Under My Boss's Direction: Office Romance Collection With New Novel Jamie Knight (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .txt) 📖

"Oh, it's not luck, honey. We're hard workers at Combey Inc. I have the best team a guy could ask for. Hand delivering me my paperwork. Joining me for dinner and interesting conversation."

He lingers his forked potatoes in the air, letting the last line sink in.

It has been twenty minutes of chatting, sharing, and not once has he brought up our nighttime chats.

Will he?

It's almost dusk, and my plate is almost done.

"What do you miss the most about the Old World?" he asks, wiping his plate with a fresh twirl of pasta.

"That's what we're calling it now?"

"I was a huge fan of The Walking Dead. Still am. I’ve been waiting on this to end so that they can bring it back, at least for the finale. For closure, I suppose. So, yeah, that's what TWD fans call it. Do you miss some of the old things we used to do?"

"I'm still shocked that I'm having dinner with a fanboy."

He chuckles and wets his tongue with wine.

"Like you're not a fangirl, huh?"

"Oh, I am. But... not everyone gets it. Three guesses, and I'll tell you what I miss the most of the 'Old World,' other than new episodes of The Walking Dead."

"Three?" he repeats.

I nod. He lets the fork and knife clutter on the table, wipes his mouth and sighs, then, smiling, he closes his eyes.

“Movie theaters.”

"Oh, close. Not my number one, though."

“Shopping.”

"Damn. On the second try, not to mention."

Awed, and quietly impressed, I breathe in heavily and say, "I miss how we had the option of going anywhere we wanted to. I miss that choice."

"Aw, come on. Do better. I just guessed your favorite fandoms in a snap. Gimme the meat. What do you really miss?"

Denue has this cute tendency to never relent. Once, he told me to get him Rocky Road ice cream. All they had was butterscotch in a family-sized tub, but that wasn’t good enough. I spent an entire day driving around town, and online, searching for his perfect scoop.

I rescind that statement slightly. It's cute until it's not.

Shrugging, I say: "I miss human contact. The way that people interact. The way I feel when I’m with someone I like."

"There we go." His arms widen and rise, and then fall. "Truth, finally."

Both our phones buzz hard, before I can ask him if he can give me a ride home, or call a cab if he'd like, and curiosity gets the better of us.

The gripping color of this alert: I've only seen it once before when, an hour later, a hurricane swept my father's house off the ground.

Chapter Four

Nellie

Axel Amador called it his 'little red house on a hill,' My father was not wrong in his description. The finishing touches done over ten years ago had not changed one bit over the years.

The paint still looked as fresh as new. I remember the first time he had told us— me, my mom and her paraplegic mother, my grandmother— that he had bought us a house in the village, away from the noise of the city and so close to nature.

Mom was furious. She had fallen in love with her childhood home in Puerto Rico, by the riveting waters of the Caribbean. She cried a lot, telling us how much she missed her fish and her friends and how much her mother hated the city life.

But with the passage of time, she had gotten so used to sitting outside and watching the birds feed their young that she started to relent. Dad got her a book, in fact, as thick as my pinkie, on bird watching, as a gift for her birthday.

She spent more time outside than in. It gave me more time with my grandma, who listened as I droned on and on about the boys in my high school gym class.

Mom would be on the red porch, in her little red chair, a poncho covering her knees, and her eyes firmly set on the bird pools we had set up weeks before. Her fingers furiously rubbed against paper as she took down notes on the feathers and eating habits and mating choices. The hobby absorbed her beautifully, and Dad was thankful for it.

His time in the Navy for the past twenty years was coming to a close. He had gone into the service immediately after high school, and his rank was enough for him to finally want to settle in and take care of his girls.

It was the liveliest spring of my teenage years. I made a few friends and was quite popular with making t-shirts for the girls in the AV club. I was close to making a stellar sale, actually, that evening, when, on the bordering lawn, walking towards our house on the hill, I noticed the porch was empty.

It was the first time in six weeks that Mom had not waved at me with a plate of fresh sandwiches in hand. I ran up the steps, ignoring the silence in the trees and the spiraling madness of bird clusters in the sky.

"What's wrong, mama?"

She was beside my grandmother, holding her hand in hers, face down. I heard sniffling and felt the sadness in the air. The bag dropped off my knees, and I along with it.

Wind rustled by my face, and the door swung open hard. I couldn't see through the tears clouding my eyes, but the strong scent of powerful coffee and grease made me more at ease, and less frantic.

"Papa, she's gone," I said.

Two heavy boots padded the floor and rushed towards us before stopping by the bed. I could feel him comforting his wife for her loss. Suddenly, an alert came through on his phone. He was showing us but I was