The Boss's Daughter

by Aubrey Parker

  “Husband material,” she says. “Fuck now. Marry later.”

  I laugh again. I was wrong about Phoebe. She is making me feel better, but just because this is so stupidly funny.

  “He’s a hothead,” I tell her. “He has issues.”

  “Your lady parts know he could take care of you. Take care of the parts, for sure. But take care of you, too.”

  “He’s barely scraping by. He’s all messed up, and even money won’t help. He can’t take care of anyone.” I think of what happened the night he ran off, how he didn’t even look at me or say goodbye, and I give Phoebe my capping argument. “He’s selfish. Only thinks of himself.”

  “You’re wrong,” Phoebe says.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. I thought you knew about his scar?”

  I nod. “So he got in a bar fight. So what? That’s not anything worth celebrating. In fact, it’s exactly what my dad thought happened the other night, and I defended him. It doesn’t say he’s not selfish. It proves he’s a brute.”

  Phoebe’s expression says that something isn’t adding up. Her eyes squint down.

  “What did Bridget tell you about Brandon’s scar?”

  “I told you. Got into a fight. Some guy had a knife.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  Phoebe sits back. She crosses her arms. “So she was too embarrassed to tell you.”

  “What?” I say.

  “He got that scar defending his sister from her boyfriend, Keith, who beat her nearly to death. He got it the last time Keith came around, after he’d put Bridget in the hospital. The time, Riley, that she needed him most.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Brandon

  “You’re such an idiot.”

  I turn to Bridget. She’s looking back at me with a matter-of-fact expression, as if she’s just informed me that two and two make four. And worse, she’s gloating because I thought two and two made five, and now she’s about to be a bitch because she was right.

  “I liked it better when you couldn’t talk.”

  “I still sound like a frog.”

  “I’ve never had a frog insult me.”

  “Oh, come on,” Bridget says. “Odds are it’s happened. You’ve just never noticed.”

  It’s been a week and a half since her surgery. I’m sure she’s still not supposed to talk beyond necessity, but giving Bridget medical reasons not to be judgmental isn’t a great strategy. She doesn’t trust doctors more than any other authority figures and thinks they’re out to get her.

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Really? That’s the argument you’re going to make?”

  Bridget winces. She touches her hand to her throat, as if she can soothe the pain or discomfort or whatever she’s feeling from the outside. I push a glass of water toward her. It hits a crack in the table and almost spills down her front. If I’d pushed harder, it would have then we’d need to abandon this discussion to get paper towels. I should have pushed harder.

  “Drink.”

  She does. Then she looks back up at me. I suppose Bridget has bedroom eyes the same as she says men tell her she has a bedroom voice, but as the only guy her age who isn’t interested in Bridget’s bedroom, they’re just insulting.

  “I was right to force you two together. You’re good for each other.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You’re ridiculous!” she blurts, actually standing. She touches he throat and winces again.

  “Shh,” I soothe. “Please. Shut your fucking mouth.”

  Bridget punches me in the arm. “Why did you come here to talk to me?”

  “So I could undo your surgery.” It’s worth saying for joke value, but only barely. Part of me is sure that I really am harming Bridget by encouraging her to speak, but that’s not how it works. I’ll just slow her recovery. Because apparently, I want more of this.

  “A girl comes into your office then storms out when things get real. So you come here and want to tell me about it.”

  “I wanted your opinion on how to handle her, seeing as her father controls my promotion.”

  “Mmm-hmm. You wanted my opinion on what you should do to get her back.”

  “There’s no ‘back.’ We were never together.”

  “You were together,” Bridget says.

  “Oh. I see. You mean the night we hooked up then couldn’t look each other in the eye? The night we had to have you come and give us a jump, right before I blew it with Mason?”

  “But you didn’t blow it with Mason, did you? You’re back on track, right?”

  “That’s not the point, Bridget.”

  “And why are you back on track?” She affects surprise. “Because Riley went to bat for you? Told her father how great you are?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Sure it is. Tell me honestly that you haven’t been thinking about it. About how she told her father all about you.”

  I meet Bridget’s eyes. I want to lie, but she’ll see through me like always. Of course I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it since I left work, and on the drive over to Bridget’s. But my thinking has nothing to do with Riley. It has everything to do with the promotion that, it turns out, is back on the table. I’m happy that Mason has come around, no matter the reason. And I’m happy that Riley is willing to move on and put that unfortunate night behind us. Yes, she seemed a little upset when she left, but she was probably just embarrassed. We’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. It’s all okay again.

  Bridget nods. “I knew it.”

  “You didn’t know anything.”

  “Before dinner, you wouldn’t shut up about her. Now, you can’t stop thinking about her.”

  “She’s cute. But that’s all.”

  Bridget gives me something like an evil eye. The kind of look that stands on its own. She won’t bother to repeat that I’m an idiot because given this look, she might as well be holding up a sign.

  “Stop pretending you know me better than I know myself,” I say, annoyed. “I didn’t come here to have you judge me.”

  “You like her, Brandon. Just admit it.”

  “I like her,” I say.

  “Not like that.”

  “Then like what?” I decide to play dumb, but it’s not much of a stretch. There are shades of meaning here that I get fine, but that I can maybe make Bridget feel ridiculous for presuming I’ll automatically get.

  Bridget stands and takes another sip of her water. Her dark-brown hair is back, and two loose strands hang on either side of her face. Her hands go to her hips, and now she looks like the mother we never had, or at least as I understand such things from TV.

  “You need a woman in your life.”

  “I have women.”

  “You need a sensible woman. Someone to ground you.”

  “Maybe you’re the one being an idiot. Is your argument seriously that I should ignore all of the girls I’ve dated, and might date, and focus instead on the single woman who will collapse all that I’ve worked for?”

  “You don’t know that. And stop being an asshole. She’s not like the others, and you know it.”

  That much is true. But whatever I feel when I look at Riley — when I think of Riley — seems arbitrary. Why would she be worth more notice because of the way her dress swirled around her legs that morning on the open land? Why would the first look she gave me, in Mason’s office, be worth more than any other look anyone has ever given me? Why do I dream about her when I’ve had many discussions worth dreaming about? Why do I want so badly to ask about what happened with her mother? I get the gist, and the gist is plenty given the way our relationship would unfold in a reasonable world. So why do I want to know more? It can’t be pleasant. It can’t be a happy story. If I ask Riley to tell me, I know she’ll cry. So why do I want her to cry, and why am I so eager to be the one to comfort her when she does?

  It’s because she’s pretty. And forbidden fruit.
That’s all it is. Combine animal attraction with something you can’t have, and anyone would feel drawn. But it’s only an impulse. My higher mind knows better. It’s ironic that Bridget, of all people, is usually the first to tell me I’m thinking with my dick. Isn’t that what she’s telling me to do now? To ignore my brain and aim lower?

  “When do you go back to work?” I ask.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I thought we were done with the old one.”

  “Ha,” Bridget says. “You wish.”

  I actually tip my head a little. Only Bridget can make a conversation sound like a threat.

  Bridget hands me my phone, which I’d left on the counter. “Call her.”

  “Why?”

  “Call her!”

  “I’m not going to call her. There’s no reason to call her.”

  Bridget shakes her head and rolls her eyes. I manage to see the latter even while she’s doing the former. It’s like a condescension sandwich.

  “You came here to talk to me. You told me all about what happened. She came to you, it looked like you might hook up, then she got mad. But only after you each had an idea how the other really felt.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “She defended you to her father, which is why you’re still in the running. You defended her to him, which is why she now has some responsibility. Trust me, Brandon. She was saying thank you, and you were saying she’s special.”

  “I think I can decide for myself what I said.”

  “You’re like kids. Two stupid kids.”

  “Thanks, Bridge.”

  “You might as well be passing notes. Jesus, you’re both fucked up.”

  “I’m not fucked up.” I pause. “Okay, I’m fucked up. But I still know what I’m saying. I don’t need you to interpret my encounters. I just wanted to check on you and bitch.”

  “And yet you told me every detail, just like you yammered on and on about her before dinner. I don’t know why you won’t just admit that you’re into her.”

  “I was plenty into her. But I can’t keep screwing my boss’s daughter. And why are you so interested, anyway? You’re a girl. Girls aren’t supposed to be all about getting it on.”

  “Yeah. You know so much about women.”

  I’m a little offended. I know plenty. I know what women want and what they seem to need. I’ve been with dozens, and have never to my knowledge left one unsatisfied.

  Bridget nudges the phone again. “Call her.”

  “And say what?”

  “Tell her you want to go out.”

  “She made a point about how we can’t keep doing what we did. Her father will flip.”

  “She needs you to hit the ball back, Brandon. You’re an idiot, so you didn’t volley. You wanted my advice, this — ”

  “I very much don’t want your advice.”

  “ — is it. All she wanted was some sort of sign that you feel what she feels.”

  “She feels ambition.”

  Bridget rolls her eyes again. “She came to see you, Brandon.”

  “To see my job site.”

  “Which she didn’t need to do. And then she stayed behind.”

  “To set the record straight. About how we’re through.”

  “Do you know how you’re through with someone? It doesn’t take an announcement — you’re just done. That poor girl came to you and put herself out there, but you ignored her.”

  Bridget is twisting all of this. She wasn’t there, so she doesn’t know. I know much better than her. Maybe I should describe it all again. I already told her everything we said and did, right down to how Riley was dressed and how her face looked and …

  “You’re so full of shit.”

  “Call her,” Bridget says. “Just call her, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  I pick up the phone. I have Riley’s number because she gave it to me that first night, and I haven’t deleted it because, you know, I might need it sometime. Her contact entry on my phone seems to have pulled her photo from somewhere online, and I look at it for several seconds, remembering how she was that first day, then at dinner, then meeting my lips. In that thing we can’t do again. In those moments we can’t have more of. But that raises a strange sensation within me, and I don’t like the way it feels.

  It’s not the sex that’s bothering me.

  It’s the dinner. It’s the morning in the meadow.

  I realize how much I’ve been thinking about those two intervals of time. How I’d been checking the Overlook’s schedule, more curious than ever to see what its lineup will be when it reopens. Bridget doesn’t love live music, so I guess I’d thought of inviting Mason and Riley, since I know Riley is into that. And maybe Mason wouldn’t want to come. Maybe Riley and I could go alone. And we could grab dinner again. I could make her laugh, and hear that unique kind of vocal music, too.

  Something must shift in my expression because when I look up, Bridget is giving me her most obnoxious grin.

  “What?” I say, thinking I might already know, afraid of what it might mean.

  “Call her,” Bridget repeats, “and take a chance for once in your life.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Riley

  I feel my phone vibrate in my purse, but stepping out of the financial meeting to answer it is the kind of thing a silly teenage girl would do. Having turned the phone entirely off or putting it into Do Not Disturb, I suspect, is what a proper businesswoman would do, but it’s too late for that. So I let the phone vibrate a few times, reasonably sure that nobody besides me is noticing anyway, and eventually it stops. Thirty seconds later, I feel a single vibration and know that the caller left me a message.

  I forget the call, refocusing on my father. Recalling my college classes. Squaring this real-life discussion of profit and loss with what I learned in the classroom. It’s the same stuff, applied to actual business. The business I’ll inherit and run someday, as my legacy.

  The fact that I’m in the meeting at all is a coup. Our going out to lunch together — just Dad and me — is an even bigger one. The idea is for us to just hang out as father and daughter, but I know that what’s being discussed here will linger in our minds. Neither of us is particularly left-brained; Dad and I are both creative first, analytical second, but we love the creation aspect of running a business because it’s just another form of art. A little-known company fact: Before he started Life of Riley, my father used to draw quite a bit. You’d never know it today, but it’s true. I was never into stuff like that. But I like music, and am damn good on a guitar.

  Like Brandon’s friend, Gavin Adams, that night at the closed Overlook club.

  Like Gavin, who sang such a sad song.

  The memory, even in the middle of this dry meeting, warms me. I want to know more about that song. I want to hear more of that music. I want to see more of how that soft melody is able to crack the armor of a man like Brandon Grant.

  Whom I shouldn’t be thinking of.

  Because that can’t happen. Not that it would happen, so why am I even considering that it might? I don’t need to remind myself not to do something that was never going to happen because it’s so obvious. It isn’t worthy of mention. I was ridiculous to allow thoughts of Brandon to enter my mind when we were together earlier. He’s one of Life of Riley’s project leads, and soon he’ll probably be our vice president of Land Acquisition. Good. He’ll be an asset to the company.

  I imagine we’ll have lunches and meetings.

  Maybe we see more live music.

  And that feels nice: the idea of being able to attend events as legitimate business functions. Life could be worse. I got my father to treat me like an adult for once, and this is a great company to rise within. I love my father, my boss. I like Margo. I like the other people in the office. And I share many interests with the new VP. The probable new VP.

  What I told Brandon was true. He does deserve the job. That’s just fact. That’s just sensible. What happened b
etween us was a moment of weakness, but I’m level-headed enough to let it go. Phoebe is wrong. Phoebe has to be wrong. Because how would that work if she was right? It wouldn’t. Dad wouldn’t allow it. He’d see it as mixing business with pleasure.

  Pleasure. All it takes is the disconnected thought of the word, and for a second I’m back under Brandon, his mouth on my neck.

  It was a mistake. Just as doing anything more would be a mistake. And no matter what Phoebe says, it couldn’t be more than a single physical incident — a moment of indiscretion and weakness. He and I are a poor fit. Believing otherwise, even if it were possible, would be tantamount to dipping pens in company ink. You don’t cross certain lines. Not if you expect to keep harmony and do what’s best for everyone.

  I listen to my father giving his goals to counter the projections. I try to focus. I try to ignore what Phoebe said. I try to ignore the clear matchmaking from Bridget’s end. I don’t even know her, other than dinner and a car ride. Why should I believe and trust her? No matter. I do, and want to.

  The meeting wraps after another forty-five minutes. The other men and women leave, and soon it’s Dad and I in the office while he finishes up, making a few final notes before lunch.

  There’s a knock at the door. It’s Dad’s assistant. She tells him he has a visitor: Mr. Grant.

  “Oh, good. Send him in.”

  Dad turns to me, grinning, maybe even proud of me for all that’s happened. “He’s due to pick some stuff up on his way out to the site. I figured we’d go ahead and let him know now about the promotion. You still think he’s the right man for the job?”

  Of course I do. Brandon loves this company. He’d take good care of it. He’d always look out for Life of Riley and serve its best interests. He’s loyal. He works hard. He’d put the company first. Sometimes, I get mad at him, but the more I think about it, the more certain I am that he’s right for the job, and it’s right for him.

  I nod. A second later, Brandon enters. My heart flutters. I tell myself it’s because I’m excited for him. And for the company, which is gaining a strong advocate. A terrific partner. Someone who looks at Life of Riley and sees how it’s special, and will always love it, always take care of it. Even if he sometimes acts like a jerk, Phoebe seems to think he’s good deep down.