Again, I wanted to punch him. I wanted to scream and yell nothing but a slew of horrible profanities at him. But instead I smiled, graciously, and composed myself. “And where might I find this Sapphire Hart’s office?”
“Straight down the hall,” he said. “Last door on the right.”
I marched out of his office, head held high, and headed towards Sapphire’s office. I knew exactly what this was about. That envious bitch wanted not only to destroy my happiness, but he wanted to destroy Preston’s career. And she could do it in one fell swoop, or at least that was her plan. I promised myself right then and there to do whatever it took to see to it her master plan failed miserably.
“What’s this about,” I said as I stood in her doorway, one hand on my hip.
“Mirabelle,” she said with a fakest smile I’d ever seen on a human being before. “So nice to see you. Sorry I missed your first day yesterday. I was traveling for work.”
“I’m onto you,” I said, my tone sharp and callous at the same time. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”
She smiled and leaned back, her short hair coifed perfectly and her brows arching as she looked me over. “Don’t try to outsmart me. You’ll never win.”
“So what’s your plan, Sapphire,” I said. “You want to drive a wedge between me and Preston? You want to destroy his career? What?”
“What’s it to you?” she said with an evil laugh.
“You had a chance to be with him,” I said, keeping my voice down. “It’s not his fault or my fault that you did what you did.”
“He could’ve taken me back,” she said, twirling the pencil in her hand as she locked eyes with me. “He can still have me anytime he wants. He knows that.”
“That’ll be a cold day in hell,” I said, spinning on my heel to walk out.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she called after me as she stood up at her desk. “Get back here.”
“Please speak to me in a professional tone,” I said to her as I turned around. “I’m your colleague. Not your ex boyfriend’s girlfriend.”
“I’m your boss,” she said, countering me. “Watch the way you speak to me, please.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Preston,” I said as I knocked on his apartment door. I’d gone to his office after work that night, but everything was already locked up. It wasn’t like him. “Are you home? Let me in.”
I waited patiently until suddenly the door handle rattled and the door flung open. Preston stood, disheveled and slightly out of it, with a tumbler full of brown liquor in his hand.
“Oh, my god,” I said crinkling my face. “How long have you been drinking?”
He swayed a bit. I’d never seen him like this before.
“I took the afternoon,” he said as he tossed back a sip of the brown liquid and let it slide down his throat.
“What is going on? And why didn’t you call me earlier?” I said. “When you didn’t answer my texts, I figured you were busy. I didn’t think you were at home getting wasted.”
“I lost three accounts today,” he said matter of factly. He walked over to a sofa and plopped down, taking another sip. “Three big, major accounts. Three accounts that I worked really hard for.”
“Oh, no,” I said, clutching my chest as I took a seat next to him. “I swear, Preston, I know nothing about this.”
“They didn’t say where they were going, but I have a hunch,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said, rubbing his back. “We’re going to make this right.”
“How?” he said with a sarcastic huff. “I’m afraid the damage has already been done.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I swore to him.
TWENTY-NINE
I knew we had an important meeting Friday morning. The office had been abuzz all week, though no one would say who it was. Only Sapphire and Carter knew, and they weren’t telling a soul.
Sapphire and Carter had spent a lot of one-on-one time prepping for this, and landing this account was going to fall squarely on Sapphire’s shoulders. Keeping this account was going to fall on mine.
My heart thumped in my chest. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew I may as well have been throwing my career in a giant trash bin, dousing it in gasoline, and then setting it all on fire, but I didn’t care.
I’d never seen Preston so down before, so weak. His business, everything he’d worked for, was crumbling down and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
As I got ready for work that morning, I slipped on a wrinkly old blouse, wrinkly linen pants, and scuffed heels. I didn’t put on a hint of makeup, and I finger-combed my long, blonde hair into a basic pony tail. No jewelry. No perfume. Not an ounce of professionalism about me.
I could feel the stares the second I walked into the conference room, and I could hear the gasps. They were used to seeing Mirabelle Baker all polished and pretty and presentable. She was always on, they’d say. Not today. Today, they were seeing a whole new me. Someone they’d never seen before.
I pulled out my purse and rifled through it until I found a stick of chewing gum, which I promptly shoved in my mouth and began chomping loudly.
Two men and a woman walked in, and I’d never seen them before, so I could only assume they were the people we were supposed to impress that day.
“Mirabelle,” Sapphire whispered in my hear the second she walked in an took a seat next to me. “What the hell are you wearing? You look like you just rolled out of bed.”
“Maybe that’s because I did?” I said with a coy smile and a shrug.
“You knew we had this meeting today,” she whispered. “Do not blow this.”
I shrugged again and laughed as if I didn’t have a care in the world, and as I spun my chair around, I couldn’t help but notice the clients staring at me with jaws dropped. I was sure amongst the throngs of suits and ties and dress slacks sitting around me, I looked garishly out of place.
“Mirabelle,” Carter said as he stood in the doorway and motioned for me to come out to the hall.
As I headed towards him, Sapphire followed
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, his eyes beady and angry. “You knew we had this meeting today.”
Sapphire stood, staring at me, with her arms crossed over her chest. “She’s lost her freaking mind.”
“Maybe this is the real me,” I said, holding my head high. “This is who I really am. This is your bought-and-paid-for contracted employee. Congratulations.”
“Go home and change,” Carter said. “And come straight back here. Don’t waste a single minute.”
“Can’t,” I lied. “All my clothes are at the cleaner’s.”
Carter’s face turned beet red out of sheer frustration and his lips were pursed hard.
“Maybe you should just fire me?” I suggested.
“Never,” he said. “Not until I get my year’s worth out of you.”
“I’m not even that great at advertising,” I lied. “Sapphire here is just jealous because I’m dating her ex. She wants to take him down, and she’s using me.”
Carter laughed, and then he laughed some more as he and Sapphire exchanged knowing glances. She edged closer to him and traced her finger down the sleeve of his blue sport coat.
“She’s not trying to take him down,” Carter scoffed. “She’s trying to help me build my company. She’s good at what she does. It’s not my fault ol’ Woodfield let her go.”
She nuzzled into his neck and then smiled while looking straight at me. They were an item. They were totally sleeping together, and I had no idea how I hadn’t seen it before. All week they seemed to be together constantly. Long lunches. Late nights. Inside jokes. It was there all along. She was doing to him what she’d done to Preston – sleeping her way to the top. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Until I remembered what a slimy snake he was.
“You’re not getting out of your contract,” Sapphire said. “Go home and change. You’re only em
barrassing yourself.”
THIRTY
“Mirabelle, Sapphire wants to see you in her office,” one of my co-workers, Alicia, said with a sheepish grin, as if she knew something I didn’t know. That or she knew Sapphire was about to serve me my head on a silver platter.
I sighed as I stood up from my desk and headed to her office.
“What now,” I said as I lingered in her doorway.
“Get in here and shut the door,” she commanded.
I rolled my eyes and did what my boss told me to do.
“That was a nice little stunt you pulled there this morning,” she said, her eyes glowing with an intense fire. “Very impressive.”
I crossed my arms. “What do you need, Sapphire?”
“I’m going to go point for point with you,” she hissed. “You make a move. I make a move.”
I rolled my eyes once more. “Okay, so…?”
“I have a plan,” she said. “And you’re trying to blow it.”
“What’s your little plan?” I asked. “You already blew it with Preston. You’re not getting him back.”
“I just want to be a good little employee and make my boss a very happy man,” she said. “Fuck Preston. I’m over that boy.”
“Yeah. Sure,” I said, not buying it.
“Which is why I need to teach you a lesson,” she said. “Because of that little stunt you pulled earlier, you made Carter question my intentions. My motives. I don’t like that. It makes me very…angry.”
“I’m not apologizing if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said.
“No, no,” she said, her lips curling into a devious grin. “I had to teach you a little lesson. I made a few phone calls. Found out you’re from Stone Mountain, Georgia. How sweet.”
Her sarcastic tone was grating, like nails on a chalkboard.
“Spoke to someone who knows a man by the name of Andrew Douglas. Turns out you dated him in high school?” she said, hardly containing her excitement. “And it turns out he had a lot of dirt on you!”
She laughed a victorious, vindictive sort of laugh, and I wanted to throw up. I knew exactly what she was getting at.
“The proof is on its way to Preston right now,” she said. “Via courier. You can’t stop it. He’s going to know. He’s going to know all about you and what you did.”
“You’re evil,” I scowled at her. “Pure evil. I can’t believe you’d do that. It wasn’t your place, Sapphire.”
“Don’t act like you’re so innocent in all of this, Mirabelle,” she said, holding her shoulders back and lifting her head up. “I bet you won’t fuck with my plans ever again, will you?”
I ran out of her office in tears, grabbed my purse out of my desk, and hailed a taxi to Preston’s office. I had to be there when he saw it. I had to explain why I hadn’t told him about my past.
THIRTY-ONE
“Preston,” I said, breathlessly, as I barged into his office. A manila envelope laid, ripped open, on his desk as he stood by the window with a single piece of paper in his hand. “Preston, I’m so sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said slowly, turning to face me. His face said it all. He was hurt. Angry. Disappointed. A lot of things and none of them good.
“Because after what you told me,” I started. “I didn’t know how you’d handle knowing this about me. I didn’t want you not to like me because of this.”
He held his head low. “I didn’t fall in love with you because of your past or our past. I fell in love with you because you were smart. Genuine. Honest.”
“I’m still that girl.”
“I don’t know,” he said, throwing the birth certificate on his desk and taking a swig of liquor from a tumbler next to it. “I don’t know anymore.”
“I was sixteen,” I said, clearing my throat. “Sixteen when I gave birth. I was fifteen when I got pregnant.”
He wouldn’t look at me.
“My parents were so disappointed in me,” I said, my voice strained. “I had my entire future ahead of me. And then I got knocked up by Andrew. It was an accident. We used condoms, but one must’ve broke.”
His face softened a tiny amount, but he still couldn’t look at me.
“I loved that little boy so much,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “I wanted him to have the most amazing life he could possibly have. I wanted him to be loved, to have opportunities.”
Preston looked at me.
“I hand-picked his parents, Preston,” I said. “He was never in foster care. We have an open adoption. I see him once a year. I’ll always be a part of his life. He’s got an amazing life right now and it’s all because I refused to let him be raised by a 16 year old mother.”
I walked over towards Preston and took his hand in mine.
“I had to make the right decision for me,” I whispered. “There’s not one cut-and-dry answer for everyone, but that was the way it had to be for me. And for him.”
I leaned into him and kissed his cheek.
“I am not your mother,” I reminded him. “I know this must open old wounds for you, but please don’t compare me to her. I loved my baby. I love him more than anything in this world, and I gave him a great life because of that.”
“I understand that,” he said, his body tense. “I just wish you would’ve been transparent with me from the beginning. This is not about the adoption. This is about being honest with me.”
“It’s not like I was never going to tell you,” I said. “You poured your heart out to me about how you had abandonment issues. I wasn’t going to follow that with, ‘Oh, by the way, I gave up my baby for adoption when I was sixteen’.”
“Mirabelle,” he said with a clenched jaw. “Please go. I just need some time alone right now.”
“But you’re being ridiculous right now,” I argued. “You’re making this into a bigger deal than it is.”
“Am I?” he asked, his eyes looking defeated.
He was a man with a past. I knew that when I agreed to date him. I knew he had a history, scars, issues. But I underestimated just how damaged he was, and I overestimated just how well I knew him.
I said nothing further. I simply turned and walked out of his office. He needed some space. He needed a cooling off period, and I was going to give it to him. I was sure he’d come around eventually.
THIRTY-TWO
One whole week. One whole week passed without so much as a text from Preston. I’d really done him in good. I’d underestimated the extent to which my omission had hurt him.
After my emails, texts, and phone calls going unanswered, I decided to slip over to his office on my lunch break one Friday.
“Ruthie,” I said as I approached her desk. “I’m just going to slip in and see Preston.”
“Oh,” she said, standing up as if to stop me. “He’s not here, Ms. Baker.”
“He’s not?” I asked, one eyebrow raised. “He’s always here. Where is he?”
“A meeting?” she said. I could tell she was lying. She was a horrible liar. “Off site.”
“Did he say where?” I asked casually. “Just curious.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she answered. “He did not.”
I headed back to my office, texting him once more. It was so bizarre that he’d go radio silent on me and that he’d have sweet old Ruthie lying to me for him. My heart began to sink at the thought of us never bouncing back from this. What I thought of as a small hiccup, Preston must have seen as a nuclear bomb.
The second I sat my purse down on my desk, I heard a commotion out in the hall. Shouting. Yelling. Raised voices. That never happened there. I peeked my head out only to find Sapphire, Carter, and Preston going at it.
Through all the chaos, I heard words throw around like blackmail and extortion and career suicide.
“What is going on?” I ran out into the hall and interrupted them.
“Mirabelle, we’re getting out of here,” Preston grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down the hall past my office
where I grabbed my purse. I spun around to catch one last glimpse of Carter and Sapphire, who looked concerned, like their entire little plan had backfired right in their faces.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked him as we ran outside and he hailed a cab.
A yellow taxi pulled up and Preston opened the door. The second we were situated inside, he cupped my face in his hands and pressed his lips against mine.
“God, I’ve missed that,” he said.
“Preston, what on God’s green earth is happening?” I asked, still flabbergasted.
“I got ‘em,” he said proudly. “They’d been trying to set me up for a while. They were even going to use you as a pawn.”
“What?”
“Oh, they had big plans,” he said, his eyes excited. “They were going to use you to pin me with sexual harassment and they were going to blackmail me into folding my company and giving them my client list.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I called them out on it in front of everyone there today in a meeting,” he said. “You walked in as they’d taken me out to the hall. Every one who works for them now knows how shady they are and how they’re going to be taken down for their illegal practices. They’re all going to get the hell out of there, and he’s going to be left with nothing but one, giant lawsuit courtesy of my laywer and a mountain of legal bills.”
“Damn.”
“They were threatening to destroy your career as well,” he said. “You were innocent in all this. I couldn’t stand back and let them do anything to you.”
“Wow,” I said, still in shock.
“I’m sorry I had to go radio silent on you,” he said, his hand gripping mine. “I’ve been working with my attorney all week. It was so hard not to tell you what was going on.”
“So…this wasn’t about the baby?” I asked.
STEP BY STEP Page 11