Page 32 of By A Thread

I didn’t like her. But sparring with her made an otherwise interminable meeting slightly more interesting. Plus, there was something…enticing about that fresh lemon scent.

“You type like a Clydesdale.”

“You know, you’d be a lot prettier if you smiled once in a while,” she mused, fluttering her lashes.

No wonder women hated it when men said that.

“I don’t have time to smile.”

“I don’t have time to smile,” she mimicked in an annoying voice.

“Your maturity peaked in preschool.”

“Aww, did Pouty Man Face get his feelings hurt?”

“You’re fired, Maleficent.”

“Good luck with that, Charming.” She headed off in the direction of the stairs.

“Don’t bother getting comfortable here,” I called after her.

I didn’t realize until a makeup artist gaped up at me and then walked straight into a glass door when I passed her that I was actually smiling.

11

Dominic

The admin pool was a place I generally avoided. It was loud, disorganized, and it had been my father’s preferred hunting grounds for employees to harass. He’d most likely seen them as powerless and pretty. The perfect victims.

I saw it as a series of potential landmines. Busy women who did the dirty work for everything that happened inside and outside our offices. One false move and I could piss off the entire backbone of our company. It was safer to avoid them, to let them do their thing, rather than remind them that there was another male Russo in residence.

It was Ally’s lunch break, but I hadn’t seen her in the cafeteria. Not that I was looking. Or that I’d checked her calendar in the system for her schedule.Okay, so maybe I had.

I absolutely refused to think about my motives for personally dropping off a legitimate research request. I always had Greta email them, keeping the lines of communication clearly defined.

But if I dropped off this request in person, I reasoned, I could also see if Ally was ready to quit yet.

I tapped the folder in my hand and surveyed the space. Most of the cubicles were abandoned, but I spotted her and that pink sweater across the room. She had headphones on and was rhythmically shimmying her shoulders, lips moving to unheard lyrics.

I tapped the folder again. Debating. What the hell. I had a few minutes for an argument.

She was still swaying in her chair when I walked up behind her. My dick inexplicably took notice of her proximity, which pissed me off. I was forty-four years old. Not some pimple-faced teenager at a pool party. And unlike my father, I had self-control.

I peered over her shoulder, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Crap on a cracker, Charming!” She yanked her headphones off but got them stuck in her hair. “Ow!” She pulled harder.

“Stop it,” I said, making a grab for the headgear and slapping her hand away. “You’ll give yourself a bald spot.”

I unwound her hair from the earpiece.

“I’d say thank you, but it’s your fault I’m now balding.”

“I see you’re doing personal work on company time,” I said, looking at the screen where she seemed to be in the middle of designing several versions of a logo for a butcher shop.

She picked up her phone—one of those knockoff smartphones that looked like it was ten seconds away from disintegrating—and showed me the countdown on the screen. “I’m on lunch, Mr. Sunshine. On my own laptop.”

“You’re onmyWi-Fi. And where did you get that poor excuse for a phone?”

She gave me a look that saidwhy don’t you go kick yourself in the ballsbefore turning back to her dinosaur of a computer and disconnecting the internet. “Happy now?”