Page 72 of Boss's Baby Surprise

KYLE

Iwatched Clarissa leave the coffee shop. I had a lot of work to do to earn back her trust, but I saw into her eyes when she handed me the paternity test results. From what I saw there, I could tell she still wanted me to be there for her son, even though she never said the words. She still loved me. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be hurting so badly.

I knew I would do anything for her because this pain in my core could only be because of how much I loved her.

I had to settle in Seattle. I needed to find a place to live. In the meantime, I still had an architectural firm to run without a personal assistant.

As tempted as I was to book a flight and be in Chicago on Monday morning, I knew I needed to stay around in case Clarissa texted me. I needed to prove to her that I was good to my word and that I would be sticking around.

I had to wait for Monday when I could give Jenna a call in the office. She refused to give me her personal phone number, which was probably just as well. She liked to remind me that she wasn’tmy personal assistant and that I couldn’t pay her enough to take on that job.

“How difficult is it to set up an interview for an assistant?” I asked the second Jenna answered the phone.

“Good morning to you too. I just walked in the office. I thought you were in Seattle, or are you back in town?”

“No, I’m still in Seattle,” I said.

“Then shouldn’t you still be asleep or something?” she asked. “I literally just walked in the office. Give me a second.”

I waited for a brief moment, listening to the sleepy hold music.

“Okay,” she said when she came back to the line. “What is it you need help with?”

“Who do you use to hire an assistant?” I asked.

She hemmed and hawed a bit before coming up with an answer. “I guess I would put together an ad for one of those job search boards.”

“You don’t just contact some agency and have them send somebody over?” I asked. “That’s what Alayna always did.”

“I don’t have the same connections or resources that she has. I’m not some kind of super assistant. I run a business office. I juggle bookkeeping and personnel and that kind of work. It’s not the same thing.”

I grunted a harumph.

“How did you find Alayna and hire her to begin with?” Jenna asked.

“Truth?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I poached her from a competitor years ago,” I admitted. “At the time, I had thought it was a surprisingly easy thing to do. Later, I discovered it was because I paid her twice her current salary.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

“So I’m on my own when it comes to hiring a new assistant?”

“Yes, you are. I mean, I can place a listing for you, but you need to come up with the job skills you are looking for.”

“Do you think that information might have been in the files Alayna left you?”

“That’s always a possibility,” she started. “I haven’t had time to go through everything. Some are physical files. Others are on the computer.”

“When you say some are physical, what are we talking about, a file folder or two?” I asked.

“More like a file cabinet or two.”

I let out a groan. “Okay, have those sent to me and create one of those Cloud accounts so that I can get access to all the computer files she left.”

“I’m not joking when I say it’s a file cabinet’s worth,” Jenna said.

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