Scandalous Box Set

by Layla Valentine

  And damn, I was even smiling.

  But then I rounded the corner, and my stomach dropped. Instead of seeing Isla, I was greeted with the sight of an empty cubicle. All of the other ones around it were occupied, but not hers. Nothing was there, not even a name placard.

  I searched around for the floor manager’s office. Once I’d found it, I gave the door a quick rap, and after speaking my name I was immediately let in. I didn’t waste any time stating why I was there.

  “Isla Marten?” the manager, a stout man in his forties, said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Forde, but she’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Gone where?”

  “She got in touch with me over the break,” he said. “Told me that she wanted a transfer.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “A transfer to where?”

  “Los Angeles, sir. The new offices.”

  There wasn’t anything else to be said. I thanked him and left and headed back to my office in something like a daze.

  The moment I was back in my office I shut the door, stormed over to my desk and slammed my fist into it. The desk was too solid to be damaged, but hard enough to send waves of pain through my hand. It hurt like hell.

  I stood there stunned for a time, shocked at what I’d done. It didn’t appear that I’d caused any major damage to my hand, but the fact that I’d lost control like that was alarming.

  And then there was the matter of Isla. She’d left, and almost certainly because of me. My terrible decisions had driven her away, and the guilt of that was mine to live with.

  I’d always been so sure of myself, but standing there, my hand throbbing, I questioned myself.

  What if, this time, I’d messed up in a way I couldn’t come back from?

  Chapter 20

  Isla

  February

  It was another beautiful day in Los Angeles. It’d been a few weeks since I’d moved to the city, and I was still having a hard time getting used to just how damned gorgeous the weather was. Sure, it’d been pretty nice in San Francisco, but you still had the occasional overcast day. In LA it was nothing but sunshine and perfect temperatures all the time.

  The top was down on my new car, a big smile on my face as I drove toward the office in Silver Lake. Driving was another thing I’d had to get used to since I’d moved there—in San Francisco I’d been able to take public transportation anywhere I needed to go. Not in LA, no way. To get anywhere here you had to drive, drive, and drive some more. I wasn’t a fan of the traffic, but today for whatever reason the roads were clear.

  The imposing, modern shape of the LA Corliss offices appeared in the distance. Moments later I was in the parking garage out of my car, ready to start a new day at work. I entered the big, spacious lobby, which was even more decked-out than the San Francisco offices. The LA location was Corliss’s newest addition, and the building looked the part. Everything about it was sleek and brand new.

  “Morning, Ms. Marten!” announced Jane, the department secretary, as I stepped out of the elevator and onto my floor.

  Ms. Marten. I was still getting used to hearing it. When I’d asked Mr. Walker, my previous manager, for a transfer over the break, I hadn’t been expecting much. Hell, I’d half-expected him to tell me that it wasn’t in the cards, that I’d have to stay put there until something maybe opened up at some point in the future.

  Instead, he was so happy I’d asked that I’d wondered if he was simply eager to get rid of me. But he told me that the new LA location was hurting for staff and he was certain they’d kill for someone like me to join them. Sure enough, a few calls with human resources and an interview later, I had a new position and a new location.

  And not just any position—it was a promotion. Senior Administrative Specialist, to be exact. I’d have a small team working underneath me, along with a nice little bump in my salary. The money had been enough that my days of living with roommates were officially over, and I had the cute one-bedroom to prove it.

  “Good morning, Jane,” I said with a smile.

  She smiled right back as I zipped along, heading toward my office.

  Saying “my office” was still just as much of a shock as hearing people refer to me as “Ms. Marten.” I’d been so used to working in my cubicle I’d half-forgotten that some people actually had rooms to themselves, and now, I was one of them.

  But, I remembered on the way to my office, I had work to do before I could get settled in. After all, I had a team working underneath me—another detail that I couldn’t help but smile when I remembered.

  The crew was already hard at work at their cubicle stations. There were five of them in total, all younger than me.

  “Wow,” I said, checking the shiny new watch that I’d bought over the weekend. “And I thought I was a go-getter.”

  Sam, a fresh-faced college grad, turned in my direction and regarded me with bright eyes behind stylish frames.

  “Just making sure that the Grafixtech report is ready to go out before lunch,” he said.

  “Awesome,” I said. “You guys send it to me when you’re done and I’ll give it a look-over.”

  “Sounds good, Ms. Marten,” said Shannon, another member of my crew.

  “Oh, and by the way, guys, Mr. Reynard wanted me to pass along how kick-ass the update on the Quenetix project was—his words exactly.”

  “And it was good?” asked Bethany, always eager to please.

  “Trust me,” I said. “It was good. And I know a thing or two about writing a good report.”

  As soon as I said the words, my brain zapped me right back to that first meeting with Adam, when he’d complimented me for the same thing.

  Adam. Just the thought of him was enough to make me shudder.

  I still couldn’t believe the way things had turned out between us, him screwing me then attempting to pay me off. When I’d first put in the request for the transfer, part of me thought that I’d done something stupid and rash. But the moment I’d crossed the San Francisco city limits and was on my way to LA, I’d felt confident about what I’d done.

  Still, Adam had been popping into my head more frequently than I’d like. And every time it happened, I felt the same rush of anger, frustration, and…nausea.

  “Ms. Marten, are you okay?” asked Bethany. “You look a little…”

  A wave of queasiness rushed through me, and I had to grab onto the top of the nearest cubicle divider to steady myself.

  I closed my eyes hard, my stomach lurching. For a moment, I felt like I was going to throw up right there on the office floor.

  “Ms. Marten?” asked Shannon. “You cool?”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head and bringing myself back to normal. “Just…um, a little vertigo. Nothing to worry about.”

  The team regarded me with a mixture of confusion and concern.

  “Anyway,” I said. “You guys know where to find me if you need me!”

  And with that I was off, more than ready to step away from my embarrassment.

  Truthfully, that hadn’t been the first time I’d had a strange spell of nausea like that. They’d been happening more and more frequently over the last couple of weeks. I wanted to chalk it up to my body still adjusting to the new location, but I knew that was a flimsy excuse. After all, I’d moved from San Francisco to LA, not to Bangkok.

  My other theory had been that I was still more frustrated with Adam than I wanted to admit. It sounded outlandish even to me, but I’d remembered hearing something once about how feelings that one didn’t properly deal with could manifest in physical symptoms. I didn’t like the idea of what Adam had done affected me in such a way, but I had to admit my dealing-with-it strategy of moving and ignoring it might not have been the best.

  “Isla!”

  I recognized the voice right away as that of Emily Stone, the boss to whom I now reported. I turned and her tall, willowy frame, impeccably dressed as always, was striding toward me with her usual calm confidence and authority.<
br />
  “Emily!” I said. “Good morning!”

  Something strange happened—I noticed her eyes flicked to my chest, hold there for a moment, and then return to my eyes.

  Had I just gotten checked out by my boss? No way. She was happily married, and to a man as far as I knew. But why was she staring at my boobs like that?

  “Um, Isla,” she said. “Can we talk a moment? In private?”

  The nausea was gone, but now there was tension. Was I in trouble? Was…was she going to make a pass at me? This was getting too weird.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Come this way.”

  Moments later we were in her impressive corner office, the view looking out over the city. Once there she took a seat on the edge of her desk, sighed, and took off her glasses.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about over the last few days, and it’s somewhat of a delicate topic.”

  “Sure,” I said, now even tenser.

  “It’s…the issue of your breasts.”

  “What?”

  The word flew out of my mouth like a bullet. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Like I said,” she went on. “Delicate subject.”

  Without thinking, I grabbed my breasts. And as soon as I realized what I was doing, my hands shot off like I’d just put them on two very hot, surprisingly large stovetops. They were…bigger?

  “Your workplace attire, while very sharp, is becoming something of a…distraction.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, feeling my cheeks redden as I spoke.

  “You’re a lovely young woman,” she said. “And I don’t blame you one bit for wanting to, well, show off your assets. Back when I was your age, you should’ve seen some of the outfits my friends and I would go out in.”

  She smiled and shook her head, as if momentarily transported back to some ’80s LA club.

  “Anyway,” she went on, snapping herself back into it. “There’s a time and a place, and this isn’t it.”

  “I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I remember when I bought this blouse it was kind of big on me, if anything.”

  “Well, it’s not now,” she said. “Take a look.”

  She nodded toward the horizontal mirror on her office wall, low enough to the ground that I could see myself from the waist up.

  “Holy…boobs!” I exclaimed.

  My boss was right—I was damn near busting out of my blouse! The fabric was strained and the buttons looked like they were giving it everything they had to stay together. How had I not noticed?

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “How did my shirt get so small?”

  “Have you put on weight?” she asked. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but it’s common for people who’ve just made a major move to overeat to deal with stress.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Everything else is fitting normally.”

  “Hmm,” she said, stepping over to me and giving me a look up and down. She seemed to be searching for something, something that only she could see. Or knew to look for.

  “How has your appetite been?” she asked.

  “Good,” I said. “Really good, actually—been eating more than I normally do. Really putting the office gym to good use burning it all off.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Boobs are bigger than usual, big appetite. How about this—have you been feeling strange recently? Out of sorts in any way?”

  I was ready to say no, that I’d been totally fine. But I hadn’t. I remembered the nausea from just a little while ago, and all the times before that.

  “I guess I have been feeling a bit off,” I said. “Not full-on flu or cold or anything. Like, I’ll feel randomly sick and it’ll go away really quickly. Maybe once or twice I’ve actually thrown up.”

  “I…see,” she said.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “Isla, do you have anything important to do today? Anything that can’t be covered by your team?”

  “Um, no,” I said. “Just getting everything ready for the week.”

  She nodded and headed over to the desk, flipping through a small stack of cards and settling on the one she was looking for. Then she approached me and handed it over.

  “Dr. Philip Mills,” I said, reading the card. “The office doctor?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I want you to see him right now. There’s a full team, great facilities—like a little hospital of our own.”

  “Hospital?” I asked. “But why?”

  My boss gave me a smile, one warmer than I’d ever seen from her.

  “Because, Isla,” she said. “I have a feeling your life is about to change.”

  Chapter 21

  Isla

  I left the office in a daze, my mind replaying the conversation I’d just had with the doctor.

  Pregnant.

  That’s what he’d said, that’s what he thought might be what was wrong with me. Or right—who even knew?

  I was in no state to even think about driving, so I called a cab and spent the entire ride home wondering if he was right, if there was really a baby inside of me. Sure, he said I’d have to wait for the blood tests to know, but he seemed almost positive.

  And it made perfect sense. All of the symptoms lined up perfectly with what pregnancy was supposed to be like. Granted, that was all just stuff I’d heard, but it seemed to be what the doctor thought, too.

  I plopped into the back of the cab and stared at the city as it passed me by. Wait until tomorrow, I tried to tell myself. That was when the doctor had said the blood test results would be ready. But I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell I could wait that long.

  Sure, Dr. Mills had said that home pregnancy tests weren’t one-hundred-percent accurate, but that wasn’t going to stop me.

  I needed to know, and I needed to know right then.

  “Can we stop by a pharmacy?” I asked the driver. “Would that be a problem?”

  “Not as long as you pay,” he said.

  I gave the affirmative and he made a turn, pulling into the parking lot of a drug store not long after. Ten minutes later I was back in the cab with the bag in my hand and on the way to my apartment. As we drove I noticed that the sun was a brilliant, wild pink in the sky, filling the scenery with one of those incredible sunsets you only saw in LA.

  Or Rio.

  “Ugh!” I cried out, loudly enough to give the driver pause.

  “You okay back there, miss?”

  “Yeah, fine, sorry.”

  But I wasn’t fine. At that moment I realized I’d gotten so wrapped up in the whole idea of being pregnant that it hadn’t occurred to me who the freaking father would be.

  Adam.

  I’d been with exactly one man in the last few years—him. If the test told me that I was pregnant, that would mean that I was about to have Adam’s kid.

  I’d gone to such a length to get away from him and somehow, someway, he’d managed to follow me in the most unexpected, intimate way possible.

  Mere moments after we’d arrived at the complex I was in my bathroom and fumbling with the box, the test and the instructions spilling out into the basin of my sink.

  “Shit,” I hissed as I tried to collect all of the stray items in my hands, which were shaking like crazy by this point.

  Finally, I had the instructions opened and the tester in my hand.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just, um, pee here, and…”

  I got to it, and a moment later placed the tester on the counter. I set my phone’s timer to ten minutes, and waited.

  It was the longest three minutes of my life. I spent the time pacing back and forth, thinking about all the ways my life could go wrong. I knew that if it were positive—which I didn’t know for sure, I had to remind myself—that would mean I’d have two options, since I was determined to keep the baby: go it alone, or call Adam.

  I tried to think abo
ut it, to weigh the pros and cons. But I was so caught up in the wait that I could only get a few minutes into the thinking before I found myself glancing over at my phone as the seconds ticked down.

  Finally, the timer went off. I rushed over to the sink so quickly that I nearly tripped over the bathroom rug. My hand was shaking, barely able to hold onto the tester. After taking one deep, steeling breath, I raised it to my hands.

  Two bars. Positive. I double-checked the instructions to make sure it was the case, and it was.

  I was pregnant.

  “Okay,” I said, speaking out loud. “I just found out that I’m pregnant. Sure, the result could be a false positive, but come on, what are the odds of that?”

  Maybe good, maybe bad—I didn’t know. And I didn’t need to know, because somehow, in the pit of my stomach, I knew that this was the answer. I was pregnant. Why else would I be feeling these symptoms?

  I dropped down onto the couch, the tester still in my hand even though I’d already learned from it what I needed to learn.

  Pregnant. And Adam was the father.

  I sat in a daze for the time, the word “pregnant” bouncing around my head over and over, doing the thing where you say the word so many times that it starts to sound like a word that doesn’t make sense, like it’s from another language.

  Before too long the hopelessness and the fear faded—to my surprise. And then I began to feel…actually kind of determined. I knew that I needed to do something, something so that I could feel like I had some level of control over my situation.

  I had to call Adam.

  Sure, I was still shaking, and I still felt like I was floating in the air above my body. But I had to call him.

  But how to get hold of him? Could I really just call up the main office and ask to speak to the CEO? I’d have to tell them who I was and make sure Adam heard that it was me on the line.

  With a deep breath, I took out my phone and dialed up my office, then asked to be transferred to the San Francisco offices. That done, I asked to be connected to Adam Forde’s office. Surprisingly, that led me to getting put on hold for his secretary. After only a little doing, I managed to get right outside his office door.