I’m responsible for your evaluations, your salary recommendations and your access to this company.
Whatever I feel does not give me the right to make your job uncomfortable.”
I stared at him.
The meaning arrived slowly.
“Whatever you feel?”
His gaze held mine.
There was nowhere for either of us to hide now.
“I thought being distant was the safest option.”
A strange laugh escaped me.
“So your solution was to become unbearable?”
“I apparently overcorrected.”
“You publicly dismissed my proposal this morning.”
“Yes.”
“That was not professional distance.
That was rude.”
“Yes.”
I waited.
He sighed.
“I’m still sorry.”
That was the moment something shifted.
Not because my intimidating billionaire boss had apparently been attracted to me.
Not because I had spent months assuming he didn’t see me when he had been paying far more attention than I realized.
It shifted because he wasn’t trying to turn his feelings into an excuse.
So I gave him the same honesty.
“Being attracted to me doesn’t make the way you treated me acceptable.”
“I know.”
“And me doing something humiliating with your poster doesn’t mean you get to use it against me.”
“I won’t.”
“And if that photograph is still on the wall tomorrow morning, I’m setting the building on fire.”
That smile appeared again.
“I’ll have it removed.”
“Before anyone arrives.”
“Before anyone arrives.”
I looked at him suspiciously.
“No copies.”
“Alexia, it was a Forbes cover, not classified intelligence.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He glanced at the folder.
“Come back tomorrow at nine.
We’ll go through the proposal properly.”
“Properly?”
“You defend your numbers.
I challenge them.
If they survive, we take it back to the board.”
“We?”
“You wrote it.
You present it.”
That surprised me almost as much as everything else.
“I’ve always presented material for you.”
“Not this time.”
I studied him.
“What changed?”
His expression sobered.
“You told me exactly how invisible I made you feel.”
The words took the last of my anger and turned it into something more complicated.
