Wait—My Boss Has a Crush on Me?!

Chapter 1

After my brother got into a car accident, he swore up and down he'd traveled back from the future.

Then he stormed into my company's lobby and screamed at my ice-cold boss, "Christian!"

I went white as a sheet. I nearly died on the spot.

I'd just spent 30 minutes in Christian Mercer's office getting torn apart over a slip in one of my proposals. If this was what pushed him over the edge, my Wall Street career was toast.

I tried to haul my brother off, but he latched onto my boss's waistband and howled at the top of his lungs.

"Christian! You still haven't told her? What are you, a ninja?! You've even got Stella's initials tattooed on your lower back! What are you waiting for?!"

The little punk was talking complete nonsense.

But Christian was clearly furious. Color flooded that usually pale, unreadable face—up his cheeks, out to his ears, down his neck. Even the rims of his eyes had gone pink.

That night, I was already drafting my resignation letter when I happened to catch the private w******p messages Christian had sent my brother.

Christian: This is Christian. Did you really come back from the future?

Christian: The tattoo on my lower back… how did you know about it?

Christian: Stella and I… do we really get married down the line?

Christian: How many kids will we have? Will they take after her or me?

Christian: Hold on. What did you mean by a "divorce scare"? Is some bastard going to try to take her from me?!

******

To explain how this whole ridiculous mess got started, I have to back up 3 days.

When Mom called, I'd just slunk out of the CEO's office with my tail between my legs. "Mom, is Lucas awake?" I asked, rubbing my pounding temples.

Lucas—my little brother, just turned 18, a student at an Ivy League prep school. Two nights back, a car had hit him while he biked home from class in Manhattan. He'd been out cold ever since.

"He's awake! The doctor just finished checking him!" Mom's excitement crackled down the line.

"That's good. He didn't hit his head too bad, did he? Does he still know everybody?"

Mom went quiet for a couple seconds, then answered, careful. "He knows us. But… he keeps talking nonsense."

Then came the sounds of a scuffle, and Lucas hollering at the top of his lungs. "Mom! You're on with Stella, aren't you? Give me the phone!"

"Stella! It's me! Listen—I came back from 2035! You need to buy Bitcoin and Tesla stock, right now. I'm telling you, we're going to make a fortune—"

Straight-faced, I hung up.

That little punk really thought I had all the time in the world, huh?

A handful of Mercer Tech's venture deals had hit cash-flow trouble that week. Christian's mood had dropped below freezing, and the whole Manhattan office was walking on eggshells.

After I hung up, Lucy—a work friend I was close with—gave me a sympathetic look. "You okay, Stella? You just got chewed out by Mercer the Grim Reaper that long and came out without so much as blinking. Nerves of steel."

"Mercer the Grim Reaper" was what everybody called Christian behind his back. The second the words were out of Lucy's mouth, her face froze and her jaw snapped shut.

Christian walked out of the CEO's office. He had a head on everyone around him, broad-shouldered and imposing in a custom dark suit. Talking on his phone, he slid his gold-rimmed glasses on and stepped into the elevator. Nobody breathed until the doors closed.

"Looks like the boss landed that five-billion-dollar Manhattan credit line."

"Christian's a real workaholic. He doesn't just run us into the ground—he does it to himself too."

Lucy patted my shoulder. "Stella, didn't you and Christian both go to Yale? He was a few years ahead of you, right? Was he this cold-blooded in college too?"

I paused, then smiled and didn't really answer.

I carried my mug into the break room, and my mind started to wander. Had Christian actually been cold-blooded at Yale? I didn't think so. The company was still young, but the break room was always stocked with chocolate and emergency candy for anybody running low on blood sugar. The women's restrooms always had pads. At client dinners, Christian handled the hard liquor himself and never once pushed the women on staff to drink with clients. Little things, easy to miss. But they said a lot about how much he quietly carried on his own. He just wasn't good with words.