Page 25 of His Instant Heir


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“The nursery at Infinity. I usually bring him up to my office after hours and let him play in the corner while I finish working.”

“I could pick him up,” Dec said.

“No. My sisters would know you had and that would raise questions,” she said.

“How would they know?”

“Emma has a three-year-old son who is in the day-care facility, as well,” Cari said.

“Okay, then I will bring dinner to your office and we can all eat together,” he said.

She wasn’t sure how it had worked out that Dec had gotten everything he wanted from her. He had merely amped up the charm and she’d succumbed. In the future she had to be more careful. She wasn’t going to make things too easy for him. After all, he was the guy who had wanted her for one night and then walked away. While she was the first to admit having a child changed people—it had changed her after all—she still didn’t trust Dec.

She’d keep her eye on him and try to ensure that she didn’t lose any more of herself than she already had. It would be a hell of a lot easier to manage if she didn’t like him.

Seven

Cari tried to focus on work while she was at the office, but she had a steady stream of appointments from employees who all wanted to talk about Dec. Though they wanted to discuss the future and what Cari thought he was going to do with their roles in the company, she had no answers. She told Ally to hold her calls and escaped upstairs to the executive floor where Emma’s office was.

The decision to move her office down onto the development floor had made sense when Cari had taken over the role of COO. She wanted to be where the staff saw her every day and where she could see what they were working on. The move had paid off and she and the staff had a good rapport.

“You look like you are on the run,” Emma said when Cari got off the elevator. Her sister wore a severe-looking business suit and had her thick black hair pulled back in a bun. Her usual corporate look. Cari didn’t envy Emma at all. As the oldest, the responsibility of keeping Infinity going had fallen to her.

“I am. Are you leaving?” she asked Emma.

“Yes. I have a lunch meeting across town,” Emma said, glancing down at her watch. “Should I cancel? Do you need me?”

Cari remembered when she was seven and used to be scared at night. She’d creep down the long, dark hallway to Emma’s room—her parents had a firm no-sleeping-in-our-room policy—and she’d stand in the doorway next to her sister’s bed and whisper her name until Emma would roll over and lift the covers, inviting her into the bed with her. Emma had always been the one she ran to when she had a problem.

And it was so hard now to not tell her everything. Even harder than it had been before Dec had come back into her life. She wanted to lean on someone else, to unburden herself so that the responsibility of the decision wouldn’t be hers. But she knew she couldn’t do that. Inside she sighed, but outside she smiled at her sister.

“I’ll always need my big sis, but I don’t want you to cancel your lunch plans. The staff is in full panic mode. I just needed to escape where no one could find me,” she admitted, which was partially the truth. She couldn’t work with the steady stream of people coming to her office to ask questions every five minutes.

Since she’d worked her way up to COO she’d always had an open-door policy. She’d learned from her time at the different levels in the company that most of the staff needed to be heard more than they needed action.

“Well, you are welcome to use my office. I’m out until two,” Emma said. “Sam wanted me to tell you that he’s happy to babysit DJ whenever you need him to.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He’s trying to teach him to say ‘what’s up, dog?’”

“Why?”

“He thinks it will crack you up,” Emma said. “He told me about you both doing hip-hop on ‘Sing Star.’”

“That was supposed to be a secret,” Cari said. But remembering playing the singing game with her nephew made her smile and she thought of all that Emma had been shouldering since her young husband had died. And Cari knew that if Emma could do it, so could she. Hiding out wasn’t a Chandler trait. Cari knew that no matter how much she wanted distance, she could not run from Dec.

“Thanks, Em.”

“You’re welcome, sweetie. Are you sure you don’t need me?”

Cari gathered her strength around her and stood taller. She was an adult, an executive, and she didn’t need to rely on her sister anymore. She couldn’t keep running away or hiding from the tough things in life. “Of course. Thanks for caring.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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