The Pregnancy Test (3 page)

“Oh, dear, God,” she whispered.

H
e wasn’t sure why he had hired her.

Maybe it had been desperation. There had been no other candidates even remotely qualified.

Or maybe it had been admiration. She had hung in there until the bitter end, finally halting the interview by yaking into his trash can, right smack between his legs. He respected that kind of grit.

Plus, prior to that, she had handled the interview well.

And she was very nice to look at when she wasn’t throwing up, not that appearance had any bearing on his decision.

Of course, he never saw her, so that was irrelevant.

Besides, regardless of the reasons why he had hired her, she was working out quite well. She was a stellar assistant, even if she was as elusive as a taxi in the rain.

In the two months since she had started, he’d seen her approximately four times.

It didn’t seem to affect her job performance. She was a whiz at instant messaging and e-mails, often responding to his messages in less than a minute. She did everything he asked of her on time and cleanly, and had even gotten to the point where she was anticipating his needs.

Like now. He was sitting at his desk, and suddenly a guy from the deli had knocked on his door and brought him a turkey sandwich on whole grain.

So he IM’d her.

Is this turkey sandwich for me?

Before he could even get it unwrapped, she had replied.

Yes, it is. Enjoy.

He should let it go at that. Really, it didn’t matter. He had the sandwich. He could eat it and not worry about being interrupted in the middle of his twelve-o’clock Web conference regarding the updates to the product roadmap at First Financial. Yet this conference call was taking three times as long as was necessary, and he found he couldn’t stop himself from instant messaging Mandy again.

How do you know I would want turkey?

You always eat turkey on Tuesdays.

He wasn’t sure if he was pleased or annoyed. Probably annoyed. Because he found that for all the hiding she did from him, it didn’t stop him from wasting a great deal of time thinking about Mandy Keeling, trying to figure her out.

Which puzzled him first, pissed him off second.

Maybe next Tuesday I’ll have pastrami.

You don’t like pastrami.

How did she know if he liked pastrami or not? She never even spoke to him, hiding in her cubicle like she was afraid to come face-to-face with her ogre boss. Maybe he loved pastrami.

He didn’t, but that wasn’t the point.

He bit the turkey sandwich with more force than was necessary and nearly ripped through his tongue.

How do you know I don’t like pastrami?

You said it smelled like armpit when I was ordering party trays for the user group meeting.

How the hell she could even remember he said that was beyond him. He went two years with assistants who couldn’t even remember what floor they were on, and now suddenly he had one with magic memory.

He should be thrilled. She was a dream secretary come true.

And maybe he would be thrilled if she wasn’t avoiding him like week-old fish.

That shouldn’t bother him either. Wasn’t he happiest when people were leaving him alone? Hadn’t he rearranged his whole life so that he had the least amount of interaction with other human beings as possible aside from work? She did her job, and she did it with minimal contact with him. A perfect working arrangement.

Which didn’t explain why he was searching his brain for an excuse to force her into his office face-to-face, so he could puzzle out why he was spending so much time thinking about her.

Do you want me to order you pastrami next week?

Oh, now she was just being a smart-ass. He could practically hear the sarcasm in her typed words. And it made him fight not to smile.

No.

Then what do you want, Mr. Sharpton?

He didn’t know what he wanted, aside from thoughts of Mandy Keeling to evacuate his head. And he definitely didn’t want pastrami.

I want to order my own sandwich.

Damien chewed the food in his mouth and reread his words. Now, that was a stupid thing to say. He sounded like a three-year-old. And he didn’t want to order his own food—that was the whole point of having an assistant, to free his time up for more pressing concerns. What the hell was he doing?

That can be arranged.

He actually laughed out loud. Something he never did. Ever. There hadn’t been a whole lot to laugh about in the last three years.

“So that’s how she gets all her work done,” he murmured to the screen as his laughter dwindled down to a chuckle. “She turns it all back around to me.”

“What was that, Damien?”

Oh, shit, he’d forgotten he was on a conference call.

“Uh, nothing, sorry.” Christ, he sounded like an idiot, and when the hell had he ever forgotten that he was on a call?

Impulsively, he pressed star six to mute the call and picked up his phone. He had to see Mandy. He had to reassure himself that he was not feeling any sort of attraction whatsoever to his invisible assistant. He had to know that she wasn’t any different than any other woman he’d encountered since Jessica. He had to look her straight in the eye and feel nothing.

She answered the phone in that clipped British accent of hers. “NY Computing, this is Mandy.”

“I need to see you in my office. Now.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “I was just going for lunch. I’ve an appointment.”

Damien was annoyed. How convenient that she had an appointment. And how coincidental that she never seemed to be at her desk when he was walking by. “When you get back then.”

“Mr. Sharpton…” She sounded nervous and as if she were scrambling around for a plausible excuse not to see him. “I have rather a busy afternoon.”

He was a suspicious man. Cynical. Inclined to think the worst. He hadn’t always been like that, but life had a cruel way of beating the trust out of a man, and he didn’t think he was overreacting in thinking something was really strange about his assistant’s behavior.

Clearly, she was avoiding him. And he wasn’t sure why it mattered, but he just needed to reassure himself that it wasn’t because she thought he was an ogre.

He wasn’t necessarily a nice guy, but he wasn’t a bastard either.

If he had made an assistant or two cry, it had never been
intentional
.

“A busy afternoon working for me.”

“Well, yes.”

She didn’t sound nearly as confident and efficient on the phone as she did in her e-mails. Damien could practically hear her squirming. And it didn’t make him feel any better. It just proved she didn’t want to get anywhere near him.

Maybe she was embarrassed about throwing up under his desk. It had been an awkward first meeting, to say the least. Or maybe she had something wrong with her, like a phobia. But what the hell would explain her sprinting down the hall to get away from him, like he could swear he’d seen her do two days before? Fear of Technical Executives?

“Since you’re busy working for me, I’m telling you that you can take five minutes out of your task-filled schedule to come to my office.”

“Mr. Sharpton, I need to leave for my appointment immediately.”

That was the tone he had come to expect from Mandy, even if he never heard it in person. That sort of mildly reprimanding, prim and proper voice.

It kind of turned him on.

Damien shoved the sandwich away so he could rest his head on his hand. Man, oh man, he’d lost his mind. He’d thought that he’d held insanity at bay, but clearly it had snuck up on him when he wasn’t looking.

“Fine, I’ll just tell you what I want over the phone, then. I’m leaving next week for the Caribbean.”

“Yes, I booked your flight last week.”

“Get back on the phone and get yourself a seat as well. I need you to accompany me on this trip.”

Not really. And he wasn’t entirely sure where the idea had come from, but it was brilliant. Whatever little secret Mandy Keeling was hiding from him would be revealed if they spent five days working in the Caribbean together. She couldn’t avoid him. There would be no high-speed Internet for her to rely on instant messaging. No maze of cubicles to dart around when she saw him approaching.

Nothing but sun and sand and rum. And Mandy in a bikini.

Damien tried to picture it, but he saw Mandy so infrequently, his mind couldn’t quite dredge up enough details to make the image complete. All he had was a cute upturned nose, wavy brown hair, and sheepskin boots.

“What?” she said, her voice squeaking as it hit the T. “I thought you won this trip for your productivity. It’s supposed to be a holiday.”

He would go absolutely freaking crazy if he had to sit in a beach chair for five days and not work. His body didn’t know how to be idle, and his brain, well, too much time to think and there might be images of Jessica popping in there.

That was something he couldn’t let happen.

“I don’t need a vacation. But I can appreciate the sun and a dive into the ocean. So I’m planning on making it a working week, just at a slower pace. Only I need you there, with me.”

“No, I couldn’t possibly!”

Was the prospect so horrible? He thought most employees would jump at the chance to hit the islands, all expenses paid for. He couldn’t quite keep the irritation out of his voice. “I’m not really asking you.”

“I see.”

There it was again, that disapproving schoolteacher voice.

He settled back in his chair, satisfied to have the upper hand again. “Do you feel our business relationship is working, Mandy?”

“I don’t have any complaints, Mr. Sharpton.” She paused. “Do you?”

Only one. “I think it’s working well overall. I’d like to make a few adjustments, though, with the idea that we’ll be working together long-term.” She really was a damn good assistant. He just wanted to see her more often.

Which sounded incredibly odd, like he was a mother neglected by her grown children. A mortifying comparison, to say the least.

“But we’ll discuss that on the trip.” He’d already wasted the better part of a half hour accomplishing nothing more than forcing her to share the same space with him.

“Fantastic,” she said, sounding so unenthusiastic that he hung up before she heard him snort in amusement.

Mandy dragged herself up the two flights of stairs to her apartment, wondering if her body realized that according to
The Everything Guide to Pregnancy,
she was supposed to have left first trimester fatigue behind. Someone upstairs hadn’t got the message, because she still felt like hell.

It was probably the stress of her new job. She had been working hard to make a good impression on Damien Sharpton, worrying that any minute he’d fire her without notice or just cause. Besides, she was expending a lot of energy dodging him, popping into the rest room or behind a cubicle wall when he came out of his office, so she wouldn’t come face-to-face with him.

In the eight weeks since she’d started as his assistant, she’d stuck to that pattern of hide and never seek, but lately she realized her reasons for it were changing. First it had been because she’d thought he was a beast, capable of making her work environment hell, and because she had seen the wisdom of keeping her pregnancy from him until it was no longer possible. But to her surprise, she was finding that while Damien was arrogant and impatient, he wasn’t a bad sort at all.

He was demanding, but he also had a sharp wit and an intelligence that astounded her. It was obvious why he was good at his job—he was aggressive and a perfectionist, but she had expected that. What she hadn’t anticipated was the sense of humor that was lurking somewhere in that stodgy exterior. It showed up randomly in his e-mails when she was least expecting it and intrigued her.

The truth was she actually enjoyed the rapport they shared via technology.

And to her horror she’d been having incredibly vivid dreams featuring his blue eyes gazing at her as he performed all manner of sexual acts. To her. With her. Under her. Over her. In her.

The
Everything Guide
said intense dreaming was common and expected in pregnant women, with dreams about the baby and sex topping the list. She’d had a couple of dreams about holding the solid weight of her child in her arms, but mostly, pervert that she was, she was dreaming about her boss getting her off.

It was phenomenally embarrassing.

And a good cause for staying away from him. Any time in his presence might either fuel the fire of her lusty dreams or have her stammering, convinced he could read her mind.

Or worst of all, make her want him during waking hours, too.