A Bride for the Boss

by Maureen Child

  It was liberation day.

  “Go on, Andi. Go to your nephew’s game. Enjoy the rest of the day and we’ll talk about this again when you calm down.”

  He still didn’t get it, and she knew that she had to make herself clear. “I’m completely calm, Mac. I’m just done.”

  A slow, disbelieving smile curved his mouth, and Andi told herself to stay strong. Stay resolved. There was no future for her here. But watching him, she realized that he would spend her two weeks’-notice time doing everything he could to change her mind. Knowing just how charming he could be was enough to convince her to say, “I haven’t had a vacation in two years. So I’m going to take my vacation time for the next two weeks.”

  “You’re just going to leave the office flat?” Stunned now, he stared at her as if she had two heads. “What about the contracts for the Stevenson deal? Or the negotiations on the Franklin Heating project?”

  “Laura’s up-to-date on all of it and if she needs me,” Andi said firmly, “she can call and I’ll be happy to walk her through whatever problem she’s having.”

  “Laura’s the office manager.”

  True, Andi thought, and though the woman had been with the company for only a couple of years, she was bright, ambitious and a hard worker. And as a newlywed, she wouldn’t be spinning romantic fantasies about her boss.

  “You’re serious?” he asked, dumbfounded. “Now?”

  “Right now,” Andi told him and felt a faint flutter of excitement tangled with just a touch of fear.

  She was really going to do it. Going to quit the job she’d dedicated herself to for years. Going to walk away from the man who had a hold on her heart whether he knew it or not. She was going out into the world to find herself a life.

  With that thought firmly in mind, she turned and headed for the door before Mac could talk her out of leaving.

  “I don’t believe this,” he muttered.

  Can’t really blame him, she thought. This was the first time since she’d met Mac that she was doing something for herself.

  Andi paused in the doorway and glanced back over her shoulder for one last look at him. He was everything she’d ever wanted and she’d finally accepted that she would never have him. “Goodbye, Mac.”

  * * *

  Outside, the June sunlight streamed down from a brassy blue sky. Summer was coming and it seemed in a hurry to get here. Andi’s footsteps crunched on the gravel of the employee parking area behind the office. With every step, she felt a little more certain that what she was doing was right. Sure, it was hard, and likely to get harder because Andi would miss seeing Mac every day. But hadn’t she spent enough time mooning over him? How would she ever find a man to spend her life with if she spent all her time around the one man she couldn’t have?

  “Just keep walking, Andi. You’ll be glad of it later.” Much later, of course. Because at the moment, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

  What she needed was affirmation and she knew just where to find it. When she got to her car, Andi opened the door and slid into the dark blue compact. Then she pulled her cell phone from her purse, hit the speed dial and waited through five rings before a familiar voice answered.

  “Thank God you called,” her sister, Jolene, said. “Tom’s shift ended two hours ago and now that he’s home, he says he needs to unwind...”

  Andi laughed and it felt good. “So which wall is he tearing down?”

  Jolene sighed. “The one between the living room and the kitchen.”

  While her sister talked, Andi could picture exactly what was happening in the old Victorian on the far side of Royal. Her brother-in-law, Tom, was a fireman who relaxed by working on his house. Last year, after a brushfire that had kept him working for more than a week, he built a new powder room on the first floor.

  “It’s a good thing you bought a fixer-upper,” Andi said when her older sister had wound down.

  “I know.” Laughing, Jolene added, “I swear the man’s crazy. But he’s all mine.”

  Andi smiled sadly, caught her expression in the rearview mirror and silently chastised herself for feeling even the slightest twinge of envy. Jolene and Tom had been married for ten years and had three kids, with another on the way. Their family was a sort of talisman for Andi. Seeing her sister happy and settled with her family made Andi want the same for herself.

  Which was just one of the reasons she’d had to quit her job. Before it was too late for her to find what her heart craved. Love. Family.

  “And,” Jolene was saying, “I love that my kitchen’s about to get a lot bigger. But oh, Lord, the noise. Hang on, I’m headed out to the front porch so I can hear you.”

  Andi listened to the crashing and banging in the background fade as her sister walked farther away from the demolition zone.

  “Okay, backyard. That’s better,” Jolene said. “So, what’s going on, little sister?”

  “I did it.” Andi blew out a breath and rolled her car windows down to let the warm Texas wind slide past her. “I quit.”

  “Holy...” Jolene paused and Andi imagined her sister’s shocked expression. “Really? You quit your job?”

  “I did.” Andi slapped one hand to her chest to keep her pounding heart from leaping out. “Walked right out before I could change my mind.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “You and me both,” Andi said. “Oh, God. I’m unemployed.”

  Jolene laughed. “It’s not like you’re living on the streets, Andi. You’ve got a house you hardly ever see, a vacation fund that you’ve never used and a rainy-day savings account that has enough in it to keep you safe through the next biblical flood.”

  “You’re right, you’re right.” Nodding, Andi took a few deep breaths and told herself to calm down. “It’s just, I haven’t been unemployed since I was sixteen.”

  The reality of the situation was hitting home and it came like a fist to the solar plexus. If this kept up, she might faint and wouldn’t that be embarrassing, having Mac come out to the parking lot and find her stretched out across her car seats?

  She’d quit her job.

  What would she do every day? How would she live? Sure, she’d had a few ideas over the past few months about what she might want to do, but none of it was carved in stone. She hadn’t looked into the logistics of anything, she hadn’t made even the first list of what she’d need do before moving on one of her ideas, so it was all too nebulous to even think about.

  She had time. Plenty of time to consider her future, to look at her ideas objectively. She would need plans. Purpose. Goals. But she wasn’t going to have those right away, so it was time to take a breath. No point in making herself totally insane. Jolene was right. Andi had a big savings account—Mac was a generous employer if nothing else—and it wasn’t as if she’d had time to spend that generous salary. Now she did.

  “This is so great, Andi.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Jolene laughed again, then shouted, “Jilly, don’t push your sister into the pool.”

  Anyone else hearing that would immediately think built-in, very deep pool. In reality, Andi knew the kids were jumping in and out of a two-foot-deep wading pool. Shallow enough to be safe and wet enough to give relief from the early Texas heat.

  “Jacob’s game still at five today?” Andi asked abruptly.

  “Sure. You’re coming?”

  Of course she was going to the game. She’d quit her job so she’d be able to see her family. She smiled at her reflection as she imagined the look on Jacob’s little face when she showed up at the town baseball field. “You couldn’t keep me away.”

  “Look at that—only been unemployed like a second and already you’re getting a life.”

  Andi rolled her eyes. Jolene had been on her to quit for the past few years, i
nsisting that standing still meant stagnating. As it turned out, she had a point. Andi had given Mac all she could give. If she stayed, she’d only end up resenting him and infuriated with herself. So it was no doubt past time to go. Move on.

  And on her first official day of freedom, she was going to the Royal Little League field to watch her nephew’s game. “I’m just going home to change and I’ll meet you at the field in an hour or so.”

  “We’ll be there. Jacob will be so excited. And after the game, you’ll come back here. Tom will grill us all some steaks to go with the bottle of champagne I’m making a point of picking up. You can drink my share.”

  Andi forced a smile into her voice. “Champagne and steaks. Sounds like a plan.”

  But after she hung up with her sister, Andi had to ask herself why, instead of celebrating, she felt more like going home for a good cry.

  Two

  Andi went to the baseball game. Jolene had been right: eight-year-old Jacob was thrilled that his aunt was there, cheering for him alongside his parents. Of course, six-year-old Jilly and three-year-old Jenna were delighted to share their bag of gummy bears with Andi, and made plans for a tea party later in the week.

  It had felt odd to be there, in the bleachers with family and friends, when normally she would have been at work. But it was good, too, she kept telling herself.

  After the game, she had dinner with her family and every time her mind drifted to thoughts of Mac, Andi forced it away again. Instead, she focused on the kids, her sister and the booming laugh of her brother-in-law as he flipped steaks on a smoking grill.

  By the following morning, she told herself that if she’d stayed with Mac and kept the job that had consumed her life, she wouldn’t have had that lazy, easy afternoon and evening. But still she had doubts. Even though she’d enjoyed herself, the whole thing had been so far out of her comfort zone, Andi knew she’d have to do some fine-tuning of her relaxation skills. But at least now she had the time to try.

  Sitting on her front porch swing, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands, Andi looked up at the early-morning sky and saw her own nebulous future staring back at her. Normally by this time she was already at the office, brewing the first of many pots of coffee, going over her and Mac’s calendars and setting up conference calls and meetings. There would already be the kind of tension she used to live for as she worked to keep one step ahead of everything.

  Now? She took another sip of coffee and sighed. The quiet crowded in on her until it felt as though she could hear her own heartbeat in the silence. Relaxation turned to tension in a finger snap. She was unemployed and, for the first time since she was a kid, had nowhere in particular to be.

  It was both liberating and a little terrifying. She was a woman who thrived on schedules, preferred order and generally needed a plan for anything she was going to do. Even as a kid, she’d had her closet tidy, her homework done early and her bookcases in her room alphabetized for easy reference.

  While Jolene’s bedroom had been chaotic, Andi’s was an island of peace and calm. A place for everything, everything in its place. Some might call that compulsive. She called it organized. And maybe that was just what she needed to do now. Organize her new world. Channel energies she would normally be using for Mac and his business into her own life. She was smart, capable and tenacious. There was nothing she couldn’t do.

  “So.” After that inner pep talk, she drew her feet up under her on the thick, deep blue cushion. “I’ll make a plan. Starting,” she said, needing the sound of her own voice in the otherwise still air, “with finally getting my house in shape.”

  She’d bought the run-down farmhouse a year ago and hadn’t even had the time to unpack most of the boxes stacked in the second bedroom. The walls hadn’t been painted, there were no pictures hung, no rugs scattered across the worn, scarred floor. It pretty much looked as lonely and abandoned as it had when she first bought it. And wasn’t that all kinds of sad and depressing?

  Until a year ago, Andi had lived in a tiny condo that was, in its own way, as impersonal and unfinished as this house. She’d rented it furnished and had never had the time—or the inclination—to put her own stamp on the place. Working for Mac had meant that she was on duty practically twenty-four hours a day. So when was she supposed to be able to carve out time for herself? But in spite of everything, Andi had wanted a home of her own. And in the back of her mind, maybe she’d been planning even then on leaving McCallum Enterprises.

  Leaving Mac.

  It was the only explanation for her buying a house that she had known going in would need a lot of renovation. Sure, she could have hired a crew to come in and fix it all up. And she had had a new roof put on, the plumbing upgraded and the electrical brought up to code. But there were still the yards to take care of, the floors to be sanded, the walls to be painted and furniture to be bought.

  “And that starts today,” she said, pushing off the swing. With one more look around the wide front yard, she turned and opened the screen door, smiling as it screeched in protest. Inside, she took another long glance at her home before heading into the kitchen to do what she did best. Make a list.

  She knew where she’d start. The walls should be painted before she brought in sanders for the floors, and they’d probably need a couple of coats of paint to cover the shadow images of long-missing paintings.

  In the kitchen she sat at a tiny table and started making notes. She’d go at her home exactly as she would have a new project at McCallum. Priorities. It was all about priorities.

  An hour later, she had several lists and the beginnings of a plan.

  “There’s a lot to do,” she said, her voice echoing in the old, empty house. “Might as well get started.”

  She worked for hours, sweeping, dusting, mopping, before heading into Royal to buy several gallons of paint. Of course, shopping in town was never as easy as entering a store, getting what you wanted and then leaving again. There were people to chat with, gossip to listen to and, as long as she was there, she stopped in at the diner for some tea and a salad she didn’t have to make herself.

  The air conditioning felt wonderful against her skin, and Andi knew if it was this hot in early June, summer was going to be a misery. She made a mental note to put in a call to Joe Bennet at Bennet Heating and Cooling. If she was going to survive a Texas summer, she was going to need her own air conditioning. Fast.

  “So,” Amanda Battle said as she gave Andi a refill on her iced tea. “I hear you quit your job and you’re running off to Jamaica with your secret lover.”

  Andi choked on a cherry tomato and, when she got her breath back, reached for her tea and took a long drink. Looking up at Amanda, wife of Sheriff Nathan Battle and owner of the diner, she saw humor shining in her friend’s eyes.

  “Jamaica?”

  Amanda grinned. “Sally Hartsfield told me, swears that Margie Fontenot got the story direct from Laura, who used to work with you at Mac’s. Well, Laura’s cousin’s husband’s sister got the story started and that is good enough to keep the grapevine humming for a while.”

  Direct was probably not the right word to describe that line of communication, but Andi knew all too well how the gossip chain worked in town. It was only mildly irritating to find out that she was now the most interesting link in that chain. For the moment.

  But Jamaica? How did people come up with this stuff? she wondered, and only briefly considered taking her first vacation in years, if only to make that rumor true. Still, if she went to Jamaica, it would be a lot more fun if she could make the secret-lover part of the gossip true, too.

  “Secret lover?” If only, she thought wistfully as an image of Mac rose up in her mind.

  “Oooh. I like how your eyes got all shiny there for a second. Tells me there might be something to this particular rumor. Something you’d like to share with a pal? Wait.” Ama
nda held up one finger. “Gotta fill some coffee cups. Don’t go anywhere until I get back.”

  While she was gone, Andi concentrated on the sounds and scents of the Royal Diner. Everything was so familiar; sitting there was like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket. Even when you knew that everyone in town was now talking about you. Royal had had plenty of things to chew over the past couple years. From the tornado to an actual sheikh working a revenge plot against Mac, local tongues had been kept wagging.

  And the diner was gossip central—well, here and the Texas Cattleman’s Club. But since the club was limited to members only, Andi figured the diner was the big winner in the grapevine contest.

  She looked around and pretended not to notice when other customers quickly shifted their gazes. The black-and-white-tile floor was spotless, the red vinyl booths and counter stools were shiny and clean, and the place, as always, was packed.

  God, she hated knowing that mostly everyone in there was now talking and speculating about her. But short of burying her head in the sand or locking herself in her own house, there was no way to avoid any of it.

  Amanda worked the counter while her sister, Pamela, and Ruby Fowler worked the tables. Conversations rose and fell like the tides, and the accompanying sounds of silverware against plates and the clink of glasses added a sort of background music to the pulse of life.

  When Amanda finally came back, Andi mused, “Where did Laura come up with Jamaica, I wonder?”

  “Nothing on the secret lover then?” Amanda asked.

  Andi snorted. “Who has time for a lover?”

  Amanda gave her a sympathetic look, reached out and patted her hand. “Honey, that’s so sad. You’ve got to make time.”

  She would if she had the option of the lover she wanted. But since she didn’t, why bother with anyone else? “How can I when I’m going to Jamaica? But again, why Jamaica?”