Page 76 of Taming the CEO

"Yeah, true. But this is different." She looked at the phone and said, "Who's texting you?"

"M-Maddox," I said, stammering for some reason.

Miriam put both hands on her belly. She'd done that often over the past few months, now that I thought about it. How on earth had I not noticed?

"Hmm. Interesting," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. I imagined the dynamic between the two of you to be a bit different.”

"Meaning?" I asked.

"Hate sex comes to mind."

I gasped. "Miriam!"

"What? You kept saying the guy was a complete ass. And then you sort of told me you jumped his bones."

"I did fill you in on the details in between," I pointed out.

"True," she said. "Still."

"He's taking me to a place called The Express."

Miriam took out her phone and googled it. Her eyes widened.

My stomach turned. "What?"

"You might need to bring out the big guns." She turned the phone to me.

My jaw went slack. "This isn’t what I was expecting."

The place was extremely fancy.

"You've still got about three hours until you leave. Chop, chop, we have lots to do. You don’t have any bookings today, right?”

I opened the booking program, pointing at the screen. “Not even one.”

“All right, minimize that.”

"You're bossy today," I said.

"Yes, and pregnant, so you have to indulge me."

I laughed and closed my laptop. "You're going to use the pregnancy card to get your way as often as you can, aren't you?"

"You bet I will. I just don’t want you to look at cash flow and stuff because I don't want you to be all panicky when you're on your date."

"I wasn't going to be panicky," I countered, though without much conviction.

"Right. Like you weren't going to calculate how much money you’re losing because of the storm.”

"Why do you know me so well?" I wondered.

"See? Okay, why don't we start prepping you for your date?”

“You want to help?”