Page 10 of Falling for Her Grumpy Boss

“Okay.”

“One of my best friends needs an assistant,” he says. “Temporarily. Maybe longer, depending on how it goes.”

I tilt my head slightly, considering that. “What kind of work?”

“Similar structure,” he replies. “Scheduling, coordination, keeping him from running his own operation into the ground. But on a larger scale. More moving parts.”

“And my position here?”

“Stays exactly as it is.” His answer comes without hesitation. “Bennett & Weston continues to pay you. Your benefits, your insurance, everything remains unchanged. This would be a temporary assignment. If you don’t like it, or if it doesn’t work out, you come back. No questions asked.”

I let that settle, turning it over in my mind. “And him?” I ask. “What’s he like to work for?”

Jeremy’s expression shifts, something that looks suspiciously like amusement flickering there before he smooths it out.

“He’s… demanding.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s a polite one.” His mouth curves again, a fraction more this time. “He’s good at what he does. Built everything he has from the ground up. But he goes through assistants.”

“How often?”

Jeremy exhales slowly, like he’s deciding how honest to be. “More often than I’d recommend.”

“A few?”

He huffs out a quiet laugh, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “More than a few.”

I sit back slightly, crossing one leg over the other. “And you think I should walk into that?”

“I think you’re competent enough to handle him,” he says, his voice firming. “And strong enough to make your boundaries clear.”

That gets my attention.

“Which one of your friends are we talking about?” I ask.

“Dylan Shaw.”

The name lands, and something in my chest tightens before I can stop it.

Dylan Shaw.

For a moment, I don't hear anything else Jeremy says. Before the fundraiser, Dylan Shaw had simply been Iron Ridge's golden boy. Fast as lightning on the football field, destined for the NFL before the Kansas City Chiefs made it official. Back then, I'd admired him from a distance the way the whole town had.

He was on screens, in recaps, in conversations that stretched far beyond a small-town field. I remember the night the Chiefs took the Super Bowl, the way his name got pulled back into it, tied to everything he’d been before the injury cut his career short. It didn’t slow him down. If anything, it just pushed him in a different direction.

He built something else.

I’ve seen the stores his company created. Clean lines, sharp branding, the kind of places that don’t just sell equipment but an idea of who you could be if you used it right. One location turned into several, then into something that spread far beyond Kansas, until his name wasn’t just tied to football anymore but to a business that kept growing no matter how far it reached.

And somewhere in all of that, the other stories started to stick.

Assistants who didn’t last. Women who came and went. A pattern people mentioned with a half-smile, like it wasn’t quite a warning but wasn’t harmless either. The kind of reputation that builds quietly, reinforced by just enough truth that no one questions it.

My fingers tighten slightly against the armrest before I force them to relax.

Jeremy is still talking, but I’m looking at him differently now, measuring the gap between what he’s offering and what it actually means.