Page 16 of My Unexpected Surprise
"About my—" I close my eyes again. Then lower my voice, even though the nearest person is twenty feet away and absorbed in their own call. "About my boss."
"Your boss."
"Piper, I need you to stop repeating everything I say."
"Then say a complete sentence! You're doing the thing where you drop information in pieces and expect me to be calm about it. You know I cannot be calm about it when you do that. Just talk."
I press my back harder against the wall.
Here's the thing about Piper Vale. She’s the most capable person I know. She manages luxury event crises for a living, and not just the pretty part.
The groom goes missing two hours before the ceremony part. The caterer's walk-in freezer fails the morning of a gala for three hundred guests. The keynote speaker has a very public meltdown in a very private venue and someone needs to make all of that disappear before it hits the press.
She handles these things withease. But when it comes to my love life? The extreme opposite.
Extreme as in slashing the tires of one of my exes at a Whole Foods and signing him onBig Butt Daddies,the gayest app to ever gay, and using his mom's details as the contact information.
Hence my hesitation.
I take a breath.
"The CEO," I start.
"Mhm."
"He came in at the end. Valentino Ferretti."
"Okay."
"He's a problem."
A loaded pause.
"A problem," Piper says slowly. "What kind of problem? Like a difficult-boss problem? Or–" I can practically hear her expression change. "Livia. Is he hot?"
"That's not–"
"Is he hot?"
I exhale hard through my nose. "That's genuinely not the point."
"Oh my God, he'sincrediblyhot. Okay, okay. Difficult-hot boss, you can work with that, that's practically a rite of passage—"
"Piper."
"—I mean it's inconvenient but manageable, you're a professional, you've dealt with—"
"Piper."
The heels stop clicking again.
"He has a tattoo," I say. "On his wrist. Three olive branches wrapped around a broken key."
Dead silence.
I count to three.
"No," she says.
