The Tie's The Limit Read online

  Other Titles by Megan Bryce

  The Fashionista and The Geek

  Boring Is The New Black

  The Tie’s The Limit

  It’s Only Temporary

  Some Like It Charming*

  Some Like It Ruthless

  Some Like It Perfect*

  Some Like It Hopeless

  The Reluctant Bride Collection

  To Catch A Spinster*

  To Tame A Lady*

  To Wed The Widow*

  To Tempt The Saint*

  *Also available as an audiobook

  About The Tie’s The Limit

  You can’t go home again? Yeah, tell that to Gia Abelli’s parents. After crumbling under the guilt trip from hell, Gia’s forced to leave the greatest city on Earth (New York!) to move in with her parents in… Florida? Hurricanes, alligators, and beer? Oh, my.

  Forced to give up her (okay, meager) apartment and her (not particularly lucrative) job, she falls back on the one thing she could do in her sleep: shopping! With help from her too-large and too-Italian family, she’s been set up as Florida’s premier fashion consultant. But if there’s anything worse than 400-degree heat and having to actually drive (and park) an obscenely large SUV, it’s having to shop for an ice-cold accountant who doesn’t realize he can’t wear the same damn tie every damn day…

  Mac Sullivan has been given an ultimatum: fix his wardrobe or kiss his promotion goodbye. Despite the fact that no one can adequately explain what exactly is wrong with wearing the same looking tie every day, or that he’s not exactly sure he wants the promotion anyway, he’s been saddled with New York. Glittery, bubbly New York who’s never met a sequined flip-flop she didn’t love, and who thinks she can dress him in something she likes to call “English Lord”…

  Well, she can think again. She’ll dress him normal, and she’ll keep the glitter and sequins out of his office, even if it is starting to look a little dull when she’s gone…

  Table of Contents

  Other titles by Megan Bryce

  About

  Title page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Copyright

  For my grandma–

  Because she spoils me rotten,

  scolds me sweetly,

  and never lets me forget

  that I need to write another book already!

  I love you, too.

  Megan BryceThe Tie’s The Limit

  One

  The thing about family, the thing about Giada Abelli’s family especially, was they were always there.

  Sometimes they were there for her.

  Like when she applied for a scholarship at an all-girls boarding school because her best friend Gina wanted to be the first Italian-American president and you just have to go to the finest boarding school so you can get into Harvard so you can get into Harvard Law or you’re just not going to make it, duh.

  That best friendship had ended abruptly after Gia had gotten accepted and Gina hadn’t.

  It might have been saved if Gia hadn’t actually gone. But she’d begged and she’d pleaded with her parents to let her go and when they both said, “No! That’s final!” she’d enlisted the help of her brothers.

  And when they’d only laughed and said that Ma and Dad were NEVER going to let their baby girl, their only girl, their only child still living at home, leave before they actually had to, she’d gone to the aunts.

  The uncles.

  Her new sister-in-law.

  Her cousins.

  She’d even gone to her nonnino’s grave and cried her eyes out because he wasn’t there anymore to make everyone do what they should.

  Her nonna had found her there. Had placed that week’s flowers carefully by her husband’s headstone and then gathered up her granddaughter.

  “What’s all this crying?”

  “Ma and Dad won’t let me go to school!”

  Nonnie laughed, having already heard about this school that their baby wanted to go to.

  “Nonnino would have made them let me go!”

  “Nonnino would have said no. Too many boys. You are too young to move away, maybe when you are thirty-five.”

  “It’s all girls. There aren’t any boys there at all.”

  “Only girls? Is it a nunnery?”

  “No. It’s where you learn how to be a president and stuff. Gina said so.”

  “President of what?”

  Gia had pushed herself up and said regally, “The president of the United States. Of America.”

  Nonnie said, “Hmm. You want to be president or you want to be with your friend Gina?”

  “Gina’s not my friend anymore. She didn’t get in. I did. I got a scholarship.”

  “And that’s a reason to not be her friend anymore?”

  “She said they only took me because I won that drawing contest last year at school. And because they felt sorry for me because of my hair.”

  Nonnie sucked in a breath and puckered her mouth, getting ready to spit, and then stopped abruptly when she remembered who she would be spitting on.

  She said instead, “A bird loves her nest,” and Gia had never been sure if that meant she was supposed to love her hair, or if she already did and wasn’t supposed to.

  Or if it just meant it was hers. So there.

  Nonnie had looked at her husband’s grave and sighed.

  “Life is too short, mia creatura. It is finished before you even realize it’s started. If you want to go to this school, away from your family who loves you and cares for you and protects you, then you will go.”

  And suddenly, the exciting adventure of being the first Abelli, the only Abelli, at that school seemed a little frightening.

  She had never been the first Abelli, ever. In anything.

  She couldn’t imagine being the only Abelli.

  Gia thought about what it would really mean to move away from the family that loved her and cared for her and protected her.

  What it would mean to be all alone.

  She leaned back into her grandmother’s soft, warm embrace, wondering if her heart was going to explode out of her chest because she was excited or because she was scared.

  She whispered, “Can I really go, Nonnie?”

  “Yes.”

  And if Nonnie said so, it was true, so Gia nodded her head slowly.

  “I really want to.”

  Nonnie squeezed her and said softly to her husband, “Gianni, our Giada is going to be the first Italian-American president. Of the United States.”

  “Of America,” said Gia.

  Megan BryceThe Tie’s The Limit

  Two

  And sometimes Gia’s family expected her to be there for them.

  With them.

  In Florida.

  When she had a hard-won, independent life in New York. That wasn’t especially prosperous, but it was hers.

  Besides, who moved from New York to Florida?

  Nobody, that’s who. Except her whole family, apparently.

  Her mother said, “Lots of people move from New York to Florida.”

  “Name me one good reason why.”

  Nonnie said,
“Winter.”

  Her mother said, “Beaches.”

  Her father said, “Money. Name me one good reason why we shouldn’t move.”

  “Hurricanes. Cockroaches as big as rats. New York is the greatest city on earth. Oh yeah, and your daughter still lives here.”

  Nonnie said, “We get hurricanes here too. We have rats as big as cats. And Roma is the greatest city on earth.”

  Her mother said, “And our daughter is moving with us.”

  “Oh no, she’s not. I’ll help you move. I’ll visit you. But I’m not moving to Florida.”

  Nonnie closed her eyes and said weakly, “I don’t know how many years I have left, mia creatura.”

  Her father beseeched the heavens silently because they all knew Nonnie was going to live forever.

  He dropped his hands quickly when she opened her eyes.

  He said, “We’re the last ones here, Gia. Your uncles all moved years ago and made a success of it. Your brothers left, and don’t think that doesn’t hurt your mother to be so far away from her grandchildren. I was waiting to retire, get my pension. And I was waiting for my daughter to get her life in order.”

  Gia scoffed. “It’s in order.”

  Kinda.

  Nonnie said, “Oh, you’re president of the United States already? I missed that.”

  “You all knew that was never going to happen. Now, dress the president? Maybe. And that could still happen.”

  “It could still happen. In Florida.”

  And if Nonnie said so, it was true.

  Gia jutted out her chin.

  “You should have never let her go to that school,” Nonnie said, looking at that chin, and Gia’s mother squeezed her fingers together tightly, glaring at Nonnie.

  Her father sighed, pointing his finger at Gia. “I’m not going to stand here all day, arguing with you. The family has moved to Florida. We’re taking your grandmother to Florida. And you will come with us. That’s final.”

  “No,” Gia said and her father shook his finger at her.

  Her mother said, “Enough.”

  She held her hand out to Gia’s father, telling him to sit.

  And then she stood.

  She said, “Silvana Giada Abelli,” and Gia knew she was in trouble.

  She was Gia, unless she was in trouble and then she was Giada.

  She’d never been in so much trouble before that she was Silvana Giada.

  Her mother said, “You will be moving to Florida. And you will live with us—”

  “Live with you!”

  “—and do you know why?”

  Gia was still reeling from the knowledge that they wanted her to live with them that she just stood there.

  Her mother said, “You said you would come back home.”

  Gia’s stomach sunk as she realized what the final tool in her mother’s arsenal was.

  Guilt.

  Gia could feel it coiling around her, poking at her defenses, looking for weakness.

  She wouldn’t let it in. Wouldn’t let it win.

  Her mother said, “You promised me. And you said my daughter wasn’t leaving for good. Only three years and then she would be back. But she never came back.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “She went to college and lived with her friends.”

  “You can’t be—”

  “And then, when she graduated, I thought now she will come back home. And she went to live all by herself, all by herself,” she said, emphasizing each word with a head jerk, her hair flying wildly. “In a one-room pezzo di merda instead of coming home to her mother!”

  Gia kept her mouth shut, her eyes widening at the uncharacteristic cursing.

  “Now she will move back home.” Her mother smoothed her hair back into place. “You are coming with us to Florida. I will have my three years. The years you promised me, the years you denied me. Capisci?”

  Gia stared at her mother. At the anger in her shoulders and the hurt in her eyes.

  She looked at her father, who suddenly looked decades older.

  At her grandmother, who despite all appearances to the contrary, wasn’t really going to live forever.

  She thought about being the only Abelli left in New York.

  And she opened her mouth and said, “Capisco.”

  Megan BryceThe Tie’s The Limit

  Three

  Mac Sullivan enjoyed his job.

  He worked in cool air conditioning when the outside was sweltering. He thought, spoke, and dreamed in numbers when other mere mortals were forced to work with words.

  And people.

  And he was only occasionally forced to come out of his numbers and into the land of the living when his boss asked something like, “Are you happy working here, Mac?”

  He turned off his computer monitor and swiveled his ergonomic chair to find her sitting across from him.

  He didn’t wonder how long she had been there only because it didn’t occur to him to wonder.

  He said, “Yes, of course.”

  “And do you find your work challenging?”

  “No. I would call it intriguing.”

  She smiled. “Would you enjoy a job that was challenging?”

  He considered for a moment before answering.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bob is retiring next year.” She kicked her leg out. “If he doesn’t have a heart attack first.”

  Mac stared at her and said, “Bob is CFO.”

  She kicked her leg out again and stared back, and Mac decided to stop thinking about the numbers on his blacked-out screen and pay attention.

  “I’d like to start grooming you for the position, and I mean that literally. I can’t have my C-level executives be this unkempt. You’re wearing two different blacks. And the same tie you wore yesterday.”

  He looked down at the offending article. “You pay attention to what tie I wear?”

  “It’s the same tie you’ve worn everyday since you began working here.”

  He shook his head. “It only looks the same. Once I find something that works, I like to keep doing it.”

  She contemplated this, then said, “How many of these ties do you own?”

  “Five.”

  “This doesn’t work, Mac.”

  “I don’t want to think about clothes, Cara.”

  “The woman who does my nails,” she said, flashing her pink-tipped fingers at him, “knows a fashion consultant from New York. She’ll think about clothes for you, shop for them, and make charts that tell you what shirt and tie to wear with what pants and jacket. You won’t have to think about clothes at all.”

  Mac liked charts.

  Mac might like CFO.

  He said, “I’ll get back to you with the cost-benefit analysis.”

  Cara smiled and stood. “I expect no less from you than cold, cool logic. Let me know if you want the job and the consultant’s number.”

  He nodded, understanding the two went together like earnings reports and late nights.

  Couldn’t have one without the other.

  He turned back to his computer, turned on the screen, and opened a new spreadsheet.

  Mac Sullivan, CFO.

  He liked the sound of it, and ultimately that was what decided it in the end because the cost-benefit analysis was remarkably even and no help in his decision.

  He turned it in to his boss a few hours later and she looked it over carefully before handing it back to him.

  “And what’s your decision?”

  “Yes,” he said when he’d meant to say that he still hadn’t decided.

  “Excellent. Here’s the consultant’s number.” She handed him a card, looking at his tie. “Do it soon, Mac. Today.”

  So he called and set up an appointment to see the consultant.

  Or, rather, for the consultant to come see him.

  Which suited Mac just fine because then he could go back into the cold, logical world of numbers and stop wondering if he’d just made a rather large mistak
e.

  Megan BryceThe Tie’s The Limit

  Four

  Gia told herself that the move to Florida was only temporary.

  She’d do her time, her three years, and then be free to move back to New York.

  Be free to move anywhere, really.

  Anywhere at all.

  It took no time at all to find a house in Tampa and get unpacked. Not with all the help from her brothers and their wives and their children, her aunts and uncles and cousins, and she’d forgotten what it felt like to be engulfed by dozens and dozens of family.

  The Abellis had trickled away from New York and she hadn’t realized how long it had been since she’d been engulfed.

  Gia sat down at her mother’s same old table in their new dining room, eating food made by who-knew-which-aunt-or-sister-in-law.

  She said, “The house is big.”

  Her mother sat down next to her with her own plate.

  “I told your aunt that we didn’t need something this big and she said to trust her. In a few months we won’t remember how we lived in less. You like your room?”

  She’d picked the one farthest from her parent’s room, on the other side of the house, but they were all still together.

  Ma, Dad, Nonnie, and her. All together.

  Gia said again, “It’s big. Almost as big as my whole apartment back in New York.”

  Her mother said, “Don’t even get me started on that apartment.”

  Gia laughed and took a big bite of pasta.

  “How is this even going to work, Ma? I’m twenty-seven.”

  “So?”

  “So don’t expect me home for dinner every night and don’t wait up for me and don’t clean my room. I’ve been on my own for a long time.”

  Loretta pushed Gia’s hair behind her ears and looked at her sadly. “I know.”

  “I’m just saying I’m not your baby anymore and this isn’t going to work if you treat me like one. I’m an adult. Do you expect Nonnie home for dinner, does she expect you? All the time?”