The Official Guide to Marrying Your Boss

by Doyle, Mae

  Which was, to say, a lot.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be shooting anything.” Although, honestly, a little spitball attack wouldn’t hurt Linda.

  But maybe that was her origin story. Maybe she’d been on the receiving end of too many spitballs when she was younger, and that was why she was so mean.

  “I’m supposed to be putting together this luncheon on Friday. Catering, decorations, the whole works.” Pausing, I took a bite of my burger, then moaned as the hot heat from the jalapeños and fire sauce spread across my tongue. “Do you know how hard it is to find a great caterer on a budget in this town?”

  She nodded. “What are you doing for decorations?”

  That had me stumped and I flipped open the notebook to where I’d been making some notes. “If it were spring or summer I’d just throw some flowers in a vase and call it a day, but I’m a little screwed when it comes to fresh flowers right now, and my budget is tiny. Like, microscopic.” I held up my finger and thumb, then squashed them together to make a point about how small my budget really was.

  We were silent for a moment, both chewing, then Tiffany’s eyes lit up. “Little Christmas trees? They could be party favors that you raffle off at the event.”

  “That’s cute,” I agreed, but it’s not exactly a place that screams Christmas cheer, you know what I mean? Besides, it’s only November, so something a little more Thanksgivingy might be better.”

  “Turkeys?”

  “Fall flowers.”

  “Mini pumpkins.”

  I opened my mouth to retort, but snapped it shut. “Mini pumpkins are cute. I could grab some fall leaves garland and lay it down the center of the table then have pumpkins for everyone to take. It would work perfectly if I could get some pumpkin pie or pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” Tiffany said around a mouthful of burger. “What’s the main course?”

  “Not sure yet. Roast? Stew? Stew. Most definitely stew, with fresh bread. I’m sure that this place bakes, too, even though they don’t have it on their website.” Even though I was in the middle of a great meal, I felt myself getting hungry.

  “Sounds good,” she agreed, wiping her mouth with her napkin.

  See? Napkins. A real restaurant for real adults has napkins.

  “It does, thanks.” I flashed her a grin then looked at my phone to see the time. “Oh, crap. I have like five minutes to get back or I’m sure that Linda will have a hernia.”

  “Is that such a bad thing? The pain meds might help her relax some.” Tiffany winked at me when I glared at her. “You go, this is my treat.”

  “Nuh uh, not a chance.” Hurriedly, I pulled a wad of money from my pocket and dropped $30 on the table. “You just let me take you out for the first time ever, so thanks.”

  I owed her. I owed her so much and $30 wasn’t going to begin to cover it, but at least it made me feel a bit better about being her unwanted roommate. It wasn’t that she’d ever said anything about it, but I could tell.

  You don’t get a one bedroom townhouse and then hope that your best friend moves in for three months.

  “Just keep your chin up, okay? Don’t let Linda get you down. Be a Jedi, not a stormtrooper.” She grinned at me and then flapped her hand at me to make me leave. “Go wow them with your menu and decorations. I honestly can’t imagine any complaints that they could have.”

  “You’re the best,” I told her, leaning down to give her a quick hug. “I’ll see you at home, and then, when I get my first paycheck, do you know what I’m doing?”

  “Moving out.”

  I grinned at her, not even hurt by her being excited for me to go. Honestly, I was excited to be getting out of her hair and into a place with a real bed, not with a sofa that sometimes threw a spring straight into my lower back.

  “You got it. So if you know any good real estate agents who wouldn’t mind helping me find an apartment, that would be great. Otherwise, I’m sure that I can look one up in my downtime between working on decorations and making calls to follow up with the caterer.”

  She bundled up her napkin and threw it at me, hitting me square in the chest. “Get. Out. You’re going to be late!” She grabbed her napkin back and then her eyes dropped down my body. “Didn’t you have on tights when you left this morning?”

  “Bye!” I grabbed my things from the table and dashed for the door, grinning to myself as little snowflakes swirled around me as I walked down the sidewalk.

  Sure, I was freezing and I had a long afternoon locked up in my little office to look forward to, but at least I had a plan coming together for Friday.

  I’d met Dr. Marshall and not melted into a puddle of goo at his feet, although I wasn’t negating the possibility of it happening when we met again.

  Linda…well, I’d deal with Linda.

  But, even with her to deal with, everything was going smoothly and I didn’t see a single reason why Friday wouldn’t be just as awesome.

  Chapter 5

  My big mistake was calling the local farmer’s market to order mini pumpkins and not walking down there myself to pick them out.

  If I’d done that instead of being lazy and thinking that it would save me time, not only would I have been able to choose the colors I wanted, because apparently mini pumpkins come in a variety of colors, but I would have gotten the correct amount.

  “Tell me again how many you ordered,” Tiffany demanded. She was sitting across from me on the floor, her glasses perched on her head. We both had on our pjs and were prepared for a nice evening of finalizing my pumpkin centerpieces, but then everything went south.

  “I ordered twenty,” I told her. “But I didn’t realize that they came in bags of five. Who sells mini pumpkins in bags of five?”

  “Local farmers who think that everyone is as excited as they are about the holidays?” Tiffany offered, ripping open the last of the bags and tipping it over so that five pumpkins fell out onto the carpet. “They are cute, though.”

  “Cute doesn’t really negate the fact that I have one hundred pumpkins. One. Hundred. Tiffany, this can’t get any worse. I blew my budget on them because they were way more than I thought they’d be and now I can’t afford the leaf garland like I wanted.”

  “You could stack them,” she suggested, putting three into a pile.

  “They look like you’re making a pumpkin snowman,” I told her, pushing them over. At least the snow from earlier in the week had melted, or I wouldn’t have been able to pick up the pumpkins at all. “I’ll probably put one at each place setting and then scatter the rest around the food table. That could look nice.”

  “It’ll be perfect,” Tiffany said, leaning over to pour a little more wine into my glass. I stopped her and took a sip. “No more?”

  “I need to be clear headed. The last thing I want is to draw penises on the pumpkins or something instead of writing the guests’ names. You know I get artistic and have the humor of a thirteen year old boy when I drink. Will you hand me the sharpie?” I pointed at it and held out my hand, but before she dropped it into my palm, my phone rang.

  I’d left it over by the sofa and I crawled over to it, flipping it over to see who it was.

  “Oh, no.” I recognized the number only because I’d called it so many times in the past week. Taking a deep breath, I swiped the screen to answer. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Katie, it’s Alexis Smith at Nu Wave Catering. How are you?”

  Well, I was fine, up until the moment that fear wrapped its icy fingers around my heart when I saw her number on my phone. It was 6 pm on the day before the big event, and there wasn’t any good reason for her to be calling me.

  “Great,” I said, smiling even though I felt a little nervous. “How are you doing? Just touching base for tomorrow?”

  She was silent and I pulled the phone from my ear and checked the screen to make sure that the call hadn’t been disconnected. We were still connected, the timer on the screen slowly counting up the seconds. />
  “Hello? You there, Alexis?”

  “Hey, yes, sorry. Um, I’m calling about tomorrow. I promise, this has never happened before, and I don’t want to do it, but I have to cancel.”

  The icy fingers that were gripping my heart? They switched position to grab hold of my entire body and squeeze. I felt my breath catch in my throat and my vision started to go blurry. I felt like I had skiing the first time when I was younger.

  Somehow, I totally missed the memo of putting the tips of your skis together when you wanted to slow down, and had jerked solidly to the side in panic when I thought I was going too fast.

  Apparently, I wasn’t, but I was going fast enough to tip over into the snow and roll down the hill, slowly wrapping myself in what felt like five inches of snow. It was freezing and terrible, and nothing compared to what was happening now.

  “You what?” My mouth felt like I’d be sucking on cotton and I swallowed hard, trying to keep from passing out. Dry mouth could do that to you, right? Make you pass out?

  I didn’t want to risk it. My wine glass was almost empty, with just a little in the bottom that was probably mostly backwash by now, so I crawled back to where I’d been sitting, grabbed Tiffany’s glass, and took a huge sip.

  Then another.

  “I’m so sorry, Katie, I really am! This hasn’t ever happened before, but Mark is really sick and he’s going to have to have emergency surgery tonight. I can’t just leave him at the hospital all by himself.” She sounded on the edge of panic, and I honestly couldn’t blame her.

  I’d never been married, but I knew that love made you do some crazy things, like give up meat if your spouse is vegetarian, or go bungee jumping, or, apparently, cancel the night before a huge catering job.

  “No, you can’t,” I heard myself say, but whether I meant that she couldn’t cancel on me or she couldn’t leave him at the hospital alone, I wasn’t sure.

  No, that’s a lie. I meant that she couldn’t cancel on me, but she obviously thought that I was a much better person than that.

  “I knew you’d understand! You know Mark, he said that we couldn’t leave you hanging, but I told him that it’s not everyday that your husband has surgery, and I wasn’t going to let him go through that on his own. Thank you, Katie.”

  “Um, you’re welcome?” This was a problem. I was falling back on the manners that my mom and grandmother had taught me when I was younger because I clearly didn’t know what else to say or do.

  Tiffany was staring at me with a mixture of concern and horror on her face, and I turned away from her, letting my hair fall between us like a red curtain of shame. I didn’t want anyone to witness me falling apart, and that was what was about to happen.

  “But I don’t want to leave you totally hanging, so here’s what we’ll do, okay? I have all of the ingredients for the stew and the bread is rising overnight to bake tomorrow. If you give me your address, we’ll drop it by on the way to this hospital.”

  “You want me to cook the stew?”

  She suddenly sounded uncertain. “I thought, since we had the ingredients already, you wouldn’t want them to go to waste?”

  “I don’t, thanks.” There was silence for a moment while we both tried to figure the other person out. Was she really serious? No, I didn’t want the food to go to waste, but I also didn’t want to try to deal with it myself.

  I wanted — no, I needed — her to do the cooking.

  “Okay, great! Text me your address and we’ll be right there, okay? Thanks again for understanding, Katie, you’re an absolute gem!” She hung up, the silence almost painful in my ears.

  I dropped my phone into my lap and turned to look at my best friend. I could see her sitting there, but I couldn’t form any words to try to tell her what I was going through.

  Shock. I was pretty sure that this is what people called being in shock.

  I was in shock.

  “Don’t even tell me that you’re cooking for your boss’ huge party tomorrow.” Tiffany grabbed my arm, making me look at her. “In what alternate dimension is this a good idea?”

  “It’s not. It’s totally not, Tiffany, I am so screwed,” I told her, leaning over to grab the wine. Instead of pouring any in a glass, I tipped the bottle to my lips and took a long pull on it. “I can’t cook.”

  That was an understatement. I was a notoriously terrible cook, but then again, so was Tiffany. It was why all of the local restaurants knew us by name when we walked in and how we’d gotten along so far with such a small kitchen.

  I’m not saying that the oven was used for storage, but the oven was used for storage. Tiffany had put a bunch of vases and a huge serving bowl in it once when she was having a guy over, and none of it had ever made it back out.

  “What are you going to do?” Her voice sounded slightly awed, like she was half-hoping that she was going to witness a miracle. Unfortunately for her, there wasn’t going to be any stigmata in the townhouse, just burned stew.

  “I’m going to text Alexis and let her know where to drop off the ingredients, then I’m going to clean out the oven and clean off the stove.” I held up my fingers, ticking my tasks off one by one as I spoke. “Then I’m going to find an apron if we have one, drink a little more wine, ask you to write the names on the pumpkins, and I’m making stew.”

  “Why do I have to do the names?”

  “Your handwriting is better than mine and I was going to ask you anyway, but now I’m pulling the best friend guilt trip card so you have to help me,” I told her, firing off a text to Alexis. That done, I stood up, tossed her the sharpie, and grabbed the bottle of wine before heading off to the kitchen.

  “You’re serious about me writing the names?”

  “No penises!” I called back. “Not a single one! Not even on that one unfortunate looking pumpkin, okay? I’m taking them all with me to work and it’s a no penises allowed party.”

  She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like that’s the worst kind of party, but I ignored her and stalked into the kitchen.

  I could do this.

  It couldn’t be much harder than boiling water, right?

  Chapter 6

  The kitchen counters were covered with food.

  Well, not food food. I’d argue, and I was pretty sure that Tiffany would agree with me, that they were ingredients. Food was something that you could eat without having to do anything to it.

  All of this stuff? Things had to be done to it before it could be eaten.

  There were huge packages of stew meat stacked in the sink so they didn’t drip meat juice on the counter or the floor, giant carrots with leafy tops and tiny roots growing out of them by the stove, and potatoes that still — and I’m deadly serious when I say this — had dirt clinging to the skins.

  “You, my friend, are going to need more wine,” Tiffany said, looping her arm around my waist. I leaned against her, closing my eyes and trying to pretend for just a moment that it didn’t look like a farmer’s market had just thrown up in our kitchen.

  “I don’t think that wine is going to help,” I told her, then forced myself to walk over to the counter. Alexis had dropped off her recipes, which I was sure was supposed to be helpful, but only gave me the hives. “I can’t very well make a pumpkin mousse with a toasted cinnamon spice graham cracker crumble if I’m drunk, can I?”

  “Can you make one sober?”

  I shot her a look. “I am so good. You just watch. I got this.” Turning around, I stepped up on tip-toes to grab the largest pot that we had for the stew. It didn’t look big enough to make all twenty servings in it at once, so I pulled down another, then another, just to be safe.

  “You’re going to dirty every single dish and utensil in here, aren’t you?” Tiffany asked, but she began to rummage through a drawer for some wooden spoons for me.

  “There’s a first time for everything. Okay. First we have to heat up the pan, melt some butter, and brown the meat.” I said it with confidence to try to make it sound lik
e I knew what I was doing.

  When, in fact, I did not.

  “Brown it?” Tiffany wrinkled her nose as she watched me turn on three burners, put butter in the pots, and then poke at it with the spoon. “What does that mean?”

  “You know, brown it.” I grabbed a packet of meat and pulled the plastic back before walking it over to the stove. “I just have to…brown it.”

  “Brown it.” She gave a little nod, then pulled her phone from her pocket and started tapping away at the screen. “Okay. You want to put some meat in the pot but don’t crowd it or the meat will steam and not brown.”

  “Gross.”

  “Yeah. Then let it get a bit of a brown crust on it and flip it so that it can do the same on the other side. Remove to a plate to rest while you finish browning the meat.”

  Okay. Maybe we weren’t going to need all three pots, but they were hot and had melted butter in them, so I felt committed. “Watch me go,” I said, grabbing a piece of meat with my tongs and dropping it into the first pan.

  It sizzled immediately on contact and I yelped, jumping back as molten drops of butter flew at me like tiny missiles.

  “Don’t drop the meat!” Tiffany cried, grabbing it from my hands and pulling it away from me. Bits of raw juice swung out from the package in an arc, splattering all the way across the oven door like a Jackson Pollock painting.

  “I wasn’t going to drop it!” I cried, grabbing my wrist where the hot grease had hit me. “I promise.”

  “You were dropping it,” Tiffany said, gingerly holding it back out to me. “You keep browning. I’ll clean up the crime scene.”

  I took the meat from her, holding the package more firmly this time, then dropped a few pieces into each of the pots. As they browned, I put the pack back in the sink, then poked at them until it was time to flip them.

  To my surprise, the kitchen started to smell amazing. I’d always loved it when my mom had cooked when I was younger, but she worked a lot and didn’t do it very much. Her style of teaching me to survive in the kitchen had been to point me to the peanut butter and jelly and tell me not to drop the toaster in the sink.