A Wife by Accident (10 page)

“And do what?” she asked.

“Interior design
work for me—full-time until you find
another job. You’ve done so much for me, why can’t you let me do something for you?”

“Thanks, boss. But I have to pass. I want to find something I’m good at and
do
it well. I can’t have someone always walking ahead of me to smooth out all the bumps in the road.” She paused in thought. “Besides, I have to leave here in just a few months.
Best not to get too attached—to this place.”

“Forget about the interior design or any kind of job at my company then. Find some new adventure. You’d at least have a roof over your head. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like after Mr.
Bellmark
sells me the boys’ home.”

“As what?
An ex-fake-wife?
A houseguest?
People would really start to talk then.”

“Let them. It was just an idea.” Gary turned away as she jumped back into the pool and the moment was broken. He stood to return to his cold dinner.
“Something to think on.”

•

Hayely’s
mind was far from her work the next morning. Sure, she’d arrived there early, but had done nothing but stare blankly at her computer monitor ever since. What was wrong with her anyway? Her conversation with Gary the night before, that’s what.

She was a valued asset and employee; he’d made that much clear beside the pool the night before. He’d said exactly what he should have said, so everything should have been well and good. And yet the monitor continued to hold her unseeing attention.

A sudden cacophony of screeching female voices jarred her from her stupor and she sat up straight in her chair. She recognized Kathy’s and Dee’s voices immediately, but it took a moment to pinpoint the chief financial officer’s and the human resource manager’s in the mix. She thought there might be a couple others standing there, too.

Dee’s voice was nothing better than a controlled bellow most of the time. “… and then one of the clerks told me that he’s bringing a date or something to the banquet with him. Can you believe it?”

The CFO chimed in. “Did they say who she was?”

“No,” Dee said petulantly. “They said the clerk who had helped her knew more, but it was her day off and she hadn’t told them anything.”

“Typical incompetence,” Kathy added. “None of them even recognized her.”

“That’s right. They’d never seen her before. They said she was really beautiful, though.”

“He can’t be serious about her,” Kathy reasoned. “If he were actually dating some out-of-state floozy again, it would have been in the papers by now. Everyone would have already seen her picture.”

“Maybe she’s a relative?” one of the other voices suggested.

Dee’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “One of them even swore she saw a wedding ring.”

“On whose finger?”

“Gary’s?”

“The mystery woman’s?”

“Whose?”

Hayely
smiled into her hand. The whispers were flying so fast and furious that she could scarcely keep up with them all. She took a sip of coffee and hoped the pack would stay just out of sight. She didn’t know if she could resist baiting them if they walked around the corner and included her in the conversation.

“I didn’t think to ask,” Dee answered as a hush fell.

Kathy rounded the corner and stood in front of
Hayely’s
desk. “Did you arrange a hairstyling appointment for Dee?”

Hayely
handed her a card with all the information on it. “She can get in about two hours before the banquet begins.”

Kathy swiped the card away.
“Fine.
I have another assignment for you.” She tossed a résumé and a series of yellow sticky notes onto
Hayely’s
desk. “I want you to send a letter to this man at this address.” She pointed to one of the notes. “You’ll have to figure out my handwriting because I don’t have time to explain it to you. Tell him we can provide the qualifications he needs for his projects. I want you to add the credentials on this piece of paper here to this résumé and include it with the letter.”

Hayely
stared at the employee’s résumé for a moment and read through the notes. “I think there may be some kind of mistake here. This employee doesn’t have that degree or any of those certifications—”

Kathy put her hands on her hips for emphasis. Her voice was rising to the verge of a yell. “Have you looked at my business card lately? It says ‘president’ and that means I can do any damn thing I want. Maybe if you ever run your own company someday, which I doubt, you’ll understand.”

“I might be able to find a different résumé—”
Hayely
had a fleeting urge to stand up and tell the woman what she thought of her, but something inside her shrunk. She knew that half the people in the office were listening to Kathy’s treatment of her just then. How could they not overhear every humiliating word?

Kathy cut her off again. “Don’t get argumentative with me, sweetie. I’ll do whatever it takes to get that contract.” With that, she walked off in a huff down the hall.

As was always the case after one of Kathy’s tirades, all the staff looked down with red faces at their desks, afraid to look up at each other.
Hayely
had seen her boss abuse people a hundred times over, but never had it been directed so hostilely toward her.
Hayely
walked in a daze to the break room to wash out her coffee cup. What should she do? Try to talk to Kathy? Go home for the day? She had no idea.

With a fresh cup of coffee in her shaking hand, she started back around the maze of hallways to her desk. Just as she approached the human resources department, Kathy’s voice reached her through a crack in the door to the manager’s office.

“Place an ad online,” Kathy hissed. “Let’s start interviewing people as soon as possible. I just can’t tolerate that kind of disobedience. We’ll get someone lined up for her job before we let her go. No downtime.”

“Don’t you think we should give her some kind of reprimand or training?” the other woman suggested.

“No. I want the unprofessional little goodie
goodie
out of here. If I can’t trust her to simply follow my instructions without questioning them, then there’s no point in having her here.”

Hayely’s
hand flew to her mouth. She was actually going to be fired for having a sense of ethics?
Hayely
ran back to her desk and did the first thing she could think of—grab her purse and leave.

She passed the cowering receptionist who looked up at her with understanding. “If Kathy asks where I am, tell her I got suddenly sick to my stomach and went home for the day.”

Hayely
was in tears by the time she walked through the front door to Gary’s house. She sat down at the kitchen table with the remaining half of the raspberry cheesecake and a spoon. It looked like Gary and Charlie had eaten the other cakes the night before.

She pulled the tissue box closer to her as her sobs came one after the other. She’d messed up everything. No one wanted her, and with the way Kathy Mark tried to blacklist ex-employees, she’d never find a decent job in this city if she tried. She knew Kathy would fire her within the next couple of weeks. Gary would hire her—he’d already offered. But she didn’t want to work for him. She couldn’t quite understand why, but being treated like hired help by Gary Tarleton after the six months were up sounded like nothing short of torture. The thought of her situation with Gary brought on a whole new wave of tears.

•

Out on the highway, Gary pushed the accelerator down hard with his heavy work boots. The truck’s big engine roared toward the house as he shifted into overdrive. He almost never heard from his gardener during the day, but the man had called to tell him he’d seen
Hayely
walk into the house crying. Had she been in an accident? Had something happened to a family member? When the gardener didn’t have any answers, a hundred more terrifying options raced through Gary’s mind.

He turned the truck sharply into the driveway and hit the brakes with a loud squeal. He banged the thick door shut behind him as he lumbered for the house. As he crossed the foyer, he heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s sniffling.

Hayely
wiped her eyes quickly and forced a smile as Gary burst into the room. With his shirt half
untucked
and his eyes wide, he paused and stood awkwardly.

“Are you alright?” he breathed out as he walked over to her.

Hayely
nodded vigorously and dabbed at her nose. “I just had a really bad morning. I’ll be fine.”

“No one’s hurt then?”

“No.
Just my pride.”

Gary exhaled harshly in relief as he sat down beside her. Should he put his arm around her? He had absolutely no experience dealing with upset females, and this one had progressed all the way to crying.

“Tell me what happened.”

The rich, full resonance of his voice instantly began to work its magic on her and the tears slowed. Slowly, haltingly,
Hayely
began to describe everything that had happened to her that morning and everything she’d witnessed over the past weeks.

“I’ve never worked in another office,” she concluded. “Is it supposed to be like that?”

A muscle near Gary’s jaw clenched and unclenched. So help him, if he saw the witch again he’d strangle her with his bare hands. How dare someone like that Mark woman make someone as wonderful as
Hayely
cry? The woman was trash in an expensive suit and
Hayely
was so thoroughly kind—so kind she didn’t know how to stand up for herself at the right times.

“No,” he soothed. “It’s never supposed to be like that. No one is entitled to treat another person that way, company president or otherwise.” He scooted his chair closer to
Hayely’s
and put his arms around her at last. “And from what you described, it sounds very much like she’s defrauding her clients.”

“It’s not just clients,” she sniffed. “I’ve seen her print out one job description and salary range, and after someone accepts that job on those terms, she changes everything on them the week after.”

Gary shook his head. “Trust me when I tell you this will come back to haunt her. When word gets out around the industry—and it will—you’ll see the best example of instant karma imaginable. You don’t need to be ruthless to be successful.”

He bent down without thinking, stopping himself just before he was about to kiss the top of her head on impulse. He accidentally breathed in the delicate scent of her flowery shampoo and hoped she was too upset to notice what he’d almost done.

“What do you want to do,
Hayely
?” he asked when she fell into silence.

“I don’t know, but it definitely isn’t shuffling paperwork. I went to school for a degree in biology. Did I ever tell you that? My father wanted me to go on to medical school. I hated biology. Pre-med would have been even worse.”

“You have to find your passion and then build a career from it.”

Hayely
blew her nose unceremoniously. “How did you make your money, Gary? I have no idea how you did all this.”

“When I came to live with Mr. and Mrs.
Bellmark
, they arranged for me to make a dollar a week sweeping floors. I saved it up like a grade school miser. No candy for me that year. When I had fifty dollars, I asked Mr.
Bellmark
what I should do with it and he told me about something called the stock market.”

“You invested in Wall Street at age ten?”

“Yup.
And I quadrupled my money. So I cashed out the original investment and reinvested the rest. When I’d made enough money, I cashed some more out and bought a car.”

“A car?
You couldn’t even drive it at that age.”

“It was a mess. I bought it cheap and spent my evenings learning how to repair it. I conned a local mechanic into letting me borrow some tools. When I had it looking the way I wanted, I sold it.”

“Sounds like you had business in your blood from the start.”

“Well, I turned fifty dollars into several thousand dollars within another year, if that’s what you mean. To make a long story short, I kept buying and selling.
Started with small pieces of land, then houses, and so on.
And of course, I kept up with the stock market investing, too.”

“So how did you wind up starting your own business?” she asked.

“After fixing up all those houses, I figured I could do a better job building them from the ground up. I don’t know how Mr.
Bellmark
did it, but he got me into college early.
Scholarships.
Loans.
But I got my degree in architecture and went on to a master’s in business administration. The rest was easy. It’s just the first million or so that’s hard to earn—and I’d done that by the time I turned twenty-three.”

•

Hayely
studied him with respect. It amazed her that this big body with its callused hands and beard stubble had such a brilliant and wise soul hidden inside it. He wasn’t the money-hungry executive ogre she’d thought he was at the start of their deal.