Misadventures with the Boss (Misadventures #12)(35)

“I’ll tell you something if you promise not to tell Mom,” I shot back immediately.

“Deal.” I could practically see Hailey’s grin through the phone. No doubt this had been her plan all along—threaten me and then get me to spill once the threat was gone, but I was so relieved to have the specter of our mother off my back, I didn’t care. I loved our mom, but she was what people tended to call “a real piece of work,” so I tried to keep our visits biannual and our phone calls to once-a-week check-ins if I could help it.

Hailey sighed, and I knew I’d reached the end of the line. I had to give her something here, or she was going to ratchet up from annoying to relentless.

I thought hard, trying to figure out how to explain Jackson to someone who had never met him.

“He’s a serious kind of guy,” I started.

“I figured that from his picture,” Hailey said. “Serious good or serious bad, though?”

“What’s the difference?”

Hailey sighed. “Well, isn’t it obvious? Serious good is like ‘I’d die for the woman I love,’ and serious bad is like…cold. Like he’s humorless.”

I thought of the glint of mischief in Jackson’s eyes when he messaged me to meet him around the corner at the hotel.

“Serious good, then,” I said.

“Good,” Hailey said. “So what else, then?”

“He cares a lot about his company.”

“And his family?” Hailey prompted. “Is he a my-mother-is-a-goddess-on-earth sort of guy or a guy who thinks his mother ruined him for life? Or…?”

“None of the above,” I answered patiently. “He’s on his own. No family.”

“Wow. No family. And serious too.” Hailey whistled. “Sounds dark and mysterious.”

“Sort of, I guess.”

“And you like him? As more than just—?”

“Maybe we should talk about something else,” I said. “You haven’t told me anything about your job. What’s going on there?”

“It exists. There’s not much more to say about it. I want to know more about Christian Grey over there, though. How is he in bed? Does he have a play room?”

I considered our encounter in the conference room the week before, our time in the elevator, and even the first night on that rooftop garden.

“No, no play room.” It was better than that. He didn’t have a room full of mysteries, but there was no telling which room he would claim as our own. Now every time I stepped into an elevator, it was with the memory of his lips on my body. Whenever I walked into his office, it was with the knowledge that he’d bent me over his desk and lifted me on top of it more times than I could count.

“Boo,” Hailey’s voice interrupted my thoughts, and I snapped back to attention. “Well, is he good in bed at least?”

“Hailey, I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Because you don’t have to. I mean, you guys have been getting it up and down for like a month and a half now. It must be good to keep at it like that.”

“A month and a half?”

Had it really been that long? It didn’t seem possible. Time was going by so quickly that I—

My heart stopped and then leapt into my throat.

A month and a half. She was right. Our first night together had been right before Cinco de Mayo, and now it was the middle of June. And in all that time…

“Piper? What’s wrong?”

“I have to go.”

“No way. You sound like someone just shot you in the chest. No fucking around here, tell me what’s going on immediately,” Hailey demanded, her tone as serious as a heart attack.

I swallowed back another rush of nausea and forced the words through my numb lips.

“I haven’t had my period,” I whispered, clasping my hand over my mouth before mumbling the rest. “I didn’t realize. We’ve been working so hard, and…”

“Look, it’s probably nothing,” Hailey rushed. “You’ve been under a lot of stress at work. Your period always gets wonky when you’ve got your mind on other things.”

“It does,” I agreed, though I didn’t move my hand from in front of my mouth.

Instead, I was thinking back to that day on the steps of the museum. How Jackson had said he’d always tried to be careful ever since he and his ex had broken up. How he’d said he didn’t want the responsibility of raising children.

“The important thing is not to panic,” Hailey said, but her voice sounded as if it was coming to me from the end of a long tunnel.

I was long past panic. I just kept thinking of how tired I’d been and how weird my stomach had felt. And how many times Jackson and I had slept together.

Distantly, I heard myself tell her that I’d have to call her back, and then I dashed to the drug store and picked up three pregnancy tests.

The next ten minutes went by in an adrenaline-and fear-induced haze, and before I could even stop shaking, I was back in my apartment bathroom. I wrenched down my pants, more determined to pee than I’d ever been in my entire life.

Carefully, I read the instructions for each test and followed them to the letter, setting timers for every single one and then pacing my apartment as I chewed on my nails—a nasty habit I’d forced myself to break way back in high school.