My Boss Is My Worst Blind Date

"Rule number one of blind dating in Manhattan: Never insult a man's typography choices. Rule number two: Make sure he isn't your new boss on Monday morning."

Poppy Bennett arrived at Verona on Park armed with a cherry-red dress and a five-question vetting questionnaire designed to eliminate terrible men. Nathaniel Cole failed before the bread basket even arrived. He showed up twenty-six minutes late, blamed municipal water pipe maintenance, dissected the dinner menu’s butchered Garamond font kerning, and delivered a deadpan lecture on why pineapple on pizza is an offense against the physical laws of the universe. Naturally, Poppy labeled him a walking corporate obituary with the romantic instincts of an expired parking meter, slapped down her half of the bill, and walked out into the October night convinced she would never see his insufferable, chiseled face again. Until Monday at eight-forty-five AM. When the boardroom door swings open, in walks Nathaniel Cole, newly appointed equity partner and Creative Director of Sterling & Cole Advertising. Nathaniel is cold, razor-sharp, and convinced that emotions ruin executive decisions. Poppy is fiercely ambitious, dreams of running her own creative department, and writes copy fueled by stubbornness, caffeine, and pure spite. They promise total professional decorum. They draft strict boundary frameworks. They try to keep a three-foot perimeter. Except their chemistry is an uncontainable five-alarm fire. When an eccentric luxury hotelier demands that "the statue and the poet" co-lead a thirty-two-million-dollar global campaign, their mutual hostility collides with close quarters: late-night bullpen war rooms, borrowed bespoke suit jackets, covert text messages across crowded boardroom tables, and an accidental single-bed hotel booking outside the city. Nathaniel swore he would never let down his armor again. Poppy swore she’d never become a casualty of an executive's ambition. But in a cutthroat agency where rumors spread like wildfire and a viral office meme account is watching their every move, keeping their hands off each other might just be the one deadline they can't meet.