Page 14 of Boss's Baby: A Fake Fiance Romance

I flashed her an easy smile, one that I hoped delivered the message I wasn’t mad in the slightest. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’re still shocked from what went down in the meeting.”

She nervously tucked her hair behind her ear. “Yeah, that must be it. Still trying to—” She shook her head. “No, I’m not going to make any excuses. What I said was totally out of line. I’m sorry.”

There we go. I liked that—no trying to wiggle her way out of it, full responsibility all the way.

I opened my mouth to speak, but decided to change my words before they came out.

“How about we talk in your office? Might be a better venue for this kind of conversation than the break room. And I’m sure you’ve got a lot you want to talk about.”

“Yeah. Let’s do that.”

She formed up at my side, and we were off. Neither of us said a word as we made our way through the office. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted her worried expression, which suggested she wasn’t convinced she hadn’t shot herself in the foot as far as her new boss was concerned.

We stopped in front of a door, her name written in clean font next it. Still without saying a word, she opened it up and we stepped inside.

The office was impressive—good size, nice view of the East River and Brooklyn beyond. I stepped into the space and let out a slow whistle of approval.

“Nice digs. You’ve really moved up in the world.” I stopped at her desk then turned around and sat on the edge. “Bet we can get you into something a little nicer once the buyout’s done.”

She glanced at my ass. For a moment, I thought she might’ve been checking me out. But her slight scowl sent the message she wasn’t thrilled with my butt being on her workspace.

“We’ve got chairs for that, you know.”

“Ah. Sorry—got a little too comfortable.”

“Yeah. You don’t own the place quite yet.”

I hopped off the desk and slid into one of the crimson chairs arranged into a small meeting area. “Technically, my dad’s the one who’s going to be owning the place. But he prefers to sit behind desks, not on them.”

She wordlessly dropped into one of the chairs—no doubt she had a hell of a lot on her mind. Moments passed before she finally spoke.

“You’re buying us out? How long have you known about this? Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

“Because this all happened over the last month.”

“Meaning you knew nothing about it at all. Sounds pretty unlikely for someone so high up in your company.”

“We had a list of firms. Yours was on it, sure. But lots of other places were too. And besides that, Dad’s been talking about having our own dedicated marketing agency for years. Never thought this would be the time he’d actually go through with it.”

She let out a soft sigh, as if realizing that there wasn’t anyone to blame here. “This is so frustrating. I’ve been at this place for my entire working life, and they drop something like this on me weeks before it actually happens. And now I find out I’m going to be working for—” Cassidy trailed off, her eyes drifting up to me.

I couldn’t help but smile. “Some spoiled rich kid?”

Her cheeks briefly tinged with red, but quickly faded. “That was out of line. Shouldn’t have said it. Sorry.”

“Apologizing because you didn’t mean it? Or because you got busted?”

I had her there. She didn’t say a word. I wasn’t bothered, however. Not like she and I had spent enough time together for her to know for sure if I’d changed. But I decided to have a little more fun with her.

“I take it this means you didn’t have fun the last time we, ah, bumped into each other?”

“Bumped into each other” was certainly one way to put it. There sure as hell was a lot of bumping—pretty fair amount of grinding too.

She narrowed her eyes slightly, letting me know she wasn’t in the mood for any playful banter. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“What I mean is that I’m still trying to figure out if you’re really a different guy or if you’ve only gotten better at hiding it. Not like you didn’t constantly have girls at your beck and call back in high school—probably ran the same kind of game on them too.”

“What, the ‘tease them in high school and then pull the turned-over-a-new-leaf card when you happen to bump into them in a bar fifteen years later’ card? That’s a little specific to be in my bag of tricks.” I followed this up with a smile to let her know I was only messing around, but the look on her face suggested she didn’t find it funny in the slightest.

---