Page 27 of Knocked Up By the Silver Fox

When I took her office, there were things she couldn't take with her. The filing cabinets held important confidential documents as hard backups of things Will didn't want stored on the cloud. Sarah couldn't have them in the hallway outside his other office entrance because he wanted the added layer of security of them being behind a locked door. We weren't sharing the office, but she did have to have access to them.

"Sorry," I mumbled, readjusting myself in my chair. I watched her work and she had a scowl on her face the whole time. I felt bad for having taken her office, and I had apologized a dozen times, but she still treated me with contempt no matter what I did. I knew it couldn't be easy. If it would have been my choice, I'd have stayed in a cubicle downstairs.

Sarah huffed and sighed hard as she sorted through the filing cabinet, and I felt like I should apologize again, but before I could manage a single word, my stomach decided it was finally time to empty itself. I bent over my trash can and threw up, trying to hold my hair back but failing. I hadn't even eaten, so it was mostly bile that came up, and Sarah scoffed and groaned.

"God, didn't anyone tell you if you're sick to stay home?" She snorted, took a few steps backward, and shoved the filing cabinet drawer shut. "You better not get me sick. I can't afford time off work."

I continued retching over the trash can until my heaves stopped and I plucked a tissue from the box on my desk to wipe my mouth. "Sorry," I grumbled and swallowed hard against the bile still pooling at the back of my throat.

"Honestly, Ms. Reid, you have some nerve," Sarah said before scoffing again and she stomped out of my office with an attitude.

I sank back down onto my desk and wished it would swallow me whole. If it wasn't for those reports I'd have just stayed home, and now that they were done I strongly considered leaving. I wondered if Rachel felt this bad too. When I told her yesterday that I was feeling queasy, she mentioned not feeling so great either. I bet she was home throwing up like me.

So I took out my phone and called her, thinking if I was headed home and she was sick, I could bring her something to feel better too.

"Hey, what's up?" she asked, and I heard the background noise and knew she wasn't home. She was out on the street somewhere, maybe waiting for her Uber.

"Oh, you're not at home?" I asked, sitting up. My head spun a little, probably dehydration, and I closed my eyes to make it stop.

Rachel scoffed and laughed. "Home? Woman, I have to work to pay the bills…What's wrong?"

"I'm sick…Like, throwing my guts up sick. I'm gonna go home, I think." I pressed my palm against my forehead. I didn't feel feverish, but I didn't think food poisoning gave you a fever anyway.

"Sick?" She snickered and said, "Probably knocked up! That's what you get." I knew she was joking about it, but the sickening dread washed over me anyway.

"Yeah, probably," I told her, forcing a joking tone, but I wasn't joking. Oh my God, could I be pregnant? The anxiety hit me worse than the nausea, and I thought I'd throw up from that now too.

"Guess we'll throw those leftovers out now, huh? Let me know if you want me to bring anything home when I'm done at work." Rachel's joking tone shifted and she sounded concerned, but all I could do was bend over my trash can and vomit again. "Talk later, sis," she said, and the line went dead as I laid my phone on my desk.

The sheer panic her words induced made me throw up thrice more before I managed to scribble a note to Will saying I was going home sick. I left it on my desk and shut off my computer, then grabbed my coat and staggered to the door.

My gut told me this wasn't just food poisoning, and it terrified me. I wasn't ready to be a mom, and I didn't know what Will would think. Let alone his daughter. If I really was pregnant, everything was about to get a whole lot trickier really fast.

18

WILL

Isat across the table from Carl Anderson staring at him in complete disbelief. They just slapped me with the announcement that they wanted to fire Beth for her supposed involvement with Nevil Banks and the suspicion that she was stealing proprietary information from the company and selling it. I knew their accusations were baseless, but I couldn't prove anything to them.

They, in turn, couldn't prove anything to me either because nothing had been dispersed and no clients had been complaining. It was all just fearmongering, and it fell right on the tails of Allen divulging my secret to them.

Of course I'd told him to do whatever he had to do, but I never expected this response. It infuriated me, especially after the reaction Abby had over seeing Beth in our penthouse. Did no one in this world expect me to return to the dating pool again?

"You have no clue what you're talking about," I said in an overly harsh tone, but this was my company, and as owner, I wasn't going to stand for them bullying my employees. They had no proof of any wrongdoing other than me dating her, and eventhat was questionable. Her performance at work hadn't suffered. In fact, she'd excelled even while dating me.

"William, I'm sure you can see how there is a major conflict of interest." Carl sighed hard and scowled at me. Clearly he thought I was going to be a pushover when it came to this. The last thing we wanted to do was anger Beth and actually send her running for the hills by firing her. And it wasn't my personal interests I was looking out for.

If we really did fire her, sure she'd be upset with me and maybe partially blame me, but the real issue was even if she never shared proprietary information, she knew the business and we'd lose her. She'd go off to one firm or another and work for them, and the advances we'd made in our attempt to scoop up prospective clients would cease to exist. She'd do that for someone else.

"I don't see how. I told you straight out that she met with Banks as an incidental thing. He is headhunting her and she has turned him down. I offered to match the salary and benefits package she was offered and she declined. She wants to work for us?—"

"Or she wants to bang you on your desk," Carl interrupted, and I noticed a few board members hide smiles behind their hands. Allen scowled at them just like I was. He knew this was a load of crap and there was nothing he could even say. "Look, William, if you end up not working out with her, what's she gonna do?" He straightened in his seat and looked around at the other board members as if requesting backup. "She'll have no reason to be loyal."

"Then have her sign a noncompete clause, don't fire her. You have no clue how this business runs, Carl. Just let me run my company and stay out of my way." I was so angry it was hard controlling my temper. I wanted to reach across the tableand shake some sense into the man. Beth wasn't causing any problems, and neither was my relationship with her.

"Then how do you explain this?" Sandra said, another one of the board members. She held up her phone and scowled at me. It was a picture on a tabloid of Nevil Banks and Beth standing in a restaurant together. I didn't even waste time reading the headline. Beth told me what happened.

"You're wrong, and you can't fire her. She'll have grounds to sue. Just back off and let this thing pan out." I shook my head and ran a hand through my hair when Allen, of all people, spoke up.

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