Page 19 of Rolling with My Bosses

“Hold on,” I need to cut this off without sounding like a dick. “Don’t rush her. She made it clear that she wants limits. Lether reveal her cards when she’s ready. Let her show us her true self…”

I don’t know what all I say. My brain is spinning out. The three of them are staring.

Lexi scrunches her lips. “Bear, stop!” She grabs her purse.

“Where are you going? You just got here,” Austin says.

She holds up her badge. “I’m taking a break. I’ll log it properly. But before I go, remind me how long you’ve worked here?”

“Fifteen year—” Austin stops abruptly.

“Days,” John says. “We’ve been here around fifteen days.”

“Yeah, just joking. It feels like fifteen years.”

She leaves without looking back.

John slaps my arm. “What the hell?”

Austin joins him. “You act like you don’t want her to go home with us. Don’t confuse her.”

John says, “Get yourself together before she comes back.”

I have to tell them before she returns. “Think about it. Lexi Smith.”

I pause “Alexandra Smith.”

Austin says, “Okay, so Lexi is short for Alexandra. Big deal.”

“You’re focusing on the wrong part of the name.”

“Smith?” John asks. “Isn’t that the most common last name? His expression stiffens. “Although, you’re starting to make me nervous.”

“You should be nervous. We should all be nervous. Lexi is CEO Smith’s daughter.”

Austin and John look paralyzed as the information sinks in. Can’t blame them. I’m still processing.

Austin says, “Does he know his daughter calls us Daddy?”

“We aren’t fired?”

“I don’t think he’d fire us. I think he’d destroy us.”

I rub a hand over my face. “We can’t care for her if we’re fired. What I can’t figure out is that she’s the only one who knows all of the connections. What is she up to?”

They both look at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“She has to realize the repercussions.”

Austin says, “But she doesn’t know all of the connections. She thinks we work in the mail room. Not a hard job to replace.”

“We can’t tell her the truth, which doesn’t leave us much room to confront her.”

“A relationship like this is hard enough. Do we want it to work?”

Everyone agrees we do. I say, “Then we have to confront her. And we have to come clean that when we go back to our regular positions, we’ll be her bosses. It’s all about trust.”

Eleven

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