Page 107 of Think Outside the Boss

“You don’t have any theories?” Toby asks me. He’s sitting across from me, his arm brushing Quentin’s on the bar table. Both seem entirely relaxed with this casual touch.

“I don’t,” I say. “And to tell you the truth, I doubt we’ll ever find out. Management is being really tight-lipped about it.”

“These things leak. They always do.”

“Mmm, not all things,” I murmur, nodding to them. I can’t help letting them know what I suspect, not when we work so closely.

Quentin goes still. Toby, however, doesn’t. He laughs. “Freddie, you know?”

I shrug. “I always thought you two would be cute together.”

Quentin looks away from our booth to the crowded bar, a flush rising on his cheeks. “Cute,” he mutters.

Toby elbows him, still looking at me. “Although now we have a new problem.”

“You do?”

Quentin looks back at me, face fondly resigned. “I was offered a job today.”

My eyebrows rise. “What? Really?”

“Yes. Apparently Eleanor’s been offered a position higher up, so to speak.”

Clive’s job. It has to be. “Oh God, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I’m not saying anything,” is his cool response, “as I’m not yet allowed to.”

“But you see what this means, right?” Toby asks. “We’re not just co-workers who are dating. I will now be dating my boss. That’s a whole different ballgame with HR.”

I can’t help but laugh, and there’s no stopping it, despite my happiness for them. The irony is too much. Toby joins in, even if he’s laughing for a different reason. “It’s like a bad movie, isn’t it? What do I do?”

“You’re an MBA grad,” Quentin comments, and it’s the first time I’ve heard him say it without a trace of scorn. “You’re in high demand in all the other departments too.”

“But then I’d leave Freddie behind,” Toby says, touching his glass to mine. “How would she survive without my guidance?”

“I’d flounder,” I say, my smile growing wider. As happy as I am for them, I’m just as nervous about talking to Tristan again. When I see him next, I’ll have to tell him what I decided.

What I’d told Eleanor the day before I left for Philadelphia.

That while I truly appreciated the offer, I was committed to staying at the Exciteur headquarters and fulfilling the position for which I was hired.

The second I’d said it, and the moment I’d seen the begrudging acceptance and respect in Eleanor’s eyes, I’d felt completely at ease with my decisions. Happy, even. Italy will still be there in a few years. In decades, too. But what I have going on now feels more important.

Tristan feels more important.

But I don’t know if he’ll think less of my ambition because of it.

My phone rings, vibrating on the table between us. I give Quentin and Toby an apologetic smile and slide off the stool.

My heart stops in my chest when the familiar caller ID appears.

I weave my way through the people in the bar as I answer, still in the outfit I’d worn at work.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Freddie.” His deep voice is familiar in my ear, like the past two weeks of separation hadn’t happened. “I’d very much like to see you.”

I swallow. “I’d like that too. Did you just get back from Tahiti?”

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