Authors: Elda Minger
Which she didn't even see.
"Girl, these grits are
perfect!
Where's your mama from?"
"Arkansas."
"Humph." There was a short silence while Sapphire tasted everything on her plate. Cameron merely watched her. Trying to contain this woman would be like stopping the tides.
Finally he spoke up.
"Was there a reason you wished to see me?"
"Yes, sir. I saw you on YouTube last night and I said to myself, 'Sapphire, what that boy needs is a voodoo charm to help him get that girl back into his life!' So, here I am and here it is!"
She pulled something out of her purse that looked like a small cloth sack and set it on the dining room table.
Cameron had excellent people instincts and knew this woman was totally sincere.
"I just felt sorry for you, Cam. All this money and you are just a
mess!
"
He grinned. "I couldn't have said it better myself."
Another of his talents in business was putting the right teams of people together at the right time.
"Sapphire, do you have any experience in the restaurant business?"
She took a deeply appreciative sip of coffee before answering. "My aunt, she used to run a place in the French Quarter. She made the best red beans and rice for miles around. People would come every Monday to eat those beans and come back the other nights for the rest of her cooking!"
Nancy sat down at the table with another plate and began to eat her breakfast. Her blue eyes were large and luminous. Cameron was suddenly quite happy that at least one person out of this entire fiasco was going to realize her dream.
After business was discussed, Cameron pushed back his chair and was about to leave when Sapphire stopped him.
"I read palms, too."
"You do."
"I'm mighty good."
What the hell. He was game. He gave her his hand and she studied it with fierce concentration.
"You are one proud man."
He smiled.
"But she's gonna get you, this mystery woman."
"I hope so."
"No, no, not just the nasty dance! I mean, she’s gonna get your heart. All of it. Body and soul, the best there is. And you're gonna love her for the rest of your life! Look at that love line!" she said, gesturing for Nancy to see his palm.
Cameron felt strangely self-conscious but squelched the urge to pull his hand from her grasp. Perhaps if he acted as if what she said was of no importance then it would have no effect.
What was he saying? Of course it would have no effect.
When the reading was over, Sapphire gave his hand a pat. "You remember what I said. You got a happy life ahead for yourself."
He couldn't help smiling.
As he left, voodoo charm in his briefcase, he heard Sapphire and Nancy planning furiously over a pot of coffee and a basket of sweet potato muffins.
"I've got a catfish recipe that'll make you think you've died and gone to heaven..."
* * *
She'd known this day was coming but had thought she might have a little more time. Even though Michaela knew her pregnancy barely showed, no one had missed the tremendous expansion of her bustline or the fact that she spent at least a third of the day in the bathroom.
Dr. Mallory had told her that some unfortunate women seemed to suffer from morning sickness a little longer than the first trimester. And she was one of the unfortunate few.
Still, she'd thought she'd covered her tracks a little better than that.
Today she'd barely made it to Julian's office before slumping down in the chair by his desk, her head in her hands.
She simply felt awful.
She also didn't hear the older man come in. When she finally realized he was in the office with her, she slowly raised her head and gazed into a pair of gentle, twinkling blue eyes.
The eyes of a child, still filled with wonder. But the soul of a very gentle man.
She swallowed against the tightness in her throat and felt her eyes fill with tired tears.
"How long have you known?" she whispered.
She watched as tears filled his eyes. He came around the desk and sat in the chair next to hers. Taking her hands in his own, he kissed her cheek.
"Thank you," he said. "You have no idea what this child means to me."
"You're not... angry with me?"
"Angry? I'm as happy as Mike Larkin would be if he were here. The only thing I regret about this moment is that he isn't around so we can go out and raise some hell. It isn't every day a man discovers he's about to become a grandfather. Or a great-grandfather."
His mentioning her father was her emotional undoing. Great sobs worked their way up her chest and out her mouth. Julian handed her tissues and let her cry herself out, then ordered in some coffee for himself, a glass of juice for her, and sandwiches for both of them.
Mrs. Monahan, tactful as ever, didn't mention the fact that Michaela had obviously been crying.
Once they were alone again, she found she needed the counsel of an older, wiser man. She poured her heart out to Julian, telling him her fears, her regrets , her reluctance to tell Cameron about the child just yet. And her instinctual knowledge that she was about to be fired from her firm.
"Joshua Burrell has been and always will be a complete ass. Doesn't the man realize a company is always about its people?"
She sniffled into a tissue.
"If you need anything, anything at all, Michaela, you come to me."
"Oh, no! That wasn't why I came here today. There's a contract—"
"It can wait. Now, what time does that slave driver Burrell expect you back?"
"Sometime after lunch."
Julian grinned. "There's a spare office down the hall with a lovely couch in it, just perfect for a nap."
She'd thought she'd cried her fill but felt tears welling up. It seemed she was always exhausted these days, what with both the pregnancy and the burden of her deception.
"That sounds wonderful."
She was almost to the door when she turned and scrutinized Julian.
"How did you know?"
He smiled. "I'd almost lost hope. It was something in your face. A glow. My Mary looked the same way."
She nodded her head, then walked back to the desk, around the side, and gave Julian an awkward hug.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Ahh," he said, hugging her close. "Welcome to the family, little girl."
* * *
The nap refreshed her. She washed her face and reapplied her makeup in one of the executive bathrooms. Then she walked back to her office.
Saw the note on her desk.
And knew it was over.
Michaela, please see me in my office at three.
* * *
"Of course you understand the gravity of the situation," Joshua Burrell intoned solemnly.
She'd never disliked him more. She also refused to see things his way.
"I'm not sure that I do."
He cleared his throat. She knew he was uneasy with her, didn't quite know what to do with her. If she really wanted to disgust him, she'd burst into tears. But she was determined not to give him that particular pleasure.
''You cannot possibly continue to work at a firm as old and established as Coleman, Watts and Burrell while pregnant and unmarried." He paused just enough to give his next words added emphasis. "That is, unless I misunderstand your situation. Are you married?"
"No."
"Then it should all be quite clear."
She’d never been angrier in her life. She loved practicing law. The thought of this man preventing her from doing just that filled her with a fine, cool rage.
"No it's not. But I realize that to continue to practice law here would not be in my best interests."
"You've always been bright, Michaela."
"Don't patronize me. You're firing me and you're going to have a lawsuit on your hands the likes of which you've never seen before."
Joshua Burrell leaned back in his leather chair and smiled. Now he was on familiar ground. It was inconceivable to him that he could lose.
"I don't believe so. You may go."
She left his office, went directly to hers, packed her things, said goodbye to Cassandra, then called a cab and went home.
* * *
Cameron stormed into his grandfather's office with the intention of simply venting some of his frustration.
Both men had long since disregarded Julian's ultimatum, directly after Cameron had simply told his elderly relative that he wanted to find this woman and not have Nancy feel she was in a marriage in which she would always be second best. Julian had agreed and, except for Cameron's moods, the two men had been getting along remarkably well.
Julian was on the phone.
"Just wanted you to know, Joshua, that we have always enjoyed working with Michaela Larkin. I consider her extraordinarily talented with contracts and... oh, I see... yes, you're making yourself quite clear... no, I don't quite understand..."
Cameron's head came up, his eyes narrowed. Julian's tone had chilled to pure, brilliant ice. He hadn't heard that particular tone of voice in a long time.
"No, I'm sorry. No, we won't be needing any other lawyer. I shall be getting in touch with her myself..."
Something was terribly wrong.
His grandfather was in a rage and Cameron listened as the older man delivered his parting shot.
"Frankly, Joshua, I've always considered you a rather sanctimonious bastard." He hung up the phone and turned toward Cameron.
"They fired her."
"Michaela?"
Julian nodded.
"Why?"
"She's in trouble, Cameron."
His grandfather was watching him closely as Cameron reached for the suit jacket he'd carelessly slung over the back of the chair.
"I'm going to her."
Julian nodded his head.
* * *
By the time he reached her office, she was gone.
Cassandra, Michaela's petite, blonde personal assistant he'd talked to numerous times, was crying as she packed up her desk.
"They fired you, too?" he asked as he came out of Michaela's empty office.
"I can't stay," she sniffed. "Not after what they did to her. It was so... unfair!"
"Why was she fired?"
She gave him a look that clearly expressed she thought he knew.
"You can't tell anyone. She didn't want anyone to know but I knew right away." The delicate blonde dissolved into a new fit of crying.
His heart almost stopped beating at the thought that something might be seriously wrong with Michaela. And it would be just like that bastard, Joshua Burrell, to let her go when she was no longer of any use to his precious firm.
He grasped her upper arms. "What's wrong with her?"
Cassandra eyed him warily.
"On my honor, I won't tell a soul. I just want to do what I can to help her—"
"She's pregnant."
He let go of the young woman, stepped back, steadied himself against her desk.
Pregnant.
Impossible.
The suspicion growing in his mind was too incredible to contemplate. His mind flashed back, remembering.
Chuck, in his office.
Was there anyone else who might have been at the scene of the crime? What about the lawyer?
Michaela, in his office, in a fine rage.
And why couldn't it have been me?
Julian, just before he left.
She's in trouble, Cameron.
Michaela, fainting in the hallway. Looking so very pale. Watching him, her blue eyes wary.
Pregnant.
"How long?" he whispered.
"What?" Cassandra said.
"How far along is she?"
"Almost four months. She wasn't even showing but she was sick so often that Mr. Buriell started to get suspicious—"
Almost four months... almost four months ago he'd been in a suite at the Four Seasons.
Almost four months ago he'd been having the most erotic and fulfilling sexual experience of his life.
Could it be...?
Michaela, pregnant with my child.
"Don't get mad at her, okay?"
How like his Mike, to inspire such loyalty.
"Here." He pulled out a business card and scribbled Mrs. Monahan's number on it. "Call tomorrow morning and ask for this woman. She'll see that we find you a comparable job."
The look on her face was all the thanks he needed. Then he was out the door and heading toward Michaela's house.
* * *
He let himself in the back door, knowing where she kept the spare key.
She wasn't home and he wondered at that. He would've thought home would be the first place she would head, having just been kicked in the teeth at work. Cameron was sure Joshua Burrell would've been absolutely ruthless in letting her go.
He thought of her hurting and couldn't bear it.
He thought of her trying to carry this secret all alone and his heart went out to her.
He went up the stairs and saw the fully decorated nursery and felt such feelings of rage building inside him that he slammed his fist against the pale yellow wall.
She hadn't just found out. You couldn't put together a nursery like this in a few weeks. There was a lot of love and time and effort that had gone into making this room what it was. What it reflected. Love. And hope.
Why didn't she tell me?
. Directly on top of that thought, he wondered,
What is she trying to do?
He'd never liked feeling out of control and he didn't like the feelings of despair that swept over him now. He walked over to the rocking chair, set the teddy bear on the floor and sat down. He watched the early summer sky darken into dusk. His mind had plenty of time to work through the various ramifications of what Michaela had done before he heard her key scrape in the lock downstairs.
He didn't move, just sat in the dark nursery as she came inside and headed straight for the crib. She was carrying a stuffed duck and she set the toy inside the crib then turned around and saw him.
She started, frightened for just an instant until she recognized him. Then, even in the dim light, he saw a new fear growing in her eyes. He decided at that exact moment he was never going to let this woman control his emotions.