How to Look Happy (39 page)

“Maybe it’s time to branch out.”

Clearly he pitied Betsy. It was time to grab the controls. “I can fix this. I can smooth things out. Get my assistant her own assistant. At least until she’s had it.”

“Her baby is not an
it
,” he snapped.

“Did I say ‘it’?” I’d been talking so quickly.
It? Good move, Kylie.

“Yes,” Bob said quietly, losing his starch. Crossing his arms, he glanced at a framed photo: a gap-toothed, pigtailed toddler on a swing, pushed by his beaming, very pregnant wife. “You’re going to have to leave until this dies down.”

For a second I felt nothing but a weight pressing on the top of my head, a dull ringing in my ears. “This isn’t
Survivor
. You can’t let random strangers on YouTube vote me off because I lost my temper.”

“They’re not. Lance is.”

The CEO?
I was in a tippy canoe, and by golly, there went my paddle.

I made a tiny bubble of an objection as I sank. “She wasn’t doing her job.”

“Effective immediately,” he said. I knew what silently preceded those two words.
Terminated.

This wasn’t a break.

This was permanent.

50 ACTS OF KINDNESS

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