Jeremiah knew that. “I’m your superior and I’m in a position of authority. It was wrong. I’m willing to take responsibility.”
“No. I’m not about to let you take all the heat. I was a willing participant. Let me talk to Stuart.”
“Absolutely not. That’s a terrible idea. For some reason he does not like you at all. I think you’ll make it worse.”
Miranda scowled. “That man is a male chauvinist who tries to pretend that he’s anything but.”
“Be that as it may, he’s our boss. I will talk to him while you lay low and keep your head down.”
“I hate this idea. We will have to think of something else. Listen, we don’t know for sure that he knows anything specific. We can say it’s our word against whoever ratted us out. Besides, what proof is there aside from one person’s supposed word? It’s practically defamation of character.”
“I’m not going to hide behind lies. You start telling one lie and it leads to another until you have a huge mess that you have to try to remember and keep straight. I don’t have the energy for that. I’d rather handle the situation and move on.”
“Even if it means you could lose your job?”
Jeremiah exhaled and nodded. “Yes. If I have to lie to keep my job, it’s not a job worth having.”
Miranda’s eyes glittered. “That’s ridiculous,” she fairly snapped. She stood to leave. “If you’re intent on trashing your job, so be it. But I want to go on record as saying this is a terrible idea. And if you would just put your thinking cap on and think outside the box or whatever other cliché you can come up with, you might find a different way out of this.”
Jeremiah didn’t have a chance to respond before she had slammed out of the office. He was surprised by her vehemence, and oddly, he was touched by her refusal to let him fall on his sword. But all things being considered, he would willingly bear the brunt of Stuart’s anger if it protected Miranda. She had enough on her plate; she didn’t need that blowhard on her tail, as well.
It was the least he could do. For Miranda, he realized he would be willing to do so much more.
* * *
STEAM FAIRLY CURLED from Miranda’s ears. She wasn’t about to let Jeremiah just throw away his job but she didn’t know what to do. Likely Stuart wouldn’t want to hear anything she had to say and anything she said might make it worse, but she couldn’t stand the idea of sitting on her hands and watching Jeremiah walk to the slaughter. She wished Jeremiah would lie. It was one small tiny white lie.
All they had to do was coordinate their stories and whoever had ratted on them would look like an overzealous tattletale. But damn Jeremiah’s sense of nobility. She didn’t want Jeremiah to go. Aside from the fact that she liked seeing him every day, he was good for the department. He was good for the office. He cared and he wanted to make change, which was far more than Virgil ever did. Virgil was a good guy but he’d been a terrible boss. For the first time ever they were looking at some positive changes within their office, which went above and beyond new pens and new staplers. It was all because of Jeremiah.
It was easy to say that losing Jeremiah in the work environment would be a huge blow because it was. It was harder to admit that losing Jeremiah on a personal level hurt more than she wanted it to. She didn’t want to have deep feelings for Jeremiah—wasn’t that the crux of this dilemma? If they hadn’t sparked off of that attraction none of this would be happening right now. They tried not to see each other; they tried to stay away from one another. But that attraction—whatever it was—refused to die. She craved his presence, his touch, his camaraderie, and he was part of the reason she enjoyed coming to the office every day. He was a good sounding board for her ideas and her concerns. And the idea of losing him over this made her crazy.
“Damn you, Stuart.”
Unable to just sit there and do nothing, Miranda tried to catch up on paperwork but the words blurred as she lost focus and after several attempts simply threw her hands in the air and gave up. She grabbed her coat and gloves and headed out. She needed to move. She needed to do something physical. She supposed now was a good time to do some fieldwork, if only to check some leads on the poaching case.
Jeremiah caught her leaving and hollered for her to wait. “Where are you going?” he asked when he’d caught up.
“Out to do something to keep my mind off your impending career suicide,” she whispered in an angry tone so no one else could hear them. “Fieldwork,” she added a bit louder for everyone else’s benefit.