Gucci Suit || Narry au

01.

"Speak for yourself, both of you have a strike each already, and I really don't want to have to go about having him hire me yet another team."

I'd had some bad luck with my design team in the past few months. It wasn't even the people who were hired, it was Mr Styles' lack of patience with them. I mean, in all honesty it probably didn't help that I was always early and so, in turn, showed them up, but I wasn't about to risk losing my job. I loved my job, even though it wasn't what I'd planned as a career for myself at all. I'd always wanted to be an artist or a photographer, but when I saw an opening for head of design at Prestige just a week after finishing my masters degree in fine art, I took a shot and applied. 6 years later, I was a highly respected member of the team and someone Mr Styles deeply trusted. I didn't know this because he told me so, because he wouldn't dream of it, but because he put me in charge of every single shoot preparation, of every single outfit line, and he always took my advice in meetings and included at least one element suggested by me in each issue.

My other colleagues liked to tease me about us being friends, but I knew that would never happen, although from the looks of it I was the closest person he had to a friend in the business.

"It actually looks pretty good." Kat mumbled when she'd finished buckling the belt, glancing at me sheepishly.

I gave her the smuggest look I could muster.

"Damn right it does." Grace nodded, grinning at me as Kat blushed a little.

"Next time, don't question me, yeah? I am your manager after all." I wagged my finger at her, only half teasing as she nodded furiously, mumbling an apology as I moved back to my desk to finish my cover shoot mood boards and the two of them made a start on the next outfit.

It was going to be a long day.

--

I knocked firmly on the door of meeting room D where our pre-shoot meeting was taking place. There was supposed to be 12 of us from the design department attending, but only 3 of us currently stood outside the door. I'll already had to shout at the 8 others in my team countless times this week and I'd given up on them today.

"Enter."

I didn't even glance back at the girls as I opened the door and strolled in, the two of them scuttling in behind me with the clothes rail and shutting the door.

"Ah, my design team. Early, as usual."

He didn't even smile.

He was sat at the head of the table, his personal assistant, Bella, sat to his left.

He was wearing a white, double breasted suit jacket over a button down pale blue shirt. His hair was styled perfectly, as usual, but he had a hint of dark facial hair on his chin and upper lip, creating a sort of shadow on his face.

Still, hands down the sexiest man I'd ever seen.

But he was my boss, and that was weird.

I just called it an appreciation for good fashion sense; yeah, that's what it was.

"Bella, please call Janie and tell her to inform the rest of the design team that they are to be out by tomorrow morning. I don't have time to be waiting around."

There he was, back at it again. A small part of me was relieved that he was firing the other 8 members of my team who were supposed to also be here; completely useless, every single one of them.

Bella nodded quickly, picking up the phone from the desk in front of her.

"Janie? Please can you inform the design team that they're all fired and have to be out by tomorrow. Great, thank you."