“I don’t get it. You’re doing all this for a cousin you barely knew? Someone you hadn’t seen in years?”
Wendy’s eyes misted over and for a second he thought that—dear God—she might actually start crying. She squeezed the baby close to her chest and planted a kiss on top of her head. Then she pinned him with a steady gaze brimming with resolution. “If something happened to Ford and Kitty, and they wanted you to take Ilsa, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to honor their wishes?”
All he could do in response was shove his hands deep into his pockets and swallow a curse. Damn it, she was right.
He stared at the adorable tot on Wendy’s lap, summing up his competition. He wasn’t about to lose the best assistant he’d ever had. He didn’t care how cute and helpless that baby was.
Peyton undoubtedly needed Wendy. But he needed her too.
Fighting the feeling of complete and utter doom—which, frankly, was a fight she’d been losing ever since the nanny had first handed her Peyton—Wendy glanced from the baby, to the open desk drawer and then to Jonathon.
She had so much to do, her mind couldn’t focus on a single task. Or maybe it was lack of sleep. Or maybe just an attack of nerves brought on by the way Jonathon kept pacing from one side of the room to the other, pausing occasionally to glower in her direction.
When she’d first started work at FMJ, Jonathon had made her distinctly nervous. There was something about his combination of magnetic good looks, keen intelligence and ruthless ambition that made her overly aware of every molecule of her body. And every molecule of his body for that matter. She’d spent the first six months on edge, jumping every time he came in the room, nearly trembling under his gaze. It wasn’t nerves precisely. More a kind of tingling anticipation. As if she were a gazelle who wanted to be eaten by the lion.
She’d forced herself to get over it.
And she’d thought she’d been successful. Only now that feeling was back. Either she could chalk it up to exhaustion and emotional vulnerability. Or she could be completely honest with herself. It wasn’t nerves. It was sexual awareness. And now that she was about to walk out of his life forever, she wished she’d acted on it when she’d had the chance.
Forcing her mind away from that thought, she stared at the open desk drawer. The lip gloss was gone forever, just like any opportunity she might have had to explore a different kind of relationship with Jonathon. The best she could hope for now was to gather her few remaining possessions and make a run for it.
She had a Voldemort for President coffee mug in the bottom drawer, her Bose iPod dock, a tub of Just Fruit strawberries and in the very back, a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate caramels. Precious few possessions to be walking away with after five years, and the cardboard box dwarfed them. On the bright side, at least she’d only have to make one trip out to the car.
Balancing Peyton on her hip, she wedged the box under her arm only to find Jonathon blocking her route to the door.
“You can’t go.”
“Right. The car seat. I can’t believe I forgot that.” She turned back around, only to notice the diaper bag as well.
She blew out a breath. Okay. More than one trip after all.
“No,” Jonathon said. “I’m not letting you quit.”
Turning back around, she stared at him. “Not letting me? How can you not let me? If I quit, I quit.”
“You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had. I’m not going to lose you over something this…” He seemed to be searching for the least offensive word. “Frivolous.”
She raised an eyebrow. “She’s a child, not a frivolity. It’s not like I’m running off to join the circus.”
There was something unsettling about the quiet, assessing way he studied her. Then he said, “If keeping this baby is really so important to you, we’ll hire a lawyer. We’ll find the best lawyer in the country. We’ll take care of it.”
She felt her throat tighten, but refused to let the tears out of the floodgate. Oh, how tempting it was to accept his help. But the poor man had no idea what he was getting into.
“You should know, my family is extremely wealthy. If they fight this, they’ll put considerable financial and political weight behind it.”
“So?”
She blew out a long breath. The moment of reckoning. She always dreaded this. “Leland is my mother’s maiden name. I legally took her name when I left college.”
Jonathon didn’t look impatient, the way some people did when she explained. That was one of the things she liked best about Jonathon. He reached conclusions quickly, but never judgments.