My hands caressed his rough cheeks. “For now…but I only have six weeks left. You won’t be my boss after that.”
My heart beat in my throat, and I died a few times while I waited for his reply. He took a breath and let out a sigh, and a weight inside my stomach dropped as I anticipated his rejection. Reaching down, he put his hands on my hips and scooted me back on his lap. “April…”
My eyes fluttered closed. Here it came…
“You know why your dad was on the campus today, right?”
I frowned and my eyes flicked to his. “He’s investing in the company. He’s done that before. And since Adam used to work for him and the company is going public…”
His jaw tightened. “It’s more than that. Adam brought him in to help form our new board of directors. It means…it means that he’ll probably end up being the chairman of the board after the IPO.”
My throat tightened and I felt sick, pressure building behind my eyes. This meant that there would be no hope for us, not even in six weeks. If my dad was the chairman of the board at Draco, and the CFO of the company was dating his daughter...
Wait, it wasn’t like that was against the law or anything. Unless Jordan was counting on the fact that we wouldn’t last…
“It’s not impossible.” I said, testing my hypothesis, to see if I was right.
“It could cause a lot of problems between your dad and me.”
“It could, if things don’t end well, but why are you assuming that will happen?”
He pressed his lips together. “Because it always does.”
I blinked. I knew that his past had messed with his head, but did that honestly mean he had no hope at all?
I absently played with the collar on his shirt and avoided looking into his eyes. “There’s…there’s a first time for everything. You aren’t willing to take that chance?”
He clenched his jaw, eyes narrowing. “It’s not really fair of you to ask me that.”
It hurt to breathe. My eyes stung from the sudden emotion rising up. I would not let him see me cry. I would not.
I quietly slipped off his lap onto the couch beside him.
He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry—”
When I thought my voice would be steady enough, I spoke. “So am I.”
There was a pinch of loss deep down in my chest. I’d allowed my foolish heart to get involved when I’d known perfectly well that this wouldn’t go anywhere.
“April…come here,” he said, pulling me into his arms, pressing me against him. I didn’t resist, letting him feel like he was comforting me when he really wasn’t. The tears, they were coming. I didn’t know how long I could fight them off.
Everything in me hurt. My throat was tight. My gut ached. My skin was hot and flushed, my pulse erratic.
I had either contracted the Ebola virus or I’d fallen in love with Jordan Fawkes.
Chapter 24
Jordan
The next few weeks brought long, arduous hours at the office as we prepared for the IPO roadshow. I was here for twelve to fifteen hours a day, arriving at seven in the morning and leaving at nine or ten every night. I’d worked those kinds of hours before, but this was different. It seemed sort of hollow and meaningless, and the harder I worked, the more I realized that my heart wasn’t completely in it like it had been.
April was here most of the time, too, which made things all the more difficult. She arrived at her usual start time—I’d noticed in Canada that she wasn’t a morning person—but she always stayed late and was one of the last people out of the building each day.
Sometimes Daddy Dearest was here as well, and it was interesting to watch them together. I puzzled at the guarded way with which she dealt with him. I wondered if she counted him among the list of men in her life who had hurt her, who had let her down. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was on that list as well.
Her demeanor toward me could best be described as coolly polite. No more joking around, no conveniently placed middle fingers indicating that she wasn’t going to take my shit. Even when I tried to get a rise out of her, she gave me the same tight, courteous smile.
And I hated it.
One night, on a particularly late night the week before we were to hit the road, Mia arrived with a stack of take-out from a nearby Mexican place. She wanted us all to sit in the break room and have a decent meal—together. And that all included Adam, Mia, David, his daughter, me, and a couple of other officers and their assistants, along with Kat, Mia’s friend who worked in playtesting.