Page 57 of The Guy Who Became My Grumpy Boss

On the contrary, quite the opposite was true.

Chapter 17

-Jessica-

The only thing that hadn’t gone wrong with the company retreat was that I got the chance to spend time with Danger Zone.

Thursday I’d had to cancel the meeting with the Curvy Girl Crew, because the catering company that Patrice and Dan had booked tried to triple their prices at the last minute, and Danger Zone wasn’t having any of that, so we’d spent the evening finding a different agency to do it.

Friday, there was an uproar with three of the teams who were openly fighting in the office. One girl threw a punch and would have knocked a guy out if he’d been an inch shorter. Granted, considering the guys from the IT department had refused to help because they were too important to participate in a fifteen-minute meeting, I didn’t blame her. Danger Zone had been on the brink of strangling someone, so I’d sent him away for two hours and had called in Tyrell and Catherine to handle it.

No one dared argue with a raging woman in her sixties who was fed up with the whining, but it had taken me half of my day to deal with it.

That night I’d left Brooke and William on their own to taste-test wedding cakes.

Saturday, the entire committee had gathered to help make the baskets, and as soon as people had seen the unique companyswag, the whining recommenced.

That’s when I’d started yelling at the employees about being entitled babies, and Danger Zone had sent me out to get myself ice cream and read a book for an hour.

I’d gotten pie, of course, but his sentiment had been appreciated.

We’d both been in and out of the office the whole weekend. Neither of us had been home for more than a few hours at a time, and we’d spent Sunday morning getting all the supplies for mini golf into the ballroom at the hotel.

Somehow, actually buying golf balls hadn’t made it onto anyone’s list, and I’d called all the nearby stores to get enough sets in different colors. Most of them would be delivered on Monday morning.

By the time Anna finally dropped off the stuffed animals Sunday at eight o’clock in the evening, I was ready to collapse.

If Danger Zone hadn’t been right there with me most of the time, I might have actually quit my job.

But he had been there, and through adversity, we’d grown closer.

He now used my name all the time, asked how I was doing, and brought me coffee in the morning. We sat close enough to touch, although not when anyone else was around. I watched him and made sure he had enough emotional energy left for what we needed to do, and if he didn’t, I made sure he took some time to recharge.

I could tell by the way his face never left a category three grouchy mode that he was getting short on pretty much everything, but he told me he was determined to see this through.

Then he was going to take a week off.

He’d offered me the same, and I was still thinking about it. I could certainly use the time with him out of the office to catchup on a few things, but I could also use some time away from my job.

And if he wasn’t at work, and I wasn’t at work, maybe we could hang out.

I hadn’t brought that up with him, but I kept thinking it.

Each time what Marissa had said about him not liking curvy women paraded through my mind, I drowned it out with all the ways Danger Zone had served me and all the times he’d touched me.

It was always subtle, but when he greeted me, his fingers grazed my arm or my back. He held the door for me and walked me to my car or the train. I’d almost gone in for a hug Saturday night, but Danger Zone had looked a little too haggard for that.

Imagining his arms around me was becoming my own personal sport, and I wanted to win it.

We’d had a quick dinner of sushi—not my favorite, but he’d seemed excited about it—then we’d unpacked the stuffed animals. We also had to add the water bottles and then put the cellophane around the baskets and tie them with bows.

The committee had cut the cellophane and made the bows so it would be easier for us tonight, but we had a long road ahead of us.

We stood in the doorway, peering into the room.

“Are you sure you don’t want to call a few people in?” I asked as I surveyed the area. Someone had rolled in wire shelves for us, and every inch of available space was packed with baskets, water bottles, and stuffed animals.

“We can do this.” Danger Zone always touched my back in exactly the same place. I knew, because the skin under my shirt felt raw from the electrical current that kept passing between us. He gave me a little push, and I entered the room first.

---