Once the door closed behind her, she finally let herself gasp and all of the air that she had been holding in her lungs came out in a sob as she closed her eyes tightly and tried to hold back the wracking pain that gripped her. Somehow she made it to her bed, and falling into her pillows, she was finally able to let everything she was feeling come rushing out of her.
She sobbed hard, tears coursing down her cheeks until she had cried herself out, and she was left alone with her thoughts, thoughts and memories of every moment that had passed between them.
She tried to determine what all of it meant; the way that he was with her, the moments when she felt that he was just a second away from saying something he wanted to say to her, or getting closer to her than he ever had, or reaching out to touch her. She tried to find reason and explanation, but there was none. He had never done anything outwardly to her that had made it clear that he was anything more than a businessman and a friend.
She wondered if it had all been in her mind; if she had just wanted him so much that she had imagined everything that she thought she felt between them. Then she argued with herself and told herself that she couldn't have imagined it because nothing had ever felt so real or so deep to her before with any other man.
Then visions of Susan came into her mind and she felt her heart ache miserably as she remembered the way that she was with Jonathon; she was demanding and insistent, and he fought it a little, but he had given in to her at the end, and that could only have happened if it had happened between them before and probably more than once.
She was someone that he owed some allegiance to, and Naomi was not. Naomi was just another administrative assistant in his long line of administrative assistants, and there was nothing about her that made her any different for him than any of the assistants before her, except that they hadn't slept together.
He had never come on to her. She had believed when she first started that he would do just that; that his arrogant playboy reputation was real and that he would treat her as he had treated all of his other girls, and that he would look at her as if she was just next in line, but he didn't. He had treated her with respect and dignity, and he had never made a move on her.
She had learned in all of their time together what a gentleman he was, and she had fallen for him; she had let feelings far beyond those of a friend take her over. As she laid there in her bed, she realized that her feelings had gone so deep and so far that it was much more serious than she had originally believed it to be.
She was in love with him. She blinked silently as the truth dawned on her like a bright morning. She was in love with Jonathon Cross. She moaned miserably as tears filled her eyes and she shut them tight. She couldn't be … she argued with herself, but then she knew she could no longer deny the truth and the truth cut her right to her soul. She was in love with him and there was nothing that she could do about it.
She was in love with a man who did not want her back, and worse than that, one who already had a woman who seemed to have control over him. She had fallen in love with her boss, and that was going to jeopardize her ability to do her job. Everything that she had worked so hard for all of her life had led her to the place where she was. It had led her to her life in Manhattan; her graduation from college, her apartment, and the dream job she had tried so hard to get and excel at.
Her ambition had given her everything that she had ever wanted, but she had not counted on ever wanting a man in all of that, and certainly not her boss. His face hovered in her mind; the feel of his hand on her back at the party, and the heat that had gone through her like a huge wave when he had stood so near her.
She felt like the biggest fool in the world having let herself feel so much for someone who didn't want it back. She felt like love's biggest fool, believing that she felt so much so deeply, and believing that there was such a strong connection between them when there was nothing on his end of it, and he did not feel anything for her that she felt for him.
She wondered how in the world she ever could have let her dreams and goals slip away from her, replacing them one by one like strands of illusion with thoughts and dreams of him, letting him into her heart, letting him into places where she had never let any man go. All the while she had let go of her hearts dearest ambitions one by one, and with each one, she had let herself and her parents down bit by bit, and she had never even realized it until that moment.
Naomi felt as if something in her had been betrayed right to the core, and it was she who had done the betraying. It was she who herself down more than anyone in her life ever had. She had been the epic failure of her own lifetime, and that was the single worst feeling she had ever known.
Her parents were let down, her dreams had been set aside for no real reason; there was no reciprocal love, there was no great shining justifiable reason for her to have sacrificed herself and her life goals. There was nothing except the truth that she had thrown everything away for the fantasy of a man who did not want her or need her; a man who was her employer and nothing else, except perhaps a work friend.
It was unbearable to her that she ever could have been so foolish and stupid, and she wept more angry regretful tears than she knew she had in her, until she was cried out and there was nothing left but a hollow silence in her.
She knew that she had to refocus herself so that every thought and feeling was realigned with her dreams and goals. She had to let go of her desires for Jonathon, and let go of the feelings she had for him. She had to concentrate on her work and never let herself down so far again; never give up on what it was she truly wanted ever again, and never let herself feel anything for any man who did not want to give all of that powerful love back to her.
Monday morning found her resolved, steeled, her heart broken and cold, and her mind focused with laser beam intensity on the only thing that mattered to her: her work. She was never going to let herself down again.
She was sitting at her desk working when Jonathon came in. He went straight to her, but she barely glanced up at him. "Your messages are on your desk," she said shortly as she kept her eyes on her monitor.
He was quiet a moment, watching her, surprised at her coolness and the wall that she seemed to have up between them. "I … I wanted to thank you for coming to the event on Saturday. I wish I could have seen you before you left." His eyes were searching her face for some kind of answer to why she had left early and why she was barely acknowledging him then.
"You're welcome." She reached for her phone and began to dial the phone number of one of the other staff members.
He understood that she was busy and that she wasn't going to take time to talk with him that morning. He nodded and left and when she heard his office door click shut, she closed her eyes and bit her lip, hoping to stem the sting of tears against her eyelids.
She knew it was going to take some time before she was fully able to control her emotions around him, before she could convince herself that she felt nothing for him, but she was determined to make it happen. She was not going to fail herself or her parents again. She was going to reach every dream and goal she had, and the only way to do that was to let go of him entirely.
A few minutes later she saw an email from him. Her heart caught in her throat and she opened it up. The message was short. ‘No Ivy League coffee this morning?' it read. Since the first morning she had left the coffee and the note on his desk, she had continued to do him the favor of leaving coffee for him as he had once requested.
It was her way of showing him that she cared about him, because he knew full well that someone with her Ivy League education wasn't about to get coffee for her boss like a secretary. She made the humble change, giving him her friendship instead, and that morning she had stopped herself from doing it.
That morning had been the sea change in her in which she refocused everything in her to stay in tune with her goals. Getting coffee for him that morning would have been an acceptance of what could not be between them; what wasn't between them, and she wasn't about to be his fool any longer, whether he knew she was his fool or not.
She was going to be completely businesslike with him, and nothing was going to change that. She was his employee, and nothing more.
She deleted the email and did not respond to it. Instead, she worked on several files and busied herself with advancing projects that she had been working on. Thoughts of him crept into her mind and each time one came to her, she pushed it aside and made herself think only of her work. Her heart ached with the loss and the change, but she would not let herself feel warmth for him again.