Tell Me No Secrets: Secret Baby Romance Collection

by Jamie Knight

  Beeeoooop. The buzz of my office intercom rips me out of the fantasy, and my moan is nowhere near as sexy as Mariah’s had been within it. I bite off a “Fuck,” take a deep breath, and answer the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but a woman named Shelly Powers is here to see you? She doesn’t have an appointment,” and then more quietly, “and she’s quite offended that I even asked.”

  I recognize the voice of the new front office assistant…who’s never met my Aunt Shelly before.

  I can’t help but laugh. Leave it to my Great-Aunt Shelly to ruin my dreams.

  Sighing, I press the intercom button again. “Go ahead and send her back. She’s right, she doesn’t need an appointment.”

  Chapter 16 - Wesley

  “Wesley, dear, it’s so good to see you!” My great-aunt Shelly bursts through my door in her usual array of violently-bright clothing, with a wide smile on her face. For a woman in her early eighties, she’s still surprisingly energetic.

  Shelly is the one member of my extended family that I’ve ever really been close to. Ever since I was a kid, she’s been around, hovering on the outskirts of the fancy family upbringing I was accustomed to. Everyone else was a businessman, a CEO, an entrepreneur… but Shelly was always just herself.

  No one is quite sure how she ended up the way she is. Rumor has it that she left the state for about a decade after she dropped out of an unnamed Ivy League school and gallivanted all around the country doing God-knows-what - but then again, it’s totally possible she just lived quietly. Either way, she popped up in the family’s orbit not long after I was born, and never left again.

  “What’re you doing here, Auntie?” I still call her that, even after all these years. Anything else would just sound strange. “I told you I was going to be on vacation all week - how did you know I was back?”

  “I know lots of things, honey. Don’t need your receptionist to tell me any of them, either.” Shelly perches on the edge of my desk, her rainbow poncho (which she proudly sewed and dyed herself), pooling around her. “Besides, it’s Monday, and the only way to beat the Monday blues…”

  “…is to have lunch in twos.” I finish the old, silly limerick that she and I have been trading back and forth for years, with a smile.

  Back when I was a sullen teenager and didn’t have any friends at school, I’d sneak off campus and meet Shelly at the diner around the corner. I think that’s where the saying started, as her way of trying to cheer me up on one particularly messy Monday, during which I was fretting about failing an exam or being turned down for a date, or something. There were a lot of those kind of Mondays though, so who knows.

  “I’d love to, but honestly I really am swamped today,” I tell her. “Apparently I can’t leave the office for more than a few hours, let alone a week, without someone losing their mind and pulling some ridiculous stunt - ”

  “- You mean like hiring that new coffee girl as a Junior Realtor?” Aunt Shelly’s quirky smile grows.

  “Seriously, how do you know all these things? Maybe I should just go on vacation after all and leave you in charge.”

  “I know because I ran into her in the hallway, and your energy was all over her… and now I come in here, and her energy is all over you too.”

  Shelly has always been what my dad derisively referred to as “hippie-dippy”, and this kind of talk is nothing new from her. The way she sees it, life is all about connection and energy and the bonds we make with one another - ironic, considering what a black sheep she is to the rest of my idiot family.

  “Energy, huh?” I push back in my chair and raise an eyebrow.

  “Don’t you mock me, Wesley. I felt it as soon as I saw her, and then again as soon as I walked into this room. You two have something brewing between you.”

  “She’s only been here for two days! Besides, even if I did ‘have a thing’ for her, there wouldn’t be anything to do about it. I’m her boss, she’s my employee. And she’s so much younger than me. I couldn’t - ”

  “Oh yes you could. Wesley, you always let yourself get too caught up in the rules of the business world. You think everything has to be neat and by the numbers for you. Just because she’s younger than you doesn’t mean there can’t be anything there. And consent trumps a business arrangement any day. She’s of age, she’s mature and smart - and you’re already falling for her, aren’t you? You can tell me. I’m not your father.”

  I let out a long breath, feeling somewhere between frustrated and bemused. She’s not wrong… and I did see something in Mariah’s eyes when she looked at me in the lobby. Right?

  Truth is, I have no idea, so I decide now’s the time to change the subject. “Speaking of Dad, why weren’t you at the country house for dinner the week before my vacation? We missed you.”

  Shelly snorts a laugh.

  “Okay, I missed you. How’s that?”

  “More like the truth.” We both know my parents, especially my father, haven’t got any use for someone as flamboyant and esoteric as Shelly. She pops in and out as she pleases, but that’s almost entirely due to the fact that my father just can’t be bothered trying to swat her away anymore.

  “I missed your father’s stuffy dinner because I was in the hills with a farmer friend of mine. He’s starting a few new plots, and I told him I’d help him out in exchange for a share of the bounty of one in particular…” She mimes puffing on a joint, and I can’t help but laugh.

  “Really?”

  “It helps with my arthritis.” She winks. “Besides, I bet I didn’t miss anything unusual.”

  “Nope, just the same old stuff. Dad wondering why I’m not just bringing him piles of money in a wheelbarrow, and Mom sitting there cutting her food into tiny pieces and lamenting her lack of grandchildren.”

  “Those two really do have a serious lack of imagination, don’t they? If I had that house to myself I’d never run out of things to do and enjoy.”

  “And you’d turn the backyard into a hemp field.”

  “Probably. Why not? It’s a lucrative business.”

  Mentioning it again, all those old frustrations start welling up in my head. “I’m just sick of it, you know? I’m never going to be good enough for them. I took my vacation just to get away from the whole thing, and it didn’t help one bit.”

  Shelly hops off the desk and peers out my window. “Listen, Wesley, your father’s been a blowhard businessman for the last 50 years. It’s probably too late for him to change that, mostly because he doesn't want to. But you…”

  “What about me? I’m just like him.”

  Shelly turns towards me, and her expression is suddenly serious. “Don’t you talk like that. You’re not like him. Want to know the first clue as to why? It’s because you have enough self-awareness to be concerned about it. What you’re doing, and how you’re doing it? It’s admirable. And it makes you happy. You didn’t promote the new woman because she’s hot - even though she is, and I’d kill for that figure – you promoted her because you saw a spark that reminded you of yourself. I saw it too.”

  I fiddle with a pen, not sure what to say.

  “No need to thank me. That’s your Monday pick-me-up, free of charge.” She winks, and the smile comes back to her face. “All right, if you really do need to catch up on work, I’ll leave you to it. But next week, no excuses. You owe me a lunch. Somewhere fancy.”

  “You got it, Auntie.” With that, she’s out the door…and I’m left contemplating just how right she is about all of this. My first instinct is to try and reject what she said, but I can’t, really. She’s not wrong, and she knows it as well as I do.

  I’m probably so dumb for falling for this new girl. But I can’t seem to help it. And my wise old Aunt Shelly is encouraging me to go for it – so, it looks like that’s exactly what I’m going to have to do.

  Chapter 17 - Mariah

  The office is small and cramped, but I don’t care. I
t’s mine. A few hours of cleaning and reorganizing have made it look halfway decent - not to mention the activity has helped me not lose my mind and run screaming through the hallways with excitement. Being professional is what got me this job to begin with, it’s what got me promoted, and it’s what’s going to keep me going around here until I make that million-dollar sale.

  The reality of the situation hits fast, though. Without knocking, my door is opened by a guy in a suit - one of my (now fellow) realtors.

  “So, you’re the new girl, huh? Whole office is buzzing about your ‘meteoric rise.’” The smirk on his face undercuts any semblance of respect he might have been pretending to impart.

  “I’m Allen. Allen Jacobs.”

  “I bet they are buzzing about it,” I manage to retort without rolling my eyes. “And I remember who you are, Mr. Jacobs. I brought you three clients yesterday. Can I help you with something now?”

  My tone’s probably a little curt, but I can’t miss a chance to make myself known as something more than a pretty pushover in this office. Despite how angry I still am with my father, the lessons he taught me are still paramount in my head, and they’re not wrong.

  Jacobs almost looks taken aback, but covers it once again with that special sneer that only divorced middle-aged men seem to have perfected.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Since you’re our new Susan, congratulations, you’ve inherited Susan’s workload. And part of Susan’s work? Comes from me. Those boxes over there?” he indicates three file boxes shoved into the corner. “That’s the start of it. First thing on your radar needs to be the Sanchez file - Susan was having trouble closing the deal with them, and now it’s on you. You mess it up, and I guarantee you’re out on your ass as fast as you came in. Congrats.”

  “Good to know.” I keep my tone just this side of terse, mostly because I now understand that he’s kinda-sorta-almost my boss. It’s something that happened at my dad’s company all the time, and I should’ve been prepared for it.

  Full-time realtors are often juggling more sales than they can handle, so the Junior Realtors are the ones who get saddled with the problem cases or the ones that have the lowest chance of success. That way, if the bottom drops out of something, the senior guy has a scapegoat and a way to keep himself from taking a loss.

  “I’ll take a look at it right away,” I tell him, but my curt smile isn’t quite enough to send him off.

  “Sure you don’t need some help?” Jacobs voice takes on a different tone now. Softer, more enigmatic. “I can stick around; we could look over the files together after hours.”

  Fuck, I realize. He’s just another horny middle-aged ass in a business suit.

  “I appreciate the offer…but I tend to work best alone.” I stare until he wavers.

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart. Just don’t come crying to me in an hour when you can’t figure out which way is up.”

  With that, he leaves me in peace. I take the whole three steps across the office (yeah, did I mention it’s small?) to the door and close it. Then I open the top file box and dig out the file with “Sanchez” scrawled on it in Sharpie.

  By the time I’m two pages into the file, I know that Jacobs was right about one thing: Susan was definitely having trouble closing this deal. There are so many back-and-forth email correspondences printed out (printed? Who the hell prints emails out, anyway? Susan that’s who) that you could fool someone into thinking that the case had been open for years.

  In reality, it looks like the Sanchez family has only been trying to sell their house for about three months… but that Susan wasn’t their first realtor - that’s a red flag for sure - and they weren’t particularly thrilled with her either - Danger, Will Robinson. Danger.

  I’ve learned that clients who complain about problems with their former realtors are usually surefire bets to have problems with their new realtor as well. It’s most likely that the client is the problem, then. Now one that I’ve just inherited.

  I skim the rest of the emails, taking in pertinent details and scrawling them on a legal pad that I dig out from underneath the desk. I make notes of trouble spots, crucial elements the family is looking for, anything that might salvage this thing from the garbage heap and help me hang onto this job.

  The process gets a little easier once the IT guy shows up with a laptop for me (the setup is surprisingly painless). With the information from the paper files and access to our database of potential buyers online, I’ve got a cross-referenced list of potential successes to reach out to in front of me pretty quickly. Or at least, I think it was a quick process, until my stomach pangs with hunger and I glance at my phone to realize it’s almost 6 p.m., and I haven’t moved from my desk for almost seven hours.

  That’s when everything finally hits me for real. I’d been so wrapped up and rushed forward by the events of the day that I hadn’t really registered them… until now. My breath catches in my throat, and the office around me goes hazy, just for a moment.

  This is real. Really, really, real. All that time following my father around his office, watching what he did, going to college for that business degree… this is the first time I’ve been able to pause and realize that I’ve got the chance to make it all worth it, on my own. I didn’t need a reference letter from my father or anyone in his company to get this job. I didn’t have to sleep my way into an office. I got this chance because I earned it.

  I can’t believe I’m here because I impressed Wesley Drive, my dad’s long-time rival. Growing up, he would always tell me that this deal or that one was ruined because it was snatched out of his grasp by Drive Realty. My dad would kill me if he knew I was here. And what would my new boss do if he knew I was my dad’s daughter?

  What a mess. I can’t believe I got myself into this situation. And I can’t believe I didn’t even know who Wesley was at first, and that he has still done everything he’s done for me after my huge gaffe. I guess he’s just a nice guy – in addition to being a hot one. Despite hearing my dad’s rants about him my whole life – or maybe because of that – I’m thinking Wesley is pretty cool.

  Leaving the office with the Sanchez file under my arm, I walk down the quiet corridor, soaking in the silence and breathing easy for what feels like the first time in months.

  That relaxed feeling lasts until I step into the elevator. As the doors start to close, a voice calls, “Hold it!” and a hand catches the elevator door just before it shuts. The doors reverse course, and I find myself, for the second time that day, face to face with Wesley Drive himself.

  “Oh, hello, Mariah.” His smile is warm, comfortable, and it puts me at ease just a bit as he steps into the elevator with me. “Wasn’t expecting to see anyone else here this late.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  He chuckles, and the constricting band of nervousness, already eased by his smile, evaporates almost completely.

  “So, day one is over. I hope it’s not a one-and-done for you.”

  “Of course not, sir!” I almost bristle at the idea. “This is an amazing opportunity, and nothing could make me give it up.”

  “That’s good to hear.” The elevator chimes and the doors open onto the main lobby. We exit together, and he heads for a door marked “Executive Parking,” while I head for the street.

  “Mariah.” I feel a tingle in my chest as I turn to face him again. His tone is… at once powerful and practically seductive.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “First of all, call me Mr. Drive around the office. ‘Sir’ is for more formal occasions.”

  “Yes, si- Mr. Drive.” I can practically feel myself blushing as my mind wonders what those more formal occasions might be.

  “More importantly,” he continues, either not noticing my blush or choosing to ignore it,

  “You earned this shot, and don’t let anyone tell you different. Good luck… and don’t fuck it up, okay?”

  With a last flash of his slightly off-kilt
er grin, he’s gone through the door to the parking garage.

  I know he can’t hear me, but I murmur, “I won’t,” anyway.

  It’s not until I’m out on the street, walking back to my apartment, that I realize I’ve still got an idiotically wide grin on my face… and that my panties are a little wet.

  Shit. I can’t possibly be falling for the guy my dad has always hated, can I? Who doesn’t even know who I am?

  What a mess. But I can’t seem to help it.

  Chapter 18 - Mariah

  The next day in the office, I (thankfully) don’t have time to worry about what it means that my new boss apparently turns me on. I take the morning to finish my research on the Sanchez project’s situation, and the early afternoon to make a few calls that I’m hoping will salvage the whole thing in one fell swoop.

  My plan might just work, if luck and pure desire have any influence in the universe. In other words, it probably won’t… but if I don’t try, what am I even doing here?

  After lunch, I make a quick stop at the reception desk to talk with Kristy. She’s on the phone when I get there, and barely spares me a glance until she’s done. Even then, a curt “Yes?” is all I get.

  “I think there’s some paperwork here that I need to fill out? I got an email from HR that they were sending up a bundle for me.”

  “No problem.” Kristy’s look is anything but happy. She hands me a manila envelope without making eye contact.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Not for you, obviously.” Kristy keeps her attention on her laptop screen.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.

  “Look.” Kristy raises her gaze from the screen and fixes it on me. “I put on the same stupid uniform you did. I put up with the same jokes and the same shit. That’s part of the job. But whatever you did to get yourself plucked out of the pool and put at the top of the ladder so fast? It’s pure luck. Or something else, I’m thinking. You didn’t earn it. Unless working on your back counts. But, just know this. The second your fresh pussy dries up you’ll be out of here and I’ll be waiting to take your place.”