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Unfortunately, by the time she got home after battling the subway and grabbing some takeout for herself and her roommates, she was exhausted. Sondra dropped off the food at the table and went straight to her room, where she fell onto the bed in a heap, not even bothering to remove her pants and blouse before falling into a deep sleep, haunted by bittersweet memories of Jake’s lovemaking that robbed her of any feeling of restfulness.
***
By the time she dragged herself into work the next morning, she was feeling pathetic and downright sick. The last thing she felt like was facing Jake, but her stubborn pride wouldn’t allow her to call in even though she legitimately needed a sick day.
Eleanor waited for her, acting colder than usual. She presented her a stack of work that was familiar.
Sondra flipped through the folios with a confused expression. “I reconciled these earlier in the week, Ms. Clevage.”
The other woman shook her head. “You attempted to do so. Now go back through and do it right. I picked you to avoid any entanglements, but if I had known how incompetent you were, I would have risked a prettier girl for the position.”
Sondra stared at the other woman. “I don’t understand.”
With a sniff, Eleanor said, “I should think it would be obvious, Ms. Elliott. You are a chubby black woman, and Mr. Jacobi has a noted preference for tall, leggy blondes. I believed you were a safe choice and wouldn’t distract him from the business at hand. Clearly I was wrong, and I don’t even get a competent assistant while having to deal with the usual shenanigans.”
Sondra’s fingers refused to hold onto the folios, and she let them fall onto Eleanor’s desk with a thud. “What shenanigans?”
Eleanor seemed to have a trace of pity in her gaze, but it was probably just the blinking of the fluorescent light that needed to be replaced. “He has a history of bedding his assistants, Sondra. It’s a bothersome burden to train someone just to have her move on after the affair ends.” She sighed. “I had high hopes for you in the beginning, but after last night, it’s obvious you were just better at hiding your intentions to seduce Mr. Jacobi.”
Sondra’s mouth gaped open, and she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scream. “I guess there was someone at the door after all,” she said instead, amazed by her cool tone.
Eleanor nodded tightly. “I came to catch up on the Nagato folio, because there were details I couldn’t trust in your hands.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand it. I see why you would be attracted to him, but his actions…well, it’s puzzling.”
Sondra swallowed the insult without retaliation. Not because she was trying to be classy or dignified, but because she was suddenly on the verge of vomiting all over Eleanor’s stark white suit. The thought was briefly satisfying, but she couldn’t allow herself to picture the result without risking losing control over the ball of nausea twisting her stomach.
“I suppose you’ll be leaving now?” Eleanor asked the question without inflection, but there was a hint of emotion in her frosty blue eyes. Eagerness? Satisfaction?
It was enlightening to see the reaction, and Sondra blinked. “You’re jealous.” A giggle escaped her. “It’s not about training someone new, or dealing with the drama of office romances. You want Jake for yourself, and you were sure he’d never look at the dumpy black chick.” She giggled some more as she turned back to her desk. “You win, Eleanor, but I’m not sure you’ll enjoy your prize.”
Scooping up her purse, she walked out of the office without glancing behind her. Considering she was turning her back on her promotion, five years of hard work, and possibly crippling her career potential, she was surprisingly lighthearted about it—right up until the moment she veered into the stall and vomited the contents of her stomach before bursting into tears as she sank to the cold tile floor.
Chapter Four
She was shocked when her doorbell rang at nine-thirty that night, and Mae showed her visitor to her room a moment later. Sondra stared at Jake with openmouthed wonder. “What are you doing here?” Her voice emerged as a shriek, and she quickly closed her mouth.
Jake ran a hand through his hair, which was already disheveled. His jacket and tie were gone, and the top two buttons of his oxford shirt were open. “I finally learned from Eleanor around three p.m. that you just abruptly resigned.” He paced around her small bedroom with the grace of a jungle cat and a sense of familiarity with the surroundings that showed his adeptness at fitting in with his environment.
She lifted a shoulder, not compelled to get up from the bed. The object she held tightly in her hand was probably going to leave its trademark pressed into her hand from how hard she grasped it. “What difference does it make?”
He stopped and stared at her. “It makes a huge difference, Sondra. You can’t just disappear like that. It was one stupid moment. One kiss. I get that you don’t want me. Or maybe you do, but only physically. I swear to you I’ll keep my hands to myself in future if you come back.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t that. Well, not entirely…” Sondra bit her lip, struggling with how much to reveal about Eleanor’s motives. Finally, with a sigh of defeat, she said, “I found out Eleanor picked me because I’m chubby and outside your race, not because my skills impressed her, or because I had done a good job. I couldn’t keep working in the position under those circumstances.”
Jake looked bewildered as he dropped down onto the bed. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
Sondra supposed she should feel guilty for betraying Eleanor, but she couldn’t muster the energy to even feign the emotion. “She’s in love with you, or maybe she just wants to fuck you. Whatever the case, she wants to make sure you don’t screw around with yet another assistant. I guess she probably knows you’re way out of her league, but she must gain some satisfaction from thwarting your office liaisons.”
Jake’s mouth was tight. “I don’t have office liaisons, Sondra. You’re the first and only employee with whom I’ve ever crossed a line. I don’t know what Eleanor said to give you that impression, but it must have been a misunderstanding.”
“Yeah, sure.” She was too tired to keep fighting about it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. You can’t just leave me…the company. You have a job to do, Sondra, and I need you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. There are ten more people in the admin pool who are qualified to replace me.”
Jake’s lips skinned back. “You signed a contract to give thirty days of notice before resigning.”
She shrugged. “So? Are you going to wreck my career prospects with a bad reference?” Did he plan to ruin her life? Too late.
“It’s a legally binding agreement—”
“So sue me.” With a cavalier motion, she tossed the white stick in her hand at the man sitting on the foot of her bed. “Good luck winning against a sick, exhausted pregnant woman.”
As Jake picked up the stick seemingly on autopilot, his gaze confused as he looked down at it, she couldn’t help giggling. It was the laugh of hysteria and panic rather than amusement, and she slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it before it could escalate to the mad cackling of a lunatic.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked after a long pause, as though he’d been trying to comprehend a complex medical study rather than the simple digital word “Pregnant.”
“Congratulations,” she said with a hint of mocking. “It is yours, but I’m sure you’ll want DNA tests or whatever rich guys do to get out of paying for their mistakes.”
Jake carefully set the pregnancy test on the bed beside himself. “We won’t need a DNA test.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “Wow, that’s generous of you, Jake, but if you’re planning to pay for a termination and bypass the need for establishing paternity, I won’t do it.”
“That’s a terrible assumption, Sondra.” He glared at her. “I didn’t ask you to. It’s your decision, but I want you to keep it.”
She paused, the rig
hteous anger she’d been stirring like a spoon in a cauldron freezing in her veins. “You do?”
“Of course. It’s our baby. We need to do the right thing here.”
Sondra nodded, surprised by the surreal turn of events. When she had come home from work that morning to find Mae leaving a bag from the corner pharmacy on her bed, all thoughts of the wreck of her career had fled when she’d seen the box with the digital pregnancy test inside. Her friend had given her a compassionate look, but hadn’t spoken as she had slipped from the room.
It had taken Sondra hours to work up the nerve to pee on the stick, and less than three minutes for one word to drastically alter the course she’d plotted for her future. Almost immediately, she’d known she would have the baby, because she supported the right to choose, and her choice was to keep it. As she had sat in stunned silence, trying to process what had happened and figure out what to do next, the last thing she had expected was Jake to be okay with it.
She’d half-expected a request to disappear from his life, perhaps paired with threats and legal documents barring her from approaching him or revealing paternity. She had braced herself for his suggestion of abortion. In the shadowy recesses of her mind, she’d pictured a future where she raised his baby with a monthly check as his sole contribution to the life they had created. Even that level of involvement had seemed unlikely and downright audacious to imagine.
Never in her wildest dreams—or nightmares—had she envisioned him uttering the words that came out of his mouth a second later.
“We’ll get married.”
He spoke with such calm certainty, as though it wasn’t the most insane suggestion ever, and that he hadn’t lost his mind. Jake looked utterly self-assured as he proposed they enter into a legally binding commitment for the sake of the embryo in her womb. The man had clearly lost his mind.
To Be Continued… (Part One of Three)
