confident it wouldn’t be an issue. The only problem was it meant I couldn’t fire Darcy unless she gave me a reason. All it would take would be one employee blabbing to bring the scrutiny of the media on me.
Tristan’s phone chimed and he looked down at it. “Gotta take this.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” I said, waving him off. Tristan had set up a temporary office outside the building with Marcus. I was working on plans to buy out the first floor. The old historic building was more apartment complex than business center, and part of me wanted to scrap the whole place entirely to move somewhere more professional. But if I could buy out the tenants on the first floor, I could convert it into some proper offices for myself and my team. It would also mean Darcy wouldn’t be prancing around right outside my window all day.
I shifted in my seat, annoyed. Of course I could just close the blinds on my windows and door. But I didn’t have the willpower. I also wanted to watch her to see if she was going to get off task, but the damn woman had lived up to her promise ever since that first morning when I moved Steve away from her workspace. She came into work, went to her computer, and grinded all fucking day.
I had the hairball from I.T. install monitoring software on all of the computers in the office so I could view employee’s screens at any time. I let them all know they could be watched and made a habit of flicking through their screens, hoping to find someone egregiously off-task so I could start building a case to fire them. Most of them occasionally got on social media, or in one case, worked on a weird ass blog about how to train your cat to flush the toilet for you–not how to use the toilet on their own, simply how to get them to flush after you’d done your business.
Weird ass employees.
My own day was mostly consumed by the articles being sent to me for edits and approval. When I wasn’t watching over the employees or editing, I was continuing to perfect my broad strategy for the magazine. This job was my chance to prove I could build something from nothing. Sure, The Squawker had a somewhat respectable following, but only in state. I wanted to make it national. I wanted to widen the scope. I wanted it to give readers everything they could want from intellectual junk food to a side of political informity.
That was the trick, as I saw it. We’d lure them in with the junk food and trick them into getting informed.
I was smiling to myself when my door opened again.
Darcy visibly swallowed, then closed it behind her with a soft click. She had on a white blouse that was just transparent enough for me to see the outline of a white bra beneath. I wondered if she knew, or if the lighting at her place was different.
Ever since I’d given her shit about the jeans, it seemed like skirts were her weapon of choice. I almost regretted ever saying anything. The truth was those fucking jeans had been distracting as hell for me. Her ass and legs were absolutely incredible, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus if she was prancing around like that all day. Was I an asshole for setting the dress code because I couldn’t keep my eyes to myself? Of course I was. But I was also a dumb asshole, because the skirts were worse.
She had a goddamn arsenal of them from tight blacks to frilly grays and even a baby blue one with flowers that was just short enough to be criminal. I wanted her gone because she made me feel out of control. I was always in control. I always had a tight leash on my emotions and my body. But not around her. She got straight past my defenses and into my head, and I wanted to punish her for it.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Did you have a chance to look at my pitch yet?”
She’d sent me some long ass email with a bunch of attachments late one evening last week. I had enough on my plate, so I’d stuffed it in the “maybe never” folder.
“No,” I said. “I have a lot of work to do.”
Darcy looked uncharacteristically meek. She actually wringed her hands and still hadn’t taken a full step into my office. Her back was against the door like she was ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. In fact, I’d barely interacted with her since the day I had Steve’s desk moved. She just came in, sat down, worked her ass off, and never got off task. I’d never once checked her screen and seen anything but her researching for a piece or actually writing it. I had to admit I was already impressed, but I wondered how long she could keep this up.
I hadn’t seen this nervous side of her, and some dumb part of me wanted to relieve her of whatever was stressing her. I wanted to promise I’d take a look at the pitch, but I was stronger than that. Maybe I could’ve simply given in. I could’ve been the nice boss for a change, but I knew what a slippery slope that was. I had mountains to prove at this magazine my father thought was beyond saving. If he thought there was a chance I could actually turn it around and make it profitable, he wouldn’t have dared leave me in charge of things.
No. My father expected me to fail here. He thought I’d come crawling back to him with the seared in knowledge that I couldn’t hack it on my own–that I needed my dear old man to hold the wheel. It was a power play, and I intended to turn it on its head.
To do that, I needed to run things here without mercy. I couldn’t make the “nice” decision because it felt good. I couldn’t overlook underperformers because I didn’t want to hurt feelings. I needed to be ruthless, especially when it came to Darcy McClain. Because whether I wanted to admit it or not, she was a distraction. The sooner she was gone, the sooner I could get myself back under control.
I watched her sitting there holding my gaze while I said nothing. She was undeniably gorgeous with that upturned nose, full lips, and the cheeks reddened from a weekend probably spent in the sun. Then I imagined how incredible she’d look in a bikini and had to pinch the bridge of my nose, willing the image to flee from my mind.
This was why I needed Darcy McClain gone. Maybe it wasn’t fair. It definitely wasn’t her fault–other than the mouth she seemed unable to stop running at the wrong times. But it was the truth. So I kept my mouth shut and continued to wait until she finally broke the silence.
“Before you took over,” she said. “I was supposed to pitch this to Jasmine. She was going to give me my own weekly article. Actually, the day she quit was the day I was going to make the pitch. I just thought you could maybe take a look. It might fit with what you’re wanting to do with the magazine, or I could take feedback and try to tweak it for the new direction. It’d just mean a lot if you looked at it.”
I stared. Every impulse in me was screaming to be an asshole. Dismiss her. Say something so unforgivable that she storms out and can’t keep up the act. Make her crack.
But I was an asshole, not a monster. I clenched the armrest of my chair. She’d kept her head down all week. She hadn’t so much as crossed me or looked my way. Maybe there was a world where we could have some sort of cease fire agreement. Of course, I’d have to learn to stop eye-fucking her every chance I got, but that was my problem. That was the truth, wasn’t it? If I really cared about sticking it to my father and proving I could turn this place around, I should at least look at the pitch, shouldn’t I?
I sighed from what felt like the depths of my soul. I knew I was making a dangerous choice, but I could feel something deep inside pulling me to do it anyway. “I’ll take a look. Is that all?”
Darcy brightened so quickly it was like rain clouds parting to reveal the sun. She smiled and took a few quick steps toward my desk, bounced on her feet, then rushed over to my chair and actually hugged me.
I sat there frozen, trying and failing not to notice how fucking good she smelled or how her short brown hair was tickling my chin as she leaned into the hug.
“Alright, alright,” I stammered, clearing my throat. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Thank you!” she said, bouncing once more before practically running out of the office.
I smiled, then realized I was smiling and forced myself to frown. When I looked down, I made a sound of disgust. Jesus Christ. I needed to have a serious sit down with my cock at some point and explain this was not going to go the way it was hoping. We were not going to fuck Darcy McClain, little c, big C. She was an employee, and I was going to get my shit together and act like an adult,not a hormonal teen who can’t keep it in his pants.
She caught me looking at her through the window and smiled, waving.
My stupid cock twitched again in excitement and it was all I could do not to bury my face in my hands.
7
DARCY
Day Fourteen since the Dominocolypse, the dawn of Lamewood’s takeover.
Little by little, things were changing. It started when Lonnie got fired last week. He’d apparently been a serial violator of the no slacking policy. From the sounds of it, Dominic had caught him working on some weird blog about cat training several times and let him go. Lonnie had been our graphic design guy. His work was never exactly my cup of tea, but I still felt an instinctive negative reaction to Dominic making changes.
Lonnie’s replacement had showed up the following day. Her name was Pollie. She was in her early twenties, offensively pretty with bouncy blonde curls and ridiculously seductive, slitted blue eyes. My first thought was that she couldn’t possibly design anything because her boobs were too big to see the keyboard, but the damn woman didn’t even need to look when she used the keys. Worse, her first revamps of some of our designs were actually good. Really good. And even more frustrating, she was super nice, too.
You get credit for making a good business decision just this once, asshole, I’d thought.
Then he fired Alek, who had been one of my favorites. He wrote a kind of silly crime piece every week that was a fan favorite. It was usually more bullshit than truth, but that wasn’t the point. It was a fun piece that I was going to miss, and he’d brought in some slick guy in his forties who was a political science major. Apparently, he’d be working with Farhad on the new politics section.
But the message was clear. The magazine was changing, and we were all on notice.
Still, it was at least something that he’d agreed to read my pitch. That was yesterday, and I was still trying to remember to play as nice as I possibly could so I didn’t piss him off before he got a chance.
Farhad swung by my desk as he was heading out for the evening. “Hey, we’re grabbing drinks at The Otter’s Rock. You coming?”
“Who’s going?” I asked.
“The usual suspects. But Grace can’t make it so I asked Pollie if she wanted to come.”
“Ugh, you did?”
“You can bring that date of yours. Did it work out?”
I gave him a sour face. “One drunken dating app decision. One,” I said, jabbing a finger at him. “Can we let it die in peace like it deserves?” The date had been completely forgettable. Not only was the guy creepy and overconfident, I’d been unable to stop thinking of Dominic the whole time. I told myself it was kind of like what happened when I watched scary movies and couldn’t stop freaking myself out. It was a bad obsession. That was Dominic. He was my recurring nightmare, even if he sometimes invaded my dreams and did horrible, dirty things to me.
“Sure, but, uh, I forgot my wallet.” Farhad pulled a face, clearly trying to impersonate my bad date. “Do you happen to–”
I slapped him on the chest, grinning. “Shut up.” I had given Farhad and Elizabeth a full run-down of the disaster of my date. Aside from not clicking with him, my date was also a borderline conman when it came to getting free meals. The conversation had been single syllables from his end and long rants about my career and father from mine. I left feeling emptied out and unheard. He left with a free steak dinner and a few beers. Then I’d made the mistake of telling my friends about it, and now they couldn’t stop giving me shit.
Ever since the hangover from hell followed me into a day of working for Dominic, I decided I was going to be a one drink girl for the foreseeable future. I ordered something fruity and girly with a little umbrella and sipped it at the bar while listening to Elizabeth rant about how some survival show she watched was pissing her off.
