For example: I was pretty sure I was actually losing weight right now rather than gaining weight. That must be a problem, right? I was sure that it had to do with how sick I was, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do to solve things. It wasn’t like I was trying to be sick all the time.
Granted, Mom had told me that that was all normal. There had been a lot of tears shed on that phone call, but at the end of the day, I knew she was there for me, and that meant the world. Of course, she had also told me to come home, but I wasn’t that desperate yet. I wasn’t ready to leave Chicago and go back home, even if I didn’t know how I was going to make things work.
She had broken down all the different stages of the pregnancy, at least what she remembered of it, so that I would know what to be prepared for. She claimed she was more accurate than any doctor would be about it, too, since she and I were blood and thus my pregnancy would be more like hers than anyone else’s. In any case, there had been a lot of good information in there, and I felt a lot better for having told her.
Mom had been the easy one, though. Telling Dad had been a lot harder, and he’d been upset, too. I guess no dad likes to hear that their little girl is pregnant, especially not when she isn’t married and wasn’t trying to have a baby. He finally seemed to come around to the idea, though, no doubt with some cajoling from Mom.
I was glad to have their support. I had been really worried about how they would take it. Of course, they were my parents, and I liked to think that they would always support me, but this was such a huge wrench in my plans. They hadn’t scolded me once, though. I think they realized that I was giving myself enough lectures over the whole thing.
Oh, if only they knew. Whether the flavor of the day was you knew better than to sleep with him, or if it was more, didn’t sex ed class teach you anything, I was running through all of it in my head, constantly. It made me even more certain that I needed to keep this baby. Time to take responsibility for my actions.
Besides, even though the pregnancy hadn’t been intentional, maybe it was alright to let something good come from that night with Adam. I could only imagine loving the child that I gave birth to.
Would it be a boy or a girl? A little boy like Adam or a headstrong girl who had all the best of us? To be honest, I was a little excited when I thought about things like that. I had always imagined that one day I would have children, and even though right now wasn’t exactly the best time for it, I wanted this.
Still, that didn’t keep me from getting scared. The new normal in my life was so far removed from any previous definition of normal that I’d had. Thinking back to Mom’s words helped. I took deep breaths and tried to relax a little. She had said things had been the same when she was pregnant with me, after all. Something about the metabolism speeding up, more so than the puking and the queasiness. Things would even out eventually.
I got dressed, pulling on a dress that was both ultra-comfy as well as being passably chic as far as work clothes went. I made it to work right on time and froze when I saw Adam walking onto the elevator.
I got the same feeling that I always did when I saw him; a need to reach out and touch him. Actually, right then, that feeling was more that I needed to burrow into his arms, to allow him to shield me from the world. I was tired, and I was scared to go this alone. I wanted his warm, solid strength.
Obviously, I couldn’t act on the feeling, and denying myself the privilege took everything I had. But most of all I hated it because I knew it for what it was. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t have feelings for Adam; it was just an odd bit of lust that had turned into need, spurred on by the fact that I was carrying his baby in my belly at the moment.
The thing was, I didn’t exactly have spare energy at the moment. I didn’t know whether it was more the physical effects of being pregnant that I was feeling or the effect of my emotions being all over the charts these days, or maybe the fact that I was still desperately trying to pretend around work that everything was normal, but I didn’t have enough left that I wanted to feel drained from seeing Adam all the time.
So I let the elevator doors close on him, even though I probably could have made it. Our eyes met as the doors slid shut, and there was something unreadable in his expression. My shoulders slumped as I waited for the next elevator.
If only I could just tell him about the baby. If only I could explain the reason I was avoiding him. Except the reason I wanted to explain things to him was so that he wouldn’t think I’d done it on purpose to trap him, and I knew that once he heard about the pregnancy, he would resent me for it. It didn’t matter if I told him about the baby; things were going to be wrecked between us either way.
And here I had thought that if we never talked about that night again, we could just go on with our lives as normal.
I finally made it to my desk and found Vera waiting there with a cup of tea. I dropped my bag on the ground and eagerly wrapped my fingers around the warm mug. I really could kiss her; she was such a sweetheart. I didn’t know how she had known that tea was just the thing I needed right now, but I appreciated it either way.
Over the months of working together, Vera had definitely become a friend. I hadn’t told her about the pregnancy yet, but sometimes I wondered if she already knew. She had been the one to suggest it in the first place, after all. Not to mention, I didn’t think she was buying the fact that I was “too tired” to go for drinks all the time. It wasn’t like I could continue to drink alcohol in my state, though. No matter how much I felt like I could use a drink.
In any case, I knew that at the end of my internship, I would definitely be staying in touch with Vera. With Pierce gone and me unable to take the full-time position I coveted, I hoped that meant that Vera would have good luck with the company. There was a part of me that was jealous of her, but again, this baby was just a reminder that I had to face the consequences of my actions. If I hadn’t slept with the boss, then things would have been different for me. It was my own fault I was in this position.
I made it through the morning and the early part of the afternoon, immersing myself in my work and feeling almost like myself again. In fact, there were whole minutes where I didn’t think about the fact that I was pregnant. Maybe my mind was starting to accept that fact. I could only hope so.
Things all came crashing down, though, when Wendell popped his head around the corner of my cubicle. “Hey,” he said. “Now that the boss is back at work, he wants to meet with the interns again. It’s not a performance review; he just wants to see how things are going with you. He asked if you could come up to his office now?”
I nearly spat out my ginger ale and tried to tell myself that it was just a normal meeting.
I swallowed hard and grabbed my tablet, following Wendell to the elevator. He made polite talk the whole way up to Adam’s office, and I tried to focus on that rather than the pounding of my heart. I nearly asked him why he had never made a move on Vera, but then I decided that that was none of my business. Besides, I was already keeping enough of a secret from Vera; I didn’t have to also hide the reason why Wendell hadn’t asked her out.
Besides, I knew that the only reason I wanted to ask was so I wouldn’t feel as guilty about being the only office romance. If Wendell and Vera were a thing, then maybe it would look less bad for me to have slept with Adam. Granted, Wendell was an assistant, basically of similar rank to Vera, he didn’t have the power to hire or fire her. Not only that, but I hadn’t just slept with Adam—I had gotten pregnant by him. That put things in a whole different realm.
I tried not to think too hard about that as I walked into Adam’s office. The last thing I needed was for him to read the guilt off my face.
We chatted for a while about my work, but I made sure to keep things strictly professional. The truth was, I wanted to ask him how he was doing. It couldn’t have been easy going back to court with his ex-wife, and I could see from the gauntness of his face and the slight smudge of shadows beneath his eyes
that he was worn-out.
Except that I wondered what I must look like to him. Probably about the same.
If I asked him about his personal life, I was opening that can of worms, inviting him to ask me about mine. My personal life wasn’t anything I could talk to him about at the moment. No way in hell. So instead, I kept things as polite and work oriented as I could and made an excuse to get out of there as soon as I felt like we’d covered all the bases.
I could tell from Adam’s expression that there was something he wanted to ask me—probably something to do with how terrible I looked. I didn’t give him the chance, though. Instead, I rushed out of there pretending that I had a collaboration meeting I was going to be late for.
I felt sick from more than the pregnancy as I made my way downstairs, because I hadn’t missed the sorry look on Adam’s face as I hurried away. He had realized that things weren’t right between us. That meant that it was only a matter of time before he started poking deeper. With the truth bubbling just below the surface, coloring my every thought, it was only a matter of time before I came clean to him.
I had to find another job before that happened. I didn’t want to make him feel trapped, like he had to go through this ordeal with me, all because I’d been stupid and made a move on him, then hadn’t insisted on him using birth control. It was my fault we had slept together, which meant that this baby was all my responsibility. I didn’t want him to feel obligated to think otherwise.
For a moment, I let myself think about what it would be like to have a baby with him. There would be so much laughter and joy there. Our baby would grow up with every opportunity available to them. He or she could do anything they wanted in life.
That wasn’t going to happen, though. It was just a fairy tale. I still barely knew Adam, and he barely knew me. Our relationship was strictly professional. We weren’t about to move in together and start a family; that just wasn’t going to happen. Telling him would only make things more difficult for both of us, and it could spell the end of my internship before I figured out some other way to pay the bills.
As supportive as my parents were, I wasn’t ready to move back home yet. That felt like admitting defeat. So I needed to hang on to this internship for as long as I could, until I had something else in place. Which meant that I had to keep the pregnancy to myself.
18
Adam
It had been a long week. I didn’t know why I had called Mindy into my office or what I’d expected out of that meeting. But I definitely hadn’t been satisfied with the way things had gone. Seeing her again made me itch to pull her into my arms. I guessed there was a part of me that expected that if I got her into the same room as me, one of us was bound to snap. That we were bound to make a move.
It quickly became clear that that wasn’t going to happen. She had been polite enough but distant, her answers a bit clipped. It was nothing like that first meeting we’d had in my office. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong, but I didn’t know how to ask about it. I was dying to know if I had done something wrong, but there was no way to get her to open up to me without getting in over my head again.
I knew better. I knew that I should never have asked her up there in the first place. It was bound to raise a few eyebrows, even if I also called Vera up there a couple of days later. But more than that, I was playing with fire. I was tempting fate. And I knew better. Logic told me I needed to forget about Mindy as anything other than a smart and talented intern, and that was what I’d decided I needed to do.
I was rattled, though. I was off my game. I was trying to focus on my work and be moderately successful at it, even, but my temper was a little too short. Abstractly, I knew that I probably needed to get laid. My levels of patience and relaxation generally typically correlated to how frequently I found myself in bed with some sexy young thing.
The trouble was that no one seemed able to capture my attention these days. What’s more, I didn’t feel like going out. I didn’t want to put in the effort to take home one-night stands. It was as though with the finalization of things with Kelly, somehow, I’d reached a point where I was ready for a relationship again.
Not that that’s what I was looking for with Mindy. I didn’t think so, anyway. But somehow, my thoughts seemed to keep coming back around to her, and if there was anyone I was going to sleep with to get me out of my funk… Except that I couldn’t sleep with her. I couldn’t cross that line again, and anyway, it didn’t seem like that would be something that she’d welcome. I didn’t know where things had even gone wrong, which meant I had no idea how to make things between us any better.
Wendell finally came in to talk to me, shutting the door carefully behind him. I could tell that whatever he was about to say wasn’t something he really wanted to. He looked more uncertain and hesitant than I had ever seen him before. Yet there was a certain resolve to his expression as well. Whatever he was about to say, he had thought long and hard about it.
For a moment, I was afraid he was about to quit. I knew I’d been a bit testy lately, but I had thought he would be able to overlook that. He knew I was a bit out of sorts at the moment, and I was sure he knew the reasons for it, even if it wasn’t anything we had discussed.
But instead, Wendell just sat down across from me. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to pretend at nonchalance.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Come on, Adam,” he said in a tone that said cut the crap. “I heard you snapped at one of the marketing girls this morning.”
I felt a flush spread across my face. I had snapped at the girl. She’d looked like she might cry, even. Still, there had been a typo in one of the briefs she had shown me. It was such a basic thing to get correct and failing to do so could totally ruin Designed by You’s reputation. It made us look sloppy, and that was the last thing I wanted our image to portray.
I knew I had been a bit harsh, and I had already made plans to apologize to her. At the same time, I knew that that kind of shortness wasn’t anything that people expected of me. Nor was that the kind of boss, let alone person, I wanted to be. I had always strived to be infinitely understanding. I just couldn’t seem to get there these days.
I sighed and sat back. I didn’t really want to talk about all of this with Wendell. I still wasn’t sure that I should tell him about Mindy, first of all. It sounded so trite to tell him that the reason I was so out of sorts at the moment was because I was interested in a woman who wasn’t interested in me. Even more so because even if Mindy and I both were interested in one another, it wasn’t like we could do anything about it. She was an intern, and I was president of the company. There was no future there. It wouldn’t be right for me to start dating her, not unless she quit the internship program.
That was something I could never ask of her. I’d never put her in a situation like that, where she had to choose between me and a job that she so clearly valued. I remembered the way she had been on that first day I had met her, so full of plans for her time here with the company. I couldn’t ask her to give all of that up. Especially not for me. I was still full of jagged ends from my divorce. I was jaded. She deserved better than me.
Not only that, but I felt jealously possessive of her talents. I wanted her working there at Designed by You. I had a feeling she could really be something, once she got a little more experience under her belt. Hell, I’d been keeping tabs on her during the internship, and she already had proven that she had a real spark to her, in only two months of being there.
I didn’t want to let her go off to some other design firm. I wanted her here.
So I couldn’t tell Wendell that the reason I was so snippy was because she had gotten under my skin. How else to explain it?
Wendell shook his head and stood up. For a moment, I thought he was just going to walk right out of there. He paused, though. “Come on, you need to take a lunch break. Do you even realize how late it is? I’m sure half the reaso
n you’re so cranky lately is that you’re not eating properly. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re skipping meals.”
“What are you, my mother?” I snapped, but of course that only made Wendell’s smile broaden, as though he had scored some sort of victory. And I supposed that with such a childish retort, I had actually proven his point. I sighed and got to my feet, allowing him to shepherd me out of the office.
He led me down the block and toward a small bistro we had been to a few times before. The place was practically deserted, and it was a relief after the busy office.
“All right, so what’s up?” Wendell asked as we sat across from one another. “Off the record, as your friend. This shit isn’t going any further than me.”
I stared at him for a long moment and abruptly decided that I had to tell him. I had to tell someone; I couldn’t keep it inside anymore. The only other person who knew I had slept with Mindy was Mindy herself, and she sure as hell wasn’t talking to me about any of it.
“I slept with Mindy,” I admitted.
“Figured,” Wendell said, nodding. “What I didn’t figure was that you were still sleeping with her. So what’s got you so bent out of shape this week?”
I grimaced. “I didn’t continue sleeping with her,” I said. “It was just the once, and it was honestly kind of an accident. We both admitted that it would be better to just not talk about it again.”
“But?” Wendell prodded.
I was silent for a long moment, considering my words carefully. The truth was that I wasn’t even 100 percent sure, even with myself. I had to sound out the words in my head before I could say them out loud.
“You know that after Kelly, I wasn’t up to anything real,” I finally said. “It was all one-night stands, and that was all I wanted. Mindy was supposed to be just another of those one-night stands. But ever since I slept with her, I just can’t seem to get her out of my head.”
Boss’s Secret Baby for Christmas Page 9