by Monroe, Lila
Now that’s what I call a midnight feast.
15
Natalie
Aries: The stars are aligning! Enjoy new experiences, but don’t let romance distract you from matters of the wallet. Stay the course and you will reap the rewards.
It seems absurd that after a night like that, I have to show up for work the next morning, like I don’t have better things to do.
Naked, hot, orgasmic things.
But the way things are at the Gazette right now, neither Justin or I can afford to take a sex day. Unfortunately.
“See you at the office?” he asks, leaning over to kiss me goodbye.
“I’m right behind you,” I promise. With a few detours first. I can’t exactly show up in my grubby gardening attire from yesterday, but there’s no time to hoof it all the way back to Brooklyn to change, either, so I swing by the Gap for a change of clothes instead. “I’ll wear them out,” I tell the saleswoman, who quirks one knowing eyebrow but doesn’t comment either way. I had sex with my boss, I barely keep myself from blurting. Mind-blowing, toe-curling, World Series kind of sex.
The clerk gazes at me boredly across the counter. “Receipt printed or emailed?” is all she asks.
I stop for coffee and a bagel at my usual place around the corner from the Gazette building—ice cream and potato chip smorgasbord notwithstanding, I’m starving after last night’s enthusiastic workout. I’m sure the headline is written all over my face—breaking: local woman spends hot night with billionaire boss man—but I manage to keep my cool through our morning staff meeting, chatting with Carl and catching up on the latest misadventures of Lori’s foulmouthed pet parrot, Walter Cronkite. “The neighbors keep threatening to call animal control,” she says mournfully. “I’m trying to teach him poetry instead, but the only thing he can remember are Eminem lyrics.”
I’m doing such a good job of acting interested in anything besides the amazingly hot sex I had not twelve hours ago that I almost miss Justin when he steps off the elevator. He looks absolutely freaking edible in dark jeans and a smartly tailored button down that I immediately imagine tearing right off his shoulders. “Morning, folks,” he calls easily, lifting a hand in greeting before heading toward his office. “How was everybody’s weekend?”
He does his Monday-morning rounds, stopping to talk to everyone from the head of the Business desk to the lowliest fact-checker, nodding sympathetically as Lori repeats the sad ballad of Walter Cronkite, aka the Real Slim Shady. Justin’s a good listener, I notice, sincerely interested in my coworkers’ editorial thoughts as well as their personal lives, and I can feel them warming to him in spite of themselves. It’s hard not to like a guy who drops everything to Google “tropical bird behavior modification techniques,” on his phone, even if he does hold the fate of your entire career in his hands.
“Oh, hey, Natalie,” he calls as he heads for his office, cool as the other side of the pillow in the middle of the night. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure thing,” I call back, trying to sound equally chill. Still, by the time I shut his door behind me, I can’t keep the goofy grin off my face. “What’s up, boss?”
Justin’s gaze flicks quickly up and down my body, taking in my early-morning costume change. The clothes I picked up are simple, just jeans and a lightweight cotton sweater with navy and white sailor stripes—but still, I can tell he’s having the same kind of X-rated thoughts I’ve been entertaining all morning. “Um,” he says, shaking his head as if to clear it. “We should probably set some ground rules, right?”
I nod seriously. “I completely agree.”
“So—”
“No flirting in the office,” I say, ticking the list off on my fingers. “No touching.”
“None,” he says firmly.
“No sex in the supply closet.”
“Or on the desk.”
“Or in the handicapped bathroom. Or the regular one.”
We grin at each other like a couple of horny idiots. “Not even in the handicapped bathroom?” he asks, teasing. “Damn, girl, you’re no fun at all.”
“You know I am,” I counter, our gazes locked across the room.
Justin swallows hard, his Adam’s apple moving underneath the thin, lickable skin of his throat. “Yes,” he agrees, his voice like gravel. “You definitely are.”
The temperature goes up about a hundred degrees, and who knows what fun things might happen if Lori didn’t barge straight in. “The sports team are driving me crazy with these abbreviations— Oh, sorry Natalie, I didn’t see you there.”
“No problem!” I blurt. “I was just leaving. I’ll, umm, schedule that meeting for you, boss.”
I duck out, my cheeks flaming. Ground rules, remember? Back at my desk I’ve barely gotten my email open when my phone pings with a text. What about the copy room? Justin wants to know. Is the copy room an acceptable venue?
I stifle a laugh, immediately picturing Justin putting me up against the wall beside the ancient Xerox machine, his mouth hot on my neck and fingers working me hard between my—
I reach for my mostly empty iced coffee, chomping hard on a mouthful of ice. I’d consider the copy room, I allow. Meet you there after hours tonight?
I wish, he texts back. I’ve got dinner plans.
I frown. What kind of dinner plans, exactly? I try to hide my disappointment in the moment before my phone dings again: It’ll probably be boring, but you should come.
I blink. So, OK. Not with another woman, then. You sure?
Absolutely, he assures me, and texts me the address of the restaurant. Eight o’clock. Then, we can stop by a Kinkos, if you like . . .
I laugh. It’s a date.
* * *
“So, who’s this dinner with again?” Poppy asks, back at my apartment that night. I called in reinforcements to help me get ready, and she and April are lounging on my bed as I rifle wildly through my closet, the three of us passing a bottle of cheap prosecco back and forth.
“We didn’t actually get that far,” I answer. “Some business guys, I’m assuming? I’m hoping we can make an appearance and then bail for something a little more fun.”
“By which you mean another session of all-night animal lovemaking in his fancy apartment?” Poppy asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
“Oh my God,” I say, tossing a pair of jeans in her direction, “please never say ‘animal lovemaking’ again.”
She purrs like a cat in response, and we all laugh.
“This place is super trendy,” April says, squinting at the restaurant’s website on her phone. “I know just the thing.”
She launches herself into my wardrobe, hunting for who knows what in the mess.
“I told you he was into you,” Poppy says triumphantly, taking a sip of sparkling wine. “Never underestimate the power of a sexy email, et cetera.”
“I’m really into him,” I counter, holding a pair of strappy sandals up for her inspection. “It’s not like me to fall this hard this fast, but there’s just something about him, you know?” I sit down on the edge of the bed. “I feel kind of guilty, though. I caught him checking his horoscope again this morning before I left to go into the office.”
Poppy shrugs. “Plenty of people check their horoscopes every morning,” she reassures me. “It doesn’t mean he’s actually putting any stock into what he reads there.”
“No, I know,” I say, fussing with the sandal’s tiny buckle. “It’s just that he still doesn’t know I’m the one writing the column. And maybe, I’m writing them for him a little,” I admit. “Just to make sure he stays on track and doesn’t fire everyone. At first, it was fun, but now . . . it feels like I’m lying to him, a little bit.”
“Every relationship needs a little mystery,” April declares, emerging with a sparkly wisp of a dress clutched in her hand, silvery-white and silky.
I laugh out loud. “That’s from five years ago! Five years, and a million burritos.”
“Try it!” she orders, and when I pu
ll it over my head and zip it up I can’t deny that I like how it hugs my curves, even if its low-cut neck and barely-there hemline make it way more scandalous than anything I’d normally wear.
“It’s not too much?” I check, turning this way and that to check my reflection.
“It depends, what are you going for?”
“Somewhere between ‘devastating sex goddess’ and ‘enigmatic socialite in a 1940s murder mystery.’ ” I reply.
“Then you’re perfect.”
I hop the subway back into Manhattan, then proceed to get a blister walking up and down the block four times, looking hopelessly for the right address. By the time I find the restaurant in a nondescript brick building that looks more like a dentist’s office than the brand-new hotspot Poppy was describing from the website, I’m nearly twenty minutes late.
“Hi,” I tell the hostess with a smile, glancing around the cavernous space with some trepidation. What looked modern and trendy on the website is actually snooty and cold, the kind of place that has me envisioning a meal of a single fava bean served with a dollop of cashew foam. Damn. I knew I should have snacked on the ride over. “I’m looking for Justin Rockford’s party?”
The hostess looks me up and down with an expression like possibly I just introduced myself as the bike messenger bringing a box of roaches to the party. “This way,” she says, sounding resigned. She leads me through the sparse, all-white dining room, then around a corner into a private alcove where Justin is sitting with a dozen people—
—nearly all of whom I recognize from the internet deep dive I did back when he first started at the Gazette.
And while I can’t say for sure if Justin’s eyes fall out of his head when he sees me . . .
The rest of his entire family’s certainly do.
16
Justin
“Ahem,” the hostess announces. Natalie is standing beside her, looking like she wishes she could crawl underneath the linen tablecloth. “This girl said she was a member of your party?”
Thank God. I was just about ready to garotte myself with a napkin before she arrived.
Just like that, my evening from hell gets a whole lot better.
“Hey,” I get up to greet her with a kiss. “You made it.”
“Yup.” Natalie smiles, but it doesn’t reach all the way to her eyes. She drops her voice to a whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That this was a Rockford family reunion,” she hisses, looking panicked.
“I didn’t think.” I pause. “Why, is it not OK?”
“Ha, no, sure, I always like to meet the family looking like I just stepped out of a burlesque show!”
I give her a reassuring smile. “You look amazing.”
And she does. The silk of her dress hugging every curve, and draping tantalizingly low in the back. I steer her to the seat beside me. “This is Natalie,” I announce.
Silence.
I look up. Every member of my family save Charlie is staring at her like they’ve already decided she’s the world’s most ruthless gold digger. My dad, in particular, is looking at her like she’s about to pick his pocket and go tearing out of the restaurant with a wad of hundred-dollar bills clutched in her fist like the freakin’ Hamburglar.
OK, so maybe Natalie is right, and a little warning might have gone a long way. “Natalie is one of the best reporters at the Gazette,” I continue, giving them all a warning look. “She’s been invaluable to me, getting settled in over there.”
“Hi, everyone,” Natalie says, lifting her hand in a wave. “It’s, um, nice to meet you all.”
I pour her a generous glass of wine—I figure I owe her that much—while the rest of them introduce themselves: my Aunt Teensy, who rattles around like an extremely WASPy Miss Havisham in her giant apartment on the Upper East Side, and my cousin Shep down from Greenwich with his waifish wife, Bronwyn. My twin uncles, Aldritch and Whitaker, sit across the table in their matching suits like an unsmiling pair of ghouls. And that’s only the half of them. What we lack in familial warmth and a sense of humor we make up for in sheer volume, Charlie always says.
It’s the Rockford way.
Speaking of Charlie, he’s sitting to my left with a horrified expression on his face. “Dude,” he mutters, “what were you thinking? Luce and I have been together for years and still I don’t subject her to these dinners!”
“It won’t be so bad,” I argue, and he just snorts.
“Have you met our family?”
Maybe he has a point. Natalie is gamely trying to distinguish between my cousins, both of whom sport short brown bobs and dour expressions, and make conversation about sailing, but she looks seriously out of her comfort zone.
Which figures, since all comfort scatters in the wind the moment more than three Rockfords assemble.
Damn, I clearly didn’t think this through. I was so focused on seeing her again, ASAP, it didn’t occur to me just who else would be seeing her as well.
“So Natalie,” my Aunt Teensy says now, taking a sip of her Chardonnay. “What is it you write, exactly?”
“Well, I started in entertainment reporting,” Natalie says, flashing a polite smile. “But my interests are mainly in local politics and culture. I wrote a profile of the mayor’s chief of staff earlier this year that made the front page of the Sunday edition.”
Teensy nods vaguely. My father sits back in his chair, gazing at her coolly across the table. “It doesn’t bother you?” he asks icily. “To be toiling away in a dying industry?”
Oh, here we go. “Dad—” I cut in, but Natalie just smiles and lifts her chin in reply. The calmly defiant expression on her face reminds me of the night she told me she wasn’t going to let me shut down the Gazette without a fight.
“Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said ‘the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated’?” she asks, reaching for her wine glass. “Of course all industries change over time, and journalism is no exception. I’m sure you know that better than most, Mr. Rockford. We don’t stand in the marketplace and shout our headlines anymore—well, unless you count Twitter. How people consume the news is different than it was a hundred years ago. Revenue streams are different than they were a hundred years ago. The challenge for any respectable news organization—and the companies that acquire them for profit—is to figure out how to adapt to those changes without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” She smiles again, beatific. “Would it be possible to get some bread? I’m starving.”
I stare at her, impressed. Delivering an impassioned smackdown to my father while wearing that dress? I’ve never been so turned on in my life.
I reach under the table and squeeze her knee. She flashes a grin at me.
But the inquisition doesn’t end there, because dad turns his attention on me. “Speaking of revenue streams,” he says, “Justin, would you like to give us a report on how the finances are looking over there?”
“Are you sure you want to get into business over dinner?” I ask.
He snorts. “No better time.”
“Fine,” I agree. “Then the finances look promising, actually.”
My dad peers at me, the skepticism practically dripping off him. “Is that so?”
“It is,” I tell him pleasantly, rattling off the numbers I got from my meeting with the Gazette’s accountants earlier this week. “Our first wave of cost-cutting measures are looking effective, so it looks like we’ll be able to keep the paper operational without having to resort to layoffs.”
My father blows out an irritated breath. “You’re just delaying the inevitable here.”
“And what’s that?”
“Stripping the damn thing down for parts,” Ashland scowls. “We can make far more getting that liability off our balance sheet. What do you think is going to happen: it’s suddenly going to start printing money overnight?”
“No,” I reply, trying to keep my temper. “But as long as it breaks even, there’
s no reason not to keep it running. It’s one of the best-loved print newspapers in the city. Some things are more important than profit, you know.”
Clearly, he doesn’t, because his face turns an interesting shade of purple.
“Are you trying to undermine me and this company?” he demands, his voice rising. “Or are you dumber than I thought you were? Of all the lily-livered causes to rally behind, you think this damn paper is worth the time—”
“Uh, excuse me,” Natalie breaks in. “Can I say something?”
My dad—along with everyone else at the table—looks at her in utter surprise. I squeeze her knee again under the table, this time in warning. You don’t interrupt my dad when he’s on a roll, and definitely not in front of an audience.
“It’s OK,” I murmur, “let him burn himself out.”
“No, that’s not OK,” Natalie corrects me. “Part of being a reporter is getting your facts straight,” she turns back to my father. “So I just wanted to . . . you know. Help you do that.”
Charlie snorts. My dad looks like his head is about to explode.
“As someone who actually works at the paper and is intimately familiar with how it runs, I just want to say how pleased we’ve all been to work with Justin, and how much the staff respects him.”
My father snorts. “You think being liked has anything to do with strong leadership?”
“Actually, yes.” Natalie replies defiantly. “His work ethic is incredible, and the staff appreciates it. They know he’s busting his ass trying to save the paper—to save the hundreds of people who actually depend on it for a living wage, to say nothing of everyone who gets their news from us every morning—but it’s like you don’t even give a damn about anything except your precious shareholders’ bottom line.” She’s getting riled up now, her cheeks flushed with anger—and looking sexy as hell. “Well, Justin’s right, some things are more important than profit,” she continues, glaring around the table. “We’re all lucky to have Justin at the helm instead of some penny-pinching, newspaper-killing, Daddy Warbucks impersonator like you!”