The Workaholic Down the Hall Read online

  “I told you I'm not going,” I said. “I don't want to be that far from home with my due date only a month away.”

  He looked down at my round belly and grimaced. “You told me that?”

  I nodded. “I also told you we need to look for someone to fill in while I'm on maternity leave.”

  He groaned and ran a hand through his hair. “You're serious about that?”

  Again, I just stared at him.

  “Right. I'll talk to HR. Please tell me you'll at least be on call during your maternity leave?”

  Another perk of my job was the fact that I felt not just needed, but entirely vital to the survival of the company and to the survival of Alex Owings. Still, I wanted my maternity leave without having to deal with his crises. I'd have enough of those myself figuring out how to be a single mother. “I'll change my number if I have to,” I said. “I earned this leave.”

  “Fine. Get the hell out of here, you heartless woman.”

  I laughed and left, feeling lighter somehow. I'd kept Alex Owings alive, I could handle a baby. Probably.

  ***

  “What happened? How'd it go?” my aunt Mimi asked over the phone. She had some sort of spidey sense for when I'd just walked in the door to my place, and for when I needed a friend.

  I kicked off my heels and sat on my couch. ““You know how worried I was? All the worst case scenarios I ran through?”

  “Sure. Yes.”

  “It was worse.”

  “I'll be there in an hour.”

  “You don't have to, I know how stressed you've been over the Blackwell case. You need to work.”

  “I need a break,” she said. “I need to be there for my favorite niece.”

  Tears welled in my eyes and I swallowed hard to keep the dam from breaking. “Okay, Mi. Thank you.”

  “We'll make this right, sugar. I will destroy that man.”

  I smiled, even as a tear slipped down my cheek. “I don't want him destroyed.”

  “We'll talk when I get there.”

  I hung up and tossed the phone onto the couch next to me. I rested my head against the couch back and rubbed my belly. Everything ached, my back especially, and I wished I could have a glass of wine to ease the pain and the stress of my horrible day. I loved that my aunt wanted to be there for me, but I was exhausted and I just wanted to sink into the couch and escape into a cheesy movie. I allowed myself ten minutes to cry and feel sorry for myself about Noah's rejection, and then I pushed to my feet and walked to the bathroom to take a shower.

  I was in my fleece pajamas and toweling my hair dry when I heard the front door open. Mimi's heels clicked over my laminate floors and I smiled. She really was my favorite person.

  “I'm shocked you still fit in that tiny shower,” she said, leaning against the door frame of the bathroom. Mimi was my mother's youngest sister, but she was only five years older than me. After my parents had died when I was six, I'd been shuffled around to the homes of each of my extended family members in turn, and Mimi had been the only constant. Even at eleven, she'd been a force of nature, and she'd insisted her parents bring her to see me wherever I happened to be. She'd wanted me to live with them, but they were not in a place to add another child to the family for many reasons, not the least of which was that Mimi was the last of five and the youngest by ten years.

  She was dressed for work in slim pants and a fitted blazer that made her look taller than her five foot three inches. Everyone in my family was short, but I was the shortest at five foot one. Mimi's long, lustrous brown hair was twisted up in a loose bun and she was wearing those dark-rimmed glasses she didn't need, but wore when she feared she wasn't being taken seriously. I had argued with her in the past that she'd won too many high profile cases not to be taken seriously, but she said men had short memories and sex-obsessed brains. She had a low opinion of all men except her husband, Hank, who was an eleventh-grade history teacher and one of the kindest, most acerbically funny people I'd ever met.

  I stuck my tongue out at her, but she was right. I'd found showering in my tiny cubicle of a shower difficult. My baby bump was not huge, in fact many women had cooed over how tiny I still was at seven months, but when you're used to walking around taking up a certain amount of space, it's difficult to adjust to new proportions.

  I pulled the towel off my head and reached for my comb, but Mimi grabbed it first. “Let me,” she said. “I'll comb your hair and you can tell me how it went.”

  “Why don't you comb my hair and tell me about your day,” I said. “I'm not ready to talk.”

  I went into the living room and got comfy on the couch. Mimi sat next to me.

  “This case has got me all kinds of stressed,” Mimi said. “Hank might just move out.”

  “He won't move out. And you haven't lost a case, yet. What's different about this one?”

  “It's my first family law case.”

  Ah. Mimi had wanted to work in family law and help orphaned and misplaced kids like me for as long as she'd wanted to be a lawyer. She couldn't just go and join a firm that already handled family cases, oh, no. She had to work for the best law firm in the city, become partner, and convince them to start taking on family cases with her at the helm. She never took the easy road, not anywhere. I'd told her more than once that she'd inherited all our familial generation's ambition.

  “How'd you convince the other partners?”

  “I'm just taking on two or three cases a year for now. I have to work enough lucrative cases to make up for it.”

  “Will that be enough?”

  She shrugged. “For now, yeah. We'll see how it goes, but the partners aren't going to like me taking on more cases that don't make us money.”

  “There have to be family law cases that bring in money. Otherwise how would firms that specialize in that field manage?”

  “They take on more lucrative cases in that arena, custody disputes, that kind of thing. I'm not interested in those cases.” She sighed. “I may just have to open my own firm.” She finished combing my hair and set the comb on the coffee table.

  “How does Hank feel about that?”

  She smiled, her eyes getting that far-away look they always got when she thought of her husband. “He's willing to support me, but he's worried I'll be taking on too much. He thinks being pregnant and opening a firm would be too much stress for me to handle. He doesn't really get that stress is like mother's milk to me, I thrive on it.”

  I eyed her petite frame, looking for signs of a baby bump. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  She got a little wrinkle of confusion between her brows. “What?”

  I looked at her belly and raised my eyebrows.

  She slapped one hand over her flat stomach and the other over her mouth. “Aubrey Honor Fletcher, if I was pregnant you would be the first one I told. I wouldn't just slip it awkwardly into a conversation about something completely unrelated.”

  I sighed. “I'm sorry, Mi. How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?” I may have blurted out the news of my pregnancy in a less than stellar way.

  She sniffed. “A few more. I don't think you'll ever understand how it hurt me to find out my only niece was four months pregnant while she was talking about spaghetti.”

  “I was really craving spaghetti. And I told you, I didn't even realize I was pregnant until I was three months along.”

  “That's what you say, but I don't believe you. How could you not notice missed periods, chronic nausea, and extreme exhaustion?”

  Because I'd been heartbroken. I didn't tell her that. Someday, I hoped Noah would be in his child's life and I didn't want my aunt to think badly of him. It was bad enough that she knew our child was the result of a drunken encounter that Noah didn't even remember. I stood. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “I'm not thirsty. I just want to know what the hell happened with that asshole who knocked you up.”

  No matter how many times I explained that he wasn't an asshole, she didn't
listen. If anyone was the asshole in this situation, it was me for not telling him about the baby. “He didn't give me a chance to tell him. He was so, so angry.” I laced my fingers together and placed them in my lap. “I hadn't expected him to be so angry.”

  Mimi pursed her lips and scooted around to sit criss-cross applesauce. “I have no interest in defending the man and I absolutely don't believe he doesn't remember having sex with you, because no man forgets sex, no matter how drunk he is, but you did leave him with no explanation, no discussion, and he did try to call you. Didn't he even show up at your door?”

  He had shown up at my door. She knew he had, because she'd been with me and I'd made her hide in the closet with me. There was no way he could have gotten in to look for us, but I'd made her hide anyway, until I was sure he'd given up. I folded my hands over my baby bump and sucked my bottom lip between my teeth. My cheeks heated. I'd been wrong to hide from him, I knew that, but I couldn't face him. I'd told myself he'd get over it, that he'd forget me as easily as he'd forgotten our one-night stand. It didn't make me feel better that he hadn't forgotten me. “He was probably just annoyed that he'd lost his assistant.”

  “I love you, sweetheart, like you're my own sister, but I told you then and I'm telling you again now, you messed up. I get why you ran, because I saw how much it hurt every time you were shoved off to another relative. I understand how much easier it is to be alone than to face rejection—”

  I gave her a look, eyebrows high.

  She sighed. “Fine, I never experienced what you went through—”

  “You've never been rejected by anyone in your life.” I really hated it when she psychoanalyzed me. One semester of psychology in college and she thought she was a shrink.

  “That's not entirely true…” She narrowed her eyes. “Stop trying to distract me. I understand why you ran and I don't blame you. But Noah deserved an explanation. He deserved to be told as soon as you found out you were pregnant.”

  Mimi had never liked Noah, but I suspected that had more to do with him being my first really good friend aside from her than from any quality he possessed that she didn't like. I'd worked to put myself through college and I'd never gotten close to anyone other than Mimi, until Noah. I was beginning to realize, though, that I'd never been as close to Noah as I thought I'd been. And, she was right. I knew she was right. I'd chickened out. I'd been as bad as Alex Owings and run away instead of talking it out with Noah. I'd run away then and I'd run away again just a few hours before. I rubbed my temples and leaned back against the couch. “How am I going to raise a child if I can't even talk to her father about anything real?”

  I felt the warmth of Mimi's hand over mine. I opened my eyes to see her gaze on me, serious and concerned. “When it's your child you're protecting, I know you'll walk on water to keep her safe and happy. I just wish you could see yourself the way I see you, to see that you are strong and kind and beautiful on the inside and the out. You should be living your life like a queen, not hiding yourself away, avoiding risk because you're afraid of rejection.”

  God, she made me sound like a total basket case. “I'm not that bad. I'm living. I'm doing well for myself.”

  She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “You're good at your job and you're good at making money, but you aren't good at making friends or dating, or putting yourself out there in any way that really matters. Noah was the closest thing you've ever had to a boyfriend and he had you friend-zoned from day one.”

  I loved Mimi, I really did, but it was moments like this I wished she didn't know me so well. There was no point in arguing with her, she was right. I'd had fun in college. I'd studied hard and I'd partied hard, but I'd never let anyone get too close. I'd never had a close friend other than Mimi, and my relationships with men had been fleeting, barely more than one-night stands. I'd felt safe that way, I'd even convinced myself I was happy, but Mimi had always been able to see through me. She saw how lonely I was, how lost. “I don't need a man to complete me,” I said, speaking to Mimi's militant feminism. “I'm happy the way I am.”

  She smirked, seeing right through me, as usual. “You don't need a man, but you aren't happy. I know you'll make an awesome single mother, but you're missing out on the opportunity for a deeper connection, for love, for the fun of a serious relationship. I want more for you, sweetie.”

  “I know. But maybe…Maybe some people are just meant to be alone. Maybe it's better that way.”

  “It's safer. If you're alone, you can't be rejected or hurt, but it's not better. Not for you, sweetie. I don't like Noah, but I know you enjoyed having him in your life. I know how much you lo—”

  “I'm hungry,” I said. “Starved in fact. We can't starve the baby.”

  She sighed but she stopped pushing. “Pizza?”

  We ordered pizza and Mimi shared stories about her career and Hank and his experiences working with teenagers. Eventually, the pizza was gone and the conversation slowed, probably because I wasn't adding much.

  “I should get going,” Mimi said. “I haven't spent much time with Hank this week.” She placed her hand over mine. “How are you going to tell Noah?”

  I looked away, already preparing for her disapproval. “I'm going to email him.”

  “Okay,” she said, surprising me. “But, sweetie, what if he doesn't read the email? If he's as angry as you say, maybe he'll delete it without reading it.”

  Damn it, she had a point. “Well, I guess…”

  “Would you like me to talk to him?”

  It was tempting, but it wouldn't be right. Noah had met Mimi, but sending her to speak on my behalf felt wrong. He should hear it from someone he wouldn't view as the enemy, someone he trusted. “I have an idea of someone he might be more receptive to,” I said. “But thanks.”

  She hugged me tight, kissed my belly and let herself out.

  I picked up my phone and dialed a number I hadn't dialed in more than eight months.

  “Aubrey,” Nora said, her tone cold and unfriendly. “How are you?”

  “Not so good, Nora.” I usually kept my emotions and vulnerabilities in check, but Nora was Noah's mother and she'd always been kind to me. I'd cut her off when I'd cut off Noah, but I'd missed her. “I've made a mistake, and I'm not sure I can fix it.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Nora said, her tone softening. “Whatever it is, I'll help you. Noah might be angry now, but he'll help you, too.”

  There was nothing for it, I jumped in with both feet. “I'm seven months pregnant, Nora, and the baby is Noah's.”

  Silence ruled for so long, I thought she might have hung up. A sob echoed over the line. “I'm going to be a grandmother?”

  Relief washed through me, releasing a tension I didn't even know I'd been feeling. My daughter would know her grandmother, she'd have family, even if Noah wanted nothing to do with her. “Yes, but Noah doesn't know. He doesn't even remember…I tried to tell him, but he won't talk to me, he won't even look at me.”

  “He can be uncommonly stubborn and hardheaded, especially when he's hurting.”

  Hurting? I'd never thought it in my power to hurt Noah, not really. If anything, I'd figured his pride had been hurt by my leaving. “He needs to know, but I can't…I'm sorry, Nora, but I can't face him again.”

  “Of course not, sweetheart. I'll tell him if you'd like.”

  “Thank you, Nora.”

  “Who's taking care of you, dear? You aren't on your own are you?”

  “I'm fine. Mimi is over all the time and I've got…Well, I've got a wonderful doctor.”

  “And your job, dear? What will you do after the baby is born?”

  I could just picture her driving down to “help” after the baby was born. “My job is fine, Nora. Everything is great. I just need you to let Noah know—”

  “Of course, dear,” she said. “I'll call him right now.”

  She hung up before I could say another word and I popped to my feet and started pacing. I couldn't imagine how she would break it to him, o
r what his reaction would be. I hated that I wasn't the one telling him and I could only imagine how angry he'd be to hear it from his mother. He probably wouldn't even believe the baby was his. Of course, Nora hadn't questioned it, so maybe…

  The ring of the phone interrupted my pacing. I leapt on it and hit accept as soon as I saw Nora's name.

  “My son is the most stubborn, most ridiculous, most infuriating—”

  “I take it he didn't give you a chance to tell him about the baby.”

  “He barely gave me the chance to say two words after I mentioned your name. He accused me of taking sides, of being sucked in by your sweet facade.”

  Facade? Is that what he thought of me? “Thank you for trying.”

  “I won't stop trying, Aubrey. I will keep calling until he listens to me, but in the meantime, you should come here. Stay with me until the baby is born, and for a while after. You shouldn't be on your own in your state, and I've got plenty of room here.”

  “I couldn't do that, Nora. I've got my job and…”

  “Nonsense. Noah told me you're working for that Alex Owings character. If I know him, he'll fire you before the baby's born. I remember how difficult the final months of pregnancy were. You should be pampered and able to relax. I want to be there when my grandbaby is born.”

  “Nora, I couldn't possibly ask—”

  “You aren't asking, Aubrey. If it makes you feel better, you can work for me. I'm living in this darling little town in the mountains of Virginia and running a bed and breakfast for Cody. I honestly have no clue what I'm doing and I could use someone with your experience and abilities to help me. Noah made it sound like you were the glue that held Reynolds Resorts together. I want you here, sweetheart, and I need your business acumen. You wouldn't deny an old lady her greatest wish, would you?”

  It was tempting, so, so tempting. Those words, “I want you,” were words I hadn't heard in a long, long time. The idea of being near Nora, of raising my baby near her sounded so wonderful. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't just leave my job and my home and be dependent on a woman I hadn't seen in eight months. “I'll think about it.”