Page 16 of Falling for Her Grumpy Boss

Embarrassment I know how to handle. Curiosity I could have deflected. Even disapproval would have been easier than the quiet professionalism he'd shown me. Instead, he'd treated Club Indigo as just another fact about my past, filed away with my degree and employment history.

Unfortunately, I haven't been nearly as good at doing the same. Dylan Shaw is still gruff, impatient, and occasionally rude. He barks instructions without looking up from whatever demands his attention. He expects people to keep up. When they don't, he makes his disappointment painfully clear. He is capable of reducing a grown man to nervous silence with a single look. Half the office braces whenever he steps out of his office, and the other half scrambles to look busy whether they need to or not.

A week of working for him has taught me that the confidence isn't an act. Neither is the reputation. Dylan walks through problems the way most people walk through open doors, already three steps ahead and impatient with anyone moving slower. The combination of competence and confidence ought to be irritating.

Somehow it isn't.

Which is unfortunate.

Because somewhere between my first day and now, I've started noticing things I'd rather not notice.

The deep voice that carries through the office without ever needing to rise.

The sharpness of his jaw that should make him look cold and unapproachable, but somehow only makes him harder to ignore.

The way people straighten when he enters a room.

The way my attention follows him when he moves through the office, even when I have absolutely no reason to be looking.

It's ridiculous.

More ridiculous is the fact that I no longer roll my eyes at the steady stream of women Jeremy warned me about.

I understand them now.

Not because Dylan flirts. He doesn't.

Not because he's charming. Most days, he's one missed deadline away from biting someone's head off.

But because every now and then he says something in that rough voice of his, or fixes a problem nobody else saw coming, and for a second I stop seeing my grumpy boss.

I see a man.

That realization sits somewhere low in my stomach, unwelcome and impossible to ignore.

And that is a problem.

Dylan

The week settles into something that finally works.

I notice it in the way I reach for things and find them where they should be, in the way my mornings stop beginning with someone else’s mistakes waiting for me to clean them up. Files stay where I left them. My calendar reflects the day I intended to have, rather than the one I usually end up salvaging halfway through.

I stand at the edge of my desk and watch her through the glass without meaning to.

She’s on the phone, one hand resting beside the keyboard while she listens. When she answers, her voice stays calm beneath the pressure coming through the receiver. Whoever’s on the other end tries pushing harder. I can tell from the slight pause that follows, the kind meant to force concessions out of people who rush to fill silence.

Tess doesn’t rush anything.

She waits them out, answers in the same even tone, and thirty seconds later, the conversation ends without the problem ever making it to my office.

A week ago, that call would have landed on my desk.

Now it doesn’t.

I look back toward the monitor, forcing my attention onto numbers and deadlines while she answers the phone, clamps the devices between her shoulder and ear while entering something into the computer. No glance toward my office. No need for acknowledgment. Just quiet competence settling through the room with the same steady control I remember from Club Indigo.

She makes a note without glancing toward my office and moves straight into the next task. No pause. No check to see if I noticed.