dip, a sway, a leap. Deep inside her.
More than three and a half years since the April day she’d sat across from Alex’s desk and accepted the position, and it was as bad—or worse—than ever.
“How’s, um, how’s everything else with the clinics, then?” Her voice was a little breathless. She hoped he’d think it had something to do with whatever had put her in the hospital.
Knowing Alex, he knew more about those details than she.
His expression didn’t change. “You think I came here to discuss business?”
“You called me nearly five times a week at first to discuss business.” He’d stopped calling after that first month, though.
She’d breathed easier, but grieved a little harder for the job she’d really loved.
“I wouldn’t have had to make those calls if the personnel department had a clue about hiring someone competent.”
“It’s your personnel department,” she replied mildly. Huffington was entirely Alex’s baby. There was no higher authority in the company.
She had a fanciful image of herself hovering around the ceiling of the hospital room, watching this particular exchange. Discussing business?
The baby kicked again and she dragged her split persona down from the ceiling. “So…you came here to… what? Ask me to come back to my job?”
“You still consider being my administrative assistant your job?”
She shifted her shoulders. “No.”
“Then you’re employed elsewhere now.”
“I start a job very soon.” She hoped, desperately wishing she knew how long she’d been in the hospital. She’d been living on her savings for months, and her pride simply refused to let her take handouts from her family, no matter how easily they could have afforded it.
She was Nikki Day. She stood on her own two feet.
The practice had kept her together when she and
Belle were only fifteen and their father died, and it had kept her together again when Cody died just as unexpectedly.
She needed the job she was supposed to begin after this trip to Montana.
“A job.”
She had to gather her scattered thoughts again. It was about as easy as gathering up sand with a sieve. “Yes.”
“Where?”
His disbelief wasn’t at all flattering. “It’s none of your business, Alex.” She’d have prided herself on the statement if her voice hadn’t trembled.
He looked disbelieving, but let it slide. Probably out of whatever pity had motivated him to come to the hospital. Then he glanced at his watch. Not overly noticeably, except that she knew him so well, having worked fifty -to sixty-hour weeks for him for three years.
She’d taken one week of vacation during her second year with Huffington. She and Belle had gone to Florida. If she hadn’t made the mistake of taking her cell phone with her, she might actually have managed to leave work behind. Instead, her sister had come back far tanner than Nikki, with a little album full of pictures of herself scuba diving and parasailing.
Nikki had come back knowing the room service menu by heart.
She hadn’t bothered trying to take a vacation again. “Don’t let me keep you,” she said now. She was desperately eager for him to leave, and painfully aware that she was doing a miserable job of hiding it.
He lifted one slashing eyebrow. “What’d I do to piss you off, Nikki?”
“Nothing!”
“Right.”
His dark gaze drifted downward from her face and she felt the heat of a fresh flush. She had to look as washed out as she felt.
She was used to being in control of things. Of herself.
Now, adrift in a tangle of pale blue sheets, she felt completely at a loss.
“Did you quit because of your pregnancy?”
“Of course not,” she exclaimed rapidly. Truthfully. The fact was, when she’d quit, she’d typed up her resignation and placed it square in the center of his computer keyboard—where he’d be certain to see it— before she’d realized she was pregnant.
Had she known, she still would have handed in her notice.
“You could have told me you were pregnant. I would have made some adjustments,” he said, ignoring her denial. He scooped up the pillow from the floor and set it on the bed beside her. “Maybe hired an assistant.”
“That’s what you did,” she pointed out. She pushed the pillow behind her. “I quit. You hired another admin. Simple.”
“Hired you an assistant.” His lips compressed a little, and the slashing dimple in his hard cheek flashed. “So you could work fewer hours or something.”
Alex had never once concerned himself with how many hours she’d put in for him. She was back to hallucinating again. Or maybe she’d wake up and find herself sitting with her nose in her computer outside Alex’s office, and that the last half year had been nothing more than a long, incredibly vivid nightmare.
She rubbed her temples.
“You didn’t have to quit on me,” Alex said.
Quitting was exactly what she’d had to do. And there was no way on earth she’d ever be able to explain that fact to him.
She dropped her hands to her lap and leaned wearily against the pillow behind her. She pulled the limp sheet and thin blanket up to her shoulders.
She wasn’t cold. She just needed more of a barrier between them.
She’d been a good administrative assistant. But nobody was irreplaceable. “I still don’t understand what you’re doing here.”
“Your sister is on her honeymoon.”
She frowned, wondering how he’d known that. “Yes.” “Your mom and her husband are on some cruise or something.”
Her mother had spent months planning the vacation. Squire, Nikki was convinced, had only agreed to plant his cowboy boots on a cruise ship deck because of the wife he adored. “Yes,” she confirmed warily. “But what’s that have to do with you?”
His shoulders moved again. He stood and walked to the foot of the bed. “So I came to Montana,” he said flatly. “Someone needed to.”
He’d hardly explained his actions. Aside from her twin sister and her mother, he knew she had a sizable stepfamily. Any one of the Clays would have assisted her in any way they could, just as she knew, without question, that she’d have abhorred even asking.
But
