Page 1 of Boss's Baby Surprise

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CLARISSA

“You aren’t wearing that, are you?” my roommate asked.

I looked down at my outfit. I thought I looked good. Presentable, as my mother would say.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I fingered the side of my skirt. It was vintage, A-line, light purple, mini-wale corduroy, very office friendly, or at least I thought it was.

“Nothing if you’re a fifty-year-old librarian. I thought you said you got an internship at an architectural firm,” Marci continued.

“I did.” I pressed my hands down the front of the vest I wore. It was also vintage, really old, from some big guy’s tux. It fit really well over my chest, but even I had to take a few stitches to nip in the sides. I was curvy, but not as curvy as whoever this had been made for.

“So why are you dressed like your mother? More realistically, like how your mother probably dressed for her first job in the last century!”

I let out a heavy sigh. Marci was so dramatic. The last century wasn’t all that long ago. So what if I had never lived in it? I was wearing vintage, so thirty-plus years was to be expected.

“You were in the same seminar as I was,” I started.

“The one where they told us how to dress for work? Yeah, but she didn’t say you had to dress hyper-conservative, just not to wear your slutty clubbing clothes. You look…” Marci shook her head as she pushed off the junky couch we had rescued off the side of the road and walked around me, plucking at my clothes.

“Sweaterorvest, not both. The skirt could be cute, but it really doesn’t do much for your figure.”

“It covers my hips.”

“Yeah, like a tarp. It’s just there. If it says anything, it’s saying, ‘look, big hips here.’”

“It’s not meant to be a statement piece. That’s the vest,” I pointed out.

“Then let the vest be a statement piece and don’t hide it under the sweater.”

She reached up and pulled my sweater off. “Really, Clarissa? That shirt?”

With a grunt of exasperation, Marci stomped off to the bedroom we shared. It was a small room with our perspective beds lining opposite walls and a single closet we had crammed with all of our clothes. But we had an off-campus apartment. I know I thought we had achieved optimal city living.

Marci was already pulling a few items out of the closet by the time I dragged myself in behind her.

“Tell me everything you know about this architecture firm,” she said as she dumped clothing on my bed, and then, with her hands on her hips, she looked back at me.

“It’s the Love Agency,” I said. I emphasized the name. Kyle Love was a big deal. And the fact that I had been selected as one of the summer interns was going to set me up for a great job after I graduated.

“Okay, so what’s love architecture? Is that a style, or something dirty?”

“Kyle Love,” I said.

“That means nothing to me. I don’t take architecture classes.”

“Kyle Love is one of the hottest architects in the world. He has buildings all over the place—Dubai, Hong Kong, London.”

Marci nodded. “Okay, how old is he?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s what I would call old-old.”

Marci rolled her eyes. “Forty and over, or under forty?”

“Probably under. Why?”

Marci shook her hands at me. “Why? Because you are wearing old people's clothes, Clarissa.”

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