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It wasn’t the issue anyway. The issue wasn’t that she didn’t measure up. The issue was simply this.
Jake Woodward wasn’t the man for her.
***
A couple of hours later, she was staring down at a printout of a new marketing proposal and trying to decide whether she should tell Jake that some of these ideas just sucked.
She’d gotten her degree in marketing and, out of college, had made an intensive effort to find a job in the field. That was right around the time when the economy had tanked, though, and marketing was one of the costs that businesses were cutting. There were no entry-level jobs to be had in this area. Not for her, anyway, since her résumé was good but not great. Plus, she couldn’t move away since her mother had just been diagnosed with cancer
So she’d applied for the job as administrative assistant with Jake, thinking it would just be a year or so before she could find the kind of job she wanted. She’d liked Jake in the interview and thought she could work well with him. Jake’s business had been starting to grow so fast he couldn’t keep up, and he’d needed her to bring order to the chaos.
She was good at it, and she even enjoyed her job most of the time. He was a hard worker and he expected the same from his staff, but he was intrinsically kind and he treated her well.
But she’d always wanted to go into marketing. And here she was, a couple of years from thirty, and she was still hesitating about whether to give her opinion to her boss about the plans from his marketing people.
This was not at all the career she’d thought she’d have.
Caring for her mother had been her priority for four years, until she died. Then Anne had thought she was really satisfied as Jake’s assistant and hadn’t felt the need to move on. A few months ago, however, after a pep talk from her friends, she had started sending out résumés again. She’d had an interview with a marketing firm two weeks ago for a job that was exactly what she wanted, but she hadn’t heard back about it, so she assumed she hadn’t gotten it.
She was hardly a dream candidate, after having spent seven years as an administrative assistant.
The phone rang, distracting her from her brooding. It was Jake’s lawyer, so she told him Jake would call him right back.
Jake had left his office a half-hour ago, when she’d been on the phone. She’d thought he was just heading for the restroom, but he must have gone somewhere else.
She didn’t like not knowing where he was, so she got up and started to look.
She knew he hadn’t left the suite, since her desk had a view of the main door. Max, his financial guy, said Jake wasn’t in the men’s room, so she checked out the conference room and the lounge area, where he sometimes moved to stretch out his legs if his knee was bothering him.
He wasn’t there either.
He also wasn’t in Janice’s or Melanie’s office, which left only one place in the suite.
Anne was shaking her head as she opened the door of the file room.
He wasn’t supposed to be in here.
But there he was, kneeling down to search through the bottom drawer of the file cabinet on the back wall.
“What are you doing?” she asked, feeling a familiar wave of annoyance. Had he been in here looking for something in a file for the whole thirty minutes?
He jerked in obvious surprise and looked at her over his shoulder. “I need the sales receipts from last February.”
She let out a breath and walked over toward him. “Well, you’re in the wrong cabinet.”
“I am not.” He looked frustrated, rumpled, and absolutely gorgeous, kneeling on the floor in front of her in his suit and red tie. “This drawer is for February 2013.”
“I know that, but the sale receipts aren’t there.” When he looked like he was about to argue, Anne went on, “Would you please stand up? You’re going to hurt your knee like that.”
His shoulders stiffened, and his square jaw clenched. “My knee is fine.”
“No, it’s not. You were limping yesterday because you were at your desk for sixteen hours on Tuesday. How long have you been kneeling here looking in that drawer? You can’t do that to your knee.”
