The Bet: A Grumpy Boss Romance

Chapter 1

“You are, as always, a creature of habit.”

I looked up from the steak and potatoes dinner I had been enjoying in silence and couldn’t help but sigh at the woman standing over my table. Without even bothering to ask or wait for an invitation, she pulled out the chair opposite me and took a seat.

“I knew I’d find you here.”

I kept eating as I watched her. She knew I wasn’t pleased by the interruption, but she was also one of the few people at the firm who wasn’t fazed by my temper or irritation.

“How is that?” she asked, referring to my plate as she set her purse down. “I’ve only ever had their carbonara here, and it was quite underwhelming, to say the least. I came here with Paul, and he complained for two weeks afterward about how overpriced food always tasted so bad.”

I continued eating, and at my silence, she eventually cocked her head and looked at me.

“How mad are you that I interrupted your dinner and reflection time, which everyone knows never to interrupt you on?”

I reached for my glass of wine and took a long drink.

“Remind me again why I can’t fire you?” I asked, and she laughed out loud, her gentle voice ringing out across the room. There was a low constant buzz of others eating and making merry as well, so no one else paid her any mind.

“Because I’m your Human Resources Officer and your former teacher. I do my job wonderfully well, but you also can’t be disrespectful or dismissive of me like others because I was your favorite teacher.”

Sighing once again because she was absolutely right, I picked up the menu and handed it over to her.

“Order the seafood pasta. It’s much better than the carbonara.”

“Alright,” she said excitedly and slipped down her glasses. A few minutes later, the waiter was waved over, and she excitedly placed her order.

“This dinner is on you, right? You pay me well, but surely not enough to pay for this sort of place. I mean, I can, but what a waste. No plate of pasta should cost anything more than thirty dollars.”

This immensely amused me, and upon seeing this, she realized it as well and gave me a soft look.

“Alright, let’s talk about it,” she said, leaning back on the chair. “Four secretaries in two months? That”s problematic, and people are beginning to ask questions.”

”You”re making it seem like I raped them,” I replied. ”All I did was fire them for being so monumentally incompetent.”

”Yes, right, so you say, yet they all deny the mistake you claim they made.”

”So, you”re saying I”m lying?”

”I”m saying you truly preferred Mr. Connerty, and now that he”s retired and moved back to Poland, you”re not even trying to give anyone else a chance to replace him. I know he”s been your secretary and a paralegal for you for the last eight years, but you need to find someone else that you actually like, or at least learn to like one. You”re the biggest talent in the firm, and you need someone to manage your affairs for you; otherwise, the losses can cripple the entire company.”

”Thank you for repeating all the things that I wasn’t aware of,” I said, and she smiled.

“The girl today,” she said. “The one you fired. She said that she proofread the contract several times before sending it two days ago. As to why there was an extra zero missing, she has no idea how that could be possible, especially since you checked the document as well.”

”So, I”m at fault?” I asked, and she sighed. ”Or maybe the document itself omitted the zero all by itself?”

”I”m just saying that I know these mistakes are monumental, but rather than fire the staff, why don”t you scold them or something and give them another chance?”

”And you were told I hadn’t given them other chances?” I asked. ”If I didn”t want to give her a chance, she would have been fired from the first day,” I said. ”She didn’t tell you about the services bill she sent to the wrong client? We had to reduce Alchai Motor’s charge when they saw how much of a discount we gave to Maxwell House.”

”Yikes, you still remember that? It must have monumentally pissed you off.”

”I”m guessing she didn’t mention this when she came crying to you, did she? Tell me, how much incompetence should I bear before I kick them out? Should I wait till they make an error that costs the company millions? Just so that I can earn the reputation of being magnanimous and friendly?”

At this, she went quiet, and a waiter came over with her food. After smiling up at him and saying thank you, she picked up her cutlery and dove in. We both ate silently, and it was comfortable. Things were always comfortable between us, and I had always trusted her judgment of character; after all, it had been that astute judgment of character that had seen the potential in me and pushed for me not to be ignored and written off as a grad who was going absolutely nowhere apart from jail for all my blowups and the troubles I had caused in school. So far, as the firm had grown, she had also been able to recruit the best talent, but so far, all the secretaries sent over to replace the now-empty seat in front of my office had been a catastrophe.

”I”m here because we have to send someone over tomorrow, but I really don”t want you to also send this person away. Can you be a little more lenient if they make mistakes?”

”I”ll forever be lenient if the mistakes they make are small mistakes,” I replied. ”If there are huge ones that could potentially harm the firm and my business, I will indeed lose my shit.”

She smiled again, shaking her head, and returned to her meal. It was then I looked out through the window at the busy Manhattan late evening sidewalk and saw her. She was just getting out of the taxi, and the first thing that caught my eye was the glistening skin of her legs. Coupled with the heels she had on, they were so long my attention was arrested long enough to see the face that those slender pair of limbs belonged to. And unsurprisingly, she was just as gorgeous as I had expected. Her hair was a dark gorgeous blonde and bouncy. The loose tendrils framed her face in a way that made me unable to look away, and when she smiled at the suited man who came up to her, then I found my breath catching in my throat. She was dressed gorgeously in a red skirt suit, and although it was as elegant as could be, especially now that she was standing straight and tall and the skirt shaped her hips and legs all the way past her knees, it was impossible to hide the gorgeous curve and appeal of her body.

The man who had come up to them held out his arms as though to embrace her, but instead, she stiffened her spine and offered her hand instead. He boldly brushed it away and instead pressed her into his chest. I saw the deep unhappiness and disgust on her face as a result. She didn’t like him immediately. True to form, she tried to pull away, and after she succeeded, she was tense. I watched as she moved toward the man in a pin-striped suit, and then they both watched the one who had forced the embrace as he spoke to them both.

I”d had enough business dealings to understand the situation, especially the man in the striped suit gesturing ahead with his hand. This was a business meeting, and she was either a partner or an employee, and the man in the striped suit was her boss. This was definitely not the first time they had met, judging by how she shifted closer to her boss; she was expecting him to protect her. However, he didn”t seem to even notice. As they walked, she tried her best to stay by her boss’s side on the extreme end, but the client soon mentioned something, no doubt complaining about this, and to her visible shock and annoyance, the boss moved and kept her right next to the client. He smiled at her like he was looking at a piece of meat that he was ready to devour, and then they all walked into the restaurant.

”Let me know exactly what you are looking for,” Gloria said just then. “Would you prefer a male secretary? But the second candidate was male, and he seemed to last even less than the other females.”

“That”s because women are emotionally intelligent enough to know when not to monumentally fuck up. Unlike that lanky moron.”

She smiled, and then she shook her head. “Alright, well, you need a replacement, and I”ll be looking externally now rather than internally. We’ve been sending people over from the temporary secretaries’ pool I had, but we’ll have to go back to the agency tonight to get someone that will suit you best, so give me your requirements now, and I can use it as a strict guide.”

“For one, I know they should, of course, not be an eyesore, like you have previously stated, but now I am beginning to think you want someone that somehow looks like those heiresses you dated, and when this expectation is not met, you eventually miraculously find a way to fire them in the weeks following.”

At her accusation, a very blatant one at that, I looked up and couldn’t help but feel wrongly accused.

“That”s not accurate,” I said. “I didn’t care what they looked like. I only cared how they performed.”

“I believe you, but in order for everyone else to believe it, at least pick someone with experience from this file and commit to trying to be patient with them for at least the next three months.”

“Gloria, I”m not committing to shit,” I told her. “Pick someone capable and send them to occupy that desk. They should be the ones vigilant and afraid of messing up, not me.”

At my words, she sighed and continued eating. “Will you at least look at the file? I came all the way here.”

“It”s fine, minutes from the office. I”m sure you needed the exercise.”

I rose to my feet then, and she laughed. “I can”t believe you”re still the same little boy from twenty years ago.”

“Creature of habit,” I said as I grabbed my phone and headed over to the bathroom with it in my hand.