Touch Me Boss: A Single Dad Office Romance

by Aria Ford

  “Bro.” Tom stretched the syllable, fist cupping his mouth over a barking laugh. “Crazy mad that they do that mail-order wife thing,” and throwing his hands up, he laughs again. “Serious-stuff, man, I didn’t know they’d be serious. Next thing I know I got this girl knocking on my doorstep. Olive-something.”

  It’s Ofélia. Not Olivia, not Olive – Ofélia!

  “She wasn’t at all what she described herself as, either. Way shorter and way fatter than I thought. Trust me when I said I learned my lesson.”

  In an effort to not chuck his phone off the balcony, Atlas asked, “This prank cost you, what, ten thousand, eleven, twelve grand?”

  Tom shrugged. “I’m going to answer, but it’s not on my minutes.”

  Well, then Atlas would have to make it short.

  “Answer the question, Tom, and while you’re at it, did you ever wonder why this woman would be doing what she did? Did you ever ask her?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because she’s looking for her missing brother, idiot,” there he said it and he wasn’t done. “Her college-aged brother went missing in the city and she’s been freaking out, as is normal. She needed the money to do the search herself.”

  “Okay, sad story, and I spent around fourteen-something,” Tom didn’t even blink. “But I never really cared for math. You’d know that if you actually listened to me, bro.”

  Was he really playing the sympathy card?

  “So, you bang that bodacious chick?”

  Really?

  “Her name is Ofélia, and no, I didn’t and will never bang her. Understand? Drop. It.”

  Atlas took a long breath, eyes raised to the heavens. He wasn’t a praying man but he was asking for a little intervention here. Namely the static-y kind that would kill this call dead –

  “Two minutes,” Atlas instead reminded him. He was a man of his word, though he regretted it, like he was starting to re-think ever coming here with Ofélia.

  But his baby brother used the two minutes well, all his questions bringing the conversation back to Ofélia. Atlas called time, cutting him off and canceled the call on Tom mid-question.

  “Idiot.” He placed the phone aside and stood, taking to the edge of the balcony, palms straightening over the warmed white stone. “Idiot,” he mumbled again, his eyes unseeing of the beauty in front of him.

  A sound behind pulled him to the present.

  “Ofélia?”

  She waved, appearing a bit tense. He met her in the shade of their room, his eyes adjusting from the sunlit balcony. Atlas appraised the bags in her hands, labels, some of which he recognized and others that had to be local labels in Ensenada and Mexico in general.

  “Did you just get in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here,” he alleviated her of the bags, getting a bit of protest that clenched his jaw. What was up with her?

  First this morning, then de-railing their day plans by making a prior engagement with Agata, and now this – he couldn’t understand her. Maybe Tom had had a point with that comment about women.

  Bags settled down on the side of the bed, Atlas faced her fiddling fingers, lip-biting and eye-darting suspicious behaviour. “Did something happen on the trip?”

  She shook her head readily, likely sensing what he was hinting at.

  Having scratched that out, Atlas gestured to her halter dress. Obviously a find from her shopping trip, he admired the beaded work and the exotic vibe to the floor-length, breezy, green material.

  “Pretty dress,” he said when he was thinking Dios.

  More than pretty, the dress was sexy – correction, Ofélia in the dress was sexy. Now Atlas had to make sure his eyes didn’t settle too long on her breasts, the cleavage pushed to be the center piece around the triangle opening making it a bit hard for him to ignore and appreciate.

  “Agata bought it for me.” Ofélia turned around and headed for the bathroom. “Excuse me.”

  Sure.

  It was the bucket of cold water he needed to snap out of it. Well, sort of. Atlas stared at her butt before she closed the door.

  As long as she didn’t pull this crap on him at the dinner where they needed to pick up their places as the loving engaged couple. The snapshot of his parents came to mind as Atlas trailed back to the balcony, to the view of the fairy-tale paradise.

  Ofélia and he would never look like the late Mr. and Mrs. Neville, but Atlas would make certain they looked believable. And Ofélia better be up to playing her part, just as she promised.

  *

  This time Ofélia enjoyed her dinner.

  Perhaps a bit too much; she didn’t have to go for seconds of the main dish or the dessert, but she had, and now she was suffering for it in two ways.

  Clutching a hand over her roiling stomach, she adjusted the seatbelt off carefully and lifted herself out of the passenger seat, thanking God she didn’t decide to re-decorate Atlas’ car.

  It would be one more thing Atlas could yell about up in their room.

  And he would be yelling – that would be her second suffering.

  “What was that?” he turned on her at the door. Ofélia had locked the door and leaned on it, hand still holding the doorknob behind her. Not that she feared Atlas hurting her.

  He didn’t seem capable of raising a hand. Besides that dark look of his smacked more of his disappointment than a mad, destructive wrath, even if his hands squeezed into fists at his side and he panted like one of those toro in that tauromaquia sports channel Jesús used to love to watch.

  “Well? Ofélia, answer me. I deserve that much, I think.”

  “I do not know what you what me to say,” she sagged against the door, her other hand smoothing her upset stomach.

  She would have appreciated if he were talking through the door of the bathroom while she relieved herself of some of the excess weight she took as souvenir from señor Montero, Agata and Gustavo’s dinner.

  That and the bottle of champagne from the Montero vineyard – a special gift from their hosts, and Atlas had given it to her to share with her family. That had been after they’d been leaving, when Agata started stating plans for another girl’s day and Ofélia told her that wouldn’t work as she was heading home.

  The rest is historia as they say.

  “You could start by telling me it’s a joke, or some memory lapse. That you aren’t really leaving.”

  “It is not a joke or a memory, um,” why was he using big words now, Ofélia rubbed her belly, failing at loosening the painful pressure. “What I mean to say is I am. I am leaving, Atlas.”

  Ofélia finally moved from the door, making a bit of headway into the room and then stopping, squaring off against Atlas’ latest comment.

  “You’re a liar. You lied to me.”

  “Excuse me,” she burped and covered her mouth from the surprise. Bile, nose-wrinkling hot, steamed up her esophagus. The spices from their main dish were coming up pretty fierce.

  It took some wrangling and he must have noticed as Atlas asked, “Are you okay?”

  Ofélia nodded. She lowered her hand when she believed the worst of it settled. But she’d definitely need to go to the bathroom soon. Once she had said her piece to Atlas who had already started babbling about her so-called deceit once more.

  “I do not see why you need me anymore.”

  Atlas raised a hand. He did that a lot. It was so infuriating, but Ofélia pursed her lips to stop from saying anything unpleasant. What she really wanted was for this to end.

  Especially after what she’d heard unintentionally.

  A part of her wanted to update Atlas, fill him in so he could climb down from the high horse of his. But then she got all knotted up inside, tears enflaming her cheeks when she remembered his words to his brother.

  Her name is Ofélia, and I am not and will not ever bang her.

  At which Thomas cackled and attempted to coax details from Atlas the human vault.

  “Ofélia, are you listening to me?”
<
br />   “Claro! I am! Why would I not be? How could I not be? Everyone is listening to you, Atlas,” Ofélia gestured wildly at their closed door, the thin wood easily penetrable by his increasing pitch. “The workers can hear you and you are going to really ruin all your hard work.”

  “Our hard work,” he’d set his fingers to his temples, hands moving in slow circles. “We were working together, Ofélia, and don’t make it sound like we weren’t now.”

  “Of course.” She’d heard enough. She stepped in the direction of the bathroom, called back not so much by Atlas, more the weird note in his voice as he said her name. “Sí?”

  “I’ll ask you one more time, do you want to leave?”

  Inside the bathroom looking out, Ofélia could count a few steps to get to him in front of the bed, but there might as well have been a chasm separating them.

  She could let go the fact he didn’t want to ever bang her as he phrased it with his brother. However Ofélia couldn’t stop the churning in her stomach. It had nothing to do with her poor choices at the dinner table tonight, and everything to do with her love for Atlas.

  Slowly, not entirely quietly, he’d slipped into her mind and heart, claiming more of her until Ofélia realized she loved this stupid gringo.

  “Ofélia?”

  She leaned against the door, head pitched to the side for support on the cool wood, answering from the heart. “Sí.”

  Atlas walked away first, striding out the room, closing the door fast behind him. At this point it seemed like he didn’t even care whether they had an audience for their lover’s spat.

  Their sham lover’s spat, Ofelia reminded herself. For it to be real, they really had to be in love.

  And we’re not, will never be in love.

  Ofélia closed the door and hugged the toilet, head pitched over the porcelain throne. She heaved and hacked alone, always half-listening for Atlas’ return.

  That same part of her that wanted to tell him, wanted him to convince her that it was un error, a misunderstanding also hoped she had walked in at a bad part then, Atlas hadn’t said something so cruel, and he was now returning with a bottle of medicine to settle her stomach.

  But it wasn’t medicine she found outside the washroom.

  Her passport and other documentation she’d left at Thomas Neville’s home lay on her side of the bed. She understood her papers, but the money took her breath away.

  It was enough for two one-way flights to Aguascalientes. She swallowed her tongue, trying to control the mad flip-flop in her already sickened stomach.

  In the end he’d kept one half of his promise and Ofélia swore she would continue to search for her brother alone, from home if she had to. Where she’d be caring for their mother on the one hand and keeping a look-out for Jesús on the other and Ofélia would do it without complaining once.

  Because, like her late abuela and her mother, she was an Espinosa woman and she could handle her own just fine.

  Anyways Atlas Neville had done enough for her. Without him, she’d have been stuck in the States with little to no money until new documentation could be prepared for her.

  The least she could do was thank him, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ofélia returned from the balcony after searching the immediate hall outside their bedroom.

  She would search outside, but there were overnight crew who might get a bit too curious as to why the señorita was asking for her husband-to-be and the news of trouble in paraíso finding its way to señor Montero, and Agata and Gustavo Oriol would ruin everything for Atlas.

  “Atlas,” Ofélia slipped under the covers, hand breezing over the new barricade she’d built with their extra pillows.

  Other than hoping she spared him any further display of embarrassment, she wished for one other thing. If she couldn’t show her gratitude in person, Ofélia promised she’d do it in spirit by continuing to play his bride until she left his life for good tomorrow morning.

  A long night awaited her, in more ways than dealing with readying for her journey in the early morning and leaving Atlas behind in the fairy-tale Valle de Santos.

  All she had to remember was to pack her heart, even though it was starting to look like she’d left it back at a certain someone’s apartment in San Diego all along…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Gracias, señor.”

  Atlas tipped the old, greying cab driver extra for the prompt delivery from the Aguascalientes International to his hotel for a quick change and off to the address in his phone.

  Alone on the street, he checked that the apartment number matched and opened the squeaking gate, puzzling over why it existed when the lock was broken. Inside was no better than the outside glimpse of the wide, two-story rectangular building.

  The broker in him valued the property as having potential. Set in a large, old neighborhood, with the amenities of many stores and entertainment in walking distance, it could have been a hot spot for buyers and sellers alike in Mexico and across the border.

  Many of his agency’s clientele, old and young, were looking for permanent vacationing property. Aguascalientes was turning out to be a great locale. And this place would surely interest them; maybe not in this current state, but with some serious TLC –

  Who knows?

  Atlas was intrigued by the project already setting up a home in his mind.

  Apparently it wasn’t enough that he now was elbows deep in the middle of a reno for the Montero resort for its grand re-opening. In the end Mr. Montero, his daughter and son-in-law came around to Atlas’ traditional proposal over the Wonderland circus-theme the competing buyer suggested.

  He smirked at the memory of the call he’d received only the day after he left Valle de Santos: Montero had been swamped with so much details and the extravagant cost of the other buyer’s plans, he even sped up the contracts signing half the property and management to Atlas and his real estate agency, Neville & Co.

  Back to the property in front of him, as he trekked up the path. Pieces of it missing, replaced by gaping holes of dark soil, the stone path was a hazard to all walking over it, and presently for his Hermès sandals.

  “Crap,” Atlas cussed, looking back when he cleared the dangerous path. He climbed the stone veranda, glancing at the two closest house numbers to judge whether he would be going left or right, odd or even.

  Room one-oh-six was his destination, and the even numbers were lined up on the right. Right it was.

  He was passing one-four when his phone buzzed. Checking the I.D., Atlas answered.

  “Señor Montero.”

  “I thought I told you to call me Eduard, Atlas,” his old benefactor laughed, jolly as always. More so now that he was relieved of the dilapidated resort falling apart on his land. “How are you, my boy?”

  “In Mexico actually,” Atlas leaned against the side, answering his new business partner’s questions, his gaze moving to apartment number one-oh-six when Mr. Montero asked after Atlas’ one and only fiancée.

  Ofélia.

  “Then I’ll let you go. I just called to ask if you’d gotten the first drawing for the renovations from Gustavo. He’d had a duplicate made from the contractor’s original.

  “Oh, and please do give my best to señorita Espinosa. Agata won’t stop asking after her, and I can relieve my poor girl of her worry.”

  “I will.” And Atlas hoped it wasn’t an empty promise. He said his farewell and hung up.

  The first couple knocks went unanswered. Atlas pressed the doorbell and got a muffled response, signalling whoever was outside to wait. He stepped back, leaning on the veranda stone boundary again, while he waited and waited.

  He counted to forty-three when she opened the door.

  “Atlas,” Ofélia said, closing the door after her, keys and coat in hand as she closed the door. “There’s a coffee shop not too far from here.”

  Atlas understood what she meant: He wasn’t welcome in her home. Yet.

  He clung to that ‘yet’ and allowed her to lead
for now. The café Ofélia mentioned was a hole-in-the-wall kind of spot. Still, as grungy as it was, Atlas admitted the coffee smelled and tasted great.

  Ofélia didn’t share his sentiment. She hadn’t touched her vanilla roast once, her gaze settled on the dusted window pane and on the houses across the street.

  “Here,” wiping his hands, he pulled out his phone. He didn’t want to prolong her anxiety. Ofélia accepted it with shaking hands, mumbling her gratitude. She stared at the glowing screen, bringing her hand up to her mouth once and sniffling, and brushing her eyes.

  A wobbly smile overtook her expression, signalling her tears were of the sadly rarer, happy variety.

  When she passed back the phone, she said, “Thank you. Thank you so much, Atlas.” Ofélia gulped at her roast now, reaching for a napkin to wipe her mouth, she leaned over. “May I ask how did you find Jesús?”

  “Social media is a powerful tool.” Atlas finished his heavenly brew, wishing he had more again. He didn’t need the extra caffeine though. Not with Ofélia in front of him, her glowing expression, all the warmer and prettier when she smiled; she was all the boost another cup could have given him. “It helped that you told me about his huge online presence.”

  “Well, really? I didn’t think it would be so easy using that.” Ofélia trailed off, her brow pinching. “But, how did you find him exactly? I used to look at all his pages every morning. Sometimes I would watch his last few videos and re-read those last online messages to see if I could know where he went.”

  “I threw out a feeler.” Atlas smiled sardonically. “It might come as a surprise but all young boys are young boys, and Jesús couldn’t pass up an opportunity to work with me.” He didn’t add the figures of the loose contract. Ofélia’s eyes widened enough as is.

  “Qué? A job?”

  Atlas detailed his plan for the youngest Espinosa. Even if he, Mr. Montero, and the Oriols were quite a ways from re-opening the resort to a whole new audience, Atlas knew it was never early to do his PR. Since Ofélia’s kid brother had a huge online following, Atlas could see himself putting Jesús to use.