Page 10 of Baby Bombshell for the Boss

“My boss was calling me this morning,” she explained. “I woke up to a ton of missed calls — apparently he needed me to come in, and I slept through it.”

“Oh my God,” Elliot said. “I feel horrible. This is my fault.”

“What? Of course it isn’t.”

“You didn’t wake up earlier because I kept you up so late last night.”

“I don’t see how we could reasonably call that your fault. It’s not as if I wasn’t on board for everything that happened last night. And besides, neither one of us knew that my boss was going to do this today.”

“Does he usually call you in on Saturday mornings?”

“He never has before.”

“Then you couldn’t have known. How could he fire you for that?”

“I was working for Devin Sayers,” she said. Then she laughed bitterly. “God, I hate saying that in the past tense.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is?”

“Probably not, but if you were in my field you would know. Devin Sayers is one of the biggest names in interior design in America right now. Working for him was a dream. I can’t believe I messed this up.”

“Well, he sounds unreasonable,” Elliot said. “Calling you to come in on your day off and firing you because you happened to be asleep when he called? I mean, what were you supposed to do? What does he want, for you to never sleep?”

“Yeah, he might want that,” Ivy said.

“You see how that’s crazy, right?”

“It is and it isn’t,” she said. “You have to think of this in the right terms. It’s like… I don’t know what a good comparison is. I guess it’s like an actor who lands their dream role but has to work with a demanding director. You’d expect them to do it anyway because the part was so good. It’s the same for me. I was ready to put in a few years with a terrible boss because I wanted this job so badly. It could have led to great things for my career…” She swore. “I can’t believe I lost it.”

“It really doesn’t sound like it’s your fault,” he said. “I hope you aren’t blaming yourself.”

“I am, a bit,” she said. “I know he was making unreasonable requests, but if I had only been awake this morning I would have been able to do what he wanted!”

“What did he want, anyway?” Elliot asked. “What was so important that he needed you first thing in the morning on a Saturday?”

“There were some photocopies that needed to be collated.”

“Are you serious? Collating papers was the big emergency?”

“I know it sounds stupid.”

“I’m not trying to pass judgment here,” Elliot said. “But it does sound like something that could have waited until Monday morning. What harm would that have done?”

“Elliot’s someone who’s used to getting what he wants when he wants it,” Ivy explained. “He isn’t used to having to wait.”

“Maybe it would do him good to have to wait for something!”

“That’s not the world he lives in,” Ivy sighed. “There will always be people who want to work for him — want it so badly that they’ll do whatever he says, meet all his demands. It doesn’t matter whether I should have to do this or not. The fact of the matter is that I did have to if I wanted to work for him. And I blew it.”

“You’ll find something else,” Elliot said in what he hoped was a bracing tone. “You must be very talented if you were hired to work for that guy in the first place. Someone else will see what you’re worth and snap you up.”

“You’re probably right,” Ivy said. “I know I’m good at what I do. It’s just so stressful to have to start all over. I just moved to New York. I thought I had everything in place, ready to go — I wasn’t expecting something like this to happen. Now I have to go back to job hunting, and in the meantime, I have to figure out how I’m going to pay rent. I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

An idea was coming into Elliot’s mind. She needed work in the short term, and he couldn’t help remembering all the things she’d said when she had seen his office yesterday. She’d had so many design ideas. Why couldn’t he ask her to work for him for a while? He could pay her well, and that would give her something to do and a reliable income while she searched for a full-time job.

But was it ethically okay to do that? They’d just slept together. It did feel a little strange to offer her a job the morning after something like that.

That isn’t why I’m offering the job, though. She needs it, and I want to help her out. It’s not a conflict of interest. It wasn’t as if he was going to use the position to try to sleep with her again — that would definitely be unethical. But this was an opportunity for him to help her, and there was no reason she should have to miss out on the job offer just because of the way the two of them had met.

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