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“He wouldn’t do that!” Jill said, then looked at Kelly for confirmation.
“Oh, he might. I told him I was thinking of bringing dog treats tomorrow. I’ll bet I can make friends with those dogs and get my morning swim back,” Jennie said.
That started the laughter again and left poor Kelly holding her stomach.
The three of them were like Charlie’s Angels in a way, each with a completely different look. Kelly was the brunette, with a curvy body even when she wasn’t pregnant, and a smile that was contagious.
Jill was the blonde in the group. She had gorgeous hazel eyes that Jennie was secretly a bit envious of and she was more willowy than Jennie and Kelly.
Jennie was a few inches shorter than her two friends, with strawberry-blond hair that hung in wild curls. She’d given up trying to tame it a long time ago. She’d always thought her brown eyes were plain looking, but Kelly said they were rich and deep so Jennie had decided to believe her.
Kelly was married to Jack Sutton, the Chief Executive Officer at Sutton Capital, where Jennie worked. Jill had just married Andrew Weston. Andrew was Jack’s best friend and the Chief Financial Officer at Sutton. They were a tight-knit group of friends who worked closely together and saw one another almost every weekend without fail.
Jennie knew that would change now that Jack and Kelly were having a baby and Jill and Andrew had just married. It hurt to think her life might be changing once again as her friends moved on to a life that couldn’t include her in the same way it always had.
Sure, she’d no doubt be Auntie Jen to all their children, but it wouldn’t be the same as having her own family and having kids alongside her best friends. Jill broke through Jennie’s thoughts.
“Hey, I keep forgetting to ask you. Where did you go on your last assignment? Anywhere fun and exciting?” Jill asked. She and Andrew had taken care of Jennie’s dog, Zeke, a few weeks ago when Jennie was traveling for Sutton.
She made a face. “To a biotech company in Wisconsin. The people were really nice but there wasn’t a whole lot to do. They were in the middle of nowhere.”
Jennie was sure she had one of the most unusual jobs on the planet. Sutton Capital was a venture capital firm that invested in startup companies and in companies looking to expand or to develop new technologies.
Although Jennie had started out as a temporary assistant, she now worked in the security and investigations division. She’d always thought Jack was crazy for promoting her, but Jack didn’t operate like a conventional CEO, and Jennie wasn’t about to question his decision.
She loved it more than she’d ever loved any job. She had floated from one temporary job to another after college, finding most of them dull and unchallenging. Her work at Sutton Capital was anything but dull. It just fit her, somehow.
When Jennie wasn’t out of the office on assignment, she worked as a floating assistant helping anyone around the company that needed her. When on assignment, she was sent into a company that was trying to get funding from Sutton or that Sutton was considering purchasing. Jennie would typically go in with someone from finance or occasionally someone from legal who was doing due diligence. She’d serve as their assistant, but in reality, she had a dual purpose.
She was tasked with quickly befriending people and getting them to talk to her. She usually acted like an airhead when she was on assignment, babbling on and on and laughing just a little too much at things. It reminded her of her days in drama club in high school. She’d played Audrey her senior year in Little Shop of Horrors and she always drew from the ditsy portrayal when she went on a new assignment.
When she took on that persona, people just opened right up to her. Then, it was just a matter of keeping her ears open for any information that might help Jack make decisions about the potential investment. Sometimes support staff she befriended would tell her juicy bits of gossip that might contain nuggets of information. Other times, executives in the company talked freely in front of her, assuming she was either too dumb to understand what they were talking about or too flighty to pay attention.
Jennie would never forget the time the two principals in a company sat in front of her and talked about the fact they had doctored the numbers they gave Jack – as if she weren’t even in the room. She sat collating papers at the conference table, keeping her head down while they met over lunch and spilled the whole story.
She would have been offended at the way the two men dismissed her so completely, if she hadn’t known how valuable the information she gathered would be. That information ended up saving Jack and his investors a lot of money.
“Never mind what the night life was like in Wisconsin, did you find out anything juicy?” Kelly asked. Jill and Kelly loved hearing what Jennie discovered during her assignments.
“No. Well, other than the fact two of the researchers like to play doctor after hours in the lab together.” Jennie shivered and laughed. “It wasn’t something I ever need to see again.”
Kelly and Jill laughed.
“It couldn’t have been that bad!” Jill said.
“Oh, but it was. They were not attractive people, to say the least, and I got a real eyeful! I had to go back to my hotel room and scrub my eyes with a pumice stone.”
The three women laughed as the waitress brought their meals and they dug into chips and sandwiches.
“I told Chad I want combat pay for that assignment, but he told me to take it up with Jack, so you need to back me on it, Kels.”
As they finished up their lunches, Jennie looked at her two best friends and silently hoped they’d be able to stay as close as they were today despite the changes that were coming. Her friends were moving toward a life that she’d already lost. Jennie’s happily-ever-after had ended years before, and there wasn’t any way she could get it back.
Chapter 3
Chad suppressed a grin as he watched Jennie. At the moment, they were in the pool at Kelly and Jack’s house, where everyone had gathered for one last party before the baby arrived. Chad stood on one side of a pool volleyball net and Jennie stood on the other. Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten what Jennie was arguing about, but he didn’t care.
It might be chauvinistic, but he loved seeing her fiery eyes sparkle as she fisted small hands on her hips and lit into him. She barely reached his chest, but she should get points for trying. Jennie tossed her head, flinging her strawberry-blond curls out behind her and kept right on going.
