And really, really needed this job, she would add silently.
Granted her parents were more than willing to take her in, but that wasn’t the way she wanted to start her new life here—indebted to her parents. It was enough that they gave her emotional support and had floated her a loan so that she could put down the first and last month’s security on her tiny apartment. The latter was the size of a moderate walk-in restaurant refrigerator, but it was hers and that meant a lot. So did earning her own way.
Up until this job, no one had room for a woman who was going to expand before their eyes in the coming months and whom they felt might or might not be back once she gave birth, despite all her assurances that she would be. But Nathalie Dixon had been sympathetic and understanding and willing to take a chance on her, which meant the world to Mindy. She’d instantly taken a liking to the other woman.
But it was obvious that she was going to have to convince the man from her past that she was up to this. Funny how things turned out.
She wondered how much Nathalie had told him. But Jason’s eyes weren’t traveling to her belly, so maybe he didn’t know.
Which was just the way she wanted it for now. One battle at a time.
“No,” Jason said curtly, sparing a look at Nathalie before he turned to face Mindy, “nothing’s wrong. Let’s see about getting you to work, Mindy.”
She smiled, relieved. Maybe this was going to be all right after all. “That sounds good to me.”
We’ll see, Jason added silently. We’ll see.
Chapter Two
Jason glanced at his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. Finally. All day it had felt as if the minutes were dragging on the back of an arthritic turtle.
He hadn’t been able to concentrate for more than ten, fifteen of those slow-moving minutes at a time. No matter how hard he tried to block out everything, his mind kept wandering back to the woman sitting some thirty feet outside of his office.
His lack of self-discipline surprised and annoyed him. It had been years since he hadn’t been able to throw a rope around his thoughts and rein them in.
He had even managed to contain the pain and guilt he felt over Debra’s death, placing the emotions in a sealed area so that he could get on with his work. That had been the important thing then. Work had been his main goal, his main purpose for existing and his salvation, all wrapped up in one—much to the relief of the great many investors that his company handled who had come to depend very heavily on his knowledge and his savvy.
Without him a lot of people would have found themselves adrift in financial waters that seemed to keep insisting on changing course without giving the slightest warning to them.
He wasn’t much good to any of them now, least of all himself, Jason thought darkly, thoroughly disgusted with himself.
With a sigh he closed the folder containing the reports he’d been staring at without success for the past half hour. Pushing away from the desk, he dragged a hand through his hair.
The July sun was shining brightly into his window, and he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass. He doubted that anyone looking at him would have had a clue what was going on inside of him, just as they wouldn’t have been able to tell back in the days when he was in high school. He’d learned early on how to mask his feelings from the outside world.
But that didn’t make them any less real to him.
This had to stop, he told himself. But at the moment, he didn’t see how. It couldn’t end by dismissing Mindy. He hadn’t expected it, but she was good. She’d taken to the work like a proverbial duck to water, absorbing everything he said. Unlike with the temps who had paraded through the office, he hadn’t had to explain anything to her twice. What was more, she didn’t act as if he was speaking in some unfathomable foreign language. The world of finance left a great many people anesthetized, but Mindy just looked at him with those bright-blue eyes of hers, and he could see she understood. In his book, that made her a very rare person.
But then, he already knew that.
Jason massaged his forehead. The shadow of a headache was playing hide-and-seek with his temples, threatening to take over. What he needed, he thought, was a stiff drink. He didn’t indulge often, but this definitely felt like one of those times men announced that they needed a drink.
Nerve endings tightened as he heard the knock on his door. Nathalie rarely knocked, she just strolled in. The fact that it could be one of the interns whom he kept to pore over every bit of news data that affected the market, never even occurred to him.
He knew it was her. “Come in.”
And he was right. The next moment Mindy was standing in the doorway, her hand resting on the doorknob, a somewhat uncertain expression on her face.
He wasn’t accustomed to seeing her that way. The Mindy Conway he remembered was the last word in confidence, in vibrancy.
But she wasn’t Mindy Conway anymore, she was Mindy Richards, he reminded himself.
Looking at her now, it seemed as if someone had put out her light, and she was struggling to strike at least a small match again.
What had happened to her? he wondered.
Mindy cleared her throat. The last time she’d felt this awkward, she’d accidentally put on two different-colored shoes and hadn’t realized it until she was halfway to class.
“Um, it’s five o’clock and I was going to…”
The words didn’t feel right even as she said them. They felt stilted on her tongue. Everything since she’d walked in on Brad, in his plush insurance office, body wrestling with his secretary, had felt stilted to her. As though she was walking around in someone else’s dream.
Or someone else’s nightmare. It certainly wasn’t hers.
Mindy bit her lower lip and tried again. The words still didn’t feel right. Or maybe it was just the situation. Here she was, playing office with someone she’d once envisioned dressed only in a loincloth. She’d heard from someone in high school that Jason had a killer body. She had a feeling he still did.
“I was wondering, will there be anything else before I go home, um, Mr. Mallory?”
She saw him frown. Had she said something wrong? When he’d given her instructions today he’d been even more reserved than she’d remembered. At least back in high school she’d caught him looking her way occasionally. Enough times to set her heart racing. This time he was acting as if she was some kind of annoyance he was forced to deal with because of circumstances.
Jason’s frowned deepened at her use of his last name. The chasm between them felt even wider than before. “Don’t call me that.”
She pressed her lips together. “What should I call you?”
“Jason.” He fairly snapped out his own name.
She tilted her head slightly as if considering the directive. And then she shook it. “But you’re my boss, it doesn’t seem right.”
He laughed shortly, the words escaping before he could think them through. “It doesn’t seem right me being your boss.”
“Are you going to fire me?” Her breath made a pit stop in her throat and stayed there.
He looked as her as if she’d just suggested his alter ego was Spiderman. “What gave you that idea?”
Was it going to be like this every day? Was she going to feel horribly uncomfortable every time she was in his presence? She’d tried her damnedest today to be bright and cheery and eager, hoping to win him over, but he’d just seemed to become progressively worse every time he talked to her.
Mindy felt as if she was digging a deeper hole for herself with every word