had taken breakfast meetings with the company’s top five suppliers. Which meant her early start and painful shoes had all been for nothing.
Awesome.
She had a slew of phone calls leading up to lunch and was about to rush out to a sandwich shop to grab a bite when she saw her fellow buyer and friend Megan hustling past her office with her head down. Spider senses tingling, Audrey followed her to the ladies’ room. She entered in time to see her friend’s face crumple with misery. She didn’t hesitate, opening her arms and pulling Megan close for a hug.
“Is this what I think it is?” Audrey asked.
“Yes.”
“Megsy, it’ll happen,” she said quietly. “By hook or by crook, it’ll happen.”
Megan and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for a while now, having suffered a miscarriage early in their relationship.
“I’m so sick of this. Why won’t my body work? What’s wrong with me?” Megan’s voice was thick with tears, her small-featured face flushed.
Audrey pressed a kiss to her temple and squeezed her a little tighter. Megan was going to make a great mum, and Audrey didn’t doubt for a moment that somehow she would get there, whether through the old-fashioned way or IVF or adoption, but it was a long, exhausting row to hoe.
“Hang in there. It’ll happen. And if it doesn’t, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
“I know. It’s just...hard.” Megan sniffed loudly and Audrey released her, leaning across to pluck a handful of tissues from the box next to the washbasin.
“Thanks.” Megan blew her nose, then took a big, shuddery breath. “Do I look like a panda?”
They both turned to consider her reflection in the mirror—smudged eyes, sad mouth, wavy blonde hair down to her shoulders.
“I’m thinking raccoon. Or Lady Gaga the morning after,” Audrey said.
Megan gave an almost-smile. “I wish.”
“Want me to go get your handbag?”
“Would you?”
Audrey gave her a gentle punch on the arm. “Even though it’s a feat on a par with landing a man on the moon, I will. Because it’s you, and because I’m that kind of girl.”
By the time she’d returned and helped Megan repair her makeup and talked some more about her friend’s recalcitrant ovaries and uncooperative uterus, the window for sandwich-grabbing had well and truly closed. Audrey was due in her office for a phone hookup with some interstate colleagues. Not that she minded, at all. Megan had saved her sanity more times than she could count, and Audrey would have been happy to hold her friend’s hand all afternoon.
Still, by two-thirty hunger was gnawing a hole in her belly, and she hobbled to the staff room to collect the tub of emergency yogurt she had stashed in the fridge. She did a little air punch when she saw that a generous colleague had left a bunch of bananas on the table with a note taped to them: Help yourself. Banana and yogurt—practically a three-course meal.
She took a seat before pulling the largest and ripest fruit from the bunch and peeling the top off her yogurt. She’d just eased her shoes off and taken a big bite of banana when a tall, gray-haired man in his late fifties appeared in the doorway. She recognized him instantly as Henry Whitman and nearly choked.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where Gary O’Connor’s office is, please?” The man smiled thinly, his gray eyes flicking over her in efficient assessment before taking a quick inventory of the staff room.
Audrey swallowed a mortified moan. She’d dragged herself out of bed at the horrific hour of four-thirty so she could be in a position to make a good first impression on this man, and instead she got to meet him with bulging cheeks and an enormous half-peeled banana in her hand.
She chewed like crazy and tried to force the lump of banana down her suddenly tight throat. The silence seemed to stretch as he waited for her answer, eyebrows slightly raised. She was on the verge of attempting to mime directions to Gary’s office when the banana finally slid down her throat.
Thank. God.
Eyes watering, she summoned what she hoped was a gracious, professional smile. “Sorry about that.” Her voice sounded funny. As though she’d choked down a chunk of banana, in fact. “Gary’s office is the first on your left around the corner. The one with the Father Christmas suit hanging from the coatrack.”
“Father Christmas. Right. Thank you.”
She started to introduce herself, but he was already turning away. A heartbeat later, he was gone.
Audrey swore under her breath and groped under the table with her feet, searching for her shoes. Had he noticed that her feet were bare? God, she hoped not. She so did not want her new boss’s first impression to be of her barefoot and chipmunk-cheeked, holding the world’s most phallic food.
She was sliding her right foot into its shoe when Zach cruised into the room, coffee mug in hand.
“Mathews.” He gave her a casual salute.
She stood. She wasn’t in the mood for his mocking smiles right now. She’d just crashed and burned, big time. Despite her careful plotting and planning, her scary, intimidating new boss now thought she was about as dynamic as a cud-chewing Jersey cow.
“You know, something’s been bugging me, Mathews.” Zach leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, his tone serious but his eyes laughing. “We were the only people here this morning—so where exactly were you headed so urgently with all those important papers?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Not the world’s wittiest comeback, but it was the best she could do at short notice.
“That was the point of me asking, actually.”
She wasn’t sure what devil prompted her next words. Maybe it was the way Zach was laughing at her, or maybe it was because she was disconcertingly aware of the fact that his crossed-arm posture accentuated the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles in his biceps.
“So, what do you think of Whitman?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.” Zach’s eyes narrowed. “Why, have you?”
“We had a little chat.”
Very little, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Yeah? What about?”
“This and that. Christmas, that kind of thing.” She waved a hand to suggest a broader conversation.
“What was your impression?”
She thought to the moment when she’d looked into Whitman’s cold, steely eyes.
“Surprisingly approachable, actually.”
Zach would find out soon enough that their new CEO was a cyborg, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep him off-balance in the short term.
