The Girlfriend (The Boss 2)

I wanted to touch him. I wanted him to touch me. I just wanted everything to be okay between us.

He led me to the kitchen, where Sue had laid out our neatly plated dinners. “Halibut, I hope you don’t mind.”

“It smells amazing.” It actually smelled awful, but I didn’t hold that against his housekeeper. It was the uninvited guest in my uterus. It made everything smell ten times stronger than usual. I looked around the kitchen. The counters were scrubbed clean, the light was off over the stove. I slid into one side of the breakfast nook. “Sue’s gone for the night?”

“I didn’t ask her to stay on past seven.” He went around the wide, marble-topped island and reached into the cooler beneath, coming up with a bottle of white wine.

“None for me, thanks,” I said, too quick. He gave me a strange look, and put the bottle away.

That was weird. He usually liked wine with dinner.

Oh god, he was probably staying sober to let me down gently when he broke things off for good. The wine was for me, to drown my sorrows, if necessary.

I completely lost my appetite.

“So...” He sat down across from me and unfolded his napkin. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked. Any developments in the job hunt?”

I knew what he was asking me. “I didn’t take the job with Gabriella.”

He nodded, and poured ice water into my glass from the carafe on the table. “Were her terms—”

“You know why I turned it down.” My hands clenched in my lap. I was more angry than I thought I would be. I’d been preparing for this moment, steeling myself against hurt and disappointment so that I could walk away with dignity. Instead, my emotional control snapped like a rubber band and I accused, “How dare you.”

“Sorry?” He looked like a man staring through the windshield of a car that was nanoseconds from hitting him.

“You did it again. You pushed me into making this huge decision, but you acted like you were somehow protecting me. You did it when you stole my plane tickets six years ago. Now you tell me that I have to take this job because it’s a wonderful opportunity, and you magnanimously declare that you’ll let me go if you have to.

“You didn’t even ask me what I wanted. You didn’t tell me what you wanted. It’s like you don’t care about the outcome, you just don’t want to feel responsible for it.”

“Magnanimous?” he repeated, outraged.

My hands were clenched to fists beneath the table. If we were going to break up, then we might as well raze this fucker, salt the earth, and poison the ground water. “If you didn’t want to be with me... then just break up with me. Don’t force me to make the choice for you.”

He was struggling to control his temper as he said, measured and controlled, “I wanted you to slow down and think about what you were doing, and where we were headed. You keep pushing me away - “

“I keep pushing you away?” I snorted derisively. “When I got to the hospital the other night, I was so worried about you. Then, you basically break up with me and try to make it seem like it was for my own good. For four days, I felt like I couldn’t call you or see how you were doing, while you were in the fucking hospital. I had to get updates from Deja, and all of those were total bullshit. Exhaustion? You don’t get exhausted.”

“On the contrary, I was quite exhausted,” he said quietly.

I looked up, and I knew he could see how furious I was from the way he slightly flinched when our eyes met. Good.

I reached into my pocket and fished out the ultrasound image. I placed it face down on the table and slid it toward him. “I needed you. I called you eleven times because I was freaked out and scared about this. And I came down to the hospital afraid something really horrible had happened to you, and I was thinking about all the stuff I would miss about you if you died. And what the hell was I going to do about this?”

He lifted the photo and turned it over. It took a moment for him to register what it was. I saw a surprising mixture of emotions in his expression, things I didn’t expect. I’d been prepared for angry, or scared. Maybe cold, or strained and polite. Instead, his eyebrows lifted and he blinked in momentary shock. The slightest smile twitched at the corner of his lips. He looked pleased, maybe even a little proud.

I clasped my hands together under the table to stop myself from trembling. The longer he looked at the photo, the more the color drained from his face. There it was. That was more like what I had expected.