“Okay. Well, have a seat.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to screw me, Alec, and I’m not a delicate flower, so I’ll stand for the screwing if that’s okay with you.”
He did appreciate that Olivia was direct. “Okay. Sure. Well…”
“Look, I just endured two hours of a guy with his hands in my mouth. I have had a million clients tell me shit I did not want to hear. You’re not inventing the wheel here. Just spit it out.”
“I can’t take the job in news.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Is there a difference?”
“There is when I’m trying to smooth things over with the network. I do have other clients, you know.”
Alec drew in a deep breath through his nose, battling guilt and doubt, the emotions that seemed to follow him everywhere. He’d known this was going to be a difficult conversation. And he had to power through it. “Okay, fine. Iwon’ttake the job. Some very important things have come up in my personal life. Things that aren’t compatible with that sort of schedule. I’m incredibly sorry, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to make this right, but I will not be signing a contract for the news division. I’ll be staying on withGood Day. We’ll just move forward like none of this happened.”
“Well, that’s going to be a problem. Because right after we go upstairs and they don’t quite give you everything you want, they’re going to tell you that they already have your replacement. And they’re ready for him to start January 1.”
Alec felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart. “Wesley?”
“The pretty weather guy himself.”
Of course.Tilly Ann and Renata must have known all along what was going to happen.Everyone’s talking about it.That was why they’d come to his dressing room a few hours ago. “Are you serious right now?”
“Dead serious.”
“Did they tell you this directly?”
“I started hearing rumblings over the weekend. But then I stopped and talked to Maddie and Jerome in security. You should chat them up. They literally know everything that happens here.”
Alec shook his head in dismay. He’d just talked to Maddie and Jerome. Neither of them let on about a thing.Traitors.He expected this kind of betrayal from Jerome, but Maddie?
“I also got a text from Georgia Carle’s assistant saying she wasn’t going to be at the meeting,” Olivia continued. “They always make the underlings do this sort of thing.”
“Can the network just get rid of me like that?”
“They can do whatever the hell they want. That’s why you need a pit bull like me for an agent.”
“What about my contract?”
“They’ll buy you out. Believe me, the network sneezes and millions of dollars come out. It’s nothing to them.Nothing.”
“So what do I do?”
“Well, the good news for you is that they have no idea you and I just had this conversation. So everything you were thinking about over Thanksgiving? The important things that have come up in your personal life? You might want to mull all of that over one more time before you’re out of a job.” She pulled her phone out of her handbag. “You have seven minutes.”
Alec’s stomach sank. He’d just gone from being the guy with too many professional options, to the guy who had none.
“No pressure, Alec.” Olivia patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Brooklyn knewwhat was about to happen before she even got out of bed. For a moment, she rolled to her side and looked out the window at the dreary gray day. Even from the safe and warm confines of her apartment, she could tell that outside it was frigid. It was like she could see the cold. And it was everywhere. She tried not to draw any parallels between the weather and her life, but it wasn’t easy to ignore the obvious—it wasn’t going to be a nice day. And she was definitelynotpregnant.
She tossed back the covers and scrambled for the bathroom. She sat on the toilet, not wanting to think of it as her body betraying her. What had happened between her and Alec had been a complete fluke. A failure of condom manufacturing. They both knew that statistically, there was a minuscule chance that his swimmers had sneaked out and met up with her waiting egg. But she’d been holding on to that possibility much more tightly than she’d wanted to admit. She’d hoped this whole thing could be decided for her by fate.
And she supposed it had been. Just not like she’d wanted it to be.
