Kate sucked in a shallow breath. “Favor for a friend?” she echoed in a voice that sounded high and strained to her own ears.
Michael shrugged his broad shoulders in discomfort. “Yeah, something about a charity thing.”
She gripped the piece of paper tightly. “I’ll try, but I may be leaving.”
“Leaving?” Michael glanced at his watch, then studied her. “It’s only ten o’clock. Are you sick?”
“In a manner of speaking,” she muttered under her breath and felt her courage slip. Kate locked her knees and lifted her chin. She had to do this. “I can’t go back,” she blurted out.
“Back where?”
His utterly clueless expression fueled her frustration and stabbed at her heart. “Back to where we were before that night we spent together.”
Realization dawned on his face and he rubbed his hand over his eyes. On a long exhale he met her gaze. “I told you I was sorry. Messing up our professional relationship is the last thing I want to do. You’re the best assistant,” he said, then added, “the only assistant I could ever have.”
He was referring to the fact that he’d gone through seven assistants before Kate arrived on the scene. If she hadn’t fallen for him, his words might have offered a bit of comfort. Not now. “I can’t go back. I have feelings for you,” she said in halting tones and felt her heart crack when his gaze slid away from hers.
Determined to give this her best shot, she continued despite her unsteady voice. “I have feelings for you that aren’t going away. I don’t just care about you as a boss. I care about you as a man.”
“Don’t,” he said bluntly, finally looking at her again with stormy eyes. “I’m not the right man for you. I don’t believe in romantic love. I’m not sure I believe in any love. Emotions come and go. You can’t depend on them. Your odds of winning would be better in Vegas than with something as capricious as human emotion. I’m not cut out to be someone you can depend on. I’d be a rotten husband and father. Don’t get involved with me. Not that way.”
Kate’s heart twisted viciously and nausea rose in her throat. She was going to be sick. Panic flooded her and she spun around to run to the rest room.
“Kate!” Michael called after her.
Feeling him on her heels, she slammed and locked the door behind her. She flipped on the exhaust fan, jerked on the water faucet, and dropped to her knees until she was finished. Ignoring the pounding on the door, she rose and splashed water on her face and took a few cool sips.
“Kate, you’ll get over this,” Michael said through the door.
Kate felt like such an idiot. She was humiliated, mortified and pregnant. She thought about the tiny life she carried in her womb, the result of that one night with Michael. A lump formed in her throat, but she shook her head. She refused to cry. Perhaps later, but not now.
Glancing in the mirror, she saw her pale face and hopelessness and hurt in blue eyes her friends once had said always sparkled. Something was terribly wrong with this picture.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” She recited the quote from a book she’d recently read. “Time to do something different,” she said and steeled herself once again.
“I’m quitting,” she simply said when she opened the door.
Michael’s eyes narrowed in consternation. “Quitting? Why would you give up a job you love because of one night when we both made a big mistake?”
Because I’m having your baby. She refused to tell him right now. Sometime later when she was more composed, but not now. Anger burned inside her. She latched onto the hot emotion, letting it chase away the cold chill inside her. “It’s impossible for me to stay. I quit,” she said and headed for her office.
Michael walked beside her, his long stride easily matching hers. “This is ridiculous. You’ll get over it. I’ll give you a raise.”
“I don’t need a raise,” she said, barely holding herself in check. She pushed open her office door. “My company stock options have insured my financial security.”
“I’ll give you your own project,” he offered.
A plum, she distantly thought, but not for her. “No.”
“There must be something you want,” he said, exasperation swelling in his voice. “Everyone has their price.”
His words angered her so she could barely speak. She took a deep breath. “I always believed the people who called you Tin Man were wrong. I always believed there was more to you. That’s why I stayed.” She turned and looked him in the eye. “I quit. I quit organizing your day, reminding you to eat, being your sounding board. I quit being seduced by your intelligence. I quit wishing you would want me. I quit working for you.”
“Your contract specifies that you’re required to give two weeks’ notice.”
She felt the edge to his voice cut inside her. She knew he could be tough. He’d just never been tough with her. Her hands began to shake. She needed to leave before she fell apart, she realized, and decided to return for her belongings later. “Dock my pay. Good-bye, Michael.” She slung her pocketbook over her shoulder and left the room feeling his gaze burn a hole in her back.
The sound of her footsteps echoed on the tile office floor of the executive suite as Michael stared after her. What in hell had just happened? He had been so careful to put their professional relationship back in place after that night he’d given in to the dark hunger and need he’d so often denied, and they’d made rock-your-world love.
He’d always been physically attracted to Kate, but what man wouldn’t be? Her silky dark hair swung in a sexy curtain to her shoulders, her blue eyes glinted with intelligence and humor, her full mouth often formed a secret smile that made him curious, and she moved her lithe feminine body in a way that reminded him of a sensual feline.
She brought out the urge for conquest in a man, but he’d denied himself food and sleep while he’d been building his company. He told himself sex was just one more need denied. Michael had valued Kate for other, more important reasons. She had been the most solid, dependable person in his life during his last three roller-coaster years. She’d treated him the same way when he’d been in debt for the company up to his eyeballs as she did when he became a multi-millionaire. He trusted her. He could count on her, and for a man who’d spent his life not counting on anyone, that was something.
Her scent lingered in the air—a scent that smelled like cookies and sex. That alone could have driven him crazy. She probably had no idea of her importance. But now she was gone. The wild, yet sad look in her eyes haunted him. She was neither impulsive, nor given to irrational displays of emotion. Michael had the uneasy sense that she had meant every word she’d said, and he had not only lost the best assistant he’d ever had, he’d lost his best friend.
The ringing of the phone on Kate’s desk jolted him. He picked up the receiver. “Hawkins,” he muttered in a rough tone.
“Michael? What are you doing answering the phone?”
Michael instantly recognized the voice of his personnel specialist, Jay Payne. “Good timing, Jay. I need a new assistant.”
A long silence followed. “Pardon? Did you say a new assistant? What about Kate?”
“She’s gone.”
“On vacation?”
“No.”
“Temporary leave?”
“No,” Michael said, feeling his impatience grow.
“Is she sick?”
“No,” Michael answered shortly, then remembered she had in fact appeared sick just before she’d left. “She quit.”
Another long silence followed. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“But she’s required to give two weeks’ notice,” Jay sputtered. “Did she give a reason? Did one of our rivals steal her? I know she’s received offers,” he added.
Michael frowned. Something about this didn’t add up. “Put her on sick leave and I’ll see if she changes her mind. Give me the names of the companies who have been after her. In the meantime, get me an interim assistant.”
“Any special requirements?”
“Someone like Kate,” Michael said and knew he had just delivered mission impossible.
Two weeks later, when he joined Dylan and Justin at O’Malley’s, Kate’s departure still bothered Michael.
“Hey, Michael, you’re falling down on the job,” Dylan said. “You’re in charge of the home for unwed teenage mothers, Justin’s looking into the after-school program for underprivileged kids and I’m checking into a medical research program.”
“Medical research,” Justin echoed with an uneasy expression on his face. “Sounds expensive.”
“If you don’t watch out, we’re gonna start calling you the tightwad millionaire,” Dylan threatened with wry humor.
“Call me anything. Just don’t call me broke.” Justin popped an antacid and glanced at Michael. “You don’t look too good. What’s up?”
Michael paused, then reluctantly said, “I lost a key employee a couple of weeks ago.”
Dylan grimaced. “A death? I’m sorry—”
Michael shook his head. “Not a death,” he said, wondering why it felt like one. “My assistant quit. No notice. Just walked out. I’d just given her the assignment to check out the home for unwed teenage mothers.”
Dylan raised his eyebrows. “Flighty?”
Michael shook his head again. “Not at all.”
“Maybe she got a better offer,” Justin said.
“Nah, I checked.”
Dylan signaled for the bartender. “Well, I haven’t yet met a woman who doesn’t act on her emotions every once in a while. PMS, pregnancy…they all get a little crazy every now and then. Maybe she’ll come to her senses and come back soon.”