She's Having the Boss's Baby - By Kate Carlisle Page 0,4
important that you need to go next week?”
She gazed back at him steadily. “It’s personal.”
“You can tell me. We’re friends.”
“You’re my boss.”
“And your friend.”
She smiled. “Trust me, Aidan. You don’t want to know.”
He folded his hands together on his desk and smiled patiently. “Now that’s where you’re wrong. What can possibly be so important that you can only give one week’s notice and then go off and leave us for three long weeks? We need you here.”
“I appreciate that, but I’m entitled to a vacation.”
“Of course you are,” he said, wondering why he was being so inflexible about this. She was their best employee. Employee? Hell, she was practically a partner in the business. Of course she was entitled to take time off. He just didn’t want her to leave right now while things were in flux. It was bad enough he didn’t have a secretary. But to lose his right-hand man—er, woman—for three weeks? He didn’t want to think of the many things that could go wrong. “We have two major construction projects going, there are union issues, my brother is out of the country, I’m going to have to travel, as well. You know we depend on you to keep everything running smoothly.”
“But—”
“It’s not about whether you deserve the time off,” he rushed to add. “It’s just that, hell, you’re always so organized. You plan your vacation time a year in advance. What happened?”
“Something came up,” she said primly.
“Damn it, Ellie. What in the world is so important that you’d leave five hundred convention attendees in the lurch?” Not to mention me, he didn’t say aloud.
She let go an exasperated sigh, then said, “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She bounded out of her chair and paced back and forth in front of his desk. Suddenly she stopped and said in a rush, “I have an appointment with a fertility clinic in Atlanta. The timing is critical because everything depends on my ovulation cycle. Once I arrive in Atlanta, the clinic advised that I’ll need two days of complete rest to get over any jet lag my ovaries might suffer. Then it’ll take a week to go through their process, and that’s followed up with two weeks of, well, rest and waiting.”
Aidan’s eyes widened. He shook his head. Had his ears plugged up suddenly? He couldn’t have heard what he thought he’d just heard. Ovaries? Good grief. Fertility?
He glared at her. “What in the world are you talking about?”
Wearing a serene smile now, Ellie sat back down in her chair. “I’m going to have a baby.”
*
There. She had finally said it out loud.
Ellie tried to appear calm, tried not to squirm in her chair as Aidan stared sharply at her. Well, it was his own darn fault for pushing the point, she thought. Honestly, she had tried to soft-peddle her vacation plans, tried to avoid explaining all the gory details, but she should’ve known Aidan Sutherland wouldn’t let things slide. He never let things slide.
Yes, she usually planned her vacations a year ahead of time. Yes, she was highly organized, detail oriented, never impulsive, always in control. She didn’t do anything without preparing a spreadsheet first. But come on, once in a while a girl had to be spontaneous. That’s what she’d heard, anyway. Ellie was pretty sure she’d never been spontaneous in her life. Until now.
She watched Aidan’s gaze narrow in on her. He turned his head slightly and leaned forward, almost as though he’d experienced a hearing loss. “Say that again?”
Ellie sighed. She and Aidan had a fabulous working relationship. She thought of him as her best friend at work, even though he was her boss. And even though he was rugged and gregarious, athletic and tanned. And gorgeous. Handsome. Downright sexy. But she was getting off track.
The fact was, she’d liked Aidan from the first day she started her job at Sutherland Corp. The two of them shared a lot of the same interests and as business associates, they’d traveled together on dozens of occasions. Together they had closed numerous deals and even a bar or two when the negotiations turned out to be rougher than they should have been.
It didn’t help that she had developed a ridiculous schoolgirl crush on Aidan shortly after she started working with him. It didn’t matter though, because she would never do anything so stupid as to act on her feelings. Not only would it destroy their relationship and mark the end of the best job she’d