Page 2 of A Deal with the Bossy Devil

Well, sure, when she said it likethatit sounded ridiculous.

“Basically,” I confirmed. “Kind of.”

I could practically hear the gears spinning in her massive, overly analytical brain. “The CEO of the biggest hotel group in North Americakind ofsexually assaulted you in public?”

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe.”

She crossed her arms.

I shifted on my feet, bracing myself. “I mean, I guess there’s a small chance it wasn’t him.”

Her eyes thinned into sharp danger-slits. “What does that mean?”

This conversation wasn’t going to go well for me. “In my defense, I was very drunk.”

“Ria.”

“I was!” I took a step back. She looked like she was getting ready to implode—and not just because she was seven months pregnant with twins. “It was Halloween! We were all wasted.”

My excuse didn’t seem to help, judging by her expression.

“Explain what happened,” she demanded. “From start to finish.”

“Okay, but can we just, like, take a few deep, calming breaths first?” I tried, lowering my voice to a more soothing pitch. “I think the rest of this conversation might benefit from a little bit of Zen.”

She didn’t agree, judging by the prim way her lips clamped together. But I went ahead and took in a long, slow breath anyway, holding it until she reluctantly followed suit. And then we let it out.

Her exhale was short, forceful, and accompanied by an impatient tap of her foot. It was as good as it was going to get.

“All right,fine. Let’s just do this.” I glanced outside the meeting room window to make sure none of the office gossips were watching or listening in, then I lowered my voice again and said, “Okay, so, Arman, Jamie, and I went to the Halloween parade on Friday night—which was less of an actual parade, to be honest with you, and more of a massive street party with a ton of drinking and sloppy Dwight Schrutes making out with sloppier Harley Quinns. It was really gross, but also kind of awesome. I highly recommend it for next year.”

She did not look convinced.

“Anyways,” I went on, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “At one point, we passed by the hotel, and I needed to use the bathroom, so I ran in.”

Except it hadn’t exactly been easy. There’d been a whole bunch of security guards lined along the entrance, preventing random partygoers from entering the building—which made sense. I didn’t think any of the guests paying four figures a night for a hotel room were all that keen on sharing their space with a pack of drunk, rowdy idiots dressed in ridiculous costumes.

“They let you go in and use the washroom?” she asked skeptically. “Wasn’t building access restricted?”

“Um, yeah, I mean… I may have used your all-access employee pass to get in.” My voice trailed off into a cowardly whisper by the end of my confession as I watched my sister’s glare twist into something lethal.

“What.” I didn’t think it was possible for a word to come out so sharp.

“I know, I know! I screwed up,” I said, showing her my palms. “But I really had to go, Alba! It was an emergency!”

“So you used my all-access pass—the one that’s supposed to be restricted to me and me only—to get into the building, then hit my boss in the dick with your costume prop? Do you have any ideahow badly this could end for both of us?”

“Okay, two things. One, I didn’t actually know it was him. And two,hedefinitely doesn’t know it wasme.”

The skin under Alba’s left eye feathered. “Explain.”

“I thought it was just some jackass in a really convincing costume at first,” I admitted. “He wasn’t the first Adrien Cloutier I ran into that night, he just happened to be the only real one. And, again, I wasreally drunk. Like… drunk enough that it was a straight-up miracle my aim even met its target.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I mean… yeah, kind of.”

“Ria.” She said my name in that slow, drawn-out way that meant I needed to listen very carefully to every single word that followed it. “I’ve worked for the guy for four years and haveneverseen him this pissed. He’s going to murder you, and then he’s going to make me bury your idiot body.”

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