“Awww thanks,” she says, taking the treats. “I’ll bring these home with me and will be very loved.”
“Make sure Asher thanks you for the treats while he’s loving on you,” I tell her.
We both crack up laughing. I have always thought Madilyn was a loving, charming woman— very different from the fake, plastic-like associates who have come in and out of this firm. In fact, after we became closer friends she confided in me that she called some of those new associates the “Barbies,” but, she said, it was only because she overheard them talking about her “cankles.”
Leave it to Madilyn to feel the need to justify a very appropriate nickname. Most other people I know would do something way worst than give the offenders nicknames. But Madilyn has never let what anyone says about her hold her back.
She was the talk of the office when she married the founding partner Asher Marks. But she soon started a trend, and there have been so many office romances around here that Madilyn and her friends Ruby and Katie lovingly refer to the firm as “Sugar Daddy Central.”
“Speaking of Asher,” I say, finding my opening and figuratively running with it. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, why?” she asks, looking a bit concerned at first. Then she arches an eyebrow at me and tsks her tongue. “Monique. I knew you didn’t just come here to give me dog treats. You’re trying to get the scoop on something, aren’t you? You’re always the revered office sleuth.”
“That’s not true,” I tell her, laughing, even though it is kind of true. I knew about all the secret romances long before anyone else did. What can I say? People just trust in me and confide in me. Plus, I have a nose for these things. Not to mention, a lot of time on my hands since work is my life and I’m here a lot. “But, I saw a meeting on the calendar and it isn’t like Asher to hold information back from me so I couldn’t help but wonder…”
My voice trails off as Madilyn narrows her eyes at me. I realize that I may have said too much. It appears that she may not know much about this mysterious meeting, either. Or if she does, she certainly doesn’t seem to want me to go too far down this line of questioning.
“Never mind,” I tell her, smiling brightly. “I’m sure it’s nothing. He probably just forgot to put a note with what it was about. Asher can be forgetful sometimes.”
“You’re telling me,” she says, laughing. “Sometimes he pours a mug of coffee and then forgets where he put it, so he pours another one after that, and loses that one too.”
I nod my head at her, knowingly. I can imagine Asher doing that because he’s forever coming into my office asking if I know where he left this file or that briefcase. It’s because he is always trying to do too many things at once. He started this firm and he is the partner who brings in the most money, even after all the mergers it’s gone through with important lawyers the firm successfully wooed.
“Well, at least he doesn’t forget the big things,” I tell her. “Anniversaries. Birthdays.”
“You’re right,” Madilyn says, looking wistfully out the window, as if feeling grateful for her husband. “He is really good at recalling fine details and that’s what makes him the best lawyer ever.”
“Maybe he’s close to the best lawyer,” I tell her. “I think that title might belong to you.”
“Oh, please,” she says. “Maybe in another twenty years.”
She’s mentioning their age difference, which is quite substantial.
“Not you’re just flattering me,” she says. “And I’m still not going to give you any information.” After hesitating a second, she adds, “Because I don’t even have any to give.”
Hmmm, I can’t help but think. Is that true or not? Either way, it’s clear she’s not going to help my cause.
“Tell your dogs I say thanks for nothing,” I tell her.
She laughs as I wave and head out the door. Madilyn was my best bet for trying to figure out who Asher is meeting with, but since she can’t or won’t help me, there has to be someone who will.
Chapter 3
Monique
I head to Boyd Ashdown’s office, not because I want to talk to him, but because I bet Grace will be there. Boyd is the newest partner at the law firm. They claim that it’s for quite a while—no more expanding. I’m glad, because I can barely keep up with all the paperwork each time there’s a merger. But I’m also dubious, because it seems to me that they can’t help but expand. It seems to be an addiction.
Just as Boyd is the newest partner around here, Grace is the newest employee to fall prey to an older, much richer partner. She and Boyd hit it off swimmingly and now she’s always ever so eager to “help him out” in the office— and the bedroom.
What is with these young women who would rather marry the partners than become one themselves? I think.
But as soon as I approach Boyd’s office and see Grace looking at me with her sweet smile as she removes headphones she was wearing, I instantly regret my judgmental thought. You’re starting to sound just like your mother except in reverse, I scold myself.
Sure, I may have devoted my life to my career at the expense of love but that doesn’t mean that every woman has or should. Perhaps some are smarter than me. Madilyn has a very good chance of making partner and all the women here who have fallen in love with men here are bright and hard working. Grace is one of the nicest of the bunch, and from what I’ve heard, she’s had a hard life as a former foster child.
“Monique!” she calls out, from the computer chair she’s sitting in, behind Boyd’s desk. He’s not here, which makes me glad. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Oh,” I tell her, shrugging innocently. “I just came to say hi. And to ask Boyd if he and the other partners need anything at their meeting tomorrow.”
It’s a ploy I decide to go for at the spur of the moment— an educated guess that if Asher is meeting with someone so important he can’t even record his or her name in the calendar, then he probably isn’t meeting with this person alone. I ask myself why Grace would know if Madilyn doesn’t— or at least, pretends not to. But she blurts out, “Hmmm, I don’t know, I think the standard coffee and tea would be fine. Isn’t that the job of the lowest person on the totem poll though?”
“Yes, but I direct that person,” I remind her, resisting the urge to add and everyone else here as well, which is why I really need to be kept informed of what’s going on, rather than left in the dark.
“Oh, yeah,” she says, smiling. “That makes sense. But I really don’t know.”
I’m trying to think of a roundabout way to ask if she knows what the meeting is about when she plunges forward, unasked. If there’s one thing I admire about Grace, it’s her headstrongness.
“I don’t really know who they’re meeting with or what the meeting is about, so I can’t really guess what they might want to eat or drink there,” she says, shrugging. “Sorry. Boyd only told me they’re meeting with a potential prospect or candidate or something.”
Wow, I think. He “only” told her that, and Asher won’t even put the name of the person he’s meeting with on our joint calendar. Pillow talk really does result in a lot of information being learned.
“A prospect?” I ask Grace. “Like, for employment?”
She shrugs again. “I guess so.”
I would be informed about any prospective employee. I’m in charge of all the employees. Unless…
My stomach sinks to the pit of my stomach. Unless they were looking to replace me.
I rack my brain, thinking of any incidents lately. Any reason they might have to get rid of me.
It’s a preposterous notion. I’m damn good at my job.
So, maybe they’re just bringing on a new office manager for me to supervise. We have a lot of new employees now thanks to all the recent mergers. But then they’d definitely tell me about it. Perhaps they think they need a co- office manager and don’t know how to break the news to me, because they think I would be upset. And, they would be right. I can handle this jo
b just fine, no matter how many employees there are; I don’t need a co-manager.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Grace asks, putting her headphones back in place. “I’m translating Boyd’s dictation.”
Umm. “There’s software for that,” I inform her. “The firm has an expensive subscription.”
How does she not know this by now? Did Boyd train her at all, or does he just like to fu…
“I know,” she says, answering that question for me. “But he’s old fashioned and insists on doing it this way. And I don’t mind. I just like to listen to his voice.”
If she weren’t so damn adorable, I’d be upset that they’re wasting the firm’s resources in this manner. We bought expensive software to keep up with technology and she’s wasting man hours— or, woman hours— doing it the old fashioned way due to some antiquated notion of romance.
But, damn. That’s cute. How could I be mad at that?
“Okay, Well, thanks for the help,” I tell her, as I see myself out.
Even though it makes me worry that my job is in jeopardy, at least I found out some information. Who would have thought it would be from one of the firm’s newest employees, rather than from Madilyn?
Chapter 3
Monique
As soon as I’m home, I draw a bath. Since I make good money, I used some of it to build myself a custom jacuzzi in my bathroom. It has marble tile and a lot of strong jets. Taking a bath is always one of my favorite things to do to relax after a long day of work. But today, I particularly need it.
I have a missed call from my dad, so I call him back while I wait for the bath tub to fill up.
“Hiya, Moni,” he says, sounding tired. It still makes me smile to hear him call me that.
“Hey, Dad. How are you? How’s Mom?”
After I left, my mom suffered a mental breakdown and never really recovered. The doctor says she has a rare attachment disorder where she feels as if she’s the child and I’m the parent and she’s neglected. He says it’s not my fault, no matter how much I might think so.
Her therapist, however, thinks she has garden variety narcissistic personality disorder. She recommended family therapy and I’ve been willing but my mother flat out refuses. She says there’s nothing wrong with her except that her daughter left and became a career woman instead of a loving wife and mother, and that therefore this means she failed in her duties as a mother; she raised me wrong.
I completely agree with her therapist, but, I also try to be empathetic of her situation. It’s not normal to be so histrionic— on that point, both her doctor and therapist agree— and so something beyond her control is clearly at play. And I particularly feel bad for my dad, who does his best to take care of her despite the way she lashes out at him.
“She’s doing all right,” he says, which is what he normally says. “She has her good days and bad.”
“Do you want to put her on the phone?” I ask him.
“This is one of her bad days,” he quickly says. “I just wanted to hear your voice and hear how your day was.”
I get it. When my mom wants to talk to me she’s thrilled to hear my voice and begs me to come visit. When she doesn’t, she runs and hides in the corner, or screams at my dad and at me through the phone, saying we don’t care about her at all.
“Well, Dad, I don’t have a lot of time to talk, unfortunately,” I tell him, watching the steam rise from the bath and getting impatient about wanting to get in. “But my day was okay.”
“That doesn’t sound completely true,” he says.
He always knows when I’m lying.
“It’s mostly true,” I tell him, which is true. I had a great day until I went to check the calendar and saw the “private meeting” entry. I knocked out a whole bunch of paperwork and trained some new secretaries on the firm’s internal billing software.
“What’s wrong, my Moni?” Dad asks.
“I just worry that maybe I’m old news for the firm,” I confess. “They might be looking around to hire someone else. At least, that’s the best I can gather.”
“I don’t believe that,” he says, convincingly. “You are the best person to run that firm’s human resources and employee training department and they know it. They’d be fools to want anyone else other than you. Are you sure you’re not just borrowing problems?”
That’s another of my dad’s favorite sayings. “Don’t borrow problems by worrying about things that haven’t happened yet.” Whenever he uses it, he’s usually right.
“Maybe,” I tell him, nodding my head even though he can’t see. “I guess that might be what I’m doing. Thanks, Dad. But I have to run.”
My bath is ready.
“Okay, well, maybe you can come visit us sometime soon,” Dad says, sounding hopeful.
I try not to sigh, or my perceptive father would probably hear me.
“Okay, Dad, I’ll try. Have a good night.”
“You too, Moni.”
Chapter 4
Monique
After college, I moved to Albuquerque for grad school in organizational management and human resources. I live far away from my hometown in Maryland, and so I don’t see my parents much, even though my dad and I talk almost daily.
When I do go home, my mom goes on and on asking why I haven’t gotten married yet and how it can be that I don’t even have a boyfriend yet. She says I blew my chance with Cal, who would have been a great husband. And she says now I’m just “married to my work.”
As I sink down into the welcoming bubbles, I can’t help but think she might be right, after all. I gave up love, marriage and a family— at least so far— for my career. And what do I have to show for it? Constant anxiety that I might be canned or replaced.
I think back to that day that Cal and I broke up. We had managed to make it through four years of a long distance relationship in undergrad. But, when I told him I’d been accepted to the University of New Mexico for graduate school, and that it was much more affordable than the equally ranked schools on the East Coast that I’d gotten into, he’d asked me not to go.
“Please,” he’d said, holding my hand as we sat on a park bench— the same one we’d come to as teenagers to make out at dusk before having to head home. His hazel eyes pleaded with me, boring into my soul.
He’d been my first love, my only love. We were home on a break, visiting our families before heading back to school— he had gotten into Harvard Law School. “Please come to Massachusetts with me. We could get married. I’d be able to provide for your every need.”
My heart had jumped at his informal marriage proposal. But then it sunk at the notion that he wanted me to give up my own educational and perhaps professional ambitions to be with him.
Sure, he was from a very wealthy family and was destined to make a lot of his own money after graduation, but, it offended me that he thought I would so easily abandon my own dreams for his. I was not my mother and never would be.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, tears coming to my eyes. “I love you but I also have to do what’s best for me.”
“I understand,” he said. “But maybe we need some time apart. Four years is a long time to wait and it seems there’s no end in sight.”
“In three years we could be living in the same city,” I insisted.
But I knew it was futile. Neither of us knew what the future held. And we did know that statistically people stay in the place where they go to graduate school, because that’s where they make connections and get job offers, and it’s hard to start over somewhere new after building up a life somewhere.
So, in the end, I agreed we would take a break and see how it would go. I thought it was only fair to let him go, since I couldn’t give him what he needed. We made love one last time that night, and it was amazing. So amazing— just like the rest of our relationship was— that I was never able to forget him or truly move on, even though I did end up getting a job in Albuquerque and staying here.
I certai
nly tried to convince myself that I could move on. But every time a guy asked me out, I felt I would be cheating on Cal, which made no sense since we weren’t together anymore. One time UNM had a joint graduate/ undergraduate formal, where they did a whole Prom queen and king theme like back in high school. My friend Shelly had nominated me for Prom queen and I’d won, having been fairly popular with the human resources crowd—the only ones nerdy enough to participate in such an event.
When I went up on stage to get my crown, the organizers told me that first I had to dance with the Prom King. So I did, and it was awkward. He was really into me but, even though he was handsome and nice enough, all I could think about— as usual— was Cal.
Everyone had started chanting “Kiss, kiss, kiss!” and so he had moved in for the kiss. Cameras flashed and at first I froze because I didn’t want to be mean. Everyone cheered and encouraged me to kiss him back but I pulled away, feeling uncomfortable because I only wanted to be kissing Cal. I’d hopped down from the stage, not even waiting to claim my crown, and I’d run away, with Shelly following after me asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t even explain it. I knew I should be having a fun time, kissing the Prom King, but I felt empty and sad.
Later, a photo of him leaning in to kiss me made its way to the front page of the student newspaper. It was during the moment I’d frozen and I’d looked quite happy. I stared at the picture for a long time, wondering how I could so successfully portray something to the camera— and the rest of the world— that was so different from what I was feeling.
Happy couple dances the night away at undergrad/grad student gala, the headline read. Obviously whomever published it didn’t stop to do their homework. I really had looked radiant, and so had the Prom King— so I couldn’t fault the photographer for wanting to publish the photo. Yet, I also couldn’t help wanting to go find him and ask him to unpublish it because it didn’t represent the real me and it was the only photo of me that had ever been in a newspaper.
Forever, Boss: Bad Boy Office Romance Series Box Set with Bonus Novella Page 33