What would I do if I got pregnant? It was a good question, and it plagued me all night. I’d always been obsessively careful, terrified at the thought of being responsible for another human. It was more than a little ironic that I was cheerleading Bobbie when I didn’t think I could handle it myself. To be honest, that was probably why most of my sexual experience was primarily with my vibrator.

When I woke up for work the next morning, I felt like I’d barely slept at all. It took a lot more makeup than usual to cover the dark circles under my eyes, and the freckles on my nose stuck out like a connect-the-dot picture against my pale face.

“Don’t you want breakfast?” my mother asked as I zipped up some knee-high boots. My wool plaid skirt twirled around my calves, the green in it matching my blouse. I looked in the mirror by the front door, and was happy to note that I looked way more put together than I felt.

“No, it’s okay. I’m not really hungry.”

She leaned against the archway to the kitchen, her concern radiating so strongly I was afraid it would burn me. I was lucky that she worried about me—but like I’d told Gage the night before it didn’t erase the fact that my biological mother had essentially thrown me away.

“What’s going on, Maddie? Did you, um, find your birth mom? Is that why you’re upset? You can tell me, you know.” Unable to look me in the eyes suddenly, she turned back into the kitchen and started fussing with putting away the breakfast food she’d gotten out for me.

I sighed and walked back into the kitchen, the heels of my boots clacking on the tile.

Cereal boxes back in the cupboard, milk back in the fridge. She tidied up methodically and efficiently, like she’d done for the last ten years I’d known her. I knew she had to get ready for work soon herself; she was lingering just for me.

“I know I haven’t always been supportive of your desire to find her,” she said as she faced the fridge. “But I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“It’s not that. I mean, I appreciate it, but that’s not why I’m upset.”

Her posture eased a little as she turned back to me. “Oh.”

“A friend of mine is pregnant and she doesn’t know what to do,” I explained.

My mother’s eyes popped out.

Uh oh. “No! Not that kind of friend. It’s not me; Jesus, calm down.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s my, uh, boss’s sister. He’s freaked out.”

“Why? Is she a teenager or something?”

“He just doesn’t know if she should have it.” It sounded ridiculous even as I said it, and my mother agreed.

She frowned. “Why is it even up to him?”

“It’s not. I think he’s just, I don’t know, worried that she can’t handle it.”

“I see. Well, like you said, it’s not up to him. You know that saying that God doesn’t throw anything at you that he doesn’t think you can handle? Maybe he should think about that.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think Gage is a particularly spiritual person.” Unless he’d taken me too seriously when I called out blasphemies when in the throes of passion.

“Maddie, she’s a grown up, right? He has to let her make her own decisions. And she has to stand by them herself.” She walked to the front door, got my coat out of the closet then she handed it to me with some advice. “Be a friend to her, and be a friend to him. But don’t get in the middle. It’s not your place if he’s your boss.”

My face burned. “He’s not just my bo—”

“Maddie! Is that who you’ve been seeing? Who you were with Friday night?”

I cursed my fair complexion. It always gave me away. Then again, I reminded myself that I was twenty-four years old and had nothing—okay, not much—to be ashamed of. My V-card had been lost in a dumb decision in my freshman year at college, and I wasn’t exactly bragging about my handful of experiences since.

“How long have you been, um, seeing each other?” she asked.

“About a month? Six weeks?”

“That’s a long time for you.”

The sad part is that she wasn’t being facetious. I rarely went out more than a couple of times with the same person. I hated commitment, and that included dating. I couldn’t even buy the same shampoo twice.

Brian Gage was probably the closest I had come so far to having a boyfriend. Considering that he was wealthy, demanding and my boss, it was probably not the best precedent to set.

My mother looked like she was not only biting her tongue, but swallowing it as well. “Maddie, do you know what you’re doing?” she finally asked.

Not a clue, Mom.

“More or less?” I said with a bright smile. I considered it a minor miracle that she didn’t ask me about the recent increase in underwear in my laundry pile.

“We will talk about this later,” she threatened. “You’d better go or you’ll miss your bus.”

* * *

Of course, I did miss my bus. Damn it. I’d decided after graduating against getting a car in order to save money, but it meant that I was at the whim of public transit or the kindness of others. And today, it meant that I walked into work almost an hour late.

Susan stuck her head out of her office to make a point of my tardiness when I walked past.

“Maddie, Brian has been looking for you. I tried to help him myself…” She trailed off with a coy smirk on her face, no doubt wanting me to wonder just how she’d tried to help him.

“Thanks, Susan.”

I gave her a smile that didn’t reach my eyes, and only the fact that I knew she was watching me walk down the hall to my desk kept me from turning back and giving her the finger. I had remarkable self-restraint—perhaps it was the recent rope training.

Gage’s door was closed. I put my bag under my desk and hung up my coat. Then I sat in my chair and rearranged my desktop. Stared at the door. Nervously rubbed my leather-covered calves together like a cricket. Stared at the door. I didn’t hear any noise from inside; for all I knew he wasn’t even in there.

I wasn’t afraid to see him. I longed to see him, in fact. I spent much of the night recalling the smell of his skin, the sardonic arch of his eyebrows, his thoughtful gestures and geeky jokes. He was frightened, a state so foreign that it produced new and strange emotions within me as well.

I’d never really wanted to comfort anyone before—I think probably because the compassion of others made me too uncomfortable when I was younger. But something about Gage made me yearn to submit to him and take care of him at the same time. For a girl who’d spent twenty years building walls around her heart, it was terrifying to suddenly find a door there. It was tempting to barricade it.

So lost was I in my head that I jumped when I heard my name.

“Madeline!”

Gage stood in the doorway to his office, looking freshly pressed but the lines around his eyes were tight and a groove seemed permanently etched in his forehead.

I took a deep breath in, lacing my fingers together in my lap. “Gage, I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have—”

“We have a problem.”

What? “Is Bobbie okay?”

He shook his head. “A work problem.”

Any problems with work concerned me, of course, but I hated that he didn’t answer my question about Bobbie. “What is it?”

“Come in here.”

He pivoted on one heel and marched back to his desk, clearly expecting me to follow. I scrambled off my chair and chased behind him.

“Close the door,” he ordered.

Standing in front of his desk, he slumped down a little to rest on the edge. The cracks spreading through his immaculate façade made him more real, more human. I remembered from somewhere that on old paintings and porcelain they called that “crazing,” which suddenly made perfect sense. He was crazing.

“What is it?”

He stretched his right arm out, his palm facing up. It was the international symbol for “come here… give me something… take my hand… I need you.”

I went to him.

When I was close enough to touch, he pulled me into his arms and hugged me tighter than anyone ever had before, even my parents. My eyes filled with tears, and not just because I could barely breathe.

“Forgive me.” His voice was hot and broken in my ear.

I couldn’t trust my own voice, so I just wrapped my arms around him to hold all the pieces of him together. Seconds felt like minutes and minutes like hours as we clung to each other. He leaned back against the front of his desk, his legs spread and me nestled between them.

A perfunctory knock rattled the door before it swung open. “Brian? I brought those—oh!”

I just about tripped over Gage’s long legs on either side of me as I extricated myself and spun around. Susan stood there, a sheaf of papers in her hand and her mouth twisted in an ugly sneer.

“Well, I guess we know why he brought you on the retreat now.”

I was burning and speechless with humiliation. It would be all over the office in an hour that I was sleeping with the boss.

I wasn’t stupid. This was not a career move recommended by any guidance counselor, and we had been playing with fire. But to be caught in an embrace by the jealous vamp in Human Resources was the worst possible scenario. On the other hand, at least we had all our clothes on.

Gage simply sighed. “What do you need, Susan?”

Stumbling to a safer distance at the side of his desk, I gaped at his nonchalance. Of course he didn’t care—he wasn’t the one going to be fired. Wait, would I really be fired? Could Susan do that? Wouldn’t that be up to Gage himself?

“I suppose I need to update the fraternization policy with you, Mister Gage. But for now, I brought you the files we discussed first thing this morning.” She threw me another arch look to remind me of my late arrival. I hadn’t been using the Happit lately.

Gage straightened and took the small stack of manila folders from her. “Thank you. Anything else?”

“Only for Miss Jones to join me in my office after your, er, meeting is finished here. I have a few other policies to review with her.”

Oh shit. Maybe she could fire me.

After shooting me a smug look, she sauntered out the door, leaving it wide open. Gage did not suggest I close it, instead he was busy spreading open the manila folders on his desk.

“This is the problem I mentioned earlier,” he said absently, poring over some papers. He’d circled back to his throne and was sitting while I still stood at the side of the desk.

It took me a moment to remember anything that happened before he took me in his arms. “What?”

He drummed his fingers on the glass top of his desk, looking up at me. “Madeline, before we get into this I need to make something very clear.”

I swallowed. “Okay?”

“It is critical that I compartmentalize better. It got away from me, but this—” He gestured between the two of us. “—can’t happen at work anymore.”

“I understand, sir.” I didn’t like it, but I understood. But if he wanted me to work twelve-hour days with him and not touch him, not share secret smiles or little jokes, then that didn’t leave much other time to explore our relationship.

His gaze searched me. He looked almost disappointed at my ready agreement. Was I supposed to straddle him in his chair and demand that he go down on me during lunch breaks or something? Although the idea had potential…

I liked working for Gage, with Gage. But I also just plain liked him. It was hard to separate the two—my boss and my boyfriend—but he was the first man I’d met who cared more about my successes than I did. Unfortunately, that also meant that he would feel my failures more keenly.

“Now, this is last year’s application for a grant from the National Science Foundation. Needless to say, it was unsuccessful.” He frowned at the file. “You’ll be glad to know that I even said please, for all the good that it did. I want you to work on this year’s application.”

I scanned through the information lying on the desk. “It’s not for very much money,” I pointed out with surprise. “Why go to the trouble?”

“A few reasons. One, the prestige and visibility.” He ticked the reasons off on his fingers. “Two, it puts us in the pipeline to apply for other funding for R&D, stuff like NIH if we’re going to expand our biometrics. And three, it looks good to other VC firms who are thinking about taking a chance on us.”

Should I remind him of all the other tasks he dumped on me last week? I wondered. Given the weekend he’d had, I doubted that my complaining about my workload would help anything. Shuffling the papers back into some semblance of order, I nodded. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

“You’ll do your best.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved my hand at him then rapped the folder on his desk to line up the papers inside.

“As your boss, I have full confidence in your abilities.”

“Thanks, boss.” My salute was lopsided, but then again so were my abilities.

“As your boyfriend—” He looked a little like his tie was strangling him as he said it; I figured it wasn’t a term he’d used on himself too often. In contrast, my inner girlfriend was ready to jump on his glass and steel desk and tap dance. “As your boyfriend, I would like to have you for dinner tonight.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant have me over to his house, or literally have me for his main course. Either way, I was hungry. My attempt at a wink made him smile, at least.

“I guess I’ll take care of dessert,” I said.