Page 61 of My Forbidden Boss

Feeling for sure that the ball was in my court, I decided to take another shot.

“Well then, now that we have that settled, you’ve heard all about me, Tisha. Don’t you think that it’s your turn?”

She didn’t even look up. “Nah.”

Silently, I was cracking up. When she decided not to give a fuck, she really, really didn’t give a single, solitary one.

I let her eat, hoping to entrap her.

A moment later, she brought her glass to her lips, and I saw my chance.

“Tisha, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your parents?”

That got her.

She was instantly caught off, accusatory, and confounded all at the same time. “My… Wh-… How the…?” She paused, fumbling over the question in her mind, trying to figure out how I could have even come by something so personal, a knowledge she had no memory of letting loose.

Abruptly, she eyed me with suspicion, having wholly abandoned her food.

“So… what did you do… go into H.R. and make them pull my tax information? My emergency contacts? You didn’t even have the guts to do it yourself and sneak in there with your stupid… master key or whatever in the middle of the night?”

I smiled tightly, letting the accusation linger.

“Well?! What do you have to say, mister big bossman?”

I nodded, adding a helping of disappointment to my cheeks and dancing my eyes to look over at her divisively.

“Oh, so we’re back to bossman? You’re absolutely right… you definitely are the clever one between us.”

She glared. I let my passive self-satisfaction flow through every ounce of my being as I shrugged the whole thing off innocently.

“To answer you, Tisha, the answer is unequivocally, ‘no.’”

“Unequivocally? Are you sure that your brain can handle words that big, honey? I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself. Not on my account.”

. I had no intentions of letting her know it, but questioning my intelligence always touched a nerve inside me. Tisha grinned deviously, but I cut in before her.

“If I wanted a degree… I would buy one, alright? Besides, you’re avoiding my answer. I said, ‘no,’ remember? As in, ‘No, my sweet little employee, I did not in any way overstep myself in asking one teeny question about your life for a change.”

“Oh, you didn’t overstep? Yeah? Then how the hell do you know anything about my parents? Huh?”

She wasn’t angry, but she wasn’t going to let it go, so I told the truth.

“Correct, I do not believe I overstepped. Why do I feel that way? Well… because the information came from you, my dear. You mentioned them back in Tyler.”

The sharpness in her eyes diffused, and her gaze fell to the table, dotting back and forth gradually as she considered my statement or tried to remember.

Tisha squinted up at me. “Oh, yeah? What else did I say, then?”

“Um, nothing. Nothing at all besides, well, you know… the fact that you’re adopted, and your birth mother was a young teenager who couldn’t keep you. I remember that part very clearly because you said it to imply in some way that my young secretary could also be my lover… since, you know, I asked you out and, obviously, you think that means I’m open to hiring my staff for that purpose. Right?”

Her mouth opened, then abruptly shut.

“How’s your duck, by the way.”

Her eyes flashed to mine. Then she relaxed and smiled, seeing the total absence of anything resembling anger in my eyes. If she had studied their depths long enough, I was sure that she would have noticed that there was nothing to be found there.

She raised her wine glass. “The best I’ve ever had.”

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