Lavash at First Sight - Softcover

Voskuni, Taleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593547322 ISBN 13: 9780593547328

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Sparks fly between two women pitted against each other in this delectable new romantic comedy by Taleen Voskuni, author of Sorry, Bro.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nazeli “Ellie” Gregorian enjoys the prestige of her tech marketing job but is sick of the condescending Patagonia-clad tech bros, her micromanaging boss, and her ex-boyfriend, who she’s forced to work with every day. When Ellie’s lovingly overbearing parents ask her to attend PakCon—a food packaging conference in Chicago—to help promote their company and vie to win an ad slot in the Superbowl (no big deal), she’s eager for a brief change and a delicious distraction.

At the conference, she meets witty, devil-may-care Vanya Simonian. Ellie can’t believe how easy it is to talk to Vanya and how much they have in common—both Armenian! From the Bay Area! Whose families are into food! Their meet-cute is cut short, however, when Ellie’s parents recognize Vanya as the daughter of the owners of their greatest rival, whose mission (according to Ellie’s mother) is to whitewash and package Armenian food for the American health-food crowd.
 
Sworn as enemies, Ellie and Vanya must compete against each other under their suspicious parents' scrutiny, all while their feelings for each other heat to sizzling temps.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Taleen Voskuni is an award-winning writer who grew up in the Bay Area Armenian diaspora. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in English and currently lives in San Francisco, working in tech. Other than a newfound obsession with writing rom-coms, she spends her free time cultivating her kids, her garden, and her dark chocolate addiction. Her first novel, Sorry, Bro, received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist, was named an Amazon editor's pick, and was favorably reviewed in The New York Times. Sorry, Bro is also winner of the 2023 Golden Poppy award for best romance. Lavash at First Sight is her second published novel.

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Chapter One

I open the conference room door, balancing my laptop (Air, for efficiency) and water bottle (navy blue, for subliminal "I'm not a girlie girl" vibes), and am happily surprised to find my boyfriend, Kyle, sitting in a swivel chair, concentrating on his screen.

"Early for my meeting? I'm honored," I say, sliding next to him. My good luck charm, I think, right before the biggest presentation of my career.

God, he's hot. I never thought I'd be with a guy like this, the tennis player look: tall with thin, toned limbs and thick, almost-wavy, almost-blond hair. He looks perilously handsome in his blue oxford button-down. I idolized men like this back in high school and none of them would ever look at me. Me, the perfectly average in every way, swarthy Armenian girl. But guess what, thick eyebrows and big butts are in now, and I bagged my dream guy; he's mine.

I rest my hand on his knee, and he instantly sloughs it off. Ugh, his stupid rules, I forgot. But we're in the room without any windows facing the office, with an opaque door. Seemed safe to me.

"Not at work, Ellie," he chides.

Our dating is a secret even though we're in lateral positions, so it's technically allowed-we don't even report to the same boss! Kyle goes to such great lengths to hide our relationship at work and outside work that sometimes I worry he's lost interest in me. Since he's not from the Bay Area and moved out here for this job, most of his buddies are his coworkers, so when he's out with them, I'm not allowed. But then he'll text me Friday late evening and come over, and he'll grab my waist and lift me up to kiss me like we're the only two people in the world.

The thought of it stirs me, and I whisper into his ear, "Right, I'll have to wait until after work to give you the present I've been working on."

He pushes his swivel chair away and, damn it, looks like I've gone too far. I'll have to be in damage control mode. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I say before he speaks.

Then he does. "I'm not sure we should keep doing this."

He's serious. The way he looks at me isn't with any of his Friday night desire, it's the way he looks at one of our coworkers when he's rejected their idea for being "too out of scope."

The blue of his eyes that had me thinking of him as my secret ocean-eyed boyfriend, now feels empty and vast. The sharpness of his features, which I'd always imagined gently pricking me in the most enticing ways, morphs into ice picks.

"I can be more subtle, I promise. I lost myself there, that wasn't me."

I need this, I need him. It's only been a few months, but he's the one for me. I could see us working our way up the ranks, a power couple now at Abilify and then beyond. Two Fortune 500 CEOs, married. Think of the Bloomberg profiles. Hell, he's so hot we might even make Vanity Fair.

His voice is almost even, except for a hint of disgust in it. "I've been wanting to tell you. This isn't working. I feel like I'm living two lives, I hate it."

He hates it. He hates being with me. He hates me. The logic is simple, sound, and I'm not talking myself out of it. He's doing it, he's breaking up with me now, in the goddamn Wallaby conference room (all of the rooms are named after Australian creatures because of the origins of Jack, Abilify's cofounder), four minutes before the chairs fill up with our company's most important directors and VPs.

I need this account. I'd practiced my slides over twenty times and got feedback from all my direct reports. It was supposed to be perfect. Now I can't even remember the title.

Instead, images from the weekend fill my head, of curling up beside him under his tartan duvet, the hour far too late, abandoned glasses of scotch on the nightstand.

"We were getting so close. I thought we were going to start"-I'm almost too embarrassed to say it- "dating. For real, and be your actual girlfriend. You told me all those things about your brother-"

"Stop. It's done. I'm sorry I had to do it here, but I've been holding it in for days."

The shock of him wanting to break up with me for days is interrupted by the Tremendous Trio-the three women I manage-pushing open the conference door. The first of them, Nina, stops short when she spots Kyle and me. "We can . . . come back?"

They know. Kyle and I are supposed to be a secret, but it's what he wanted, not what I wanted, so I couldn't help but tell my crew anyway. Not like it came as a surprise; Abby was all over it with her intuition and had been dropping hints for weeks. I felt slightly uncomfortable sharing about my love life with my direct reports, but I tried to keep it as vague and professional as possible. No comments about a certain penchant for reverse cowgirl, for instance.

I wave her off. "Meeting's starting in a few, come in." I am doing my best impression of a normal, happy person. I rush over to their side of the conference table. Kyle loses himself in his computer.

"You all feeling ready with your sections?" I ask them.

"Entirely. I committed it to memory and have written out and answered in my head all possible questions that may be fielded." That's Jasmine, the quant star of the group.

"Are . . . you ready?" Abby asks me, voice uneasy.

Never show weakness as the leader. I need to turn these feelings to anger and then channel it into dominating this presentation and landing Operation Wolf for my team. Screw Kyle and his sneaking around with me. He thinks he's better than me? He's a nobody from some Nowheresville town. Which, admittedly, is pretty cool that he made the journey all the way out here on his own. No! He's the worst.

"Totally," I tell her as bile rises in my throat.

It's then that the CEO, Reid Erikson, pushes in. He is one of the only people in the company who scare the shit out of me, with his bald head and missile eyes, his targeted commands, and his whole lack-of-smiling thing. The man always wears a Patagonia vest, without fail, daily, except on the one or two hundred-degree days where he removes it, revealing a Patagonia-branded T-shirt underneath.

I didn't know he would be attending this meeting. He was not on the invite list, but Operation Wolf is a big deal. The cold of the conference room settles over me, like he brought the Nordic winds in with him.

He's trailed by the cofounder and president, Jack, who plants himself in a corner and says in his Australian accent, "Y'all mind if I do some squats in here?" No one minds, and Jack begins bending his ass toward the window, up and down.

Then rush in the VPs and directors, including my boss, Jamie, the marketing VP. Jamie's . . . okay. I don't feel like she's necessarily rooting for my success, but her insistence on perfection, especially with presentation slides, has pushed my abilities to the next level. She's an odd one. Always has her nails perfectly manicured and sports curated minimalist jewelry but also is really buff, loves hiking and skiing, and never eats. Well, not true-she seems to subsist on Oreo snack packs stashed in her purse. I nod to her briefly-Jamie likes brief-and she acknowledges me with a blink.

The whole reason we're here is that we're in the process of wooing Abilify's potentially biggest client, Zarek's, the world's largest international coffee chain, whose logo is a wolf, to join our performance management platform.

That's right, we do performance review software. Keeping track of how good or crappy your employees are. Not exactly the most inspiring product of all time, but it's a solid group of people, and we're growing fast. They call us a unicorn in Silicon Valley, meaning we're already worth a billion dollars. The founders (including the terrifying Reid) took a chance on me when I was no one, and now look where I am: senior product marketing manager. Just one tiny hop...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593547322
• ISBN 13: 9780593547328
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland