Boss’s Secret Baby for Christmas

by Black, Natasha L.

  Besides, thinking back to her note, she had made it clear that this wasn’t the kind of thing she wanted to parade around the office. If I didn’t talk about it, she wouldn’t either.

  Maybe I wouldn’t find a new bar. Maybe I would just meet her there, every so often.

  But not that night, I decided. I didn’t want to admit that I was chickening out on seeing her again because I wasn’t sure I could keep my hands off of her, but in my heart, I knew the truth.

  It’s just until her position with the company is settled, I promised myself. Once we were one step closer to peers, we could revisit all of this. For now, it was best that I kept my distance.

  I thought about the meeting the following morning. Should I text Wendell to cancel it? Except that, no, I definitely did need to talk to her. It wasn’t like my impulses were going to get the better of me there in the office when anyone could walk in. We should be fine. More than anything, I wanted to make sure she was okay.

  Yes, I would see her the next morning. No need to rush things by trying to see her tonight as well. Tomorrow was soon enough.

  I headed home to my apartment. Somehow, even though it was just me in there as usual, it didn’t seem quite as gloomy and lonely as it had since the divorce.

  11

  Mindy

  I couldn’t help but feel worried when I got to work and saw the new appointment notice in my inbox. Shit.

  My palms started sweating a little, and I wondered if I had said something wrong. I had agonized over that note from the time I had talked to Risa about sleeping with Adam, up until the time that I had actually given it to Wendell. And then some, really. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, overanalyzing what I had written there, wondering if I had done something wrong. I just didn’t know what else I might have said.

  We had to cobble together some sort of working relationship. That meant that we had to at least mention what had happened on Friday night. Otherwise, it would be there, the elephant in the corner of the room. I was sure that that tension would be obvious to anyone who had to interact with the two of us together.

  No, we had to say something to one another. Since I had been the instigator, the burden of saying something fell to me. Hence the note that I had slipped to him thanks to Wendell’s help. I had stupidly thought that sending him that note would mean we never had to actually talk about things face-to-face, but of course that would have been too easy. In any case, we were both adults, and adults communicated about things like this.

  There were two ways that this meeting might go. I didn’t think that Adam would dare fire me. Not that I would ever even dream of pursuing legal action over something like that. After all, it was my own damn fault that I was in this situation. So that wasn’t one of the outcomes I was worried about.

  What would I do if he told me that in addition to never mentioning our night together again, though, we also could never see one another outside of official business again? There was no way I was going to be able to impress him with my work here if I couldn’t get him alone.

  On the other hand, how would I phrase things if he said that he didn’t want to forget about them, that he was interested in pursuing something with me? That was even more nerve-inducing than the idea that he might want nothing to do with me outside the strictly professional. I had meant what I said to Risa. I wasn’t looking for something more when it came to him. Or anyone. It just wasn’t the right time in my life.

  Either way, I had sent the note, and now I had to stand for the fallout, whatever it was. I sat there at my desk, trying to prepare myself for whatever outcome this meeting could possibly have.

  Suddenly, another idea occurred to me. I knew that I would never use this to my advantage, but Adam didn’t necessarily know that. He didn’t really know me at all, just like I didn’t really know him well enough to predict what he was thinking. What if he offered me something? What could I possibly leverage from him with this?

  A full-time job. It would be no secret that I, as an intern, coveted a permanent role with the company. It was right there within my grasp, and I had to admit, it was a little tempting to accept something like that if it was there on the table. Except that I didn’t want to be a cliché, a girl who slept her way up the ladder. No, if I was going to net myself a job, then I wanted to earn it. I wanted to impress him with my work and make sure that everyone knew that that was why I had gotten the position.

  It wasn’t just out of a sense of pride either. I respected Vera too much to want to do something so underhanded. If she didn’t get a fair chance at a job all because I had slept with the boss, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. It just wouldn’t be right.

  So no, I wouldn’t ask for anything like that, nor would I accept it if he was offering it. I wanted Adam to know that, too. The only thing I wanted from him was another try. A redo. A chance to go back and begin it all over, even if I had to start it from the point where I crashed into him in the hallway.

  Except that I hated the idea of losing Friday night, too. I had to admit, at least to myself, that I didn’t regret where we had ended up, no matter how tricky it made our future.

  I headed up to his office, taking a deep breath before I knocked on the door. Wendell was there, and I could feel his gaze on me. No doubt he was curious what was going on. I hadn’t given him any clues about what was in the envelope I had dropped off the previous day, and he likely didn’t know why his boss had wanted to meet with me first thing this morning either, even though he had been the one to set this meeting up and send me the notification.

  Was that dangerous? If I did stay part of the company, would Wendell start to catch on? What would we do if he did? I figured that was something I could leave to Adam to handle, though. Wendell was his assistant, and anyway, he wouldn’t have hired the man if he didn’t think he could trust him.

  I glanced over at Wendell, wondering if there was something I could say to him that would get him on my side, whatever the fallout of this meeting. “The other intern, Vera?” I heard myself blurt out. “She thinks you’re hot.”

  I was mortified as soon as the words were out of my mouth. And Vera, what the heck would she think if she knew I had said that? Then again, there was still a chance that I might get fired when I walked in there. Maybe it didn’t matter what Vera might think.

  Wendell’s only reaction was a slight twitch to his lips. “Good to know,” he said.

  I shrugged, not sure what else to say. Just then, Adam called for me to come in, and I snapped to attention, reaching tentatively for the doorknob. I wondered, as I walked inside, if he could see how nervous I was. I was practically shaking in my boots. Still, I tried to play it cool as I walked forward and took a seat across from him.

  “I got your note,” Adam began, his voice grave. “I just wanted to be sure that we agree on a few things before we close this conversation.”

  I nodded, my mouth gone dry. I didn’t think I could get a sound out, but my mouth opened, and the words came tumbling out. “All I want, sir, is to keep my internship. That’s all.” I took a deep breath, warming to what I was saying. Or was that desperate instinct taking over? Either way, I had just this one chance to convince him, and I knew that I needed to make the most of it.

  “I fought hard for this,” I continued. “I’ve told you everything I’ve been up to so far, since starting here, and how much more I still want to do in my time here. Please, don’t let my actions on Friday night jeopardize this.”

  I wondered if he could hear my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. Still, I was proud of myself for even managing to get the words out. The plea might be a little too desperate sounding, but it conveyed everything I had to say.

  Finally, Adam nodded slowly. “I’m willing to chalk it up to a lapse of judgment. On both of our parts. I won’t take your internship over something like that. But I do want to be clear that that is all that you want from me.”

  There it was, his offer. A blank check, whatever I wanted. I
stared at him, trying to gauge what he was thinking. God, he was so hard to read! Why did he have to be so damn inscrutable as well as so damn attractive?

  As I studied him, though, I saw the slight tick at his jawline. Suddenly, I realized he was nervous, too. Somehow that made me feel better. I wondered if he was trying to gauge exactly what I was thinking, the same way that I was doing with him. After all, he didn’t know me any better than I knew him.

  It helped to realize that. Maybe it made it easier to pretend that Friday night had happened to someone else, that it was something we could hope to forget.

  I stood up. “I appreciate what you’re saying, but honestly, I really just want the chance to prove myself, sir.”

  I knew I should probably wait there to see his reaction. Was this some sort of a test? Had I passed? I couldn’t stand there for any longer, though. If I did, I was going to do something wild, something I would regret. Like rounding his desk and slipping into his lap, so reminiscent of what had started everything the other night.

  No, I couldn’t do that. So I flashed him a quick smile. “In the spirit of keeping my job, I should probably get back to it,” I said. I don’t want to say that I ran out of there, but my departure was hasty at best.

  Still, I noticed the way that Wendell watched me as I hurried out of there. I knew what I must look like to him: nervous, flustered, probably flushed with a faint tinge of embarrassment, eyes dark with lust. Oh boy.

  But hopefully what I had told him before about Vera would be enough to get him to turn the other way and pretend he hadn’t seen me leave there like that. Or at least enough to keep him from spreading gossip all around the office.

  Only time would tell. For now, though, I was going to try to focus on my job and only my job. After all, it was thinking of things other than my job that had gotten me into this trouble in the first place.

  12

  Adam

  I didn’t know what I had been expecting from the conversation with Mindy, but it certainly hadn’t turned out the way I had thought it might. Had I thought she would come in there, meek and apologetic, ready to listen to whatever it was I had to say, just waiting to hear what I had to offer to her?

  In retrospect, the idea of that was laughable. Hadn’t I learned by now that no matter how sweet she appeared on the outside, there was an inner steel to her? She knew just what she wanted, and she wasn’t about to let me dictate the terms of her future.

  Again, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d had ever had any sort of control over the situation. I was starting to realize that I probably hadn’t, no matter what she had initially let me believe.

  I was still a little bit in shock when Wendell slipped into my office with a cold bottle of water that he passed over to me. I accepted it gratefully, only then realizing how dry my mouth was in the aftermath of my nervousness about the meeting. Mindy had been nervous, too, I was sure of it, but somehow she had handled her nervousness way better than I had.

  “That one is going to be a match for you, isn’t she?” Wendell asked, smirking slightly.

  I gave him a look but didn’t rebuke him. He was right, really. I wanted to beat my head against my desk, especially when I realized that Wendell probably had figured out what had happened. The secret notes, the sudden promotion to a full-time job, the private meeting that morning when we didn’t have any projects we were working on with one another. Of course it all added up to only one thing.

  I sighed. “One mistake,” I said. “One. And she can effectively ruin me now.” I could hear the fear in my voice, and it pissed me off.

  The thing was, I didn’t want to consider the fact that Mindy could ruin me. But I just couldn’t figure her out. Here I’d been all ready to tell her that I wanted to keep her on after her internship ended, and she hadn’t even wanted to hear that. What was she playing at?

  She must want something. I knew that. What if it was something I couldn’t give her, though? What if she went to the press or something? It would spell the end of Designed by You, and my career. God, what a mess.

  I wished we had just been able to have the conversation, to figure out some of the uncertainty. But with the way she had nearly run out of there, it had been as though she didn’t trust being alone with me. Like she thought I was going to jump her if she stayed in there a second longer. I hadn’t invited her up there for sex, though. I wouldn’t do that.

  My anger at what I had done, at the mess I had brought upon myself, was my only salvation. It was that anger that would protect me, that would keep me from going to bed with her again. Because that definitely couldn’t happen. It never should have happened once, but it would be even worse if it happened again. Because I could feel her eroding my defenses.

  Let her too far in and I would be powerless to deny her anything.

  “You know,” Wendell said, grinning at me, “I like her. She’s got moxie. I kind of want to introduce her to my mom; I think the two of them would get along really well.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not helping,” I groaned. “Go. Do work things.”

  Wendell laughed but headed out of my office, leaving me in peace. I took a sip of water, feeling at least a little bit better. Was it possible that I could take her at her word? That I could believe her when she said that all she wanted was to keep her job?

  I thought again about that initial meeting I’d had with her, and how different it had been than similar meetings with other interns in the past. She hadn’t pushed for anything. And today as well, she hadn’t seemed like she wanted any sort of special treatment.

  She seemed honest. I couldn’t help thinking back to Friday night. Every step of the way, her emotions had been right there on her face, easy enough for me to read. She hadn’t been hiding anything from me. Nor did it seem like she had gone into that for the wrong reasons. She had seemed like she wanted it.

  No, she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would hatch a plot like this just to secure a job. That just wasn’t the Mindy I had seen so far, and I liked to think I could read people well enough that I would have realized if she was faking it.

  I was drawn out of my reveries by the ringing of the phone. I answered it quickly. If I had my way, Wendell was the only person who would realize that Mindy and I were anything more than intern and boss. The only way to protect that information was to pretend I wasn’t agonizing over it all. To pretend that I was just as focused on my work as I ever was.

  I cringed when I heard my lawyer’s voice on the other end of the line, however. I could feel my jaw clenching with anger. Then, I was really angry. Not just mildly angry with myself for having slept with someone I knew was off-limits, but really angry.

  Who the hell was I kidding when I said I could read people well enough to know when they were trying to screw me over? I had let Kelly play me just right, and all along, she had been faking it and angling for more. I had thought she loved me.

  I didn’t know anything about Mindy.

  I couldn’t think about that right now. Yet again, Kelly’s antics were pulling me away from the rest of my life. Somehow, even this long after the divorce, she had the power to disrupt my whole life. I hated that more than anything.

  I grabbed my jacket and headed out of my office, Mindy all but forgotten. “I have to go see my lawyer,” I bit out as I passed Wendell. “Probably not coming back in today.”

  “Okay,” Wendell said, and I could tell it was on the tip of his tongue to tell me all about the meetings he would be rescheduling because of this inconvenience. I didn’t pause for long enough to give him a chance, though. I knew it was only going to push my rage even higher to know all the shit that was going to have to be rearranged thanks to my ex-wife.

  I should have realized, when Kelly asked me to meet her for that terrible brunch, that things wouldn’t stop there. Even though I was sure, given my lawyer’s assurances, that she wasn’t going to find a way to get more money out of me, I had been foolish to think she wouldn’t try.

 
Sure enough, she was trying to up her alimony. All for a stupid vacation. I probably should have just handed her a blank check in the first place. It would have been easier than this. The last thing I wanted was for things to get dragged back into the courts. I was sick and tired of court dates. I was sick and tired of having to sit there in the same room as Kelly and pretend like I was sorry for the way our marriage had gone sour.

  I didn’t want her anymore. I didn’t want her to be any part of my life. I just wanted to move the fuck on.

  “So according to her lawyers, you’re making more money now, which of course could affect how much she receives per month in alimony,” my lawyer said, and I could tell from the tentative way he said it that I was doing a lousy job of hiding my frustration. I tried to school my expression to something neutral, even if I couldn’t manage pleasant. It wasn’t his fault, after all.

  “What?” I asked. “I haven’t…” Then, I trailed off, making a sour face. “I got a good bonus last month, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “But it wasn’t a raise or anything like that. Just a one-off thing. How could that affect alimony?”

  I didn’t even know how the hell she had found out about it. But of course, somehow Kelly had her ways. She had her claws in everything she could possibly reach, and I had gotten used to being one of her favorite targets.

  My lawyer frowned and launched into a complicated legal explanation. Finally, he trailed off, clearly noting from my expression that I wasn’t even trying to follow what he was saying. He sighed. “Look, I know it seems like common sense from your side. She shouldn’t be entitled to any part of a bonus that you received long after you two were divorced. Unfortunately, she’s still trying to say that the reason she quit her job was because you were trying to have kids, and thus the reason that you stuck with your company and flourished there was because she was going to be the stay-at-home parent. Meaning she believes she’s entitled to anything you make from your job.”