Page 33 of My Forbidden Boss

His face flashed down to mine with a fury. “Don’t you test me, sister. You know very well that I know that you know what that old hag said back to me. You can’t change the subject here, not when you’re fucking our boss.”

“Ack! I am not!”

“Well, actually, he’s our boss’s boss’s… boss’s boss… I think. Whatever, he’s the owner of the whole fucking company, Tisha! He’s definitely a multi-multi-millionaire… probably one with a big ‘b’ in front instead of an ‘m!’ And you know what that makes you?!”

I swelled. “Don’t you say it.”

He grimaced as if it was too repugnant for even him to consider.

“It means you’re a… a… a gold-digging taxable slut whore! You’re the dark side of the employee of the month! You’re going to get a Christmas bonus in the butt! That’s what it means!”

He breathed heavily, flaring his nostrils and pretending to fume as my sides burst with laughter.

“Tisha! … Your pussy’s on payroll!”

Hollis

“What do you mean, she’s leaving?”

“Hmmm? Oh, not like that. We’re sending her to Wyoming.”

Charlie didn’t reply for a long while. The bar’s muted televisions and blaring banjo music from the band of old men danced in motion and sound around my head, but none registered.

“Hollis.”

“Hmmm?” I turned and blinked the glassiness from my eyes. “What?”

He looked concerned. Instinctively I reached up, wondering if there was some kind of bug on me or something.

“Hollis.”

“What, Charlie? … What?”

He squinted. “Who is sending your girl to Wyoming, and why?”

“Oh. We are. The company, I mean. We have another headquarters out there, a big one, actually. It’s hard to get people to move out there, but it’s the main hub for everything from Washington state down to Crater Lake and over to Montana. From there, it goes on down to New Mexico, Colorado, Utah…”

“Hollis, I don’t give a shit about where your company’s fucking jurisdictions are. Why the hell are you sending her away?”

I shrugged and sipped my beer, wondering if the band had been playing the same song over and over for the past hour.

“Hollis!”

“What? Oh, relax. It’s just for a few days. She’ll be back. And I’m already trying to think of a way to get us working together. It’s actually a lot harder than it sounds… I would have better luck trying to sit down and work with the accountants.”

“Why is that?”

I sighed, feeling insignificant and forsaken.

“It takes brains to do her job. Even the people who work in that department don’t really do any team stuff together. They don’t need to. Everyone just sits down and does the numbers, then passes them along or whatever. I don’t know. I actually don’t really know what they do all day. But I know that it’s hard to replace them if they leave… or die.”

I sighed again and gulped my drink, sloshing a big wave over my chin and dropping a cascade of froth and bubbles down my flannel shirt.

I wiped it away without really caring. My mind was a puzzle, and I was starting to wonder if there was any actual way of getting the missing piece into place.

Charlie coughed and poured the pitcher, refilling both our glasses. “So, what exactly is she doing in Wyoming? I feel like I’ve asked the same damn question twenty times.”

“Sorry, I just can’t get my mind wrapped around it. I know there has to be a way.”

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