“That’s my boss, Mr. Hamilton,” she told Harry. “I work for him.”
Harry gave Jake an appraising look. “I’m Harry. I’m four.” He held up four fingers.
“Nice try.” Charlotte adjusted his fingers down to two. “You know how old you are. Stop trying to pretend you’re older.”
Harry scowled at her for calling him out, and then sipped his milk in what he apparently thought was a dignified manner.
The weight of Jake’s gaze felt as though someone had covered her face with a lead blanket. Deciding that she’d avoided the moment long enough, she hitched up her chin and looked at him over Harry’s head, feeling defiant.
His reaction to this news that she was a single mother—he’d figure out that she and Roger had never been married soon enough—didn’t matter to her. Of course it didn’t. If people judged her harshly, then that was their problem, not hers. She loved Harry, who was the pride of her life, and anyone who thought less of her personal situation was a moron. And her life was too full and busy to waste time with morons.
It was just that she’d had a few painful and best-forgotten experiences with men who had wanted to date her, found out she had a kid, then took the next train to I’m outta here, never to be seen again.
Jake’s expression was still. Dark. Utterly unreadable.
They stared at each other for one lengthy and terrible moment before Jake broke free of whatever had him in its grip. Something about him eased up, making him much less forbidding, and he studied Harry for a second or two.
Harry, all wide-eyed and fat-cheeked behind his cup, stared back.
“So you’re two, eh?” Jake’s lips curled into a half smile. “That makes you old enough to get a job, doesn’t it, little dude?”
Harry darted Charlotte an incredulous glance and squealed with laughter. “A job? No way!”
“Well, you’re welcome to hang out at the office for as long as you need to, anyway. Kids are always welcome here,” Jake informed him.
Charlotte’s jaw dropped.
“We’ll find something for you to do, okay?” Jake continued. “God knows some of the lawyers around here aren’t that much smarter than you. How does that sound?”
Harry grinned, revealing his tiny set of perfectly white teeth. “Great. Yay!”
With a definitive nod, Jake adjusted his cuffs and spared Roger a sidelong look that was none too warm. “I’ll let you two wrap things up.” He paused. “Quickly.”
“Thanks,” Charlotte said.
Jake leveled all of his attention on her, which gave her the uncomfortable sensation of being a butterfly pinned to someone’s board.
“I’ll need to see you in my office,” he said as he strode off. “Five minutes.”
Chapter 3
Jake planted his palms on his desk and leaned into it, struggling to master his thoughts. His thoughts did not want to be mastered. They were, in fact, spinning out of control, as though his head had become a child’s top, ricocheting off walls and furniture legs with no sign of stopping.
After a weekend of high agitation, no sleep and stalking the Starbucks for any sign of her, he’d found his mystery woman.
Well, found wasn’t exactly the right word, was it?
He’d stumbled on to his mystery woman.
He’d discovered that his mystery woman was no real mystery, after all.
She’d been working right here, in this very building, under his very nose, for the past couple years, and he was willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that he’d never seen her before in his life, because how could he have ever laid eyes on a woman like that and forgotten her?
He must have, though.
Which made him a dumbass.
A blind dumbass, to be precise, and that was not a good feeling.
Shit.
Sudden exhaustion made him slump into his leather chair.
Renewed agitation made him get back up again and pace.
Charlotte Evans. A firm employee. And since he was a partner in the firm, that made her his employee.
A man couldn’t go around lusting after his employees, not unless he wanted to get sued for sexual harassment. And if he did enter into a discreet, consensual relationship with Charlotte—a big if, considering he didn’t know the status of her relationship with Dr. Punko out there—word would get out. Word always got out. And what would happen then? Office morale would plummet, for one. And his family would hand him his head on a platter for introducing his personal drama into the workplace, for another.
Double shit.
So where did that leave him?
Screwed, that’s where.
Because he thought about Charlotte Evans, firm employee. He saw her eyes when he didn’t want to. Heard her laugh when he wanted silence. Had been haunted by her all weekend.
Wanted her.
After about the tenth lap of his office, he wore himself out and rested a hip on the edge of his desk. And what about—
There was a soft knock on his ajar door, and Charlotte poked her head inside. “Hi.”
Snapping to attention with an abrupt spike in his pulse rate, he stood. “Come in.”
“Come on, little man.” Tugging Harry’s hand, she ushered him inside the office and tried to steer him toward the tufted leather sofa against the far wall. “I want you to sit right here and be very—”
But Harry had seen the large jar of M&M’s on Jake’s desk.
“Candy, Mommy!”
“Not a chance,” she told him.
No worries. Harry wheeled around, spotted the giant aquarium of tropical fish and plants and veered in that direction with a shout of surprised delight that made Jake grin. “Look, Mommy! Fish!” Harry raced over and pointed at the orange one with black and white stripes. “And look! There’s Nemo! Hi, Nemo!”
Charlotte shot Jake an apologetic look. “Harry ends every sentence with an exclamation point, in case you hadn’t noticed. Don’t tap on the glass, Harry. It disturbs the fish, okay?” It didn’t seem to matter, though, because Harry now had both palms and his nose pressed up against the aquarium and was in toddler rapture, murmuring to the fish. “Sorry about the fingerprints,” she told Jake, lowering her voice. “And I told Roger that I couldn’t have Harry here, but—”
Jake raised a hand, stopping her. “It’s okay. Kids are welcome here.”
“That’s very nice of you, but it’s a law firm, and Harry has no idea what an inside voice is. Oh, and he left a half pound of M&M’s in the potted plant in the reception area, and his typing sucks.”
Jake laughed.
“So I need to get him out of here. And I will. I just need to—”
“I didn’t know you had a child.”
Jake resisted the urge to clap his hand over his big mouth. Whoa. Where had that come from? And why had he said it, even if he was thinking it? He did, thankfully, restrain the follow-up question on the tip of his tongue, which had to do with Harry’s father—who was clearly a punk ass if ever he’d seen one—and whether he and Charlotte had an ongoing romantic relationship.
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