Taboo Boss: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance

by Black, Natasha L.

  “Tom?” Mason asked, turning to me. I could tell this wasn’t going to go well. No matter how I explained it, this was going to go poorly for me.

  “Look, it’s not like it sounds,” I said, and a groan rose up from each of the brothers.

  “Man, how could you?” Mason demanded.

  “Hang on, hang on, let him speak,” Tyler said, turning to me and squaring his shoulders. “Come on, Tom. Tell us why you would go down to the bar of the man who most certainly had something to do with our bar burning down, and offer to buy his bar?”

  “I thought if I made him an offer, and he said yes, he would leave,” I said. “It might sound stupid, but I just wanted to see if he would get the hell out of town. Maybe take the cash, close down his bar, and go be someone else’s problem for a while.”

  “And you thought it would be a good idea to do that without asking any of us?” Tyler asked.

  “I didn’t want to rile you guys up. Some of you are particularly riled up already, and I didn’t want to start a rumble,” I said.

  “The only person I want to rumble with right now is you, Tom,” Jordan said.

  “Enough,” Mason interjected. “Just enough.”

  “No one has to worry,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “Danny said no. He said no even when I told him that he would never get another chance. That was it, the answer is no, and I am not going back up there ever again.”

  “You had better not,” Jordan said. “Because if you do, I am coming with you, and I will not be held responsible for what I do to him or his place.”

  “Not a damn thing, that’s what,” I said. “We need all of us running this bar when it’s up, not behind bars for beating up an old rival.”

  “Whatever, Tom,” Jordan said. He stomped off away from me, and I looked around at the other brothers. Most of them had jobs to get to, and they moved accordingly. I kept my head down and went to work painting near Ava, and by the end of the day, I was worn-out. None of the boys seemed to open up to me, and I guessed I couldn’t really be upset about it. They were mad at me. But at least the bar was ours now, and all it needed was our attention and then it could get opened.

  The guys stayed away the rest of the day, and I was only able to get the barest of attention to questions or ideas I was throwing out. Finally, I got frustrated and called it a day, leaving the paint and paintbrush where they were and heading for the door. A few of the boys were still there, mostly in the back, and I snuck out of the front.

  My patience had worn thin, and between my job, Amanda, the bar, the new changes and the stress of the loan hanging over my head, I felt like I was already stretched too thin. As Amanda had told me, I needed to relax and let the business get handled by them. And yet, that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be part of every decision, to be the face of our company, and to interact with Amanda, far more than her ignoring me on video calls.

  30

  Amanda

  By the time the weekend came, I was starting to think it wasn’t just nerves that made my favorite diner food flip my stomach. The leftovers were still sitting in my refrigerator, and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to eat any of them. But when I woke up Saturday morning, I was feeling even sicker than I had when I went to the diner.

  The first few seconds of consciousness brought waves of nausea through me. I just managed to get out of bed and run into the bathroom before I got sick. After a couple of minutes of pure misery throwing up, I dropped down to sit on the floor and leaned over. Resting my face against the cool side of the tub helped to calm my shaking and ease some of the sick feeling still rippling through me.

  Fantastic. Not only had the whirlwind of my time in Astoria and coming back here to try to adjust to my schedule done a number on my emotions, but it was also starting to mess with my physical health as well. I had stressed my immune system into hiding and caught some sort of stomach bug or virus.

  And it was the last thing I needed right then. There was so much work to be done, so many meetings that were scheduled and situations I had to handle. I really couldn’t afford to be sick and have to take any time away from work. It was a particularly cruel paradox. Being stressed out was what had made me vulnerable to getting sick, but now being sick was making me even more stressed out.

  Another wave of sickness crashed over me, and I spent another few minutes hunched over the toilet. Finally, it ended, and I was able to pry myself up off the floor and brush my teeth. I filled my hands with water and drank it down, hoping to settle my stomach, or at least keep me from getting dehydrated.

  I had just dragged myself back into my bedroom and crawled under the covers with the intention of hiding out there for a good while when my phone rang. My heart sank, and I let out a bit of a groan. I really couldn’t deal with Tom right now.

  But I knew from experience if I didn’t answer, he would only call more. My head was spinning, and I didn’t think I could tolerate listening to it ring repeatedly, so I grabbed my phone off the table. When I glanced at the screen, I realized it wasn’t Tom. It was Ava.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Amanda?” she asked. “It’s Ava.”

  “Hey, Ava,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “I was upset we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I’ve missed you since you left,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish we had gotten a chance to say goodbye, too. But I just had to get out of there. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course I do. I wouldn’t have wanted to hang around here, either, if I were you. But it’s not the same without you around. There have been a couple of times when I’ve been out shopping or getting ready to go to lunch or something and picked up the phone to call and see if you wanted to come with me,” she said.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I said. “It was really nice spending time with you while I was there.”

  My stomach was starting to feel sick again, and I drew in a breath, held it for a second, then let it out slowly.

  “Are you okay?” Ava asked. “You don’t sound too good.”

  “I don’t feel too good,” I said. “But I’m okay. With all the stress and everything, I managed to get myself sick.”

  “Sick?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve just been sick to my stomach for a couple of days. I must have caught a virus or something. I was actually going to spend today being a productive adult and do things like laundry and grocery shopping. But now I think I’ll be spending the day curled up in bed hoping I’m done throwing up,” I said.

  I meant it as a joke, but it seemed to have gone over Ava’s head. She was silent for a couple of seconds.

  “You’ve been sick to your stomach?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like I said, I think I caught a stomach bug. Either that, or I ate something bad. It’s pretty gross right now, but I’m sure I’ll be better soon.” I laughed.

  “Uh-oh,” she said.

  I gave a short laugh. “It’s really okay. It’s not a big deal. I feel bad right now, but I’ll feel better in the morning. I’ll just get a lot of sleep and maybe order some ginger ale from the grocery delivery. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said.

  That struck me as odd. “What do you mean? How do you know I won’t feel better?”

  “Because I’ve felt that way before, and I most certainly didn’t feel better the next day. I didn’t feel better for a few weeks,” she said.

  “A few weeks?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Amanda, I don’t think you caught a stomach bug. And I definitely don’t think you ate something bad.”

  “Why?”

  “When was the first time you and Tom had sex?” she asked.

  I thought about it, counting back through the days I’d been home and then while we were there. “Four weeks ago.”

  “Did you use protection?” Ava asked.

  I felt the color drain out of my face. “No. We di
dn’t use any protection.”

  Even as I was saying it, my mind was going over the calendar. I realized my period was late. My heart started pounding in my chest, and my lungs constricted so it was harder to breathe.

  “Amanda, I think you need to go get a pregnancy test,” Ava said.

  I nodded even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “I’m going to go now.”

  “Update me as soon as you know,” she said firmly.

  “I will. I promise,” I said and hung up.

  Getting dressed as fast as I could, I grabbed a plastic bag out of the kitchen just in case and ran outside to jump in the car. I managed to get to the drugstore without getting sick but had to sit still in the parking spot for a few seconds to keep it that way. When my stomach felt settled again, I got out and rushed inside.

  The pregnancy test aisle was nothing short of overwhelming. The sheer number of options was staggering. I had no idea there were so many different kinds. This was the first time I’d ever been in this sort of situation, the first time I stared at the rows of different sized and colored tests with everything that ranged from a simple colored line to actual words and estimation of pregnancy stage as results.

  Gathering six of the most promising-looking options, I bought them and rushed home. I read the instructions for the tests, then proceeded to take all six of them, glad I had hydrated as much as possible. The results were supposed to take three minutes to show up, but it seemed like only a matter of seconds had passed before the tiny windows on the sticks started to morph.

  Five minutes later, I was still staring at them. Another five minutes after that, reality was sinking in. No matter how long I stood there and stared at the tests, I couldn’t make the results change. Those lines weren’t going to spontaneously disappear or turn a different color. And I certainly wasn’t going to make different words show up on the digital ones.

  They were positive. Every single one of them. Six different little sticks announcing to me that I was most definitely pregnant.

  Not even bothering it to throw the tests away, I crawled back into bed and called Emily. It only took her a matter of minutes to get to my apartment. She used her key to let herself in and rushed to my bedroom to comfort me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now. But I promise, it’s going to be okay. Let me go make you some tea. It’ll make you feel better.”

  She was still in the kitchen brewing the tea when my phone rang. I realized I hadn’t called Ava back, and it was her checking in on me.

  “So?” she asked when I answered.

  “I am,” I said without introduction.

  She drew in a breath. Emily came back into the room with my tea and gave a questioning look to the phone in my hand.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  “It’s Ava,” I said, switching over to speakerphone. Reality was really starting to settle in, and rather than the almost numb feeling I had, I was starting to freak out. “What am I supposed to do? Everybody at work is going to have an absolute field day with this. And what about the society pages? What about the tabloids? The company is just starting to get big, and Tom has already been followed by photographers.”

  “That really cannot be what you’re thinking about right now,” Ava said. “You don’t need to be worrying about it. We can figure out how to handle that later if it comes up. But right now, you have other things to think about. Specifically, Tom. You really need to tell him.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to,” I said, tears finally starting to fall down my cheeks. “How am I possibly supposed to tell him about this?”

  Emily reached out and took my hand. “You’re going to be fine. You’ll figure out what to say.”

  “I just bought you a ticket,” Ava said. “Your flight leaves at five tomorrow evening. It was the earliest one I could find.”

  “You got me a plane ticket?” I asked, my voice rising.

  “Yes,” she said. “You need to do this. Please, Amanda. Pack a bag and take that flight. Trust me.”

  I agreed, but I was still feeling unsure. I could handle anything when it came to the complications and messes at work, but this… this was something I didn’t know if I could handle.

  31

  Tom

  I was in a weird mood when I sat down for the video conference meeting that morning. People often talked about waking up on the wrong side of the bed, but this was more like waking up on the wrong side of the room. My whole day felt off. No matter how much coffee I poured down my throat, it didn’t seem to lift the fog, either. Before the meeting started, I decided that getting a little food in me might fix the problem, and if not, I’d take a long bath or something and see if that reset me.

  Yet the room service breakfast had done nothing except make me long for better food in general, and as I sat down for the meeting, I was starting to get cranky. Whatever was causing me to feel this way made me unnaturally upset at the speed of my laptop, and I shouted at it in vain when it took too long to open the window. Perhaps nine in the morning was too early to have whiskey, but I was very close to resorting to liquor to take the edge off if I didn’t get it under control.

  Then, things were made exponentially worse when the meeting began. Amanda wasn’t there. Not only was she not there, her window didn’t even exist. She wasn’t on the call at all. I suffered through about half of it, hoping she would pop on late or something, and when she didn’t, I resigned myself to the fact that she just wasn’t going to be there. Miserable and bored, I made it through the rest of the meeting, and when it was finally over, I breathed a sigh of relief. Landon stayed on until after everyone else left, and then it was just me and him.

  “Well, I think that went well,” Landon said.

  “Yeah, fine. Where’s Amanda?”

  “What?” Landon asked, surprised.

  “I just noticed she wasn’t there,” I said, trying to cover my tracks.

  “Oh, yeah, I don’t know, actually. I thought you might shed some light on that,” Landon said.

  “I don’t know, either,” I grumbled. Landon insisted on talking about the call for a little longer, but I got off as soon as I could. I had other things on my mind.

  I was worried about her. She wasn’t the type of person who just wouldn’t show up to a meeting without telling someone what was going on. She would have told someone. She would have told me.

  Pulling open my phone, I went through my messages, just in case she had texted me and I hadn’t noticed. It was foolish. I had been checking my texts for some kind of response from her for days. Predictably, there was none there. That left the company messaging program and my emails. The messaging program had nothing new from her, and she hadn’t posted in any of the group chats for days either.

  That left the email. I opened it up on my laptop, skimming the most recent ones before searching for her name. Once I got her name in the search bar, a list of emails from her came through, mostly itineraries and rundowns of meetings and conference calls. But the most recent one stuck out. The subject simply said “Transfer.”

  I opened it up, and my heart sank to my stomach. Amanda had put in for a change of position to another area of the company. A million thoughts ran through my mind, not the least of which was how hurt I was. Her asking to change positions in the company meant that she no longer felt comfortable around me, which was hard enough, but it also meant that whatever we had was in her past. She was moving on, to the point of making it a point that she wouldn’t have to see me anymore.

  Perhaps, though, it would be better that way. I would no longer be her direct boss. She wouldn’t have to worry about our relationship, as it were, because there was no longer any power position for me to hold over her. She would be free to date me if she wanted to, since there were no rules about people dating that worked in different departments.

  But then I remembered how she pushed me away. Even that email was a way of pushing me away. She didn’t want to c
onfront me face-to-face, and the language was short and direct. She wanted to transfer to another area of the company, but not because she wanted to date me. She didn’t want to see me at all anymore.

  I closed my laptop and sat there in silence for a few moments. What had started off as a weird day was only getting worse. Now, I was going to have to get used to the fact that there was no future with Amanda, not even the glimmer of hope I had been holding out. She was done, and she was moving on. All I had left was my work and the bar.

  Speaking of the bar, I hadn’t heard from any of my brothers yet that morning, either. Figuring a drink might help out, assuming Mason had already stocked the bar like he said he was going to, I decided to head that way. Besides, a little physical labor might keep me from yelling at any other inanimate objects for the day. At least I could work out my aggression by hammering something.

  When I arrived at the bar, it became readily apparent why my brothers hadn’t messaged me. They were on the warpath, and the bar was looking fantastic. The outside had already gotten a fresh coat of paint and a temporary sign hung above the door. Upon getting in, I noticed the new paint wasn’t limited to the outside, either. The whole bar smelled like wood polish and new coats of finisher. Chairs were already set out in the areas that we’d discussed putting tables, though the tables themselves weren’t in yet apparently. Booths were up along the walls, and the biggest surprise, a small stage in one corner with some basic lighting above it and giant speakers. I walked up to the bar where Ava was, and she looked up to see me, breaking out into a smile.

  “Oh, hey, Tom! Didn’t expect you until later today,” she said.

  “Hey, Ava. Where’s Robert? I asked.

  “He’s with Susan today. Your mom is on cloud nine right now.”

  “I bet. So where is everybody?”

  “Most of them left to take a lunch break, but Mason is in the back organizing the office, and Matt should be back any minute now with some tables,” she said.