Several years ago

 

Alice Story seethed inside, barely hearing what her father was saying.

The gist of it was this: You’re an excellent employee. You’re doing great work. I’m raising your salary and giving you a five-figure bonus, but you will not be promoted. Again.

For five years, Alice Story had worked her ass off for her father’s company, Story Imports. At her desk before anyone else arrived and staying long after everyone else had gone home, she was only outperformed occasionally by her father’s lapdog, Shane Olson, who had been promoted four times in the five years that she and Shane had been working shoulder to shoulder on identical projects.

For some reason, Alice had convinced herself that this year—her fifth anniversary at Story Imports—her father would surprise her with a big promotion. As the eldest Story child, and after such intense dedication, she dreamed that she’d skip the title of manager and be promoted directly to vice president…or at least director.

Alas, no. Her title remained at associate, and she’d had it.

“…so, that’s it, gal. Good work. Your bonus should hit your bank account in seven to ten—”

And just like that, something inside of Alice snapped.

“No,” she growled.

“What’s that?” asked her father, cocking his head to the side.

“No,” she repeated, leveling him with her eyes.

“No to the bonus?” asked her father, his voice taking on a slight sneer. “Fine. More money for—”

“No to all of it,” she hissed, placing her palms on the arms of her chair and standing up. “No to getting your coffee…No to staying here until midnight…No to coming in at five in the morning for conference calls to Paris and staying until after eight for conference calls to Napa…No to sitting in a cube when I deserve an office…No to the embarrassment of being your daughter and still being an associate. No, no, no, no, NO!” She balled up her hands and brought them down on his desk with a definitive thud. “No more!”

“You forget yourself, Alice Hughes Sto—”

“I remember myself, Father!” she bellowed, fury and injustice reddening her cheeks and fueling her tirade. “I remember that I went to Princeton undergrad. I remember that I went to the Wharton School of Business. I remember that I have been working here for five long, insufferable years!”

Her father leaped to his feet. “Get out! Get out of my office, you ungrateful—”

“I am ungrateful?” she shrieked, pounding the desk again. “I am ungrateful? I am responsible and dutiful and have given you everything I have inside my head and my heart since the day I graduated from business school! And yet you refuse to promote me. You refuse to let me rise up in this company that my grandfather Morrow started because you are a sexist, masochistic PIG!”

“GET OUT!” he half-growled, half-yelled, his face bright red and his eyeballs bulging from their sockets. “GET THE HELL OUT! You’re FIRED!”

“Well, that’s fine,” she hissed, “because I QUIT!”

Turning her back on her father, she marched out of his office, hurling open the door, which slammed against the wall, the handle burying itself into the drywall with a loud and definitive crunch.

Standing before her, his hands on a rolling mailroom cart and his gray eyes wide as saucers, was…was…the guy from the mail room. He stared at her unblinkingly, which clued Alice into the fact that the entire office had just heard every word of her dramatic resignation. Holding his gaze, which felt—for no good reason—like the peaceful eye of a brutal, unforgiving storm, she clenched her jaw once and took a shaky breath through her teeth.

“You’ve got this,” he whispered in Spanish-accented English, nodding slowly, deep dimples denting his brown cheeks as he pursed his full lips.

Still staring into his clear gray eyes, she nodded back, spying her cubicle desk behind him. “Yes, I do.”

Brushing his shoulder as she stepped forward, she knelt on the desk, placing one heeled shoe flat on the surface next to her keyboard, then the other. Standing to her full height so that she could see over the tops of the twenty or so cubicles on the office floor, she loosened her jaw and took a deep, cleansing breath.

Looking down at—Juan? Julio?—once more for support, she raised her chin and cleared her throat.

“Fellow employees!”

The office was already fairly quiet, most of the personnel having heard the fight she had with her father and stopping to gawk. Now they looked up at her in shock, staring at the boss’s daughter standing on top of her desk.

“Do any of you value your dignity? Do any of you want to get ahead at a company where you will be judged on your contributions, not your gender or race? Do any of you feel passed over for advancement here because you’re not kissing my father’s ass?”

She glanced down at the mail room guy again, pausing for a millisecond to realize that his eyelashes were obscenely long and curled up at the end. He blinked up at her, and she shook her head to clear it, looking out at the sea of stunned eyes staring back at her.

“I’m starting a new company! And it’s called…um, Alice Story Imports! All of you are welcome to come and work for me!”

***

Carlos Vega stared up at Alice Story as she made her impetuous offer to the employees of her father’s company.

He’d heard Alice and her father screaming at each other, of course—everyone in Philadelphia had probably heard them—but he’d never seen anything quite as glorious, or half as brave, as Alice Story standing on a desk, telling her father, in so many words, to go straight to hell.

Carlos, who’d started in the Story Imports mail room just over eight months ago after earning his bachelor’s degree in business administration, had hoped to rise more quickly through the ranks of the company. But taking one look at the very white management told him that it would be an uphill, possibly impossible battle for a Hispanic man.

Still, he’d worked hard and hoped that one day he’d have an opportunity to move from mail room coordinator to corporate associate. Unlikely? Maybe. But Carlos was a dreamer, and he knew that if someone would give him a chance, he could prove his worth.

Looking up at Alice Story, who waited for someone—anyone—to take her up on her offer, it occurred to him that this, here and now, was his chance.

Though Alice lived and worked—and, hell, breathed—in a stratosphere way above a man who’d grown up on the tiny island of Puerto Rico, sharing a respectable but very modest home with three generations of Vegas, he knew that her offer was made from the heart. She had experienced discrimination at the hands of her father; she wasn’t likely to perpetuate it within her own company.

“Me,” he heard himself whisper.

Alice looked down at him, shock written across her face. “Did you say something?”

“Uh.” He cleared his throat. “Me. I would like to work for you.”

His accent was stronger for his nerves, but his words were clear and decisive, and Alice’s lips twitched in relief as she jerked a nod at him. “What’s your name?”

“Carlos, Miss Alice.”

“Carlos,” she said. “That’s ‘Charles,’ right?”

Hearing her say his name made something inside of him clench tightly, then release, and he had a vague thought that hearing San Pedro call your name at the pearly gates would have nothing on Alice Story translating it from Spanish to English.

“Sí, lo es,” he murmured in Spanish, then quickly switched to English. “Uh. Yes. That’s right.”

“Thank you, Charles,” she whispered. “You won’t regret it.” She raised her chin, put her hands on her hips, and called out over the heads of her erstwhile coworkers, “Is anyone else interested in a fresh start away from this hellhole?”

Somewhere across the office, a paper clip dropped to the floor, an isolated sound in the thick silence.

Behind him, Mr. Story’s office door opened, and Carlos turned to find his boss standing in the doorway, his face twisted with fury and disdain.

“Security’s on their way up, gal,” he sneered. “Get out and good riddance!”

He slammed his door, which reverberated around the silent, still office, every employee transfixed on the drama that had just unfolded before them. But then a phone rang, and the entire office got back to work, humming with the sound of employees going about their usual business.

Carlos turned back to Alice, watching as she flinched, her brows kitting together in disbelief as she realized that no one else at Story Imports was willing to take a chance on her.

“Miss Alice,” he said, “are you okay?”

She looked down at him, her eyes slightly glassy. “Yes.”

“I meant it. I will work for you.”

“Alice.”

“What?”

“Just call me Alice.” Her lips twitched briefly as she sized him up. For a moment, he thought—hoped—she might smile at him, but she didn’t. She raised her chin instead. “I promise…you won’t regret it.”

He let his hand slip from the mesh basket he’d been pushing around the office and raised it to her. “I trust you.”

Glancing down at his hand for a long moment, she finally took it, holding onto him as she lowered herself to her knees, then climbed off the desk. The office around them buzzed with normal activity as though nothing out of the ordinary had just taken place.

She let go of his hand, took a framed photo of herself and her four sisters off the desk, and shoved it into her purse. Then she said, “I’ve got everything I need. Ready to go?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded. “Alice.”

As she turned and left her cubicle—her posture perfect as she walked down the hallway, past the conference room, past the reception desk, to the elevator lobby—her choppy and shallow breathing was the only indication she was rattled.

When they reached the elevator bank, Carlos hit the call button, then turned to Alice, who just stared at the double doors in silence. When the doors dinged open, he stepped onto the elevator beside his new boss, watching the chrome doors close in front of them and hoping like hell that he’d made the right decision.