She loved her brother dearly. Melanie had become a close friend. It was just that it was painful to watch them reach a milestone Anna was skeptical she’d ever reach. At twenty-eight, being hopelessly single in a city full of men who didn’t have eyes for women with lofty aspirations, there wasn’t much else to think. Most men were intimidated by her family and the job she’d already ascended to at LangTel. It wasn’t going to get any less daunting for them if and when she took over as CEO.
“The black, I guess,” Anna said. “But you should pick what you want. Don’t worry about me. It’s your big day, not mine.”
“No, I want you to be happy. I think we’ll go with the black.” Melanie smiled warmly.
Anna really did adore her future sister-in-law. These days, Melanie was the only thing that made being around Adam tolerable, which was so sad. Adam had once been her ally. Now it was as if she had a grizzly bear for a brother and a boss—she never knew what would set him off, and most days, it seemed as if everything did.
She’d assumed she and Adam would lean on each other after their father passed away, but instead, Adam had withdrawn. He’d holed up in Dad’s big corner office and become distant. The tougher things got, the more Adam shut her out. She’d been exercising patience. Everyone dealt with death differently. If only he’d trust her with more responsibility, she could lighten his workload and remind him that she was well equipped to take over.
Melanie took Adam’s hand across the sleek ebony table, her stunning Harry Winston engagement ring glinting. “I still can’t believe we’re getting married. I pinch myself every morning.”
“Just wait until we have kids,” Adam quipped. “Then things will really get surreal.”
“You’re already talking about children?” Anna tried to squelch the extreme surprise in her voice.
“We are,” Melanie answered. “Two of my sisters had trouble getting pregnant. If we’re going to have kids, I don’t want to risk waiting too long.”
Anna nodded. She’d worried about how long she would have to wait. Her friends from college were having kids, some their second or third. On an intellectual level, she knew she had time, but after her dad had died, emotion had taken over reasoning, and she panicked.
Feeling alone while watching Adam move forward with his life, Anna decided she wasn’t about to wait for a man to show up in hers. She’d looked into artificial insemination. It was a just-in-case sort of thing—a fact-finding mission. Hopefully, she’d find love and a partner and none of it would be necessary, but at that moment when she’d felt powerless, taking action was the only comfort she could get.
Unfortunately, the visit to the clinic brought a devastating problem to light—a tangle of scar tissue from her appendectomy, literally choking off her chances of conception unless she had surgery. If she didn’t fix the problem and she did become pregnant, carrying a baby to term was unlikely. With things crazy at work, Anna hadn’t done a thing about it, although she planned to. Some day.
“We aren’t going to have to try, Mel.” Adam leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head. “If I have my way, you’ll be pregnant by the end of the honeymoon.”
Melanie laughed quietly. “Did Adam tell you about Fiji?” she asked Anna. “Two weeks in a private villa on the beach with a chef and an on-call masseuse, all while the rest of New York is dealing with gray snow and cold. I can’t wait.”
Fiji. In January. Anna took a cleansing breath. She hated these feelings of envy. She wanted to squash them like a bug.
“We need to talk about that, because we’re going to be away for a full two weeks,” Adam said to Anna. “If you think that’s too long a stretch for you to be in charge at LangTel, you need to tell me now.”
Anna blew out an exasperated breath. “I can’t believe you think there’s a chance I can’t handle it.”
Adam fetched a bottle of beer from the fridge and returned to the table. “What about Australia? What if something like that happens when I’m gone? We’re still sorting out that mess.”
“First off, we’re not sorting out that mess, I am. And you asked me to make those changes. I was following orders.”
“If you’re going to be CEO, you have to think for yourself.” He took a sip of his beer and pointed at her with the neck of the bottle. “There will be no orders to follow.”
How she hated it when he talked down to her like that, as if she didn’t know as much about business, when she absolutely did. “And I will do that once you finally hand over the reins.” Anna tightened her hands into balls. She was so tired of her dynamic with Adam, constantly at war.