dismiss her if he discovered she was pregnant, it wasn’t something she wanted to risk finding out, either.
Not until she absolutely had to, she decided with a huge sigh.
Besides, the man had something far more pressing and bigger to deal with than a pregnant employee who might not be able to perform her duties. As far as that went, she definitely was up to doing her job even in her present condition—but she had a feeling that what she said or didn’t say carried very little weight at the moment.
But, be that as it may, something far bigger than the tiny seed growing within her had hit the corporation. Everybody, not just Zane, was still more or less reeling from shock. Zane’s father, that nice old man who had started and owned the company, Eldridge Colton, had been kidnapped a little more than a month ago now and the sheriff still hadn’t been able to find any trace of him.
Mirabella made no effort to suppress the shiver that zipped over her body as she thought about the current situation.
Some of the people she worked with believed Eldridge Colton was dead right from the beginning. Others felt he had been killed some time in the last couple of weeks.
Some people believed that, but not everybody.
From what she had overheard when Zane had been talking to someone on the phone, her boss didn’t belong to that group. Zane was utterly certain his father was still alive.
Or rather that his stepfather was still alive, Mirabella corrected herself.
But whatever label she affixed to Zane’s relationship with the missing Mr. Colton, she knew her boss cared a great deal about the man and that he wasn’t just going to passively wait for someone else to either stumble across the man’s inert body or find him clinging to life somewhere, perhaps months from now. She knew Zane Colton intended to find the missing corporation founder now—or barring that, as close to now as he could possibly manage.
This was not a man who needed to hear his administrative assistant hesitantly ask for a moment of his time, timidly clear her throat and then nervously announce she was pregnant and throwing up her insides. Then quickly tell him not to worry, that she would find a way to incorporate her frequent dashes to the ladies’ room into her workday so the latter wasn’t adversely affected. She would then conclude by assuring him that all would work itself out for the best.
It was a phrase her grandmother used to frequently tell her when she was a little girl.
Her grandmother’s wisdom not withstanding, Mirabella really didn’t see how that was going to happen. It was hard to hold on to the little bit of optimism when her baby’s father, after being informed of his pending fatherhood, had only four angry words to throw in her direction: Get rid of it.
He had been even less happy when she’d tersely held her ground and announced, No.
Feeling about as energetic as an overworked flea, Mirabella slid behind the steering wheel of her car and buckled up. She couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before she had to adjust both her seat and her seat belt to accommodate her enlarged size.
She supposed there was a small, outside chance she wouldn’t have to. There were, after all, some cases of women who had gone their entire pregnancy hardly gaining weight at all and never looking as though they were pregnant. Those cases were very few and far between, but they did happen.
But usually, in order for that to happen, she thought in the next moment as she started up her car, her baby would have to do only a minimum of growing in her womb—and something like that might wind up having dire consequences for the baby.
Just what kind of a vain monster was she? She couldn’t wish for something like that, Mirabella upbraided herself.
No, she was a big girl who had done big girl things, Mirabella reminded herself, and now it was time to face up to the consequences. The little being inside of her wasn’t going to be made to pay for her one wild, impetuous moment of irresponsibility.
That was on her.
Just not yet, Mirabella thought as she put her vehicle in Reverse and then pulled out of the parking spot.
Coward, the little voice in her head taunted.
Mirabella ignored the little voice. Lately, she’d gotten good at that.
* * *
When he had first begun to work at Colton Incorporated, each time he walked into the building, Zane used to feel as if all eyes were on him. He was certain that all the employees there, from the lowest to the board of directors surrounding his stepfather, were waiting for him to fall flat on his face and fail.
Fail big-time.
He didn’t doubt that these other employees were convinced he was having everything handed to him—especially when Eldridge had promoted him to be the head of the company’s security division. They hadn’t known or realized, at least not at that point, that he’d had to prove himself. Prove himself to Eldridge and especially to himself. It wouldn’t have meant something to him otherwise.
Eventually, he did prove himself.
But it had taken him time. Time to prove himself, to prove he was there to work, to get the job done and to resolve things as fairly as possible, making decisions to the best of his ability after listening to both sides of a problem. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it.
In time, he’d dealt with everything from employee disputes, to embezzlement and to the ever challenging matter of internet security. He liked to feel that he did this all well. Eventually, he had his proof of that. People had begun to seek him out, to trust him to handle things fairly. To treat him with respect.
But that had all changed in the last month.
He was back to square one.
Lower than square one. Because now he couldn’t help feeling that some of the employees were looking at him and wondering if he was somehow involved in his stepfather’s disappearance.
He supposed in a way it made sense because, in reality, he was guilty of doing the very same thing each and every time he and his family gathered around the dining room table for a meal.
To the outside world, the various Colton siblings, as well as the woman who called herself their mother, did what they could to present a united front, to appear to have one another’s backs. Privately, it was another story. It seemed as if they had always been at odds with one another, breaking up into smaller factions.
While Zane was always close to his younger sister, Marceline, she and Eldridge’s oldest son, Fowler, used to go out of their way to make the three youngest Coltons, Thomas, Piper and Reid, miserable. And then there were times that the others would all gang up on Piper, a maid’s daughter, who had been adopted by Eldridge and Whitney when her mother died.
As for himself, Zane had done his best to remain out of it all, focusing instead on just proving himself to the one man who mattered.
And now he was probably included in the mix of suspects, Zane couldn’t help thinking. In these cases, the family was always the first to be suspected.
He stared at the blank screen on the computer monitor on his desk, his thoughts going in a dozen directions at once.
So
