Page 13 of Tough Luck

“Right,” He nodded and his brows furrowed. “S-s-steven,” he answered, lifting his chin. “I think. You know, I have so many accounts under my belt right now.” He shifted and actually pulled out his phone.

I waited.

“The contact doesn’t seem to be in my phone any longer.” He shoved his phone back in his pocket. “I had to replace my old phone last month. I just had lunch with him last month. Nice guy.”

“That’s funny,” I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous, ice-cold register, “because the bakery owner, Bethany Williams, tells me that she is a close personal friend of Sofia Ferreira’s family. She assured me, when I was on the phone with her just moments before you came in, that Sofia is the reason she decided to use us for all her business’s marketing needs. She also claims that she never spoke to or met you during the entire onboarding process with GSM. And as for the hardware store ad copy you claim to have spent late nights on, the server logs show Sofia uploaded those finalized files at midnight last night, while you logged off yesterday at three in the afternoon. Then, she uploaded more files around eleven thirty this morning. You did in fact touch those files. Oddly, you deleted them from the server around eleven forty. Then, according to several people in the office, Sofia spent the rest of the day recreating the majority of them. I have asked IT to confirm that you accessed Sofia’s computer at her desk around that same time and remove her backup files.” I paused and could see the man’s eyes heating. Thankfully, he remained quiet. “In fact, most days you clock into work around ten and log out of the system around three.” I waited. “Yet, you seem to have turned in more than thirty hours of overtime in the past month alone.”

Leonard’s smug expression was slowly withering. I watched the color drain from his face, leaving him looking sickly under the fluorescent lights. “I oversee the high-level concepts. I, Sofia works under me, she arranges…” He seemed to have dried up, unsure of what to say at this point. Instead, he just stared at me with his mouth open wide, like a guppy. “I’m sure there is some sort of misunderstanding with IT.”

“You take credit for a young woman’s grueling overtime because you don’t have a single creative bone in your body,” I said smoothly, standing up to my full height. “I’ve heard a few things about you today from the other staff members. That you micromanage, you plagiarize. Not to mention that you lied to my face on my very first day as your boss.”

“Now, wait a minute, your father knows my value⁠—”

“My father isn’t here,” I said firmly, leaning over the desk. “I am. And effective immediately, you’re fired. Security is waiting outside to escort you out of the building.” I motioned toward my closed doors.

He opened his mouth to argue, but the sheer finality in my eyes shut him up. He turned on his heel and practically fled the office.

I took a deep breath and felt satisfied I was doing the best thing. The man was shady, not to mention full of himself. Guys like that needed to be knocked down a notch every now and then so they learn that you can’t step on everyone’s toes to get ahead.

When I’d left Colorado for California, I hadn’t used my father’s name or wealth to make something of myself. Starting from scratch had been hard. I had been a one-man-show for the first year. I’d hunted down and found my own clients. Doing everything in my business alone had been tiring. Then, thanks to my hard work and the skills I had gained working at GSM, I earned enough to hire one other marketing person. For the second year, it had been Joe Marlow and me. We scored a few more jobs and found our first small office. We hired two part-time staff and one more full-time marketing professional.

Currently, I had eleven employees, counting myself. Joe was now my partner in the business, and while I was helping out here he was overseeing as much as possible in my absence.

Coming home to Colorado was definitely proving to be a wild ride, but as I looked down at one the sketches that Sofia had left on my desk, I guessed that taking over temporarily around here was going to be worth every single second.

Chapter 5

Sofia

Working with Rick Mylonas was going to be exciting and difficult at the same time. There was a vibrating, electric current to him, and for the first time in a year, the suffocating weight of my job had lifted. Even though he’d explicitly told me not to look at the project until tomorrow, there was absolutely no way my hyperactive brain was going to let me sleep without cracking open that folder.

The difficult part was going to be to try and focus whenever those blue eyes landed on me. God, why did he have to be such a… god?

Not only had he seen through Leonard’s BS about stealing my work, but he’d encouraged me and given me free rein.

I’d taken the thick file of Clear Creek Brewery data with me to the little Italian place down the street from my apartment. It was a cozy, dimly lit place that smelled of garlic and baked oregano—the perfect spot to disappear into a corner booth. I had the documents spread out over the red-and-white checkered tablecloth, and was scouring the financial metrics and market distributions as I waited for my chicken parm.

Just as the waiter set down my steaming plate of food, a sudden, erratic skip in my pulse made me look up.

My heart did a violent, Olympic-level sprint against my ribs.

Walking through the front door of the restaurant was Rick. He was dressed down a bit from his corporate armor, wearing a dark sweater that made his shoulders look impossibly broad. Beside him was a spectacularly beautiful dark-haired woman. She looked like she’d stepped right off a Milan runway, with flawless olive skin, cascading glossy dark curls, and an effortlessly chic outfit that probably cost more than my car.

Of course he’d be with someone like her. A guy that looked like him probably didn’t do takeout on his sofa in sweatpants. My brain immediately began a chaotic, uninvited spiral of how the couple had met. Had she come from California with him? Were they married? Engaged? The woman certainly clung to his arm with a level of familiar possessiveness that made my stomach do a weird little sink.

I slumped my shoulders and tried to blend into the background.

The hostess led them to the other side of the dining room, thankfully seating them quite a distance away from me. I tried harder to shrink into my upholstered chair, pulling the edges of the brewery folder up like a makeshift privacy screen. Please don’t look over here, please don’t look over here.

But my spectacular string of bad luck held strong. The exact moment he finished politely pulling out the chair for the gorgeous brunette, his head lifted, as if sensing someone watching him and those blue eyes scanned the room quickly. His eyes swept past the bar and hit my corner booth before settling on me.

I couldn’t manage to look away, locking eyes with his and holding there for several heartbeats.

Even from across the restaurant, I could see the immediate, amused spark that lit up his gaze. He leaned down, murmured something to the dark-haired woman, and then turned on his heel to make his way straight across the dining room toward me.

I closed the folder a second too late, my face no doubt erupting into a brilliant, familiar crimson.

“Sofia.” His deep, gritty baritone rumbled as he stopped beside my booth, sliding a hand easily into his pocket. He looked down at the manila folder, a slow, devastatingly handsome smile breaking across his face. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I explicitly order you to go home, relax, and stay off the clock until tomorrow?”