Dominic was staring at me like he couldn’t decide whether to chop me into pieces or pull my hair and French kiss me.
Dominic
I got her fired. Okay, so I’d had a bad day and took it out on a bystander in a pizza shop. But there’s nothing innocent about Ally Morales. She proves that her first day of her new job… in my office… after being hired by my mother.
So maybe her colorful, annoying, inexplicably alluring personality brightens up the magazine’s offices that have felt like a prison for the past year. Maybe I like that she argues with me in front of the editorial staff. And maybe my after-hours fantasies are haunted by those brown eyes and that sharp tongue.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be the next Russo man to take advantage of his position. I might be a second-generation asshole, but I am not my father.
She’s working herself to death at half a dozen dead-end jobs for some secret reason she doesn’t feel like sharing with me. And I’m going to fix it all. Don’t accuse me of caring. She’s nothing more than a puzzle to be solved. If I can get her to quit, I can finally peel away all those layers. Then I can go back to salvaging the family name and forget all about the dancing, beer-slinging brunette.
Ally
Ha. Hold my beer, Grumpy Grump Face.
Dominic first appears as a pompous, insufferable jerk who gets Ally fired within minutes of entering the restaurant where she works. Worked. Luckily, his mother is there to witness the entire debacle and, knowing that her beloved son can be difficult, she offers Ally a job at her company. Dom and Ally can’t stand one another, her for good reason and him because he can’t stand his attraction to the sassy firebrand. He needs to keep his lust under wraps and dispel it immediately though, because the last thing his mother’s empire needs is another scandal. No, his father’s affairs and copious harassment of young female staffers went unnoticed by his mother for years but finally blew up, casting a dark cloud on her life’s work.
That’s the whole reason he’s there, in fact. His sense of obligation to his mother had Dom leaving a career he loved to help her run the company and he’s been miserable ever since. He was confident and successful in his old life but here he’s a novice with a lot to learn and not popular among the staff. Those who could help him most tend to loathe him, reminding him that he has no business holding such a high position.
Ally is always happy to remind him he’s a d*ck too and never misses an opportunity to point out his bad attitude. Her biting wit and his frustration make for excellent banter and it all adds up to explosive chemistry. There are some serious elements to the story line but this is a lovely romantic comedy with laugh out loud moments and lots of heart.
