The weekend past with a blur of angry calls with my boss, desperate meetings with the head of HR to please just get the team from Boston approved before Monday, and dodging at least a dozen questions about the “make out guy from Friday”. Even my best friend J, who hadn’t even been there had texted me to ask. Although Jimmy had been hot as hell, and therefore a pretty big score for drunk Dean, I didn’t want to admit to the guys that I didn’t remember a thing and that I also completely forgot to get his phone number. I really didn’t want to accidentally admit that I’d spent the rest of the weekend, when I wasn’t panicking about the merger, mourning that mistake.

Monday came too quickly. Mondays always came too quickly but this one was really going to blow.

I was happy about the merger, of course—after all, it was my pet project and my responsibility to coordinate the entire Boston team once they arrived. And I was very glad that those we kept from the other branch were coming here instead of the other way around. Chicago was home and the idea of upping and leaving for the east coast was as miserable to me as it was to my team.

I had been at Singer-Paulson since I graduated. I hadn’t thought I’d like working for a marketing firm half as much as I did, but something about the work just fit with me. And having a team to run, to put out fires for, and to watch over was right up my alley.

So, all in all, the merger was going smoothly, would be a great success for the firm and a feather in my cap. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a hell of a lot of work, or that it would let up once the team got here. Integrating a dozen strangers into a tight knit marketing team wasn’t going to be easy, even if I’d spent half of my meetings in the past three months swearing up and down that it would be.

I had to keep business running as usual and my team happy while getting the new guys up to speed. And they still didn’t have their goddamn offices sorted out yet.

The building was still dark when I got there. It usually was. Ben, the night security officer, waved me in quickly and accepted the coffee I offered him. He drank a long pull of it before bothering to clear the buzzer.

Upstairs, I unlocked my office and powered up my computer. If I could get the office and cubicle situation worked out by eight when others piled in, it wouldn’t look like I was holding this merger together with the skin of my teeth.

If this didn’t work, we’d have shut down an entire firm for nothing. Dozens of people without jobs, an entire team uprooted from their lives only to be turned away, not to mention the crumbling of our own Chicago office and the dismantling of my team.

I had been project manager and executive for almost five years. Most of these guys had been with me from the start—I wasn’t about to disappoint them now.

I lost track of time and was halfway through the reassignment of new clients when my assistant, Cheryl, knocked on the office door.

She hurried inside without waiting for my approval. The click of her heels was as comforting as the smile she offered and the green smoothie she placed on my desk. Cheryl had been my assistant for three years and was nearly as good at helping me as I was at my job. Even though she technically wasn’t in marketing and had never worked as an executive, I was pretty damn sure Cheryl would be my replacement one day. Probably with a coup. It would be hard to not support her even as she kicked my ass out of the building.

“Mr. Cannon,” Cheryl said, throwing herself into the chair across from me. She crossed her legs in front of her and arched an eyebrow, looking pointedly at the smoothie.

I sighed and picked it up, drinking from the metal straw. Cheryl was a stickler for health and environment and while it clearly showed—I refused to believe genetics kept her blonde hair so smooth and shiny, or her work ethic that meant she’d never taken a sick day in three years. But I could really have done without the amount of kale she insisted I consume every week.

“Thank you,” I said. Her smile quirked into a smirk that we both pretended wasn’t because she could hear the bitterness in my voice. I took a glance at the clock, startling at the time. Nearly nine-thirty. Shit, I really had lost cross of time. “Have they arrived?”

Cheryl nodded, folding her arms onto her knees and leaned forward. “I’ve wrangled them into the conference room.”

“They’re not cattle.” I finished the email draft I was working on, trying to drain as much of the smoothie as possible so she wouldn’t be tempted to order me a salad for lunch.

Cheryl shrugged, standing and smoothing her dress pants. “Might as well be.”

I closed my laptop, stood and straightening my tie. “They’re part of our team now,” I told her. “They deserve our respect.”

Cheryl gave me a once over and nodded to herself. “I’ll hold your calls. Go get ‘em, Boss.”

The conference room was just down the hall from my office. I could hear the quiet, muffled chatter before I got to the door.

When I walked in, the room quieted immediately. I ignored the nerves curling in my stomach and throat, focusing on keeping my shoulders straight and posture confident. I knew that half of conversation was non-verbal and tried to ease the nerves out of my stance. I wanted the Boston team to feel welcomed, but more than that, I wanted them not to be miserable about their own branch closing or to blame me. It was only my fault because I’d argued that it shouldn’t have been my branch that closed.

I stopped behind the chair in the front of the long, oval table. I recognized half of the faces—I my whole team had showed up as instructed. But with it being Monday, I never held out hope that everyone would be on time.

No one looked openly pissed so I figured it was a good start.

“Good morning,” I said, pausing to clear my throat. My voice sounded nervous—I needed to stop that immediately. I could hear my boss David’s voice loud in my head: be in charge, have control, get results. The mantra was a bit cheesy and limiting, but it worked. The tension eased a bit from my shoulders. “I’m Dean Cannon, the head of marketing and outreach here at Singer-Paulson. As you all know, today is the start of our new partnership with the Boston team. We are very happy to have you join us here in Chicago.”

There was a small smattering of applause. “I expect everyone from the original team to be welcoming and help the new guys settle in. If there are any issues or complaints, you can come directly to me.”

I skimmed the room, waiting for the hum of approval and nodding to settle across them. The new team seemed to be pressed together in the back of the room, but no one looked particularly upset or angry, so at least there probably wouldn’t be any open fighting. I had heard horror stories of mergers in the past and the sheer idea of having to quell an interdepartmental fist fight on a Monday morning threatened to produce a migraine.

“The clients who are already assigned here in the Midwest will remain with the current account leads—the same for any of the clients brought over from Boston,” I nodded toward the corner of new guys. “I am currently working on dispensing and distributing from the new client list in an even, fair way. We’re all a team now. Chicago Team, head out. Boston team, we’ll be doing entrance interviews today. Cheryl, my assistant, will call you when you’re up..”

I took a last sweep around the room. Thirty people did not fit easily in here. I could barely see everyone. I would have to do something about the layout for future meetings.

“Come to me with any issues that arrive. Now, get to work.” No one moved. I sighed and gestured towards the door. “Meeting over. Class dismissed.”

I left the room first, propping the door open with a quick shove so that everyone would file out quickly. I made it back to my office only thirty seconds before Cheryl glided in.

“Good meeting,” she said, even though she hadn’t attended. “Ready for your first interview?”

I stifled a groan. No. “Sure thing,” I smiled, leaning back in my chair. “Who’s first?”

“Department head,” she said, glancing down at the clipboard in her hand. “He ran the entire marketing department back in Boston. Not, like, your job—that guy was fired,” she paused, raised her eyebrows in silent protest. I ignored it outside of fidgeting. Redundancies were unavoidable, if a little heartless. “But more like his right-hand man. From performance reviews and project descriptions, it seems like he was the other guy’s version of me and Clark.”

I whistled. “Sounds like a good addition to the team.”

Cheryl nodded and ran a finger down the paper. “Name’s James Swan. He requested to come in first.”

I glanced down at my watch. “Sure. Send him in.”

She passed me the clipboard before slipping back out. I re-scaned his file as she said, “Mr. Cannon will see you now.”

I flipped to the empty questionnaire Cheryl had prepared. I hated entrance and exit interviews. They were mandatory, took all day and rarely gave any useful information—especially entrance ones.

I scribbled the date and time on the top of the page as the door closed and I heard the chair across from me scrape the floor. James Swan cleared his throat.

“Mr. Swan,” I said, looking up to see the Boston department head and—

Holy goddamn shit.

My breath got kicked out of my lungs. I dropped the pen and clipboard—the clatter was a distant sound compared to the ragged sound of my own breathing.

“Dean,” Jimmy said, wincing. “Hello.”

Holy. Goddamn. Shit.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. It fell open again.

James Swan aka Jimmy aka Hot Guy I black out slept with stared at me. His eyes were greener and wider than I remembered—he’d shaven and was wearing a shirt, at least.

That thought felt like a punch to the throat—I could remember what his chest looked like bare. I was his boss.

Something right on the edge between nausea and excitement bubbled beneath my skin. Half of me was ready to run screaming from the room; the other half forced me to calm down and pretend not to panic. My mouth was dry as I tried again to speak. “It’s... nice to see you again.”

I winced; Jimmy’s mouth quirked into an almost smile. “It is.” He stopped, cleared his throat, and rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. He let his head roll back and looked up at the ceiling, as if it was to blame for—this. “I had no idea—”

I held my hands up. He could probably hear my pulse, but I kept my face smooth, just in case I was still not visibly shaken. “Neither did I.”

“Technically,” he said slowly, “all we remember is breakfast. A perfectly professi—well, a perfectly platonic encounter, one might say. Right?”

“Exactly,” I agreed, cheeks burning hot. Not remembering my night with him hadn’t stopped my imagination. The past few nights dug into my skull painfully now that I was his boss. I tried to remember our fraternization policy. Hadn’t it changed? I couldn’t remember. How was I going to get Cheryl to look into it without her bloodhound nose picking up on what was happening?

“So.” He cleared his throat again and straightened his tie. It was a dark green, a darker version of the same vivid shade as his eyes. It looked—

Professional. It was a very professional tie.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Goddamn. This, right here, was exactly why I shouldn’t drink tequila. Stick with beer, Dean. You don’t make mistakes like this on beer.

He was looking at me as hard and searching as I was at him. His pale skin had a dark flush, his eyes narrowed—even though he was in a slim fitting suit and clean shaven, his hair was still a royal mess.

I reached blindly for a drink. The only thing on the table was the kale smoothie—I took a long swallow. It was disgusting and the only thing I deserved.

“Jim—J—Mr. Swan, I—”

“Jimmy,” he said. He bit his bottom lip, the same way he had the other day. When my eyes narrowed, his widened and he let it go with a pop. “Jimmy is fine.”

“Jimmy, then.” His name still felt nice in my mouth. I was going to hell. Or at least to the bottom of the corporate ladder. “Do you want to report this to HR?”

We probably should. Keeping it secret was probably all kinds of wrong. The no-fraternization policy swam behind my eyes, the little black print mocked me. When Jimmy shook his head fervently, relief filled me.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. My pulse had evened out a little, my body not quite as shocked as it had been. “If—if you change your mind, please come forward immediately. I promise that this will not in any way affect your role here in the Chicago branch and—”

“De—Mr. Cannon,” Jimmy leaned forward, placing a hand on my desk. I swallowed a wave of nerves and adrenaline. “I’m unconcerned about your professionalism. I’m confident that we can work together well, despite any—awkwardness that might arise.”

Had Jimmy talked this formally the other day? I fought the urge to run through our time together.

That Jimmy was a hot stranger from a bar whose number I forgot to get—and honestly, thank God for that. This Jimmy was the Boston branch department head and newest member of my team.

I didn’t get to be a marketing executive at Singer-Paulson by the age of thirty-three because I couldn’t compartmentalize.

I straightened and picked up the pen and clipboard I had dropped when Jimmy came in. “So, should we get started?”

Jimmy cocked his head, eyes flicking across my face. I held still, waiting, hoping whatever he was looking for he would find. After a minute, he nodded, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap.

“Sure,” he said, smoothly, the perfect semblance of professional. “What is your first question, Mr. Cannon?”

My whole body shivered. His eyes narrowed, and his lips tightened into a smooth line. We both pretended like the other wasn’t affected.

My vision swam when I looked down at the entrance interview questions.

Holy hell, this is going to be something.