Page 3 of Tangling with the Boss

“And I know you hate interviewing, but I promise this will all be over in no time. The fifteenth will come so fast and then you’ll forget I was ever here, I swear! This transition will happen in a blur.”

“Hazel.” The boss sprawls back in his chair, breathing hard, face chalky-pale. If I didn’t know better, I’d call for a doctor, because he looksill.Does he really hate change that much? He coped okay when we repainted the lobby. “I mean it,” he says. “You can’t leave.”

Master of the universe.That’s who Leo Corbin is in this building; that’s who he’s been to me for the last four years. The all-powerful master of all he surveys… including me.

When he gives orders, we hop to it.

When he asks questions, we rush to answer.

No one tells him no. What Leo wants, he gets, and that conditioning isstrong. It takes every ounce of my willpower to raise my chin and meet his gaze square-on.

“This is happening,” I say, and if my voice is shaky as hell… it still counts as a victory. I’m standing my ground, damn it! I’m protecting my wrung-out heart! “I’m sorry, but it’s not open for discussion. Some things aren’t.”

And it’s not the best parting shot, but I turn on my heel anyway—because one more minute in this room will make me fray into a thousand pieces.

Two

Leo

The door clicks shut behind my assistant, and I stare at the handle with dry eyes. Waiting for it to jiggle. Waiting for Hazel to burst back in here and declare this is all a terrible joke—that this is the long-awaited sequel to the April Fool’s Day cream tart made of shaving cream that she left on my desk last year. Yet another example of her god-awful sense of humor.

The clock ticks on the wall.

Swallowing hard, I wait.

But… nothing. The door handle is still, and there are no sounds from the next room. No muffled giggles as Hazel relays her prank on the phone, and no creak of floorboards as she eavesdrops outside the door.

Nothing. She’s just… gone.

She dropped that bombshell, blew my goddamn life apart, then just… left.

Jesus Christ. Has she really found another job? Is that true?

Gusting out a ragged breath, I lurch to my feet and out from behind my desk, then pace back and forth in front of the windows, wracking my brain to make sense of this. Trying to sort through the wreckage.

Back and forth, I march. Back and forth.

Sunshine sparkles through the windows, warming the air, and my office smells like rug-cleaner and fresh paper. This room is more familiar to me than any other in the world, and yet everything now seems off-kilter. Wrong.

Were the walls always that eggshell color?

Is thatreallymy desk?

And my trusted assistant didn’t really just quit… did she?

Because it doesn’t add up. I pay Hazel stacks more than any other assistant in the city, and her benefits package is even better than mine.She gets everything, damn it, every possible perk that money can buy, and that’s still not enough?

Growling, I rake both hands through my hair and tug. My headache squeezes my skull, and unease roils in my belly.

Because IknowHazel likes her work, and she loves her colleagues. She’s always babbling on about them, telling me stories about this accountant who had a baby, that designer who’s getting married, the janitor who’s learning to knit. Every tedious detail. Hazel loves Grapevine.

She knows my employees better than I do. She wouldn’t leave them without good reason.

There’s something I’m not seeing here. Something must have chased her away. But what?

Striding to my desk, I snatch the phone from its cradle—and freeze. Because this is where habit tells me to bark at my assistant, yelling at her to get in here and fix the problem. This is where Hazel bounces in with her swishy blonde ponytail and her big doe eyes, practically fizzing with excitement at being given a task.

Christ, it’s like she was raised by golden retrievers.No onecan be that perky—it’s not natural. And yet… she is.

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