Adored (Masters and Mercenaries #8.5)(15)

Said the two skinny chicks. She sometimes wondered who her father was. Not because she had a grand desire to meet the man so much as to punch him in the face for passing on his faulty metabolism. Lila and Lisa were graceful and willowy. Will was lean and athletic. Laurel got teased all through school for being on the chunky side.

Maybe that was why Mitch hadn’t wanted her. Maybe he’d wanted a slender, graceful sub. She wondered what the two exes looked like. Probably movie stars.

“I’m not on a diet. I just was a little off this morning.” A bit nauseous, but that could be anything.

Or you could be pregnant. Because you had sex without a condom. You had crazy, wild, can’t-forget-about-it sex without a condom and Mitchell Bradford’s sperm are probably as masculine and arrogant and aggressive as the rest of him. Knocked up. You’re all kinds of knocked up.

She shoved that thinking to the side because she was an optimist. She wasn’t late. Her period was coming sometime this week. She’d already felt crampy and had a nice ache in her back and her boobs were slightly tender. All signs that Mother Nature was sending her a monthly package and her egg had been wilier than that army of sperm Mitch had sent her way.

The nausea this morning could be explained away as nerves about starting a new job. She’d only been here for a week and she got a little nervous about handling cases without having Mitch on call to answer questions. That was all.

She wondered if Mitch had hired either of the paralegals she’d sent his way. Tom and Cindy were both exceptional. And Cindy was married, so Mitch wouldn’t have to worry about another employee hitting on him and making things uncomfortable.

Now that she looked back at it, she’d been the one to behave badly and Mitch had to put up with it. Yes, they had chemistry, but he’d been clear about not wanting to act on it. She’d practically sexually harassed the man.

“Are you all right?” Lila asked. “You went pale. Give me your hand.”

She didn’t have to. Lila moved in, grasping her right hand and feeling for her pulse.

“What’s going on?” Will asked, his eyes concerned as he strode in. Her brother was dressed in slacks and a snowy-white dress shirt. He’d likely left his white coat in the car. Sometimes she thought he should wear a Superman shirt under his clothes. Super Doc. That was her big bro.

“Her pulse rate is high,” Lila said, her voice the same flat monotone she used in the ER.

“I’m fine.” She pulled her arm out of Lila’s hand, but then Will was checking her. She rolled her eyes and looked to her youngest sibling. “Have I thanked you for not going into the medical field?”

Lisa grinned. “They would have been bossy either way.”

Will let go. “She’s fine, though she is paler than normal.”

“Complain to my northern European ancestors. Can we please get some food now? We’re supposed to be celebrating Lisa passing her classes, not worrying about my health. Which is fine by the way. I’m perfectly normal.”

Because it was normal to get pregnant when you have sex while you’re ovulating and forget to wear protection of any kind.

She was done. She was stopping by after work and getting a stupid pee on the stick pregnancy test and putting these thoughts out of her head. Worrying about being pregnant was making her insane. Of course, so was worrying about Mitch.

Had he fired Sharon? She should call and see. Had he managed to turn the office into a fortress yet? She would bet he’d blocked off all the natural light and now the only illumination was fluorescent. And he’d likely eaten like crap and stopped recycling.

None of that was her concern. She was off the Mitchell Bradford improvement committee.

“All right, you say you’re fine, I’ll believe you,” Lila said with a nod. “I’m going to run to the bathroom and then I’ll be ready to go.”

“I’ll go with you.” Lisa followed their sister.

She was left alone with Will, who was staring at her the same way he had when she’d been fifteen and had snuck out of their trailer to make out with Jimmy Hodges.

“What happened with Mitch?”

She rolled her eyes. She’d been playing the brat with her brother since before she knew the word had more than one meaning. “He was difficult, to say the least. He was absolutely the most annoying boss I’ve ever worked for.”

And weirdly the most thoughtful. He’d been the one to push her to become a paralegal. He’d supported her through all the training. Most bosses would have offered to hire her back when she was done with school, but Mitch had understood she needed the money. He’d let her work part time but never changed her salary and never complained when he had to do things she would have done as the office manager.

And he’d given her those law books for graduation and told her if she wanted to go further, he would support her through law school.

He’d actually been a great boss. He simply couldn’t love her.

“I got sick of banging my head against the massive wall that is Mitchell Bradford. I need a job where I don’t have to fight the boss every single time I need to change something. Back when I was only his office manager, I had the time to plot and plan my way around him. Now that I’m also his paralegal…was his paralegal, I don’t have time to try to make the new copy machine look like the old copy machine because Mitch has issues with change. I had to kick the damn thing in exactly the right place to get it to work, but does the high-and-mighty Mitch see reason? Nope. He liked the copy machine. He brought the stupid copy machine with him from California. He claimed the copy machine had been more faithful than his last wife.”