Who’s The Boss? Read online

  Who’s The Boss?

  Erin McCarthy

  Copyright © 2020 by Erin McCarthy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by Hang Le.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  Also by Erin McCarthy

  Prologue

  The first time I met Sean Kincaid it was hate at first sight.

  I didn’t know who he was at the time, but he annoyed me from the very first second he entered the same air space as me.

  The feeling had clearly been mutual.

  On my way to my friend Felicia’s engagement party, I was already in the elevator reaching for the button when a very tall, very attractive guy threw his arm up to stop the door from closing. The door bounced back open and he stepped in the elevator with a victorious smile on his face.

  Then he stopped. Mid-smile, he just cut it off. Like once he’d taken in the view of me and made eye contact, he’d decided I no longer was worthy of his teeth being displayed.

  It was so shockingly obvious that I had an immediate intense negative reaction in return. Boom. Insta-hate.

  I had a reputation of being something of a cynic because I don’t think couples should jump into moving in together or say, get married after a couple of weeks. I believe in taking it slow and background checks, so sue me. Proceed with caution or get your heart shattered into a million pieces. Or worse, you wind up with a restraining order. But I wasn’t unfriendly. I liked people. I was open to giving everyone a shot. It was rare for me to dislike a guy on sight.

  But that dismissive glance made me want to build a wall brick by brick between us so I didn’t have to look at his arrogant face.

  He made it worse when he spoke.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  Fuck what? Himself? Because that would make me happy. It better not be fuck me because that was totally uncalled for.

  “What floor?” I asked, to be polite, because even though I couldn’t shake that flicker of irritation, I wasn’t going to be a bitch.

  “Four. I’m going to my brother’s engagement party.” He made a sound of disgust, shaking his head. “He’s marrying some psycho he met on a dating app a hot minute ago.”

  We were going to the same party. Fabulous. I actually agreed with him that the engagement was too fast. Which it definitely was. Felicia and Michael had been dating all of three weeks. But that psycho was my best friend, and why was she the crazy one and his brother wasn’t when both of them had jumped into the engagement?

  “I’m going to the same apartment,” I said, studiously staring at the numbers panel. Do not engage. Do not argue with a total stranger, I coached myself.

  We were only on the second floor. Slowest. Elevator. Ever.

  “Oh, you know Michael? Do you work with him? Can you talk him out of this ridiculous engagement?”

  I had never met Michael (because as mentioned, Felicia and Michael had basically just met themselves) but it wasn’t reassuring that I would adore Felicia’s fiancé if he shared DNA with this guy standing next to me.

  “No, I don’t work with Michael.” I turned and gave him a hard stare. “Felicia is one of my best friends. You know, the psycho marrying your brother.”

  Understanding dawned, but he merely grinned. He didn’t look even remotely apologetic. “No kidding? Small world.”

  “How does that make it a small world?” I asked, unable to contain myself. “There are eight units in this building, two on the first floor, and we’re on the elevator together. Odds are we’d be going to the same party.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “It’s called small talk. A non sequitur.”

  Was that mansplaining? My vow to be polite disintegrated. “Small world, small talk… what else in your world is small?” I asked, giving him a questioning stare.

  He just gave a laugh. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “No. I wouldn’t.” Because I doubted he had a small anything, in spite of my jab.

  Because unfortunately, he was actually a hot piece of man candy. I could admit that. He was tall, broad shouldered, with a strong jaw. He had light green eyes that gave off an icy coolness and cheekbones that women spent hours watching YouTube videos to try to achieve with contouring. He hadn’t shaved recently, but it wasn’t a full beard. Just a few days of caramel-colored stubble that I had no doubt most women would enjoy running their fingers through.

  He was gorgeous and muscular and probably had a cock to back up all that confidence. Which made me dislike him even more.

  “What do you think of this engagement?” he asked. “Seriously. No offense, but there has to be something wrong with your friend.”

  “Are you serious?” Because again, Felicia was defective, but that made his brother normal? I wasn’t going to be a bitch on my own behalf, but if you mess with my friends, I will bring it. I opened my mouth to annihilate him, but got distracted when the elevator jerked to a sudden halt.

  “Why are we stopping?” he asked, looking up.

  The second-floor button was still lit up. “Maybe someone is going up from the second floor,” I said, because duh. That’s what elevators do. They stop at floors.

  “But the doors aren’t opening.” He reached out and jammed his finger repeatedly into the “open door” button.

  Fighting the urge to sigh, I just stood there and watched him pull back from the panel and run his hand through his hair.

  “Nothing is happening.”

  No, it wasn’t. I unfurled my scarf so it wasn’t covering my neck. It was December and I was bundled up from the commute from Brooklyn to SoHo. It was getting stuffy in the elevator. I had my purse over my shoulder and across my midsection so I didn’t have to carry it and I shifted so that I could unzip my winter coat.

  Michael’s brother turned to me, panic clear on his face. “What the hell do we do?”

  “It might start up again in a minute,” I said, not really that worried. I’d been on enough trains that had stopped and started again without any reason or explanation. I’d also been trapped in an elevator once about four years earlier and that had lasted three hours. Once we got past ten minutes, I would start to get concerned, but for now I wasn’t going to freak out. “Push the help button.”

  That seemed an obvious course of action to me.

  But he dismissed that idea. “No one is going to respond to that.”

  Okay, Mr. Elevator Expert.

  “I’ll push it, then.” I tried to shift around him, but he wasn’t moving. “Excuse me.” I was determined to keep my cool.

  He wrinkled his nose and frowned down at me. “What? Why?”

  “So I can push the button.”

  The frown deepened. His mouth was sensual, with lips that probably could do amazing things to a woman’s inner thighs, after he stripped her naked.

  “That’s pointless,” he said. “I’ll text Michael. He can call maintenance.”

  I looked at him and the only stripping I wanted to do was to rip off my scarf fully and tie it over that irritating mouth.

  “Fine. Good luck getting a text t
o send in an elevator in a building this old.” I had no idea if a text would go through or not, he just annoyed me.

  It was then that I realized I hadn’t asked his name and he hadn’t offered it. He hadn’t asked for my name either and I didn’t care. I pressed the “help” button.

  “Michael’s not responding.”

  “He is in the middle of his engagement party,” I pointed out. “He’s probably, you know, busy.”

  He just turned and gave me a long stare, eyebrows raised. “Wow. That was totally unnecessary.”

  Oh, no, he did not. I narrowed my eyes. “What was unnecessary?”

  “Sarcasm.”

  “That was not sarcasm. That was stating the obvious.”

  “Whatever.” He went back to his phone, typing again.

  Now I was actually amused. That was his best response? I felt triumphant. The victor. “Um, isn’t ‘whatever-ing’ me sarcasm? I thought sarcasm was unnecessary.”

  Actually, I thought “whatever” fell more under the category of bratty, but it wasn’t worth pointing that out. I already felt like I’d bested him and that was enough for me.

  Without responding, he ripped his coat off. “Damn, it’s hot in here.” He dropped the coat on the floor and tore at the neck of his dress shirt. “Why the hell isn’t anything happening?”

  For a split second I felt sorry for him. He was clearly claustrophobic and I knew that wasn’t something you could actually control. Sympathy had me asking, “Do you want me to try calling one of my other friends at the party?”

  “What I want is for you to stop talking.”

  My sympathy evaporated. Thoughts of strangling him with my scarf returned.

  “You’re a jerk,” I said, because hello. If you’re trapped in an elevator with someone, it doesn’t exactly make sense to be rude to them. Though technically I had just broken my own rule, but he had broken it first. So, there.

  Now we were both acting like children. Fabulous.

  He frowned at me. “What did I do to deserve that? I know being trapped is stressful but you don’t have to start calling me names.”

  “You told me to stop talking!”

  “Calm down.” He held his hand up like I was being irrational.

  There it was again. He was patronizing me.

  I pressed my lips tightly together and looked up at the ceiling, praying for composure. Zen. I needed it. Breathe deeply. It was a technique I had perfected working as a chef in the restaurant business. My job was nonstop stress. I knew how to handle a high-pressure situation and I didn’t need this total stranger telling me to calm down.

  “I don’t think I’m the one who needs to calm down,” I said, my voice sugary sweet, a hard edge underlying it.

  Any man with any sense would recognize the tone of a woman who is seriously, extensively pissed off.

  But he clearly was an oblivious idiot.

  “We’re both panicking, it’s okay,” he said. “This elevator is hot and no one is responding to us. We’ll get through this.”

  Yep. Still clueless.

  “Thanks, I feel so much better,” I said in a breathy voice. “You’re such a big, helpful man.” At eighteen I had intended to be an actress. I could bullshit with the best of them.

  He eyed me like he couldn’t decide if I was insane or serious. He didn’t seem to catch on to the fact that I was mocking him.

  “Come here,” he said, shocking the hell out of me by taking my hand into his.

  Uh-oh. He was tugging me closer to him. “What are you doing?” I asked, barely holding on to the helpless female voice.

  I did not want to be in his personal space.

  “I think we could both use a hug.”

  A hug? Oh, hell, no.

  I jerked away from him. “What? No, I’m good, thanks.”

  He laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t go through with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I called your bluff. Big, helpful man? You took it too far with that.”

  Rolling my eyes, I stepped away. He was right, but I wasn’t going to admit that. “Don’t try me, you never know what I’ll do.”

  “Is that so? Will you distract me from the fact that we’re going to suffocate and die in this elevator?”

  “It depends how. I can tap-dance for you if you’d like.” I wasn’t serious. I couldn’t tap-dance, and if I did, I wasn’t doing it for him.

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “You could kiss me.”

  I gripped the strap of my purse, assessing him.

  If I was offered a million dollars, I might kiss him. Might. I’d have to think about it for a minute or twelve.

  But for free? For his amusement?

  Hell no.

  “Sure,” I said lightly, because he expected me to say no.

  For half a heartbeat he looked alarmed, which made me want to laugh. He didn’t want to kiss me any more than I wanted to kiss him.

  “That’s very generous of you,” he murmured, shifting closer to me. “I appreciate you wanting to help me out.”

  “I’m a very sweet woman,” I said, standing my ground. I was not going to be the first to break away.

  “I can tell that about you,” he said, genuine amusement in his eyes. “I said to myself when I got on this elevator, ‘Sean, that is a sweet, gentle woman.’”

  Sean.

  He looked like a Sean. Strong, like an old-school boxer.

  “That’s why my mother named me Isla.” That made exactly zero sense. My name was derived from a Scottish island, but it seemed like a good comeback to a conversation that all the way around was rooted in the ridiculous.

  “Isla? That's a beautiful name for a beautiful woman.” He brushed my hair off of my shoulder and cupped my cheek.

  Damn it. One of us needed to stop this.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the one to lose the game and pull away.

  He leaned, crowding into my space. I felt the hard length of his thigh shift against mine.

  I was grateful I was still wearing my coat, so there was a barrier between my body and his. He smelled like the woods. And… was that cilantro? What the hell. It was wafting off his fingertips brushing over my cheek.

  Neither of us broke eye contact. I could see the challenge in his eyes.

  I was sure he saw the same determination in mine.

  “Thank you,” I said, to stall.

  His mouth was mere inches from mine and we stood there, the tension hanging between us.

  I shifted, going up on tiptoes so I was even closer to him, wanting to show him I wasn’t going to back down.

  His eyes actually darkened and I saw a spark of lust.

  I felt an answering response deep in my body.

  We were really going to kiss. We were going to kiss and it was going to be hot as hell.

  The elevator groaned and jerked into movement. We both stumbled as the box rose upward.

  I grabbed on to his shirt for balance but he was already pulling away.

  “Thank God,” he said. “That was a close one.”

  Like he’d been saved from the sheer torture of having to kiss me. I dropped my hands and reached for the bar on the wall to steady myself, heart racing.

  I should have been very grateful for the interruption, but I felt a mild disappointment that made me instantly angry. I didn’t want to kiss him. Kissing him would be stupid as hell and there was no million dollars being offered to me. It wouldn’t even be a good kiss. How could it be? He was a straight-up jerk.

  Pulling my phone out I glanced at the time. We’d been trapped in the elevator for a whopping eight minutes. It had felt like a solid hour.

  The doors opened, and in some last-ditch effort at pretending to be a gentleman, Sean gestured for me to go first as he stuck both his foot and his hand over the door to prevent it from closing again. He scooped his coat up off the floor.

  I stepped out into the cooler air of the hallway and took a deep breath. “I’m taking the stairs when
it’s time to leave.”

  “Same.”

  We walked down the hall, Sean obviously knowing where he was going. I fell in step beside him, not really looking forward to this party. I wasn’t sold on the engagement any more than Sean apparently was.

  “So,” Sean said as we approached an apartment door.

  “So what?” I asked when he didn’t continue.

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” he said, glancing down at me.

  “What am I talking about? What are you talking about? You said ‘so’ and then didn’t say anything else.”

  “No, I didn’t.” The look he gave me was one where he seemed to be doubting my sanity.

  He was really an exasperating person to be around. “Yes, you did.”

  Sean gave me a slow smile. “Isla the Intimidator.” He lifted his hands and touched the lapels of my coat. “You don’t scare me.”

  “You don’t scare me either but you do annoy me,” I said, honestly. He looked so pleased with himself that I really, really disliked him. I also really hated the fact that my body didn’t seem to agree with me. I felt warm in places that had nothing to do with my winter wear.

  This would be a perfect man to hate fuck and it would probably be off-the-charts hot as hell. The thought had me breathing just a little harder, and I felt heat in my cheeks.

  It was like he knew what I was thinking. His expression changed, and I saw that same flash of lust in his eyes I’d seen on the elevator.

  “Grumpy girl,” he murmured.

  “Jerk-off.”

  “Man-hater.”

  “Asshole,” I said, because it made me angry that I was sexually attracted to him and that he thought he knew anything about me at all.

  His grip on my coat tightened and he was leaning in, closer to me. The kiss was actually going to happen this time.

  But time stood still, and the anticipation hovered there between us. We both took a breath. It was like the moment when the presenter opens the envelope and knows the winner’s name for an Oscar but doesn’t announce it. Everyone pauses, waits, listens, doesn’t breathe. Then the name is spoken and the room reacts with excitement, cheers, winners jumping up.