Page 15 of The Relationship Clause

After sending Kiera a pointed glare, I flick a switch beside my desk. The glass wall of my office turns opaque, effectively shrouding Junie and me in privacy. It’s both a good and bad thing. Good because there are no more prying eyes. Bad because there are suddenly far less things to distract me from the fact that Junie is right here, leaving me very much alone with her bright eyes and pouty lips.

“Look,” I say, forcing myself to focus, “like I said, we can talk more about details later, but the short of it is, I need someone I can trust who can help me…collect information about what my employees are saying and doing around the office.”

Wow. Could I try to sound any more cryptic?

I can see her calculating. Analyzing and dissecting every word. “So you need me to be your spy?”

I hold back a wince. “Spy is an overly-dramatic way of putting this. I prefer to think of you as…doing some investigative work. What do you say?”

“I guess I say, why me?”

Her question isn’t one I’m expecting, and for a moment, all I can do is blink at her. “I need someone outside my company. Someone who has no interest or stake in anything we do here.”

“Right, that makes sense, but I mean, why me? There have got to be thousands of people out there who meet those exact qualifications. I know we kind of got into a sticky situation back there with your mom, but you could easily tell her you fired me, let me walk out the door, and hire someone else. Maybe someone whose spying skills don’t rely on what they’ve seen from James Bond or Mission Impossible. Why me?”

I pause, wondering if I should admit this next part. I don’t like revealing all my cards, but, knowing Kiera, she’ll probably end up telling her anyway.

“Kiera said I could trust you.”

Actually, that’s an oversimplification. In the seconds following our mother leaving my office, I hurriedly asked Kiera how much she trusted Junie. What Kiera actually said was, “I would trust her with my life, and if you turn around and fire her from this job that Mom thinks she has, I will disown you as my brother and write your personal phone number on every single public bathroom stall I can find.”

Yeah, it was a little scary, but I could tell my sister was serious about all her points. We’re opposites in many ways. Kiera doesn’t always make the best business decisions, but she does know people. Her opinion about Junie is good enough for me.

Junie folds her arms over her chest. “Okay…” She seems to be toying with the idea, and it has me way more excited than I should be. “So, how much are not-so-fake secretaries charging these days?”

I’m already prepared with the answer to this question and don’t even hesitate. “Ten thousand per month.”

Junie immediately starts choking on her gum. Literally. She inhales after I tell her the amount, and I hear the gum lodge in her throat. Her eyes go big, and she panics. She struggles to breathe, and her hands go to her throat.

I react on instinct. I pull Junie toward me and wrap my arms around her. There’s no time to think, no time to question. Bending her forward, I ball my fists together and perform the Heimlich, pressing in and up once, twice, three times.

Her gum pops out of her mouth. It lands with a little splat on the tiled floor, and Junie gasps for breath.

“Are you alright?” I ask as I let her go.

She moves slowly, clutching her stomach and wincing. “I’ll survive,” she wheezes.

“Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. I was—”

“No, no.” She holds up a hand and eases down into one of the plush leather chairs in front of my desk. “Believe me, I’m glad you saved my life. I just don’t think ‘receive the Heimlich maneuver’ was on my list of approved post-surgery activities.”

Awful realization seeps through me, and I sit in the other chair. While she was away from the coffee shop, I assumed she was gone for the holidays, not in the hospital. So many times I wanted to ask Pete where she was, but I’d stopped myself. I barely knew her. At the most, we were acquaintances. She was an attractive acquaintance, but an acquaintance nonetheless. She’d spent the holidays in the hospital? Recovering from surgery?

My alarm grows deeper and deeper, choking me like a weed until Junie lifts her head from where she’d had it close to her knees. Her pale skin is flushed, almost matching her hair, which makes the picture all the more endearing when she shoots me a beaming, if not forced, smile.

“Don’t worry. It was only a ruptured appendix. I’ll survive this pain like I survived that. So, what were we talking about before I started choking? Oh, yeah. Working for you. Ten thousand? Are you sure you don’t want me working for free? Because I think I literally owe you my life now.”

“No. You will not be working for free. I insist on paying you.”

“Okay, but seriously? Ten thousand every single month?” she repeats. “As in, dollars?”

“Yes, of course dollars. I’ll also expect you to sign an NDA.”

She leans back in her chair, studying me with a critical gaze. Not for the first time do I question my own sanity, as she must be doing too. If she thinks ten thousand dollars for a month’s worth of work is expensive, she doesn’t know how much I stand to lose.

Asking Junie to do this was spur of the moment, and that’s not like me. I’m not a spur of the moment kind of guy. I like to think, plan, formulate, worry, plan some more, and then act. But this morning, I hadn’t done any of that.

“Look,” I say, feeling impatience seeping into my words, “I know how much Pete likes you, and I wouldn’t want you to have to quit suddenly and leave him in a bind. Think about it over the weekend and let me know your answer on Monday. Because of the situation with my mother,” I say, grinding the word out, “I can’t give you much more time than that. Deal?” I give her my best close-the-deal look and hold out my hand.

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