The Official Guide to Marrying Your Boss

by Doyle, Mae

  The best thing for me to do was just to go to my office, clean everything out, and then head home. Well, not home. Tiffany’s place.

  Tears burned in my eyes as I realized that I was going to be on her sofa again for longer than I ever planned. Working here was supposed to be my way out, but now that I’d been forced to come clean, I didn’t see any reason why he would let me stay.

  The hallway to my office hadn’t ever seemed so long, and my handle felt cold under my hand. For just a moment I stood there, thinking about what might have been. What I might have done differently.

  How I could go back in time and make none of this happen.

  When I realized that there wasn’t anything for me to do, I started packing up. First I grabbed my purse and filled it with the cute pens and sticky notes I’d picked up to decorate. I’d leave my plant out in the main lobby just because there wasn’t any room for it at Tiffany’s place.

  My burner sat on my desk and I hesitated, holding it in my hand for a moment while I tried to decide what to do with it. There wasn’t any reason to hang onto it anymore, but it still felt silly to just throw it away.

  In the end, though, that was what I did, the loud thunk of it hitting the bottom of the trashcan making me flinch. I turned off the light in my office for the last time and shut the door behind me before lowly walking back down the hall.

  Linda heard me enter the main office and turned in her seat, a vicious smile on her face. “You come to give me your key?” She asked, and I hesitated.

  I’d wanted to give it directly to Nick just so I could look at him and talk to him one more time, but I didn’t see him. “Where’s Nick?” I asked, even as I walked up to her desk.

  She grinned at me. “Not in his office. Poor thing was so upset that you would lie to him and take advantage of him like that so he left to go on a walk. I’ll give him your key, though.” She held out her hand and I hesitated for just a moment, debating giving it to her or waiting around to see Nick.

  But then I realized that that was silly.

  There wasn’t any reason for me to do that. As much as I wanted to think that he wanted to see me, it was obvious that I’d really messed up this time. All of the things that I’d tried to do to change the fact that I’d lied to him didn’t matter.

  “Fine,” I grumbled, handing Linda my key. I made sure to drop it into her outstretched hand, not actually touch her. “Tell him I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head a little, like a disappointed parent, and I sighed, hoisting my purse higher on my shoulder and leaving the plant behind.

  They were all going to be dead in under a month, I could practically guarantee it. Linda either wouldn’t water them or would sabotage them, and then, before Christmas, Nick would have forgotten about me.

  Chapter 26

  Tiffany was too nice to say anything about it, but I had a pretty good feeling that I probably smelled really, really bad.

  I hadn’t moved off of her sofa since I lost my job, which was approximately forty-eight hours ago, and I had no intention of moving before Nick got so old that he completely forgot that I even existed.

  She brought me a sandwich and some water and stood over me like a warden in a prison. “You have to sit up if you’re going to eat anything, Katie,” she told me, then put the plate down just out of my reach.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, “but I’m never moving again and I’m just going to melt into your sofa, so forgive me.”

  “You’re so dramatic,” she told me, grabbing my legs and spinning me so that they flopped off of the sofa and I was kinda sorta sitting up. “It sucks, okay? I get it, but you’re never going to get another job or get over Nick if you just sit here moping.”

  “And melting,” I reminded her, leaning forward to grab the sandwich. It was peanut butter and marshmallow fluff, my absolute favorite, and the only thing that I had eaten since losing my job.

  That made about eight of those sandwiches since Friday, if you’re keeping track.

  “And melting,” she agreed before clapping her hand down on my thigh. “But you can’t stay here forever, you know that. Neither of us want that, and so you need to pull it together.”

  “That’s basically an impossible task.”

  “Nope. You did it after you got dumped a year ago. And, more impressively, you did it after your grandmother died. You and I both know that she wouldn’t want you melting on my sofa like this.”

  “You’re really playing the dead grandmother card?” I asked her around a bite of sandwich.

  “Sure am. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “Shower,” I said reluctantly. “Dye my hair again since I didn’t get a chance to last week. Maybe even shave my legs.”

  “Let’s not go overboard,” she teased, standing back up. “You want your phone so you can listen to music while you clean up?”

  “Only if it’s death metal or something super emo.”

  She grabbed my phone and swiped through it before turning on the music for Hamilton. “I haven’t heard you sing show tunes in days, Katie. Days. My neighbors probably think that you moved out.”

  “Or died,” I offered helpfully.

  “It does smell that way,” she agreed, then grabbed her keys from the table. “I’m headed out in a minute, but only after you can prove to me that by the time I get back you won’t still be stinky on the sofa.”

  “Really?” She didn’t move and I popped the last bite of my sandwich in my mouth before getting up, still holding my phone. Renée Goldsberry’s gorgeous voice serenaded me as I walked down the hall to the bathroom. “By the time you get back I’m going to be a brand new woman!” I shouted as I walked into the bathroom.

  She didn’t answer and I turned my phone up louder before starting the hot water. One of the great things about Tiffany’s apartment, aside from the fact that I got to live with my best friend, was that the water was hot almost instantly, and the bathroom quickly filled with steam.

  I stripped down and hopped in, enjoying the way the water seemed to burn through the thin layer of grime and grit that was on me to clean me off. My skin was going to be hot red by the time I was done, but at least I wouldn’t be so dirty anymore.

  My shampoo smelled like lavender and I popped the bottle open, taking a whiff. Because I wanted to dye my hair later, I knew that I had to clean it first. After squeezing a huge dollop out into my hands, I lathered up and rinsed two times before finally feeling like I was getting clean.

  Everything was going to be okay. I’d find another job, probably not with such great eye candy, but one with a solid paycheck, and I’d finally get my own place. Maybe someday in the future I’d meet someone I wanted to date, and then I’d be able to forget about Nick.

  When I was clean I turned off the shower and stepped out, wrapping a fluffy pink and orange towel around me. The song changed on the phone, and in the few seconds of silence between tracks, just as I was getting ready to grab a Q-Tip to clean out my ears, I heard a thunk in the condo.

  I froze.

  My heart started to beat faster and I didn’t move.

  Tiffany must have come back to the condo for something, I decided, and pulled the towel tighter around myself, hooking the tip of it into the top and tucking it under my armpit.

  “Tiffany?” I called out, then grabbed my phone to turn it off. As much as I loved Hamilton, it wasn’t going to help me deal with whatever was in the condo. Slowly I turned the handle on the door and opened it.

  “Hello?” I called out into the hall.

  Nothing.

  Crap. I was soaking wet, had a little cut on one knee from where I’d slipped while shaving, and someone was in the condo. The last thing that I needed to do was try to figure out who was in the condo, but that was exactly what was going to happen.

  I grabbed my hairdryer, yanking the cord from the wall, and held it over my head as a weapon. If it was an intruder or a robber I could at least try to hit them over the head with it and knock them out.


  That sounded like something I could totally do.

  “Who’s here?” I called again, inching my way down the hall. “You have to show yourself! I’m calling 911 right now!” The truth was that I’d forgotten my phone in the bathroom, but I wasn’t about to admit that to anyone, especially not someone who had broken in.

  “Katie?” A voice called back and I froze in my tracks.

  Nick? That made no sense.

  “Hello?” I walked a little faster down the hall, trying to ignore the excitement that was rising in me. There was a tiny chance that it was really Nick, but an ever bigger one that I was just hearing things.

  Auditory hallucinations, that’s what they were called. I didn’t know if they could occur because of stress or overeating marshmallow fluff, but I had a pretty good idea that that’s what was happening.

  Nick wasn’t in the condo.

  He had no way of getting into the condo.

  There wasn’t any reason for him to want to come to the condo in the first place.

  “Katie.” Nick turned the corner from the living room to the hall where I stood, his eyes widening a little when he saw me in the towel. “Oh, you’re not decent, I’m so sorry.”

  Those weren’t exactly the words that I wanted to hear from a man when he saw me wrapped in a towel, but I didn’t focus on that. Nick was here. Standing in front of me.

  “What are you doing here? And how did you even get in here?” Even though my towel hung almost to my knees, I still felt entirely naked in front of him and I wrapped it tighter around me. “Did I forget something at the office?”

  “I ran into Tiffany and she let me in. Listen, Katie, I needed to tell you something, so I just need you to promise that you’ll listen and not try to argue with me or talk over me, okay?” He looked so earnest, so honest and open that I felt my heart squeeze.

  Hearing from someone about how you had hurt them was always one of the worst experiences ever. I’d been on both the giving and the receiving end before, and it wasn’t something that I wanted to do right now.

  “What is it? Are you…pressing charges?” He paused for a moment, obviously thinking about what I had just said, and I grabbed the wall for support.

  This was it. I was going to jail for…well, something. I wasn’t entirely sure what, but it was happening.

  I could just imagine the headlines. And the mugshot of me with my washed out red hair. At least I showered and got one last shave in before I went somewhere where you weren’t allowed to have razors.

  “I keep wanting to text you,” he said, obviously oblivious to the mental turmoil I was in. “I have to stop myself over and over because it’s just foolish, isn’t it? To want to talk to you after everything?”

  “It’s stupid,” I agreed. “I can’t apologize enough, Nick. I just wanted everything to be perfect and then things started spiraling out of control. You were falling for Marie and kept texting her and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I was what?”

  “Falling for Marie.” I’d seen it coming but couldn’t do anything about it. It was obvious to me that he liked her or he wouldn’t have kept trying to get together with her. Then, when she ghosted him, he turned to me, but it was too late.

  I’d already started down my path of lies.

  “You don’t understand,” he said, but I shook my head. “It’s okay, Nick, I get it. I’m gone, don’t worry.”

  “But I don’t want you to be gone.” He closed the gap between us in a few long steps, reaching out and grabbing me by the waist so I couldn’t get away. “I kept reaching out to Marie because I thought that she could cater us a date and I Linda was hounding me about her not cashing that first check. I wanted to ask you out, Katie, but I never got the chance.”

  He..what?

  I had to admit, it sounded great, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I believed him. It wasn’t that he was a liar, exactly, but that it would be insane for someone like him to want someone well, like me.

  “You don’t want to date a liar,” I told him, and he chuckled.

  “I want to date you,” he said. “You with the red hair and the nose that’s not too big for kissing. You who obviously has a mild obsession with plants and most certainly doesn’t get along with my aunt.”

  “She does hate me,” I agreed, and he nodded.

  “She really does, but that’s only because she and Sara got along so well, so nobody will ever be good enough for me in her eyes. But I don’t care what she things, or what we’ve been through. You make me laugh, Katie, which is something I haven’t done in a while.”

  I thought about shopping with him and going to the coffee shop. I thought about how it had felt to kiss him and when he’d taken such good care of me after I got burned.

  I looked up at Nick and knew that he was all I had ever wanted.

  I knew that I couldn’t ever walk away from him without hating myself for giving up on the chance that we could have had something.

  “Do you forgive me? I lied about Tasty Foods. I had Tiffany’s poor intern make a fake website for me. When I got the burner phone at the bodega, the man assumed that I was a drug dealer and tried to sell me pot!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Did you buy any?”

  “No!” I screeched, smacking him hard on the arm. “Of course not. I was just there for a burner phone and that was only because you wanted to be able to handle out Marie’s number to people.”

  “And because I wanted her to cater for us,” he pointed out.

  “Wait. Do you not cook?”

  Nick sighed and ran a hand through his hair before grinning at me. “I find that I have so many other things to do that cooking falls by the wayside. I’d rather fly to Italy and have some pizza there, for instance.”

  I didn’t want to smile at that, but I did. “You do know how spoiled you are, right? Not everyone can just pick up and fly to Italy when they’re hungry.”

  “I feel for them,” he said, putting one hand on his heart. “But then again, I feel for them for a number of reasons.”

  “Why else?” My heart pounded in my chest. The entire time we talked, I couldn’t get over the fact that he and I were so close together. We were practically touching, with just his button-up shirt and my fluffy towel separating us.

  Before he spoke, Nick reached out and lightly cupped my cheek. I turned my head into his touch, enjoying the feeling of his soft fingers on my skin.

  “I feel bad for them, Katie,” he said, and my core thrummed at how husky his voice suddenly sounded, “because they will never get to know you.”

  “What?”

  He moved closer. There wasn’t any space between us now, and I knew that if I leaned forward just a bit I would be pressed up against him. Every cell of my body screamed for me to close the gap between us, but I was frozen still.

  “You, Katie. I feel for all of the poor saps in the world who will never see you dance in the office when you don’t think anyone sees you or text you in the middle of the night from around the world because they just can’t handle not getting to talk to you in person. I feel for everyone who doesn’t get to see how you turned my office into a huge greenhouse. I hate that some people will never get to see you with a bit of whipped cream on the end of your cute little nose.”

  My heart pounded in my chest, but the fact that he’d paused for a minute made me wonder if I was supposed to say something. I cleared my throat. “Is that all?”

  He laughed and brushed my wet hair back. “I hate that they won’t get to kiss you and love you, but at the same time, I’m so glad that I’m the one who does.”

  “Who does what? Who gets to kiss me?” My head was spinning and I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience where I could see everything that was happening to me but none of it made sense.

  In response, Nick kissed me, his lips lingering just for a moment on mine. I’d wondered if the electrical charge that I’d felt before when we kissed was a fluke, but it whipped through me again,
settling low in my core.

  Nope. Definitely not a fluke. I could get used to that.

  “Not just that, but the people who don’t get to love you, Katie.”

  I shook my head. None of this made sense, even though I would have been willing to do anything to hear him say that to me. “I don’t understand.”

  “You, Katie. You make me feel alive. You swept into my life like a hurricane and turned everything upside down and I’ve never been happier.”

  My jaw dropped open and he took a step back. “Of course, I understand if you don’t feel the same way.”

  He was kidding, right? He had to be kidding.

  “You want to be with me?” I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice.

  “I do.”

  “Even though I’m a mess?”

  I thought for sure that that would make him run for it, but he just nodded and kissed me again, a little harder this time. I didn’t want him to stop, but I planted both of my hands on his chest and pushed him back.

  Oh, my. He had muscles on muscles, and I had to shake my head to concentrate.

  “Even though you’re a mess. Even though you almost killed my aunt with cinnamon, gave yourself serious burns with hot chocolate, and almost got crushed to death by my ex.”

  “She came at me,” I said in defense, and he laughed.

  “I’ve been missing something in my life Katie, and after years of searching all over the world and hoping to find it, I finally did.”

  “What have you been missing?” I had a feeling that I knew what he was going to say. All he had to do was say it and I would be his. It didn’t matter what we’d gone through.

  And then he said it.

  “You. Katie Marie, you are the biggest mess I’ve ever met and you make me so happy. You are what I’ve been missing.”

  Thank you!

  Thanks so much for reading! I hope that you enjoyed spending a little time with my lovely characters. If you’d like to stay in touch and want to know when I release new books, then please join my newsletter! I promise I won’t spam you – I’d rather be writing.