Mostly MyBoss

by Doyle, S.

  Mostly MyBoss

  S. Doyle

  Copyright © 2019 by S. Doyle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Mostly My Girlfriend

  Also by S. Doyle

  Foreword

  Okay so boss/secretary stories have always been my favorite. And one of my favorite couples of all time has been Josh and Donna from the West Wing. (I know I’m dating myself. It’s an old show, but it’s on Netflix so it counts.)

  I waited for years for them to finally get together. And eventually I got my happy ending. So this book is for them. And if you know them like I do, you’ll find all the winks and nods to them throughout the story.

  If you don’t know them…then just enjoy Ethan and Julia. They can be sooooo frustrating. But I still loved them both.

  1

  Now

  Therapy

  Julia

  The office smelled like lavender. A diffuser no doubt. Something that might put the occupants at ease without their even realizing that was happening. I was not fooled. He wasn’t here yet. Typical. So I took a seat as the older woman—late fifties, early sixties maybe, perfectly dressed complete with hair and makeup—sat in a comfortable chair across from mine. I knew her name was Carol.

  I appreciated the clean esthetic of the office. A desk and a computer behind her. Three comfortable but sturdy leather chairs situated in the center of the room. A bookshelf filled with books but no knickknacks to make the room feel cluttered.

  “Can I get you coffee? Tea? Water?” the woman asked as she directed her gaze to a small area designated for that purpose: a mini fridge, a counter with a coffeepot and kettle.

  I was about to decline when she started rattling off her tea menu.

  “The vanilla orchid sounds delicious,” I said with a tight smile.

  Prepping the tea would give her something to do while we waited. A way to cover for the fact that Ethan was late. Which wasn’t my responsibility anymore. No more making sure he was on time for things. So no reason for me to feel antsy, which is what I’d always felt when Ethan was late, and it was my responsibility to get him someplace.

  Not my responsibility anymore.

  A few minutes later she came back with a large white mug filled with steaming tea. She sat again and I took a second to admire her outfit. A blouse that I knew had cost more than a hundred dollars. Pants that were tailored to her exact height, which was tall for a woman. A pair of unassuming nude pumps that I recognized as Jimmy Choo’s work.

  She wore no ring on her left hand. Was that a purposeful choice to put her clients at ease? After all, no one in this predicament wanted to be faced with the icon of a perfect relationship sitting directly across them. It would only ratchet up the tension and highlight the deficiencies of the dubious couple in question.

  “I should tell you,” I began, “before he gets here, that we probably have different agendas for this meeting.”

  Carol’s eyebrow rose. “You understand this isn’t a business meeting.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying not to think too hard about what I was doing here. I mean, I knew what I was doing here. These were Ethan’s terms and I agreed to them. This was the price of getting free. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m only doing this because he’s insisting.”

  The door opened in a rush and I turned to take him in. He was still sporting the scruff around his jaw. His clothes were wrinkled and disheveled, as if he’d hastily tucked his button-down into the jeans but hadn’t quite managed to tuck it in all the way around.

  I shook my head in dismay, wondering if he’d slept in those same clothes last night. On the heels of that thought, I wondered who he might have been with.

  Not that it was any of my business.

  One hour. I could do this for exactly one hour.

  “Sorry,” he announced to both of us.

  Thinking on it, that’s how he started almost all his conversations with me. With an apology. I might have been tempted to feel sorry for him if:

  a) I wasn’t SO so over him,

  b) he wasn’t usually right to be apologizing.

  He took a seat next to me and Carol smiled at him.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked him. “Coffee—”

  “No, thank you,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I really want to get started.”

  “If that was the case, then you wouldn’t have been late,” I pointed out.

  I winced. Wow, that sounded bitchy. Passive–aggressive. Mean. Cold. And bitchy. When had I become that person? One more thing to blame on Ethan. Forcing me to become the worst version of myself.

  “You’re right. Sorry. There was a reason…I’ll explain later. Anyway, I’m here now.”

  There was always a reason with Ethan. This time I managed to hold my tongue.

  “Well then, let’s begin, shall we?” Carol said. “Obviously you both know who I am as I come to you recommended by a mutual friend, Daniel. But for the purposes of introductions, I’m Dr. Carol Longmire. I can list all my credentials for you, but that would be boring. Enough to say I’ve spent the past ten years focused exclusively on couples therapy. Obviously I’ve heard and read quite a lot about you both, but I hadn’t realized you were married.”

  “Oh, we’re not married.” I snorted. “Did Daniel tell you that we were?”

  “No, I suppose I just assumed that beyond the corporate relationship there was a personal relationship.”

  “There is,” Ethan said. “We’ve been together…in some way…for over twelve years. Since our freshman year in college. That’s personal. That’s a relationship. That’s why I said we needed counseling.”

  Carol turned her attention to me while I focused on my tea. “And you, Julia? Would you call what you have with Ethan a personal relationship?”

  “I’d call it something,” I quipped as I sipped my tea.

  “That’s her defense mechanism,” Ethan pointed out. “She uses sarcasm like a sword to keep the hordes at bay. You just have to see through it.”

  I sniffed. Okay, maybe I did a little. But hordes? Really? That was being overly dramatic.

  “Ethan, Julia said she thinks you both have separate agendas today. It’s probably important for me to know what both of those are.”

  “I want to fix what I broke,” Ethan said.

  I shook my head. He couldn’t. There was no going back. Didn’t he see that?

  “I just want out,” I said. Out of my job, away from Ethan. To be someplace where I wouldn’t hurt so damn bad.

  “Jules,” Ethan muttered, and I could hear the desperation in his voice, but I couldn’t let it touch me. If I did, it would be too easy to crumble, too easy to cave.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened, then?” Carol said. “What broke you?”

  I looked at Ethan and his expression was desolate.

  “It’s simple,” I said. “I quit.”

  * * *

  One week earlier

  The Seattle office

  Julia

  “You can pull over here, Sean,” I directed our company driver.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to try and get closer?” he asked. “It’s
raining.”

  “It’s always raining in Seattle. I won’t melt. Thanks for picking me up.” I opened the car door. Having a driver on call was definitely a luxury I was going to miss.

  “Am I waiting for you?”

  I shook my head. After I did what I was going to do, I would no longer be entitled to the service. Sean worked for Phoenix, after all.

  “Thanks for everything, Sean. Truly.”

  “No problem, Julia. See you tomorrow.”

  I didn’t correct him. Instead, I shut the door behind me and wrapped my raincoat more tightly around me.

  My assistant, Jordyn, had been the one to call me. To tell me that the light was on in the penthouse office.

  Only Ethan and I had access to that floor and I hadn’t set foot up there since he left for Japan.

  Which meant only one thing. He was back.

  I walked inside the building and stopped when confronted with all the images in the lobby. The jet planes, the pictures of nurses and doctors, our logo, which was now seen around the world as representing one of the most transformative companies of the twenty-first century.

  This was Ethan Moss.

  And this had been me too. But I couldn’t do it. Not anymore.

  I took the glass elevator up the fifteen floors to the top and used my access key to open the doors. The entire office was open with floor to ceiling glass windows. Built entirely to Ethan’s specifications.

  My office, similarly constructed, was the floor below his.

  Jordyn had been right. The lights were on. And I was right about what that meant. Ethan sat with his back to me behind the massive desk that was still too small for the space.

  He had a private bathroom on the other side of the floor and it looked like he’d recently showered—as I got closer I could see his hair was wet. But it was still the burnished brown color that sometimes looked redder in the sun.

  Of course he’d heard the elevator doors open. Of course he knew it was me.

  He swung his chair around and I caught my breath. He was leaner than usual, the angles of his face more sharply defined. Scruff covered his jaw and…

  “Your eyebrows need to be trimmed,” I said.

  He ran his hand over his face and sighed.

  “Jules…” he started and then stopped. As if he didn’t have the words.

  The sound washed over me and I shivered.

  Then I looked at him more closely. The lines of his face were severe and his eyes, always so sharp, so laser focused, told the story of the brilliant brain behind them. They were red, likely because he’d just gotten off the plane after a twelve-hour flight.

  He was exhausted. Or grief-stricken. It was hard to tell.

  “I know I owe you an explanation,” he began. “I wrote to you. Did you get any of my letters? I tried to tell you…but you didn’t write back. You always used to write back.”

  I pulled the envelope from an inside pocket of my jacket. The one I’d typed up the day after he left three months ago. When I knew that I couldn’t go on living this life. With him. Without him.

  I set it down on this desk and slid it toward him.

  “Don’t do this, Jules,” he said obviously understanding my intent. That was the thing about us.

  We always got each other.

  “Jules…”

  “Read it,” I told him.

  “Did you get my letters?” he asked me instead.

  I had gotten them. But I hadn’t read them. Not a single one. Because receiving those letters, holding them in my hand, I’d realized something important about myself.

  I was an addict. Addicted to something that wasn’t healthy for me. And the only way to break an addiction was to quit it.

  Those letters were the unopened bottle of whiskey I wouldn’t drink.

  “Please, Ethan. Let’s try to end this without a lot of drama…”

  He shook his head and pushed the letter away. “So you’re quitting? That’s your solution to this problem?”

  “Effective immediately. I’ve prepared Jordyn. I knew I had to stay until you came back, but once you did…well, you’re here so I can leave. She’ll have the status of everything I was working on and will be able to get you up to speed fairly quickly.”

  “Jules, you can’t quit.”

  Yes. I could. I could quit him and get free.

  “Goodbye, Ethan.” I heard my voice crack as I said it. Had I thought this was going to be easy? I should have known it wouldn’t be. I turned to leave but he was up in an instant. Moving around me to stop me.

  “Get out of my way, Ethan.”

  “I can’t let you do this.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” I told him. “It’s done.”

  “No!” he shouted. Then he clearly reached for control of his temper. He took a few breaths. “You have to give me one chance. Once chance to fix this.”

  That was something, I thought. That he was acknowledging he broke us. But it wasn’t all his fault. I was equally to blame really. After all, I was the addict. Not him.

  “Ethan,” I said, reaching for every ounce of calm reasonableness left inside me. “Please let me do this. Please just let me go.”

  He shook his head. “No. I screwed up, but I can fix this. You promised me. You promised me twelve years ago that when I did the thing that would fuck us up, you would forgive me. You promised me that. All I want is one chance.”

  I closed my eyes. “A chance to do what? What are you going to say? Or do? You left, Ethan. You’ve been gone for three months. Anything you could have said or done… now it’s too late.”

  “No.”

  I puffed out a sound. Half laugh, half exasperation. “You’re not a king, Ethan. You don’t get to decree something and simply make it so. And now you’re not even my boss. Please step aside and let’s just do this. End this. End us. Once and for all.”

  His mouth got tight and I knew his brain was racing. Looking for angles and areas of weakness in me he might exploit. Things he could use against me to bend me to his will. I had to be strong.

  “Okay,” he relented. “I’ll let you go. Under one condition.”

  “I don’t have to give you any conditions,” I told him.

  “Twelve goddamn years, Jules!” he railed. “That’s how long we’ve been us. So yes, you owe me a fucking CONDITION!”

  “What is it?” In the long run it would be easier to give in to what he thought might put us back to the way were. Except I knew that nothing would work. Because I was determined to get clean of Ethan Moss. And then, once I’d done that, then I could look forward to what came next.

  “I’ve been thinking about this. A lot. For three months to be precise. Let’s talk to someone. We…we can’t…we don’t say…sometimes the things we need to say. If we had help…”

  “Help?”

  “A therapist. Someone who could listen to both us. Help us work through some of this shit. One hour. That’s all I’m asking.”

  One hour. With a therapist. Yeah, that wasn’t going to change anything. But maybe it would help. Maybe we could talk it all out and find some kind of closure. Like easing away from the thing that you were addicted to in gradual steps instead of quitting cold turkey.

  “Fine,” I agreed. “You’ve got your one hour.”

  2

  Therapy

  Julia

  “It’s not even close to being as simple as her quitting,” Ethan said to Carol. “Jules and I have an unusual relationship. One that, I will point out, has been fine for the last twelve years. One fuck-up shouldn’t destroy that.”

  That was so typical of him. To think that because things were fine for him everything else was fine, too. I’d agreed to this hour as a way to help me get closure. Maybe the only way to do that was through the truth.

  “It’s not one fuck-up, Ethan! It’s a thousand fuck-ups. And maybe what you think is fine, I think is messed up. You used me!”

  “Have you ever told him that before?” Carol asked me.


  “I might have,” I said petulantly. “If he hadn’t left me.”

  I winced again even as his whole body got tight. My words were like a knife I could use to stab him. You left me. You left me. Jab. Jab. Jab.

  It was a total bitch move. I wanted to choke on it because I knew he was still in so much pain. But I couldn’t stop.

  “You seem upset by what you said, Julia,” Carol pointed out.

  “It was mean,” I admitted. “And bitchy. I’ve been nothing but mean and bitchy to him since he came back, and I hate it. Hate how it makes me sound.”

  There. That was honest.

  She nodded. “And why is that, do you think? Why have you been mean to Ethan?”

  I blinked and something snapped inside my head. “BECAUSE I’M SO FUCKING PISSED AT HIM!”

  I’d shouted it so loudly there was no doubt anyone in the lobby of her office suite would havehad heard it. My tea sloshed over the rim of the cup and I was grateful for the sting of hot water on my hand to help keep me focused. I set the tea on the end table next to my chair and folded my hands together in my lap as if I hadn’t just shouted at the top of my lungs.

  “Ethan,” Carol said, turning her attention to him. “Does this anger make sense to you?”

  “Yeah. Yes. It does. I’ve been pissing Julia off for years. Since we met, actually, so it doesn’t surprise me. But we…we can’t really talk about it. With each other. That’s why I thought we should try this.”

  “Anger implies feelings and emotions. Deep anger naturally means deeper emotions. So let’s talk about that. Ethan, you say you want to fix things. Do you mean your working relationship with Julia? Are you hoping that this counseling will end with her working for you again?”