by Lynn, K. I.
There was silence for a moment. “That pain will always be there when you think back on it, but you can’t let it rule you. Don’t give it power.”
Could she be any more perfect? “Thanks. What can I do for you, Dr. Cates?”
She chuckled, and if she had been in front of me, I knew she’d be rolling her eyes. “I just wanted to let you know that I miss you.”
“You called just to tell me that?” I asked, my chest warming.
“And I wanted to hear your voice,” she said softly.
I ran my hand through my hair. “I miss you, too. More than you know.” More than I can even comprehend.
Meeting Natasha was like being hit by the L—life changing. Little by little I was becoming someone new with her.
Now the trouble was not fucking things up.
For weeks I’d heard the whispered words and theories, Jenna had even filled me in on some of the gossip circulating on her side of the building. I tried not to let it get to me, but every time Richard popped up, he didn’t care who saw us being affectionate. It negated all of my efforts to appear professional.
However, I felt a change occurring in my relationship with Richard. Work Richard, the VP, was serious and stiff, while my boyfriend was loving and attentive. The problem was the VP was becoming more and more present with each week.
Earlier in the week I sent him our favorite baby Yoda memes, and twice in the week he hadn’t responded. One night I even went without our nightly phone call. It wasn’t like our nightly calls were long and time consuming, sometimes they were as short as a couple of minutes, but it was enough just to hear his voice.
It felt like our footing had become uneven somehow, but I attributed it to the distance between us.
“Natasha, did I hear Richard was coming down today?” Marjorie asked as she appeared in my cubicle.
Marjorie used to only be someone I ran into in the break room or bathroom or the occasional meeting, but she started popping up more and more. It was getting on my nerves and I was beginning to understand Richard’s frustration with her. She seemed to be focused on finding me or my department doing something wrong so she could turn me in.
Like an overly nosy neighbor, she was constantly watching.
I clenched my teeth before turning in my chair and looking up at her. “He is.”
“Did you know it’s against company policy to have relations with a subordinate?” she asked.
My expression fell, and my jaw ticked, finally understanding her interest. “Yes, I am aware of that.”
“And do you know the penalty?”
Was she threatening me? I stood and was sadly unable to be eye-to-eye with her. “Excuse me?”
“Natasha!” Richard’s voice called out and I turned to find him walking toward us, his steely gaze on Marjorie.
“Hello, Richard,” Marjorie said, a slight waver in her voice.
“Marjorie. What brings you to Natasha?” he asked. I could tell by the hard set of his jaw he was ready to lash out at her.
“Just a friendly chat.”
I made a humph sound, and Richard’s gaze flickered to me.
“There is no time for friendly chats today. Natasha is already late for our meeting.”
I picked up my laptop and the files I needed, and stepped around Marjorie. She didn’t have any response, probably too embarrassed she was almost caught trying to intimidate me.
“Thank you,” I said as the door closed.
“Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”
I sat down and opened up my laptop. “Just Marjorie being Marjorie.” If she thought she could threaten me, she had another thing coming. Richard was the Vice President, and I wasn’t going to lose my job because we were dating, despite what she might think.
“That’s all?”
I nodded. “So, I gathered up the last year’s profit and loss statements, and I think I found a way to make the more sound investments work with the budget without overstretching the company too much.”
He stared at me for a moment, then took the seat next to me. “Tell me more.”
We spent the next few hours solidifying the plan. There were only a few short weeks left until his meeting when everything we’d gathered would be presented.
We ended up leaving the office after everyone else had gone. It was eerie to be there alone with him.
His arms wrapped around my waist and he nuzzled my neck. “The things I could do to you right now.”
A giggle left me, then my stomach let out a roar, making us both laugh.
“Guess I should get my girls some food first.”
We headed back to my place, and before he could start looking at restaurants I began pulling ingredients from the fridge. I was determined to cook.
Things had changed in me due to the pregnancy, and I found myself getting lightheaded if I didn’t eat every few hours—even if it was just a handful of crackers.
It was a hard-learned lesson when Jenna and I were at the grocery store. My heart started to race, and my hands were shaking, then the room started to spin.
Thank goodness for Jenna catching me before I fell. I needed to remember to mention it to my doctor the next time I saw her.
“Are you okay?” Richard asked as he stared at me.
I’d been so focused on my task and our meeting that I’d forgotten to eat my snack. My hands vibrated and my heart was flying in my chest. I wiped my hands off on the towel and moved to sit at the kitchen table, Richard in step behind me.
“Natasha, what’s wrong?” He crouched down in front of me, his brow furrowed as he placed his hands on my knees.
I closed my eyes and gripped onto his shoulders, praying I didn’t pass out.
“Baby, you’re scaring me.”
Blindly, I reached for the sleeve of saltines sitting on the table and immediately popped one in my mouth. Richard seemed to understand and pulled a Sprite from the fridge, popping the top before handing it to me. I took a few greedy sips, then devoured another cracker, and another. By the fifth cracker and half a can of soda, the shaking had subsided considerably.
“I’m okay. I just forgot to eat a snack,” I assured him. And I was fine…for the most part. “It’s just more of the lovely side effects of growing a human.”
He brushed back a lock of hair from my face. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Positive.”
“Have you told your doctor about this?” He covered my hands with his, giving them a squeeze.
I shook my head. “I see her on Tuesday. They didn’t have a Friday appointment.” I crunched down on another cracker.
If the symptoms continued throughout the rest of my pregnancy, I was really going to need to make sure I carried snacks with me at all times.
“I’m ordering dinner,” he said as he pulled out his phone and scanned the options.
“No, I can finish. We can’t keep going out for every meal,” I argued as I got up to continue chopping vegetables. I’d been looking up recipes all week and was excited to try a Mexican shredded beef one I’d found.
“It’s not worth you falling over. And why not?” Richard was the king of takeout and food delivery services, but that wasn’t something I was used to. However, I did find him to be a master onion dicer. That was when he revealed his mom was a cook at a local restaurant in the town he grew up in who taught him many things around the kitchen.
“Because I’m growing every day, and that is just more calories than I need. Besides, I like to cook.”
“I don’t mind cooking,” he said, which I found surprising.
“But you never do it. Interesting.”
He shrugged. “My father didn’t like me being in the kitchen with my mom and sister and often dragged me outside to help chop wood or some other more ‘manly’ task.”
“Okay. Why did he do that?” It was another piece to the Richard puzzle.
“Because I was a boy. He expected his son to be a man and let women do softer tasks. My father i
sn’t the most open with his emotions.”
“That’s where you get it from.”
He shook his head and pulled me closer, his lips pressing against my forehead. “Compared to him, I am an open book.”
“Tell me about your sister,” I said. I’d been hoping he would open up about his family, but it was like pulling teeth to get any information out of him. “You don’t talk much about your family, but I feel like she’s the safest topic.”
“Susie is a lesbian living her dreams with her partner in California far from the scrutiny of our parents,” he said.
“Okay, that was the most basic explanation I’ve ever heard.”
He shrugged. “She’s a pediatrician who fell in love with one of her nurses.”
“Oh, how scandalous.”
“It really was. Suz came out to me when she was fifteen. She knew even then, but she didn’t tell our parents until she was in college.”
“Were you two close back then?” I asked.
He nodded. “We were, but when I went off to college, I’ll admit I wasn’t the best at keeping in touch. Then she went off to college and med school, and next thing I know she’s living on the other side of the country.”
I took another sip, finishing off the Sprite. “Do you talk?”
“Thanks to the advent of video chats, we’ve actually gotten closer the last…well, since I got divorced.” He picked up the book I’d been reading, one of those what-to-expect pregnancy books. After the initial shock wore off, I craved knowledge about what was happening in my body. Especially knowledge about when some of my symptoms might stop.
He flipped through the pages, stopping at one I’d bookmarked with a sticky note.
“Your baby is the size of a strawberry,” he read out. His eyes met mine, and I bit down on my lower lip. “We’re going to have a girl.”
“Oh we are, are we?” It had become a running gag, but I secretly hoped he was right.
He nodded, confident in his statement. “A little princess who will adore her daddy.”
“Well, just to be a pain, I’m going to say we’re having a boy.”
“A boy after we have a little girl.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “How many kids do you think we’re going to have?”
He grinned at me. “At least—”
His phone went off, which was something that had been happening more and more lately. He grimaced and excused himself to answer. With him distracted, I was able to continue cooking and avoid another take-out meal.
End of March
I should have stayed at the office.
I should have been in a meeting with Michael about next month’s rollout.
But instead I was where I wanted to be, though the quirked brow and pursed lips that met me had me on edge. Natasha was still working, and I wasn’t even there for the project we were working on together.
“In the five years I’ve worked here I don’t think you’ve ever come for a visit, but the last month and a half you’ve come five times,” she said before standing. “I think I’m getting special attention, because Nina never saw you this much. And if you’re blaming it on my department I will swat you.”
I had been to the office before, many times, but it was odd how I’d never seen or noticed her. If she hadn’t been in that meeting, would I have noticed that day?
“No, I’m blaming it on you.”
She rolled her eyes, a smile playing on her lips. “Ass.” I pulled on her wrist and she crashed against my chest. “Richard,” she hissed, her gaze darting around.
I didn’t give a fuck who saw or who knew. She was mine. “By Wednesday my skin crawls, aching for your touch. When Friday rolls around I can’t stand being away from you anymore.”
I wanted to be around her all the time. The distance was really starting to grate on me.
“There are still two hours until the weekend starts,” she said, thinking that would deter me, but it wasn’t going to work.
“And you’ve already worked forty,” I pointed out, making sure she knew I was watching.
“How do you know that?”
I grinned at her. “Baby, I’m the VP—I know all. Besides, I actually came to pick you up.”
“Pick me up?”
My lips formed a thin line. “I just got out of a meeting with Derek in acquisitions, and then I wanted to take you back to Chicago.”
“Chicago?”
I nodded. “I have a conference call tomorrow I can’t miss, and some work to do.”
I hated the flicker of disappointment in her eyes just before she looked away. “Why didn’t you just stay there and work, then come when you were done?”
Because I’m addicted to you.
“I wanted to see you, and if I went back there I might not have been able to tear myself away from my computer because you aren’t there to do your little siren song and pull me away.”
“My siren song, huh?”
I nodded. “Very siren-y.”
“Does it bring all the boys to the yard?” she asked, that sexy smirk I loved so much on her lips.
“It brings my boys.”
“Hey, hottie McHotterson, what are you doing here?” Jenna asked, emerging from the open door to the break room.
“Picking up Natasha. What are you doing here?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I might be working, but sometimes I really don’t know.”
“Might want to figure that out before your boss notices,” I said with a chuckle.
“The only thing she notices is if I’m violating some arbitrary office policy that nobody cares about and everyone breaks, including her boss.”
While I appreciated rules and order, they were never as black and white as Marjorie took them to be. The morale of her section was low and was something I needed to investigate. The last thing we wanted to do was lose good employees due to bad management.
I knew Natasha didn’t exactly like the office knowing about us, and I began to wonder how much Marjorie had to do with that.
Wrangling Natasha from the office was almost as bad as pulling me from mine, but with Jenna’s assistance I got her to her car and I saw a look pass between them. Jenna’s eyes went wide and then glanced toward me, but Natasha gave a small shake of her head. It was odd.
“What?” I asked.
Jenna and I stared at Natasha, who glared at her best friend. “It’s nothing,” she said before sliding into the driver’s side.
I exchanged a look with Jenna, one that gave nothing away, before climbing into my own car. The interaction didn’t sit well with me and different scenarios played out in my head on the drive to her apartment.
The last person to keep secrets from me was fucking my best friend, sneaking around behind my back for years. What was Natasha keeping from me?
Once at her apartment, I watched her pull an overnight bag from her closet, the same one she’d brought when she visited, and she began stuffing it with clothes and any of the necessary items she might need.
I managed to keep my hands from her, but when I noticed the slope of her abdomen, the definite bump, there was nothing that could keep me from her. Stepping up behind her, I wrapped my arms around her, one hand resting on her bump.
She was so tiny in my arms. When she wasn’t wearing heels she was almost a foot shorter than me, and I had to admit I loved how my arms swallowed her up.
“Hi,” she said with a small laugh at my sudden attack.
I just grunted back as I held her in my arms, my thumb stroking her bump as I placed a kiss to her neck. The change in her body in just a few weeks was amazing. In six weeks she went from flat to a cute little curve that was evidence of our baby.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, my lips pressing against her temple.
“Not bad. Now that I’m in my second trimester I can hopefully start kissing this exhaustion goodbye.”
A few minutes later we were loaded up in my car and on the road. It sucked to do a there and back in one day, but
to spend more time with her, I would do it.
We weren’t very far out of Indianapolis when Natasha went silent. When I glanced over, her eyes were closed and her lips were parted. It seemed she was going to have to wait a little bit longer for the exhaustion to abate.
With another glance, I noticed the dark circles around her eyes. She looked somehow smaller as well, her skin paler. How had I not noticed earlier?
I knew the pregnancy had drained her energy, reduced her to taking naps the moment she got home, and she’d had some trouble keeping food down. But by the look of her, there was more. That, or I simply hadn’t noticed the toll the pregnancy was taking on her. It wasn’t something I had to think much about, and I didn’t see her daily to know.
My chest clenched, and I realized how much I wanted to take care of this woman…this woman who was giving me a gift that I never thought I’d experience.
I didn’t know what the answer was to our problem, but we would find it.
There was always some position opening up in the Chicago office. The idea of her as my personal assistant crossed my mind, but that was more fantasy based than reality based.
If she moved up to Chicago, she wouldn’t even need to work after the baby was born. We could get a three-bedroom condo, or even a four bedroom for future children. That way, I still retained a home office.
I hoped she’d like that, like Chicago, because I hated when we were apart, even after only six weeks.
There was a calm that came over me when she was near. A peace I hadn’t felt in ages. Maybe Keenan’s words weren’t far off. Maybe there was so much more to us than I’d comprehended.
From the moment I met her, I’d known she was different. She was more of everything, and I wanted all of her.
All of the sudden it was difficult to breathe. I found myself almost having to pull over from the pain constricting my chest.
It was a pain I’d known for many years, rearing its ugly head, reminding me what those types of thoughts could do. Those feelings that had once crushed me were growing again, for her.
And that scared me.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give her that kind of power over me.
