Page 8 of Accidentally Amy

“I’m going to take off and let you get back to work,” I said,lifting my lips so the baring of my teeth looked like a smile. “It was very nice meeting you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Was it?”

“Of course,” I said, coughing out a little laugh and smiling at Pam to make sure she knew that everything was fine. But the second Pam looked away from me, I couldn’t stop myself. I was so disappointed in the lost possibilities of Mr. Chest that I gave Blake a tiny headshake and mouthed the wordnope.

Which made his jaw clench and his eyes narrow.

Which made me feel like I’d scored some sort of point.

“We’ll get out of your hair now, Blake,” Pam tittered, and I let her lead me away from the office and out to the elevators. My heart was racing and my brain was scrambling as I tried to determine how screwed I was in regard to my new job.

I mean, I worked on a different floor from Bloke, so that was good. And he didn’t seem like someone prone to office gossip (mostly because he came across as an arrogant jackass who didn’t have time for other people), so hopefully no one else in the company would ever learn of my latte pilferage.

Technically, all that had happened was I earned the disapproval of some random Ellis employee who worked upstairs. As long as Pam didn’t have an issue with my atrocities, I’d probably be okay.

But as we waited for the elevator, she said the very worst thing possible.

“I know Blake can seem a little intimidating,” she said, smiling as she looked up at the number display above the elevators. “But that’s just because he’s very focused. He’s actually a really nice guy once you get to know him.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” I muttered, relieved she didn’t seem upset about the awkward interaction with Bloke.

That made her smile. “He takes his job very seriously, that’s all.”

I tried, but I couldn’t recall what exactly his jobwas.Had she told me? She’d introduced me to like ten people in a row, so I’d been on autopilot, but then the minute I’d seen him sitting behind the desk, I’d stopped hearing her voice altogether. “What is his title again?”

“He’s an administrative vice president,” she said as the elevator bell dinged.

“AnAVP?” I said, as calmly as I could when my brain was exploding and yelling,Nooooooooo!all at the same time. “So that would make him…?”

“Our boss.” The elevator doors opened, and Pam smiled at the two women inside as she said, “Blake is technically the boss of everyone in administration at Ellis.”

Chapter Four

Blake

“You think I won’t throw you out of the game?”

“It’s fucking rec league,” my brother Jason yelled at the ref, stepping a little too close to the guy (who was about a foot shorter than him). “Swallow the whistle and the power trip, and let us play basketball. Christ.”

“Jace,” AJ said, grabbing Jason’s arm and pulling him back. “Will you shut the hell up so we can finish the game?”

AJ was a year younger than Jason and onlyslightlyless confrontational. I loved my brothers, but they were overcompetitive hotheads when it came to sports.

“I’ll shut up if Chrome Dome here will stop pretending he’s an NBA official.”

Spoiler: We didn’t get to finish the game.

Because when the ref threw Jason out, that madeAJget in the ref’s face, which gothisstupid ass tossed, too. And since there were only seven guys on our team, and one of them wasn’tthere because his wife just had a baby, we had to forfeit because we didn’t have enough players.

Which was how it came to pass that we were eating wings at Oscar’s before it was even dark outside.

“I’m not sad aboutthis,” AJ said, picking up his bottle of Heineken. “I was fucking starving.”

“You’re always starving,” Chloe said, grabbing a french fry from his plate. She usually met us for postgame wings but avoided our games because they were ugly. Her words—which meant she’d fit right into this family. “The scariest part of marrying you is the fear that I’ll never have enough food to keep you happy.”

“Well, there’s that and the fact that you’re gonna have to live with that piece of shit,” Jason said while licking the wing sauce off his fingers. “Did you know that he used to talk to himself, like, all the time? And I don’t mean a little bit, I mean all the fucking time. Our next-door neighbors must’ve thought—”

“It was my coping mechanism for living withyou,” AJ said around a laugh. “A guy can only take so many hours of armpit jail before he cracks.”

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