Grumpy Boss

Book 5 - Chapter Two Luke

I couldn’t believe the number of deadlines I had at the moment. I was nearly thirty, and I was ready to slow down and live a calmer life, not increase my blood pressure. The business had taken off after my dad had given me a thousand dollars and told me to build it. A family tradition, something his dad had done, and his father before him. But back then it wasn’t as much as a thousand, it was a lot less. I followed in the same footsteps as all of the men in my family, which was great at the time, but now I was regretting it. My life was all about all work and no play. As much as I tried to distance myself from my job, I always managed to end up staying late and promising myself I wouldn’t do it the next day.

The buzzer for the intercom buzzed on my phone.

“What?” I barked.

“It’s Mr. Hales, he’s here to see you,” Bianca sounded as stressed out as I was right now.

She was too good to me and put up with all my s**t, but she was only here temporarily. I could tell she couldn’t wait to leave. It was a bad time for me. A really bad time. There were too many f*****g deadlines, and all of them were driving me directly to a straitjacket.

I looked at the time.

Fuck!

How could it be nearly six already? I was supposed to meet Ed at the bar an hour to take the edge off before going on this blind date later tonight. Maybe it would make whoever they’d set me up with more attractive or make me better company. Either way, I wasn’t in the mood to be meeting someone new, but Hayley insisted.

“Send him in!” I blurted back to Bianca.

“Right away, sir.”

I really needed a permanent PA. I´d managed to steal Bianca from Bob, the CIO, but he’d be back on Monday. I needed one of my own, quickly. Bianca was doing two jobs at the moment, sharing his tasks while he was away and mine too, which was most likely why she was working late on a Friday night.

“Luke.”

“Ed!”

It was our usual greeting, as if we were cavemen who knew very few syllables and could only say each other’s names.

“You’re late, man,” he said, slapping me on the back as I got up from my chair. The one that felt as if it were a second skin. I’d been sitting on it so long it felt like it was stuck to my pants.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late. I have so much work to do, and it doesn’t help I don’t have a PA. I have shitloads to do, and it’s a Friday, which means…”

“Save it for someone who cares,” Ed said as he lifted up his hand, stopping me from boring him with the details of my life.

“We booked this evening like two weeks ago to loosen you up for your date. Do you want me to talk about work and all the patients I cut open today?”

He didn’t wait for me to respond as he said, “Today I cut open and found out…”

I put my hands up as if to surrender. “Okay, I get your point. Your job is more important than mine.”

“Exactly. And I have two crazy kids and a wife.”

I pointed at him. “Kids, your mom claims are exact replicas of you when you were a kid. Besides, you shouldn’t talk about them that way. They’re great and you know you wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world.”

He sighed. “What were the odds they would turn out like me? I only agreed to have kids in the first place because I thought they would turn out like Hayley. Who the f**k needs three of me in the world?”

I shook my head because we had this conversation every time he spoke about them. The kids he loved to complain about but loved with every inch of his heart.

“No one. Do the math—there was a fifty percent chance.”

“I know, but not only once, but twice! Look, I need a drink. Time away from the crazy kids. The wife who tempts me to make another baby with her, but imagine there being four of me! No… you don’t want to imagine. I keep telling her to get rid of the idea, but she insists, claiming what are the odds? But that’s what I said the first and second time, and look—they’re just like me!”

“Right. I’ll take my laptop with me.”

I said quicky gathering my pad and putting my mouse and laptop in the case.

“You can do whatever you want, but you’re not bringing it to the bar, and you’re not boring me with your boring day and boring crises. I could have stayed at home, but I promised Hayley I’d make sure you had a drink to loosen you up and get you to the restaurant for your date.”

Ed had left London to reap the rewards of going to UC Berkeley. He loved it so much he’d decided to stay here in the States and didn’t hesitate in joining a medical school here. He hasn’t been back to London since, mainly because his parents aren’t alive anymore and he doesn’t miss the place. He hangs on to his accent sentimentally, despite his claims how it constantly gets him in trouble. Not only with the nurses for its apparent s*x appeal, but the doctors too, for claiming the Brits always think they know best.

Whenever we went out, if he even mentioned being a doctor, women were giving him their numbers and not the other way around.

“Hot, smart, and ooh that accent,” they’d swoon at him. He claimed it was a big issue, but we all know he loves the attention. All men love attention from the opposite s*x—or the same s*x, depending on which way you’re inclined. The older we get, the more we crave it. Ed always wore his scrubs with his full name and doctor title on his chest.

“You ready, mate?”

“Seriously, this is the night you have to exaggerate the accent you’re so desperate to get rid of?” I asked as I packed up.

He laughed. “No, just winding you up.”

“I hate you, with your coloquial talk. It freaks me out because half the time they make no damn sense. So, hey give it a rest, mate.” I stressed the last word to emphasize my annoyance, but he ignored it.

He chuckled as we finally left my office and made it to the elevator, clearly amused at my rant. We stood waiting for one of the elevators to come after I pressed the button. He turned to me long enough to give me a sarcastic look before he faced forward.

“I thought you’d hired someone, a PA. You said she was the one.”

“f**k! Never judge a book by its cover. On paper, she was perfect, but in person she looked like Freddy Krueger’s ex.”

“Why ex?”

“She looked all messed up. Like she’d got drunk, fell in a ditch, and then was attacked by bees before she arrived at the interview. She made no effort for the interview, how could I know that anything on her resumé was true? Why did Carol have to leave?”

“Damn, you love moaning like a b***h. She didn’t leave, she had a baby. She even told you she was pregnant before she told her parents so you could plan for her maternity leave, and you still waited until the last minute to find someone. Not feeling any sympathy.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about work?” I asked. I raised my eyebrow and looked at his dark eyes.

Sometimes he stole the limelight from me when we went out. No more did we spend the night talking and venting like we did back at UC Berkeley. Once we hit the bar, it’d be all about his ego. It was about not feeling like a married man with two kids at home. Ed would never cheat—he loved Hayley too much—but he needed to feel like me sometimes, single and carefree, and I let him feel like the free man who was in his thirties and could go home with a different girl every single night. The irony in all this was if it was so f*****g great being single, then why was I always miserable?

***

As Ed and I jumped in the taxi and headed downtown, I had to ask him the one question on my mind.

“Remind me, why am I going on this blind date?”

He laughed. “Because you don’t want to go to your ex’s wedding alone next weekend. Have fun with her tonight and let loose. This isn’t a job interview, you’re just going on a blind date. A little conversation, a little wine, and who knows what might happen next….”

I stopped him before he could go any further with describing the events for the rest of the night. “Silly me for dating my mom’s best friend’s daughter!” I groused.

“You used to think it was cute how your families could all hang out together when you two were an item. Wasn’t that the reason you went out, moved in together, and then one day declared you would marry her?”

“I used to think Bambi’s cute. Doesn’t mean I want to sit down and watch the movie every night.”

“You really need to loosen up!” He stopped joking and gave me the serious look. The one that told me I needed to find something, or someone in life, or I was going to end up like one of his patients who had died on his operating table. The ones who had nobody to be there with or for them. No one to call or inform them they were dead. Ed didn’t want me to end up that way, so he made sure I socialized, and he kept tabs on me all the time.

“This feels a little over the top. There’s services I could call to get a date for the wedding. Kim, your ex has moved on, clearly. She wouldn’t have invited me to the wedding or dated a guy for only three months and said yes when he popped the question.”

“Wow, you seem to know a lot about their relationship. But I don’t remember you asking me the details when you got the invite,” he noted, lifting an eyebrow.

The only way I would have known would have been to do the one thing I hated most in my life—stalk her on social media. I may have an account on i********: and f*******:, both of which Carol set up to make me look more likable. I smile, I show teeth in my photos—what more does the world want? And she used to post on there for me, too. To show people what I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Where I shopped; every tiny thing even my mom wasn’t interested in knowing. I stopped the minute she went on maternity leave, and there was no way I was falling down the rabbit hole and posting every detail of my life. No one needed to know where I ate, let alone where I shopped, unless they spoke to me.

“I may have found her on f*******: saying something about—”

“You don’t use f*******:,” he interrupted. “Which means the only way you could know is if you—”

The taxi driver spoke up just in time. “We’re here.”

Before he could say anything else, I paid the driver and jumped out of the taxi. I knew Ed had figured it out, which was why he was laughing so hard on the side of the curb.

“Come on, stalker!” he said as he edged for us to go into the bar.

“Really?”

He nodded. “What do you prefer? Lurker? Hypocrite? Need to get a life? It’s your poison. The man who claimed he had social media accounts and never logged on or used them seems to be using them for the same thing he claimed he would never use them for. So, tell me, am I wrong?”

“Okay, I get the hint. Let’s get to the bar in one piece. Get something to drink, and then you can drop me at the restaurant like a good little boy.”

“Whatever you say, stalker. Your wish is my command. I better do what you say, otherwise, you’ll be stalking me too.”

I ignored his comment as he quickly put his badge on his shirt, which magically appeared in his hand. We smiled at the guys at the door, who knew us all too well. Sure enough, we were allowed into Steps with no issue. Our good friend Corey, who we met and used to hang out with at UC Berkeley, owned the bar, and we tried to hang out at the glitzy place whenever we got the chance. Not only because it’s the coolest bar on this side of the coast, but because the drinks are free.

“Corey says he’ll be at the bar when we get in. Usual spot. So we have plenty of time for a couple of drinks, and then you can leave Corey and me at the bar, having fun.”

I shook my head. “It’s a s**t shack. f**k, now I’m talking like you. I want to be at the bar, checking out chicks and taking one of them home and fooling around like we used to do.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Tonight you are not in the circle. And do us a favor and don’t try and sound like me because you’ve got a s**t accent.”

“What, the accent you desire so badly?”

He laughed. “Not yours. Just everyone in L.A., but definitely not yours.”

I went to a boarding school in Berlin, then in Zurich, graduated from an academy in Boston, and ended up in UC Berkeley. I’ve got a European-American accent which confused everyone, including myself at times. Especially when I would spit out a word of German, a language I hadn’t practiced or spoken in years. Ed was right—there was nothing sexy about my accent. He said I used to sound like one of those military kids, when we were at UC Berkeley, who on paper were American but they’d never spent more than two months here as a kid and as an adult, they spent their time trying to fit in.

I did crave the feeling of picking up someone and getting all this frustration out of me for the night. The last thing I felt like doing was going on a date and making a polite conversation. I had a couple of hours before it was time to meet her. Maybe by then Corey would have picked someone up and Ed would have to go home, and I’d be left alone to indulge in my own pleasure. The night was young and who knew what lay ahead.

One thing was for sure—I had no intention of being disappointed.