Taboo Boss: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance

by Black, Natasha L.

  “Oh, yeah. Uhh, here is to… new beginnings,” I muttered and slammed the shot back. I hadn’t even asked what it was, but it turned out I didn’t need to after the fact. It was most certainly Fireball whiskey.

  “Woo!” Jordan said as he slammed the shot glass down on the table. “Who’s up for another?”

  I shook my hands and sat down, pouring myself a mug of the pitcher beer and grabbing a handful of fries.

  “No?” Mason said, looking at me and then shrugging.

  “I’m just not feeling shots today, guys,” I said, weakly.

  “Why not?” Matt asked.

  “I think I know,” Mason said, a bit louder than he probably thought he was being. “It’s Amanda, isn’t it. No matter what you say. You got a thing for her.”

  A teasing laughter filled the table, but when I didn’t join, they quieted down.

  “It’s not like that,” I said, trying to find the words.

  “Oh, come on,” Jordan said, interrupting. “We all saw how you looked at her, Tom.”

  “No, I mean it’s more than that,” I said, sighing. What the hell. If anyone wouldn’t judge me, it would be them. “We slept together. A couple of times.”

  “Bravo!” Jordan said, holding his empty shot glass in the air and suddenly looking around. “Waitress? Waitress, I have another celebration I need a drink for.”

  “She has a name, you know,” Tyler said, elbowing Jordan in the rib.

  “I am so sorry, what’s your name?” Jordan said as she approached.

  “Carla,” she said.

  “Carla, can I have another shot please?” Jordan asked, turning on the charm. She smiled and turned on her heel, rushing back to the bar.

  “It’s not worth the celebration,” I said miserably.

  “Why?” Jordan asked, his eyes following the drink as it made its way above people’s heads and back to him.

  “Because he told me they were just business. Nothing personal. Right in front of her,” Mason said, the silliness and jovialness gone.

  “That,” I said, pointing to Mason.

  “Ah, fuck,” Matt said.

  “Well, how do you feel about her?” Tyler asked, adding more beer to my mug.

  “I’ll be honest, I am terrified out of my mind. She’s the first woman I have ever felt something even resembling something real for. Whatever was going on between us when she was here with me, it was more than sleeping together or just dating.”

  “Sounds like you’re in love,” Mason said. A general head-bobbing from around the table meant the rest of them agreed.

  “Well, fuck,” I said.

  “Another one bites the dust,” Jordan said, slamming back the shot and placing the empty glass on the table. Carla, who hadn’t gone far, came back up to grab it, and Jordan motioned that he wanted one more.

  “Well, mad or not, in a different city or not, my brother being in love is worthy of a glass of something,” Matt said.

  “What if she breaks up with him and never talks to him again?” Mason asked.

  “Ouch, man, he’s sitting right here,” Tyler said, pointing to me.

  “And I have ears. I can hear you. All of you,” I said.

  “Then we mourn his loss with a drink,” Matt said.

  “Fair enough,” Tyler said. Reluctantly, I raised my glass, shook it, and downed it in one long pull.

  “So, now what?” I asked.

  “You go back to San Francisco,” Jordan said from the other side of the table. “You go back home, spend a couple of days getting things sorted, and get her back.”

  A murmur of agreement from around the table had them all look back at me.

  “I don’t even know if she’ll see me,” I said.

  “Has she quit her job yet?” Mason asked.

  “Well, no, not yet,” I said.

  Mason looked at me blankly. He blinked a few times, and I looked around the table to see all the other brothers giving me the same expectant but blank expression.

  “What?” I said, exasperated.

  “If she hasn’t quit yet,” Mason said, “then you know where to find her.”

  28

  Amanda

  It took a few days, but I was finding my flow again. My routine was back to the way it used to be before I left San Francisco, and during the day when I could convince myself I had put everything behind me and was back to normal life. I just did my best not to acknowledge the thoughts that came up during the other times of day.

  My usual early morning start was back to feeling natural, and I had fallen back into my pattern of carefully detailed to-do lists and highly focused productivity during the day. While I didn’t like to dwell on it, a couple of times I noticed I got even more work done now that I was in the office and didn’t have Tom in his office just a few steps away to distract me.

  It was the first time that I really allowed myself to acknowledge how much he had influenced me even before we went to Oregon. I always recognized he was friendly and fun to be around. But I stopped myself short of acknowledging that we were good friends, or that we could have any sort of connection or relationship outside of the office.

  It was unprofessional. It would be irresponsible and potentially damage work together to keep his company going.

  Those were all thoughts of a version of me who didn’t know how incredible things could be if I let down my guard and explored what else could exist between us. But that version also didn’t know how painful and disillusioning it could be to lose that connection as well.

  “Amanda?”

  It was Tom’s voice. My head snapped up, and I stared at him coming through the door into the office. What the hell?

  “Can we talk?” Tom asked.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why aren’t you in Astoria?”

  He glanced around. “Because I’m here.

  “I need to talk with you,” he said.

  I turned back to the email responses I was typing, flicking my eyes between the screen and the calendar beside me to make sure I was keeping up the schedule properly. “Right now isn’t a very good time. I am very busy with work. Landon did a fine job, but there were a lot of things that needed to be put back together, and I’m still catching up and fixing a few things.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll talk at lunch.”

  “I can’t,” I said almost before the sentence was all the way out of his mouth. “I mean, I’m too busy to take a lunch today.”

  “That’s not acceptable,” he said.

  I looked at him in shock. “Excuse me?”

  Tom shrugged. “Legally, you have to take a lunch break. It’s a requirement. I’m just stating facts.”

  A hint of a smile teased at his lips like he was trying to break the ice between us and find some common ground again. It only made me feel worse. I didn’t want him to be adorable and charming. I didn’t want him to be sexy and fun. I didn’t want him to be there.

  “Then I’m taking my lunch at my desk,” I said.

  “Amanda, we need to talk. You have to take a lunch. We’ll do them at the same time,” he said.

  One of our coworkers walked past, and I met eyes with her as she took very specific note of how Tom was leaned against my desk talking to me. Unsurprisingly, there were rumors waiting for me when I got back to the office. It was to be expected. After all, we were both gone for so long, and I’d made a very sudden return. It was the stuff water-cooler dreams were made out of.

  I had been very careful to steer clear of those rumors and not entertain any questions or leading comments. This confrontation with Tom wasn’t doing great things for perpetuating that. I let out a reluctant sigh.

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll go to lunch and talk.”

  “Good,” Tom said. “I’m going to go into my office and do some work. I’ll meet you out here in a couple of hours.”

  “I think we should go separately,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the diner.”

  He looked a little s
tung by the statement but didn’t argue. With a nod, he turned and headed into his office.

  When it came time for lunch, I purposely waited until several minutes after Tom left the office to get up and walk out. I didn’t want anybody noticing us leaving together or me leaving too soon after him. It was aggravating having to make the concessions and feel like I was sneaking around without even having anything to show for it.

  Tom already had a couple of appetizers sitting in the middle of the table when I got to the diner and sat across from him. Nervousness had been tossing around in my stomach since he first asked me to talk with him over lunch. The sight of the food just made my stomach turn even more.

  Being here alone with him underscored the awkwardness and discomfort of the situation between us. It had been a few weeks since the first time we’d tumbled into bed together, and the time had given me the chance to get a fresh perspective on it. And that fresh perspective had me feeling incredibly foolish for thinking things could have worked out between us.

  Now that I was at a bit of a distance from him, I wasn’t so wrapped up in our chemistry or my attraction to him. I wasn’t so distracted and dreamy-eyed. It made me realize how irrational it was of me to ever think that we could have been anything more than a fling away from home.

  “Help yourself,” he said, gesturing at the platters of food in front of me.

  I shook my head and held up my hand. “No, thank you. Why don’t you just tell me what you need to talk about so I can get back to work.”

  “Alright,” he said, tossing a half-eaten fry down onto his plate next to a pool of ketchup. “Why did you leave the hotel the way you did?”

  It was blunt and starkly to the point, but I had walked right into it.

  “I wanted to give you space,” I said.

  “What do you mean space?” he asked.

  “Everything going on with the bar and your brothers was just getting messier and more complicated. You needed to be able to focus on that and get it sorted. I decided to give you space to let you get everything figured out without the stress of the company… or of me,” I said.

  Tom swallowed, an indecipherable mix of emotion crossing his eyes. “You weren’t stressing me out, Amanda. Well, not at that point, anyway.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Tom reached across the table to grab onto my hands. I wanted to pull them away, but his touch warmed a place in me that had gone cold.

  “You weren’t stressing me out at all while we were in Astoria together. Not at any point in those two months did you cause me any stress or difficulty. But over these last couple of weeks, I’ve been worried sick about you,” he said.

  “Why were you worried about me?” I asked.

  “Because you won’t talk to me. I’ve called you. I’ve emailed you. I’ve done everything I could think of to try to get you to talk to me, and you just won’t.”

  I shook my head slightly. “I just didn’t think there was anything to talk about.”

  “How could you possibly think that?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing going on between us,” I said, sliding my hands out of his reluctantly. “You shouldn’t worry. If you needed to talk about something having to do with work, I would have been readily available. I am your employee and that’s all. You made that very clear. We just can put it behind us and not dwell on it.”

  The waitress came by with very full plates and set them down in front of us. I noticed he had already ordered me my favorite thing on the menu. The gesture was sweet and caring, and the tingle of tears made me grab the glass of ice water sitting in front of me and drown it away.

  “Amanda,” he started when the waitress walked away.

  “It’s okay,” I said again. “And everything here is okay, too. There’s still plenty of time in the day for you to go back and be there to handle everything you need to be handling. You need to go back to Astoria and take care of things there. I’ve got this. You don’t need to worry. Not about the company. And not about me.”

  Tom eyed my food, which I hadn’t touched. “Is there something wrong with your lunch? I thought that was your favorite.”

  “It is,” I said. “And I really appreciate you ordering it for me.”

  “Then why haven’t you eaten?” he asked.

  “I’m just not hungry,” I said. “And I really should be getting back to the office. There’s a ton for me to get done leading up to these meetings this week. And you should get to the airport.”

  Tom looked drawn and a little bit confused as he nodded and gestured for the waitress to come over. He asked her to bring a couple of boxes so we could package up the food. I went back to the office with several containers in my hands, knowing Tom was heading for the airport to go home again.

  29

  Tom

  I arrived later than I expected due to some delays with the flight and made my way right back to the hotel. I hadn’t bothered to check out, so I was able to just go right to my room, and it was as I left it. I flipped on the box fan and changed out of my clothes, getting a quick shower and crawling into bed.

  When I woke up the next morning, the alarm still had a little time on it and I hopped out of bed anyway, dropping to the floor to do some push-ups. I could have stayed in the bed, but without Amanda to snuggle with in the early morning hours, my desire to stay recumbent was at an all-time low. A quick set of morning exercises and I was ready for the day. I stopped at the same corner shop for coffee but forewent the chocolate croissant out of bitterness and headed to the new bar.

  It had only been a day, but I could see that my brothers had been hard at work. A moving truck was parked outside with the ramp down, and I could see new kitchen equipment ready to be loaded in. A few men in blue coveralls were moving stuff around back there, and I assumed they must have hired professionals to get things situated easier while they took on other tasks. Opening the door, I saw what some of them were.

  Ava was right beside the main door, painting the wall right beside it, and her face lit up when she saw me. I gave her a quick hug as I looked around at the space. The bar had been polished, and a new top had been laid over it, the old one lying on the floor in front. Various new décor littered the walls, and streaks of paint in competing colors were on various spaces of the walls.

  “You guys are already hard at work, huh?” I asked.

  “We are,” Ava said. “We all agreed this wall over here needed some color to cover up the marks here, so I went ahead and took that over. We’re trying to decide between several colors for that wall if you want to weigh in. Jordan and Tyler are replacing the bar top and have been extraordinarily loud in the process. And Mason is over there hanging some of the stuff we found at the thrift store. You said you wanted the bar to have a uniquely Oregon history feel, right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, nothing says Oregon more than a bunch of little old ladies’ knickknacks and old men’s man-cave garage wall hangings.”

  “True,” I responded. “Not quite what I had in mind, but we can tinker. We can tinker.” She smiled, and I moved further into the wide space we were going to fill with tables and chairs. Tyler came out from the back and wrapped me in a big bear hug before taking me off to the side to talk.

  “So how did things go with Amanda?” he asked. “Did you get in touch with her?”

  “I did, but she shut me out,” I said. “I don’t know if things are just different for her now or if she just doesn’t want to deal with it at the moment, but she wouldn’t give me the time of day over it. She practically bought my plane ticket, telling me I needed to come back here, that they have things handled there.”

  “Bummer, man,” Tyler said. “Are you okay?”

  I was about to respond when Mason came into the room, announcing himself loudly, and wrapping me up in a hug as well.

  “How did it go?” he asked. “You profess your undying love for Amanda?” he asked, looking back and forth between me and Tyler. S
lowly, his face dropped. “You didn’t?” he asked. I shook my head.

  “I didn’t have a chance to,” I said. “She’s in a different place right now, and whatever or wherever that place is, it’s not anywhere near I am. So I just have to deal with it and try to get her to talk to me some other time. But I needed to come take care of this first. How is it going here?”

  “It’s going,” Mason said. “Are you sure she won’t talk to you?”

  I sighed. “Maybe it was too much for her. Maybe she didn’t like that we crossed that line. Not everything ends up like in movies, Mason.”

  Mason nodded, and we went to work on decorating and preparing the building. It would take some time, but our progress was already looking pretty good. I made my way to the kitchen, joining Matt there, to help guide some of the equipment in. I noticed Jordan wasn’t around but didn’t think much of it. He wasn’t going to miss helping out, so wherever he was I was sure he had a reason for it.

  I had moved to the bar, beginning to polish it down and start the treatment process when the front door swung open and the handle smeared a bit of the fresh paint Ava had just put on.

  “Hey!” she said. “Watch it!”

  “Tom,” Jordan said, storming into the room, ignoring Ava. “Where is Tom?”

  “I’m right here, Jordan,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on?” he asked, seeming indignant. “What is going on?”

  “I think we covered that. That was indeed the question,” Matt said.

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on. Tom went to Danny’s bar,” Jordan said.

  “Oh, alright,” I began, but he cut me off.

  “He went to Danny’s bar, not to hit him or to threaten him or anything reasonable. No, he went to Danny’s stupid, hole-in-the-wall dive bar to make him an offer. Didn’t you?”