Page 26 of The Hang Up
Ellie had told him Miriam stopped by to drop off the gloves, and he’d been bummed to miss her. “She’s pretty,” his kid sister had said, grinning like she had in grade school when she found out he had a crush on a girl. “I tried to get her to come in and hang out until you got back, but she didn’t want to wait around for your sorry ass.”
So that’s the way it had to be between them. It made sense, but Jason couldn’t pretend to like it. He’d been trying like hell to forget that kiss for the last four days. Maybe Miriam had had better luck with that than he had.
Around the table, the other executives were beginning to stand up and stuff papers into briefcases. Rex seemed intent on ignoring Jason, but the marketing director, Pete Marshall, gave him a nod. “Do you need a ride back to the office?”
“Nah, I biked here,” Jason said.“You go on ahead. I want to stay a minute longer to go over some of the ad concepts with Holly and Miriam.”
“Actually, Holly has another meeting scheduled in here,” Miriam said with a glance at her business partner. Holly gave what looked like a sympathetic head tilt before Miriam turned back to Jason.
Her eyes shone bright and a little wary, but at least she was looking at him now. “We can talk in my office,” she offered.
“I’d like that.”
Miriam nodded, not echoing the sentiment, but not arguing, either. They both stood up and gathered their things, Miriam moving with crisp efficiency. She headed for the door, and Jason followed, admiring the sway of her hips and the gloss of those dark curls. He remembered the feel of those curls tangled around his fingers, and he ordered himself to stop ogling her.
She rounded a corner into an office, so Jason followed and sat when she gestured him to a straight-backed chair in front of her desk. She pushed her door shut behind him, then turned and plugged in an electric teakettle. He watched in silence as she went about making a pot of tea, arranging a handful of fancy-looking cookies onto a plate, filling a delicate little creamer from a milk carton in the mini-fridge, then carrying the whole thing on a tray to her desk.
She set the small feast on the surface between them, centering the little tray of cookies in the middle of her desk before setting a thin china plate in front of him. She poured each of them some tea in a flowery cup that looked like it was made for a dollhouse.
Finally, she took a seat on the other side of her desk. She looked at him for a few beats and Jason felt the same prickly- skin sensation he used to have when he got summoned to the principal’s office in middle school.
“So,” she said, breaking the silence at last.“Commitment to family is important to you.”
“That’s right,” he said slowly, not sure whether he was supposed to pick up a cookie or just admire them. “I appreciate you underscoring that just now in the meeting.”
“Of course.” Her voice was oddly brittle, and her green eyes flashed with something he couldn’t quite read. “There’s nothing in the world more important to me than loyalty.”
“Good,” Jason said, not sure why they were rehashing this point. “I may be new to Urban Trax, but as CEO, it’s my duty to protect our employees. To look out for their well-being and security.”
“I see.” Miriam steepled her hands together on the desk in front of her as she stared at him with ice in her eyes. “So at what point were you planning to tell me you have a wife and kid?”
“Oh.” A lightbulb flashed in the back of his brain, and he leaned back in his chair, glad to have this out in the open at last. “Well, I guessnever. Since I don’t actually have a wife and kid.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What?”
He laughed, so relieved to realize what all the hostility was about that he didn’t care that her frown deepened at the bark of his laughter. “Ellie,” he said, shaking his head a little as the puzzle pieces clicked together. “You’re talking about Ellie?”
“That’s right,” she said slowly, sounding less sure of herself now. “And your son, Henry?”
“If Henry were my son, this would be a conversation for Jerry Springer.” He laughed again, then scooped his teacup into his palm and took a fortifying slurp. “Henry’s my nephew. Ellie is my sister.”
“Your sister,” she repeated, looking as stunned as he’d felt just a few seconds ago. “And your nephew.” Miriam closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. “God, now I feel like an idiot.”
“Don’t,” he said, setting the teacup down. He kept grinning as he shoved a cookie into his mouth and chewed, dropping crumbs down the front of his shirt. Miriam uncovered her face and he offered her a sympathetic smile. “To be fair,” he said. “I never mentioned them to you.”
“Why on earth not?” she asked, her gaze flickering to the cookie crumbs on his shirt before returning to his face. “We were in the car together for a long time on Saturday. You might have mentioned that you live with your sister and her kid.”
“Technically, they live next door. I own both sides of the duplex, and you just happened to knock on their door instead of mine.”
“Okay,” she said with exaggerated patience. “Still, it seems like something you might have mentioned. We talked about a lot of other things on Saturday.”
He shrugged and brushed cookie crumbs off the front of his shirt before licking the buttery residue off his finger. “I guess I’m a little protective of them. Of their privacy. Henry was diagnosed with leukemia eighteen months ago?—”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!”
“Thank you. Anyway, it’s been a long battle, but he’s in the early stages of remission now. Partial remission, they call it. He’s not out of the dark, but it’s looking promising.” He reached for another cookie. “The whole process has been really hard for Ellie and for Henry. Ellie’s a single mom, and she had a bad experience with a sitter watching him one night she had to work.”
“What happened?”
