Page 35 of A Ticking Time Boss

“Think you can be friends with your boss, despite his… business practices?”

I smile. Friends, of course. That’s what he wants. I have nothing to worry about. “I’m considering it, yes. Even if it makes no sense and is definitely not advisable.”

“Wondering if I should be offended,” he says. “Deciding not to be.”

I bump his knee with mine. His legs are long, stretched out in the ample space of the town car. “Then tell me something honestly in return.”

“Yes, I was born this handsome. My mother has been contacted repeatedly by the press, but there’s no real explanation. I’m just a beautiful accident of nature.”

“Are you ever serious?”

“Life forces me to be sometimes,” he admits, “but I avoid it at all costs.”

I chuckle. “Tell me something, then. Someone like you—I don’t mean someone as handsome as you, although you are, and you know it. But I mean someone as successful and social… why did you and I end up texting so much? What did you gain from it, you know?”

He arranges the cuff of his jacket and I can’t see his eyes. But his voice is the same confident drawl as always. “Is it so crazy to imagine I wanted a friend?”

“You must have a hundred people in this city that are better friends than me.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t. People are intimidated by me, you know. It’s the face.”

I laugh again. It’s hard not to, around him, and even harder when you’re drunk off champagne and the best night of your life. “The clothes, perhaps, the expensive watch, the town car, the easy wit…”

Heated gold eyes meet mine. “Compliments?”

“You were fishing for them,” I say, but I lean back in my seat.

He smiles slowly, and his eyes drop down to my dress again. “Well, kid, for being a grown woman in her prom dress… you look fucking gorgeous.”

My eyebrows climb all the way up to the sunroof of the car. “What?”

“We’re exchanging compliments, are we not?”

“Yes, but they have to be believable.”

“You don’t think you’re beautiful,” he says skeptically. “Don’t play that card. How many damn dates have you been on in the past month?”

I shake my head. “No, no, I’m not trying to be falsely modest. I like how I look. It’s not like a supermodel or anything, but I’m happy with it. But I’ve seen the women you date.”

Just not the one you brought tonight. The thought immediately sours my thinking. Was he like this with them too? Like he wants nothing more than to make them laugh?

“That’s a comment we’ll dissect another day,” he says. “You live in Queens.”

I nod. Outside the windows, the streets are becoming familiar. We’re getting closer. “Yes.”

“Rent your own apartment?”

“I rent a room in a house. The owner lives on the first floor.”

Carter nods. “Right. I grew up in Queens.”

“You did?”

He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. So now you know where I grew up.”

I recognize a tentative gesture when I see it, and through my drunken haze, I wonder if he’d meant exactly what he’d said earlier. If some of his jokes aren’t jokes at all, the self-deprecation hiding things beneath the surface.

“I grew up in Alrich,” I say. “It’s a town upstate.”

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