Page 2 of Married to the Mafia

She watched him lean back in his chair, gaze roving over his triple-wide, double-stacked line of monitors. His eyes were an even brighter blue than usual thanks to the angle of light streaming in from the windows. Combined with his impeccably clean-shaven jaw and just slightly disheveled head of hair, there was no denying the man was gorgeous. If he were the kind who took egregious advantage of that she would never have been able to take this job—it was hard enough to focus sometimes as it was.

He set the cup onto the desk. “Was something wrong out there?”

Brandi blinked. “Excuse me?”

His gaze snapped back to her. “You are aware this property is surveilled from almost every angle, right? Was there a particular reason you came whipping into the parking lot?”

Her mouth dropped open. For a single second, she was tempted to tell him.

He was a damn De Salvo, after all. If she was right that he didn’t hate her, if she’d proven her worth at all as an employee, he might care enough to help her out with her stalker problem.

But she couldn’t. Because she was sure she knew who was behind the asshole, and she needed to handle that herself. I just need to woman up and deal with it. “Got too wrapped up in my music is all,” she lied. “I nearly missed the turn.” She hated lying, but that didn’t mean she was lousy at it.

The way Mikey’s brow furrowed still made her question her skill.

He took a slow sip of his coffee and she was pretty sure she blinked first as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Not that they were having a staring contest. It was stupid to have something as juvenile as a staring contest with her boss and absolutely idiotic to have one with a De Salvo.

“If you say so,” he finally said. He rolled back into position behind his monitors. “Get back to work, Richardson.”

Brandi nodded pointlessly. “Of course, sir.” She did not feel disappointed that he was dropping it when she was almost positive he’d seen through her lie. Which therefore meant she was not annoyed with herself, because she would have to have something to be annoyed over. And she didn’t. She dropped the empty drink carrier into the guest garbage in Mikey’s office before slipping out again.

If she was annoyed at anything, she was annoyed that after some three months of employment, her boss still insisted on addressing her by her surname. She was the only one in the office he made that distinction with. It always felt like a stabbing wound when he bit out her name, because they both knew she was no longer the one he was thinking of when he said it.

“You were right,” she said to Miguel as she passed his desk enroute to her own. “Fuck Mondays.”

She dropped into her seat, removed her tablet and phone from her purse, then shoved the purse itself beneath the desk as she woke up her side-by-side monitors. With a couple of clicks she had re-opened the program she was supposed to be focusing on, and with a little boost from her drink, she set herself to work. The best thing to do when she could do nothing about the more pressing problems weighing her down was to simply lose herself in work, and that was what she loved about her job. There was always something on-hand that allowed her to do just that.

Brandi disregarded the grumbling of her stomach while she worked to unscramble a particular set of numbers on her screen. The project she’d been assigned had expected parameters, but she had every intention of delivering an end result product that surpassed those baseline goals. It might even shut up the naysayers for a while. First, though, she had to make sure her product wasn’t bogged down with superfluous code or, worse, bugs.

She pulled her hands off the keyboard, stretching her fingers while her mind worked out the next steps, and suddenly her chair was yanked backward. Brandi let out a sharp yelp as she found herself rolled from her desk and spun around, being just as suddenly—jarringly—stopped once she was facing away from her desk.

Mikey didn’t even flinch at the impact of the chair against his leg. He reached down and caught the armrest, keeping it still and bringing himself well within her personal space. “Did you happen to get up, grab food, and cram an entire thirty-minute break into the fifteen minutes I was away?”

Brandi steadied her breathing, but had less success over her heartrate. Before she could open her mouth to acknowledge his strange question, her stomach growled loudly.

Mikey’s brow furrowed. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Um, it’s—” She shot a glance toward the windows, belatedly realizing the electric shades were half lowered and the light filtering in was significantly warmer than it should have been. “Crap.” She winced as her inner voice escaped for not the first time. “It’s later than I realized,” she finally said, dragging her gaze forward in spite of the danger.

“It’s after four. You haven’t gotten up from your desk since your coffee run, Richardson.” Mikey straightened but did not step away. “I appreciate your enthusiasm for the work, but it puts the company in a bad position if you don’t take your breaks.”

She wanted to say something snappy, but she bit her tongue. He was her boss, and she recognized he wasn’t wrong. “I’m sorry, Mr. De Salvo. I lost track of time.”

Mikey indicated the station he’d pulled her from. “Save your progress and close up. You’re done for today.” He didn’t wait for her response before turning and striding back toward his office.

Brandi’s jaw dropped and she stared at his retreating back for a full five seconds. Yes, she should have paid attention to the time instead of relying on presumably inevitable interruptions to drag her focus away from the project. But was he really so pissed over a couple of missed breaks that he was sending her home early? What sort of punishment even is that?

She hurried through the motions of saving her work and closing everything down the way they were supposed to, then double-checked her phone to make sure she hadn’t missed a message from any superiors. Her frustration tripled. Not only had she not missed any demands for work, which was odd but not impossible, she had two texts from her father.

Opting to ignore them for the time being, she shoved the device into her purse and shouldered the bag as she turned toward Mikey’s office. If she was off the clock, she wasn’t blowing anything off by speaking up.

“What the hell was the that?” Brandi demanded as she came to stand off to the side of her boss’s desk, to make sure he could see her balling her fists on her hips.

Mikey faced her and arched a brow. “I beg your pardon?”

She gestured out toward the office behind them absently. “You practically manhandled me back there. Over a whopping forty minutes of missed breaks, which I do not have a habit of skipping. It’s not like I was slacking on the job or being a nuisance. If I could get like two more—”

Mikey was on his feet and in her space again before she realized he’d moved, standing close enough that his breath tickled her skin though he wasn’t technically touching her. “Be careful about the accusations you throw, Richardson,” he said, voice low. “I haven’t come close to manhandling you.” He reached up, slowly, and with achingly deliberate movements curled two fingers around the strap of her purse. His knuckle rested just above her collar bone, the heat of his touch warm even through her shirt.

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