Page 52 of Triple Pucked
My expression lightens. “You knew that he would fall asleep after he’d knelt.”
D’Angelo smirks. “Now you’re learning, my young Padawan.”
Maybe he has Star Wars figures in his man cave.
“You were helping him.”
“Sometimes, my cucciolo only acceptshelpwhen it looks like harshness.”
“Have you also tried to help him with gentleness? Like you do Robyn?”
D’Angelo looks taken aback.
He coughs. “Well, the apprentice has become the master. I’ll give it a go. Now, the surprise.”
He gives a wide grin, twirling on his foot to the door with a flourish.
Then he shoves the door wide open.
I stiffen.
If anybody jumps out from behind furniture and yellssurpriseat me, then I’m handing them their arses.
Cautiously, I follow D’Angelo into the mystery room.
I glance around myself in shock.
It’s a vast study with walls that have been painted deep green. The floors are oak.
Sunlight streams through the wide window out over the rose garden behind the mansion.
And all my equipment and furniture that I loved from the study in Captain’s Hall have been brought across town and installed here.
I thought that I had lost them.
In fact, the study is a replica of the one in Captain’s Hall.
A surge of happiness that I’m not used to surges through me.
My eyes sting.
I wander in silence, overcome, to the heavy, rich mahogany desk. I run my hand over its smooth surface.
D’Angelo is watching me with a small smile.
The desk was D’Angelo’s official gift to me for starting as his PA.
No other boss has bought me a gift.
No other boss has decorated a room for me or bothered to understand that I would function better with the same equipment.
Without change.
Maybe I do like some surprises.
I scan my computer, iPad, and phone on the desk, which D’Angelo also ordered for me, then my favorite pile of moleskin notepads and professional color-coded document organizer, which I dreamed about owning in college.
I still can’t believe that D’Angelo allows me to order as much stationary as I like.
