CEO's Expectant Secretary(21)

After a jam-packed day, Brock stood to greet Elle at The Four Square Diner. He studied her face. “You overdid it today,” he said. “You’re tired.”

She brushed her lips against his cheek. “Thank you. You look gorgeous, too,” she said and sat down.

He couldn’t keep his lips from twitching. “You’re supposed to stay rested.”

She picked up the menu from the table. “There’s a difference between rested and going into a coma. How was your afternoon?”

“Good. The campaign for the Prentice account is going smoothly,” he said.

“Great. How do you like your new assistant?”

“He isn’t you,” Brock said.

She nearly dropped her menu. “You have a male assistant?” she asked, surprised.

“Careful,” Brock said. “You’re edging toward sexist.”

“The whole advertising business is sexist,” she said dismissively. “I wasn’t aware you’d ever had a male assistant.”

“I haven’t,” Brock said. “But this one is competent.”

“It might also negate any criticisms about your marriage to me,” she said. “Good strategy.”

Brock met her gaze, giving nothing away. The waitress arrived and took their order. After she left, Brock returned his attention to Elle. “What did you buy today?”

“Odds and ends,” she said, wondering how much of an embarrassment he considered her to be. She’d often thought her grandfather had considered her an embarrassment until he’d found a use for her.

“What odds? What ends?” he asked. “Just tell me you bought a new robe that you won’t trip over.”

She smiled. “Yes, I did, along with a few other things. Do you have plans for this weekend?”

Brock shrugged. “The usual,” he said. “Work.”

She nodded. “There’s always that.”

She noticed him lift his hand to a man across the room. She recognized the man as one of Brock’s executives, Logan Emerson. The man nodded at Brock, glanced at her, then looked away. She’d always had an odd feeling about Logan. Brock hadn’t discussed his hiring with her and she’d always wondered at Brock’s motivation for bringing him into such a high-profile position at Maddox. Logan had never seemed to fit in.

“How’s he doing with the other account reps now?” she asked.

“Fine,” Brock said. “I’ve altered his duties a bit in the last few days. I think that will work out better.”

“Oh, really?” she asked. “What will he be doing?”

“I’ve assigned him to work more closely with personnel and computer security,” he said as their meal arrived.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s a big switch from sales.”

He nodded but didn’t make any further comment and a possibility occurred to her. “Computer security,” she mused. “He always seemed better suited for security. So quiet, so determined to stay in the background—he could be a private investigator.”

Brock’s jaw twitched, but he still added nothing. It suddenly hit her. “He is a private investigator,” she said. “Was he the one who told you about me?”

Brock stabbed his fork into his meatloaf. “And if he was?” he asked her.

She bit her lip, feeling her appetite for the open-faced turkey sandwich disappear. She adjusted her paper napkin. “That’s why you wouldn’t talk about him with me,” she said. “Did you already suspect me?”

Brock set down his fork. “You were the last person I suspected,” he said, his eyes as turbulent as a stormy sea.

She felt a twist of guilt and looked away. “I was almost relieved when you found out,” she confessed in a low voice. “Being pregnant made it even worse. If it hadn’t been for my mother needing the experimental treatments—”

“What?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “What experimental treatments?”

She finally met his gaze. “I wasn’t sure if Logan might have known something about my mother’s illness,” she said. “My mother is taking experimental treatments that are very expensive. There’s no way she or I could afford them, and insurance wouldn’t cover them.”

“Are you saying that Athos agreed to pay for your mother’s treatments as long as you spied on me?”

A lump formed in her throat. “Yes, he did. I’m ashamed of it, but I didn’t feel as if I had any other choice. I couldn’t risk losing her. She’s all I’ve ever had.”

The sound of stainless steel clanging against plates and the conversation of the other diners was a roar compared to the absolute silence between them.