Page 3 of Baby Proposal
“I’m your boss, and I’m saying no.” He seems angry enough to punch something. His jaw is clenched so hard I think he’ll split his face in half.
“I have to!” I don’t say that I considered finding some guy to have sex with and just scrolled and scrolled on the app, because none of those men were my boss. “I have to get pregnant, and sperm banks are expensive.”
“Absolutely not.”
“They are!” I’m way beyond humiliated now. I’m out the other side, accepting my demise. There is no dignity in this situation, so I will fight my corner on those terms.
He slams his hand down onto my desk, his hair flopping forwards and his eyes screwing shut like he’s in pain.
Well. Serves him right for butting into my private business. Albeit on an office computer. During work hours. After lunch break has finished.
He’s going to fire me. Of course he is. Rhys Cavendish is the most notoriously difficult and exacting man in London.
When I got this job, it was with the understanding that Rhys was a beautiful monster. The HR person actually said that. He’d made six previous assistants quit, and he’d never even met four of them. Usually the resignation included tears. But I was a fresh-faced twenty-one-year-old straight out of a business studies degree that had proven less useful than I’d expected, and I was a bit desperate.
Rhys runs half a dozen major companies, and the HR lady said he would bark orders down the phone and make impossible demands for reports and sales targets. She said he wouldn’t be here much, but would make his presence known.
Ha.
The first time I met my boss, he walked into the office eighteen months after I’d started working for him and said, “What the fuck?”
He looked around the top floor executive office, high above the rest of the company levels. When I started work, for six months I’d bounced through the echoey rooms, a single pinball in an empty white box. Then I’d read carefully through my contract and found that there was money available for office supplies. They’d probably been thinking of pencils, a laptop, and a sit-stand desk or something. But I’d decided it meant renovation of the whole floor of what I’d begun to think about asmyoffice.
A veritable forest of pot plants surrounds the room, framing the views over London. Mostly I’ve tended them back to health from unfortunate floppy stubs I got cheap at supermarkets. The vinyl window butterflies were a bit of an indulgence, and the carpet took some careful strategy with the maintenance department and a dozen “accidents” with cups of coffee.
I was, in short, very proud of the office decor he was looking around with undisguised revulsion, and not about to allow the rumoured mafia boss who hadn’t bothered to visit in two years to spoil my fun.
It took me an admirably brief amount of time, in my humble opinion, to get over the fact that he was even more perfectly gorgeous in real life than in his promotional photos, and reply.
And what came out?
“Mr Cavendish, so glad you’re here,” I chirped. “Do you like the executive floor interior design? I’ve been waiting twelve months for you to sign off on the expenses. Perhaps you’d do that now you’ve been able to approve it in person.”
He looked me in the eyes then and in hindsight I think he might have been close to laughing. Not certain though, as I’ve never actually seen him laugh.
“Put the claim on my desk,” he’d said and stalked into his office.
The payment arrived in my account minutes after I gave it to him the next day.
Since then, he’s always been fair with me, if growly and harsh. Doesn’t even notice that I light up when he comes into the room, and is approximately forty per cent less grumpy with me than he is with the legal team when they visit from two floors below. He doesn’t recognize that I see when he rubs his forehead during a meeting and bring him a new cup of coffee, just the way he likes it, black as his soul.
Actually, he drinks flat white, which is exactly how I see him. Fifty-fifty pure darkness and sweet light.
But I think turkey basters and buying spunk donations at work will be where he draws the line.
He’s entirely mute, a statue made of bone and warm muscle.
“I’ll pack my stuff,” I say in the smallest voice possible. So much for bravery. The lump in my throat is a watermelon. My neck is pregnant and I’m never going to be, because I am an idiot who just got fired from her job for looking at semen at her work computer. “I’m sorry, I—”
He silences me with a single glance.
Yeah. I lower my gaze to the desk. Mr Cavendish isn’t interested in my apology. Heat prickles behind my eyes and I might throw up and cry simultaneously. I should be scared and worried that I’ve lost my job. Can’t have a baby without maternity pay and employment to come back to, right?
But it’s not that. It’s really not.
Now I’ll have no reason to see Rhys Cavendish. I know nothing was ever going to happen between us. He’s a billionaire and I’m his assistant for one of the many companies he runs. Spending the last six months focussed on said company and all his days on the same floor as me, being my overly-demanding boss, snapping that he needs complex reports at quarter to five so we’re both working late into the evening, doesn’t mean he likes me.
I suppose this will be one way to get over my crush, but I’m an addict, and the prospect of withdrawal makes me sweat. Cry. Puking is not outside the realm of possibilities.
