Page 12 of Her Impossible Boss's Baby

“If you take issue with Dr. Salvatore and how he works, then perhaps this should be your first and last flight for him,” she bit out.

Luca chose that moment to come out of the bedroom. “There is no need to be defensive of me, Polly. Though it is appreciated. I didn’t realize you were so concerned with my image. Having said that, I don’t care if the attendant finds me unreasonable or not.” His focus was turned to the other woman. “All it requires is that she do her job. Is that possible?”

The flight attendant nodded, looking the kind of intimidated that Polly simply didn’t feel around him anymore.

After all that, the notebook finally arrived, and they were able to settle in to take off.

She tried to live that experience through the eyes of a woman who had never encountered Luca before.

She tried to dissect her own response to it.

It was unreasonable to feel like Luca needed three notebooks. Luca felt like he needed three notebooks, but she knew that it was... It was one of his particular habits.

One of his ways.

She wondered when she had become so understanding to those ways.

She would like to think that she wasn’t. She would like to think that this was just her, doing her job as well as she’d always done to the end. After all, she had just gotten angry with him about calling her to his apartment at midnight. But was that the ridiculousness of the request, the hour, or the way it had made her feel to look at him half-naked?

You don’t have to know. Because you’re getting a new job.

She felt relief. For the first time in a week. Maybe for the first time in five years. She didn’t have to know the answer to the question about Luca. Because she simply wasn’t going to be part of his life anymore.

You were never part of his life. You might as well be a paperweight.

A paperweight he really liked, but a paperweight all the same.

She had gotten very used to flying by private jet. She liked it. It was going to be hard to give up.

But she didn’t need luxury.

She wanted to be important. A main character in her own life. She had never been that growing up. She had been the supporting character to her parents, and she was simply tired of it. She’d been a prop. Used when convenient, ignored when not. They were the main cast, they were all that mattered.

It was the same with Luca.

Because he could see one perspective, one way of being, and it was his own. Everything else was one of those insignificant extras.

They didn’t speak, as was customary on a long flight. She had brought a book, and Luca filled each notebook. She wondered sometimes if he did it because he had asked for them, and he was trying to prove to himself and others that his eccentricities were a necessity. Or perhaps he simply knew that a long flight produced three notebooks’ worth of thoughts.

“You could digitize your notes,” she pointed out.

She didn’t know why she said it. She was only baiting him. And after hours of sitting across from him, having food, having a nap, it was like commentary was just begging to be made. Even though she knew better.

“I do not see the point in changing something that works,” he responded, without looking up at her.

“You have endless stacks of notebooks,” she said.

“Yes. I do. I also have the space to organize them.”

“If they were digitized they would be searchable.”

He looked up at her like she had sprouted a second head. “I remember what is in every notebook.”

There was something earnest in the way that he responded to that, and it reminded her why it was sometimes easy to defend him, to feel confusion about him. He wasn’t actually being difficult, or obstinate for the sake of it. He genuinely couldn’t understand why she would suggest such a thing because he couldn’t imagine having a hard time remembering where he’d written what.

She had to wonder what a childhood with a brain like that must’ve been like. Were people in awe of him even then?

“Have you always been like this?” she asked, saying it out loud in spite of herself.

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