But I recognized the red leather under a very nice ivory wool winter coat.
“Ollie?” Charming’s date asked tentatively. She was tall, and not just because she was in a pair of suede boots that I’d sell a kidney for.
Long-legged. High cheekbones. Killer haircut. Emerald the size of a postage stamp on her middle finger.
“Ally,” I said warily.
“I’m Dalessandra,” she said, reaching into an impossibly chic clutch. “Here.”
It was a business card. Dalessandra Russo, editor-in-chief Label Magazine.
Whoa. Even I’d read Label before.
“What’s this for?” I asked, still staring at the linen card.
“You just lost a job. I’ve got one for you.”
“You need a server?” I hedged, still not understanding.
“No. But I could use someone with your… personality. Show up at this address on Monday morning. Nine a.m. Ask for me. Full-time. Benefits.”
My stupid, optimistic heart started to sing a diva-worthy aria. My father had always warned me I was just a little too Pollyanna and not enough Mr. Darcy.
“I just show up, and you give me a job?” I pressed, trying to squash the hope that bloomed inside me.
“Yes.”
Well, that was vague.
“Hey, lady. You maybe got another job in there for me?” a burly guy in ripped cargo pants and a hunter-safety-orange ski cap asked hopefully. He had a spectacular beard and wind-reddened cheeks. His smile was oddly beguiling.
She looked him up and down. “Can you type?”
He winced, shook his head.
“How about sort packages? Deliver things?”
“Now that I can do! I worked in a mail room for two years in high school.”
High school looked like it had been about thirty years ago for him. I recognized a fellow Pollyanna.
Dalessandra produced another card, and—using a ballpoint pen that looked like it was made from actual gold—scribbled something on the back. “Go here Monday and give them this card. Full-time. Benefits,” she said again.
The man held it like it was a winning lottery ticket. “My wife ain’t gonna believe this! I’ve been out of work for six months!” He celebrated by hugging every person at the bus stop, including our lovely benefactress and then me. He smelled like birthday cakes and granted wishes.
“See you Monday, Ally,” she said before walking down the block and sliding into the backseat of an SUV with tinted windows.
“Ain’t this the greatest day?” Guy Pollyanna asked, elbowing me in the ribs.
“The greatest,” I repeated.
I didn’t know if I’d just hit the lottery or if this was a setup. After all, the woman had been on a date with Charming the Doucheweasel.
But I literally couldn’t afford to not take the chance.
4
Dominic
“Morning, Greta,” I said, handing my assistant her daily cappuccino.
“Good morning,” she responded, doing her customary scan of me.
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “What’s wrong?” she demanded, raising a Nordic eyebrow. She was in her early sixties, suffered no fools, and was obstinately loyal. I was fully aware of the fact that I didn’t deserve her.
The one and only time she’d mentioned the word “retirement,” I’d given her a raise so obnoxious she’d agreed to stay with me until she hit sixty-five. We’d cross that bridge in less than six months. And at that point, I was prepared to double my offer.
I didn’t want to have to break in a new assistant. Get to know someone.
I kept my circle small, tight. Greta was a part of that circle and had stayed by my side through thick and thin. Scandal to stable.
She’d worked for me at my old firm, a carryover from my former life and the days when I’d assessed risks and enjoyed the freedom to yell at people. No one took it personally. There were no eggshells under my feet. I was me. They were… well, them. And everything worked just fine.
Now nothing worked, and the eggshells here were sharp enough to draw blood.
But Greta was here. And with that continuity, with someone I could trust implicitly, I was fumbling my way through my father’s former job description. Doing my damn best to prove that Paul Russo’s blood wasn’t poisoning me from the inside out.
“Nothing is wrong,” I hedged. Nothing besides my mother laying into me and filleting me over the incident at the pizza place. In her criticism, she hadn’t said the words outright, but I knew she was thinking them.
It was something my father would have done. Abusing his position of power to have someone who dared stand up to him fired.
That made it worse.
I already hadn’t felt great about it, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. A year’s worth of pent-up frustration had finally boiled over. Not that the woman had been an innocent victim. There was nothing “victim” about the opinionated, curvy Maleficent.
Minus the firing, I thought we’d both enjoyed the sparring.
“Liar,” Greta said fondly.
We were close but not that close. As a rule, I didn’t spill my guts to anyone. Not to my mother. Not to Greta. Not even to my best friends. It was part of being a Russo. We did what was necessary to protect the family name.
Even if it meant never admitting anything was wrong.
A leggy woman in a fitted sheath dress trotted by, a tray of eye-searing juices in one hand and four Hermès shopping bags in her other. She was making a beeline for the conference room when she spotted me. Her eyes went wide in that deer-in-the-headlights, fearful adrenaline kind of way. She stumbled, the point of her shoe grazing the carpet.
I looked away as a putrid green juice tumbled into one of the bags.
She yelped and sprinted away.
Another day, another terrified employee.
I’d assumed they’d all get used to me. Apparently I’d assumed incorrectly. I was the beast to my mother’s beauty. The monster to the heroine. When they looked at me, they saw my father.
“Maybe if you smiled once in a while,” Greta suggested to me.
I rolled my eyes and pulled out my phone. “If I smile, they think I’m baring my teeth at them.”
“Rawr,” she teased.
“Drink your poison, woman,” I said gruffly.
“Maybe someday you’ll grow up to drink coffee too,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes.
“When hell freezes over.” I was a staunch tea drinker, and the preference had nothing to do with the beverage itself. It had been the first of my many rebellious stands.
She nodded in the direction of the windows. Outside, New York shivered and froze. “Looks like it already has.”
I leaned against her desk, thumbing through my inbox on my phone. “What’s up first today?”
“You’ve got advertising at ten, proofs for approval due by noon, Irvin asked if you could take his place in a budget meeting at two, and Shayla would like five minutes of your time right now.”
Greta nodded behind me, and I knew the beauty editor was standing there. I felt her perpetual cloud of low-level annoyance.
I turned.
The terms statuesque and stern came to mind. Shayla Bruno had earned the Miss Teenage America title at age seventeen and enjoyed a brief career in modeling before moving behind the camera. She was a few years my senior, had exquisite taste in jewelry, mothered three children with her wife, and—in my opinion—her talents were being wasted as beauty editor.