Like a Boss - Annabelle Costa Page 0,15
remember how deeply tanned he used to be in college (from all those summers in Greece), his already blond hair highlighted with gold from the sun… but now he’s bordering on pale.
“Hi, Ellie.” He glances at his watch. “Exactly on time. As usual. Tell me—do you wait outside the office to make sure you show up at the exact moment I told you to arrive?”
“No.” He’s wrong—I wait outside the elevator. “So, um, Michelle seems really good.”
“Yeah. She’s a good assistant.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Just an assistant?”
“Well, she’s also a notary.”
“Okay.” I nod. “So… that’s all?”
“She also makes travel arrangements,” he says. “And she makes really good brownies too.”
“Oh. I see…”
He throws back his head and laughs. “Why don’t you just ask me straight out if I’m sleeping with her?”
Oh God. “I didn’t… I mean, I wasn’t implying…”
“I’m not sleeping with her.” His brown eyes meet mine. “She’s just my assistant. And a damn good one. Okay?”
“I don’t care,” I mumble.
“Uh-huh…”
Something he said a minute ago struck me. “Do you travel a lot?”
He winces. “More than I’d like. All business, no pleasure.”
“Do you ever go to Greece anymore?”
The way Luke looks at me blankly pretty much gives me my answer. “Oh God,” he groans. “I haven’t been there in years. How did you know about that?”
“You mentioned on the first day of expos that your family had a villa there,” I remind him, emphasizing the word “villa.”
“Did I?” He grins. “Wow, I was such a pretentious prick. No wonder you wouldn’t hook up with me. Anyway, it’s more like a house than a villa. I don’t even know what the hell a villa is… I was probably just trying to impress everyone.”
“Why don’t you go there anymore?”
“No time,” he says with a shrug. “Anyway, I try not to fly any more than I absolutely have to… I end up getting shuffled around like a piece of luggage at the airport. My chair gets stored under the plane, and I’m always scared they’re going to break it. And the beaches and the old streets are a bitch to wheel around—Greece is especially challenging.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Hey, I always wondered: Are you really fluent in French, Greek, and German?”
“What, you think I was a liar too?” He shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m fluent.”
“Say something in French.”
He thinks for a minute, then says in perfectly accented French: “Je suis en amour avec vous.”
“What does that mean?”
He smiles. “It means, ‘I value your friendship.’”
“Aw,” I say.
“So what languages do you speak?”
“Oh, lots,” I reply. “C, C++, Java, Python, Visual Basic…”
“I get it, those are computer languages.”
“Muy bien.”
Luke grins. “Still a nerd.”
Our eyes meet and my tummy inexplicably does a little flip-flop. I’m surprised at myself. Luke wasn’t my type sixteen years ago and he’s even less my type now. Yet… well, I don’t know. It’s weird. There’s just something about him.
Luke clears his throat. “We better get to work. Do you have the numbers I asked you for?”
I hold up the papers that have grown slightly damp in my fist. “I’m ready.”
We spend the next hour talking shop. I don’t even realize how hungry I am until Michelle interrupts us with a big brown bag of Chinese food. I guess in addition to being his assistant, his secretary, and making brownies, she also orders him lunch. I skipped breakfast this morning and the smell is so unbelievable, it’s physically painful.
“I can leave so you can eat,” I say. “I’ll come back after lunch if you want.”
He shakes his head. “No, we’re not done. I ordered enough for two.”
Thank God. I brought a dry turkey sandwich for lunch and I wasn’t looking forward to eating it. I do feel guilty chowing down on top of Luke’s ridiculously expensive mahogany desk, but he tells me not to worry about it. I dig into my chicken with broccoli and practically moan in ecstasy. We’re right near Chinatown so there’s a lot of good Chinese food in the financial district, but this is the best I’ve ever had by a mile.
We put in another hour talking through the project. Luke turns to his computer and brings up a page of notes that he made. I’m amazed by how carefully he was listening to everything I said yesterday. We talk and he types in my thoughts using just his index fingers. I wonder if he does that because of his injury or if he was always a two-finger typist.
“Thanks for your help, Ellie,” he says at