He could see that this wasn’t going to be easy. She was afraid of him, or at least afraid of something. That bothered him.
“That would be obvious from my question. Why didn’t you tell me?” he repeated.
Eva looked down at her hands, lacing her long, slender fingers tightly, as if that was all that was holding her together. “Because I was afraid,” she finally said.
It was one thing to suspect that she was afraid of him, it was another to actually hear her say it. It stung more than he’d thought it would.
“Afraid?” he echoed incredulously.
Her head bobbed up and down. “That you’d fire me,” she explained. “I mean, who wants to see a pregnant waitress waddling over with their order, right?” But even as she asked, she was watching him hopefully.
Eva had been the first person he’d hired when a vacancy had become available, about two months after he’d started at Red. He couldn’t deny that he had a soft spot for her in his heart.
Which was why her response took him by such surprise. Did he come across as some kind of ogre to her and the others?
He thought he’d done his best to be fair and evenhanded with all of them—except for perhaps the Fortune girl, but that was a different matter entirely. As for his real staff at Red, he’d tried to make himself available to all of them so that if there was some kind of problem, they’d tell him.
Apparently he wasn’t as approachable as he’d thought.
Still, in light of how things were these days, with everyone watching their back and afraid of losing their jobs—usually for reasons beyond their control—he could see where Eva might be afraid.
But if she’d just come to him with this news, he would have set her straight.
As he intended to now.
“There’s only one reason to let someone go—and only one reason to fire them. The first happens when the business is losing money, which, happily, is definitely not the case here at Red. The second is if the employee is more interested in getting away with things than in getting the job done. We both know that doesn’t describe you. You’ve always been an exceptionally hard worker, Eva.”
Mentally, Marcos made a notation to look into getting her a raise. With another mouth to feed, she was going to need one.
In response to his words, Eva’s breathing grew a little more even and relaxed. Calmer, she looked up at him, still a little confused. “If you don’t want to fire me, then why are you angry that I didn’t tell you that I was pregnant?”
“Because if I’d known, I would have seen to it that you were assigned to the smaller tables. Pregnant women shouldn’t have to struggle with overloaded trays,” he told her.
She’d always been proud of the fact that she pulled her own weight. Now was no exception.
“I don’t want any special treatment, Mr. Mendoza,” Eva protested.
“It’s not special, it’s just common sense. If you wind up overdoing it, carrying trays that are too heavy for you, you might wind up hurting the baby—or worse. You could wind up in the hospital—and Red would be out one damn good waitress. So it’s settled,” he said with finality. “You take over waiting on the smaller tables, starting now.” Marcos looked at her pointedly. “Anything else I should know?”
Eva allowed a little sigh of relief to escape her lips. “No, sir.”
“You need any extra time?” he asked her. “Maybe some time off to go see your doctor?” When Eva flushed and hesitated before answering him, Marcos arrived at his own conclusion: she wasn’t going to a doctor. “You need to see a doctor on a regular basis, Eva. It’s important for your baby—and you.”
Opening the double drawer on the right side of his desk, Marcos thumbed through several folders until he found what he was looking for: insurance information. He pulled out a thick booklet and handed it to her.
“You have health coverage. Pregnancy is a covered expense. Go see your doctor. And if you don’t have a doctor and find that you have trouble picking one out—”
“I have a name,” Eva assured him. “My sister gave me the name of the one she uses. Dr. Sonia Ortiz.”
He hoped she was a good doctor. “All right. Call Dr. Ortiz and see if she can squeeze you in this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I don’t want you having any problems because you haven’t been taking care of yourself, Eva.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mendoza,” Eva cried, tears of relief shimmering in her eyes.
Marcos flushed at her words. He didn’t want her gratitude, that just embarrassed him. What he did want was for the woman to take care of herself—and the child she was carrying.
“I’m glad we talked,” he told her, turning his chair so that he was facing his computer. “Why don’t we both get back to work.” Marcos smiled, then touched the keyboard and activated the monitor on his computer. Abandoning its sleep mode, the screen instantly grew bright.
Focused on his timesheets, Marcos barely heard Eva leave his office. There was a slight pause before he heard the door being closed again, making him think that perhaps Eva had wanted to ask him something else.
“That was very nice of you.”
The soft, melodic Southern drawl made him look up sharply from his screen. There was only one way to construe the woman’s words, since not enough time had passed for Eva to have filled his personal albatross in on the conversation they had just had.
“You were eavesdropping,” he accused.
“Yes,” Wendy said simply. “I was.”
Marcos stared at her, momentarily speechless. The Fortune girl made absolutely no attempt to deny her transgression. If anything, he thought he heard a hint of pride in her voice.
She was brazen, he’d give her that. In another setting, that might have even intrigued him a little. He liked a woman who didn’t act like a shrinking violet. Usually. But not in this case.
“I had to,” she told him before he could demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing, listening in on his private conversation with an employee. “I was afraid you were going to rake her over the coals about being pregnant. There was fire in your eyes when you walked away and called her into your office,” Wendy explained. “I figured you were either mad at her—or at me. If it was her, I wanted to be there for her when you finished reading her the riot act.”
His eyes narrowed as he pinned her in place. “And if it was you?”
He expected her to cower, or at least pretend to. Instead, Wendy smiled in response. That same bright, disarming smile he’d seen her aim at the customers, both male and female, when she walked up to their tables.
The same smile that somehow seemed to brighten up a room.
It was official, he thought. He was losing his mind. Because of her.
“If it was me, I thought I’d spare you having to come and fetch me. I figured that would make you even angrier.”
To his further surprise, Wendy slid into the seat that Eva had just vacated and then, without so much as blinking or building up to it, she asked, “You don’t like me much, do you?”
She definitely wasn’t the kind of employee he was used to. Or the kind of woman he was used to, for that matter, either.
“Whether I do or not doesn’t matter—”
Again she didn’t give him a chance to finish—why didn’t that surprise him? “It does to me,” she told him. “I’m not used to people not liking me,” she said with genuine sincerity. “Now what have I done to rub you the wrong way?”
Her