บททั้งหมดของ Pregnant by Her Best Friend Brother : บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

He reached us and greeted Grandpa with the warmth of someone being polite to a business obligation, and then his eyes moved to me. He stopped mid-sentence. "It's you," he said. Grandpa looked between us. "You know my granddaughter?" "No," I said, at the same moment he opened his mouth to answer. I looked at him with a clean, pleasant smile. "I don't think we've met." He blinked. Then, recovering: "I thought I recognized you from you almost fell in the hallway earlier. My mistake." "Oh, that was you." I tilted my head slightly. "I didn't recognize you." I extended my hand. "Nice to meet you." He took it. His grip was warm and he held it one beat longer than a handshake required. "Finally," Grandpa said with the manufactured delight of a man who had arranged every element of this moment. "I'll leave you young people. I have his father to speak to." He was already turning, already gone, with the smoothness of a man who had been engineering exits for decades. We were alone in the

Back to present:The office had gone quiet around me by degrees, first the designers leaving one by one, then the meeting room emptying out, then the front desk going dark when Olly left without looking in my direction. Now the only light burning in the whole floor was the one above my desk and the glow of the excel sheet on my screen.I had been at it since Marcus left that morning.The notebook beside my keyboard was covered in numbers and supplier names and question marks and lines crossing out the question marks where I had found answers and more question marks where I hadn't. My phone was warm from being held so long. I had it wedged between my ear and my shoulder while I typed with both hands, waiting for someone on the other end to pick up, and when they did I wrote down what they told me and crossed it against what Marcus had quoted us and wrote that number down too with a small circle around it.The circles were adding up.Not dramatically. Not in the way that would make for

I knocked on Lucas's door with the report folder held against my chest and what I was fairly certain was the closest thing to confidence I had managed since arriving in Aldenvale.The door opened and he was not alone.A man was seated across from his desk, mid-conversation, and they both looked toward me at the same moment. Lucas's expression did the thing it did that flat, assessing cool that made me want to take a step back and I felt the confidence deflate slightly around the edges."I'm sorry," I said immediately. "I'll come back another time.""You've already interrupted," Lucas said. "You might as well come in."I pressed my lips together and walked in.The heels that had never been a problem before this week were currently staging a quiet protest after two days of walking across most of the city, and I was moving slightly more carefully than I would have liked. I crossed to the desk and set the folder on the edge of it."I just came to leave the report. I can go over it wheneve

The sounds had been going on for the better part of an hour, the particular thudding and scraping of furniture being moved into a space that had been empty long enough to have its own echo.I was already on the terrace with my ice cream when I saw the man from the moving company carry a small table out through the sliding doors of the unit beside mine and set it against the railing. Then a chair. He stepped back, assessed the arrangement, adjusted the chair by two inches, and went back inside.I looked at the terrace.I had walked past that space for a week without really registering it as a space, just the edge of the building, a railing, air. But looking at it now, I noticed how close it actually was to mine. Not far at all. Close enough that if someone wanted to step across they probably could without much effort.I looked at my own terrace doors and considered this for a moment.Then I looked back at my ice cream."Why is this so good?" I muttered, taking another spoonful of it. I

The meeting room emptied and they walked the corridor together, Lucas slightly ahead, hands in his pockets."That went well," Lucas said."It did." Alexander glanced at his phone. "The timeline works."Lucas was already looking at his own phone, typing something brief and sending it before sliding it back into his jacket.They walked in comfortable silence for a few seconds."That's your new assistant," Alexander said. The inflection made it not quite a question."She is." Lucas kept walking. "She had a bad day today. You should see her on a good one she had Marcus Maron out of our supplier contract and replaced inside a week. Saved us thirty percent. Hard worker."Alexander's jaw tightened. He stopped walking.Lucas noticed and turned around."For you to talk like that," Alexander said, "in that short a time she must have made quite an impression."Lucas looked at him. "What are you trying to say.""You know what I'm trying to say." Alexander crossed his arms. "It wasn't long ago tha