Page 50 of Lead Me On
“Okay, but I—”
“Oh, my God,” she yelped. “What day is it?”
“Um… I think…” He looked up to the ceiling, waiting for his mental calendar to spit out an answer. “Thursday, maybe?”
“Thursday,” she murmured. “Thursday the fifteenth.” Her fingers hovered over the files for a moment before they clenched into sudden fists. “Thursday the fifteenth. Seven-thirty breakfast meeting with the head contractor for the Gramercy job.” Air pressure pressed into her. “I didn’t… I didn’t remind you. Did you miss the meeting? Please tell me you didn’t miss the meeting.”
“It’s okay.” Mr. Jennings held up his hands and took a sidestep toward his office door. “No big deal. He called and I apologized and we’re meeting for lunch tomorrow.”
“You have lunch with Edward Cohen tomorrow!”
“Just change it,” he said, and darted for his door. “Ed won’t mind. It’s okay.” The latch clicked softly closed behind him as Jane’s heart beat faster and faster.
She was disintegrating. Every piece of herself that she’d so carefully constructed was peeling away like ancient wallpaper. First she’d slept with the type of man she’d assiduously avoided for ten years. Then she’d cried at her workplace. She’d been caught in an embrace by her boss. Then the typos. The getting drunk over Thai food. And now…now the lost project proposal. And worst of all, she’d caused Mr. Jennings to miss an important meeting. She’d embarrassed and inconvenienced him. She’d failed.
Her purpose in this office was to keep exactly that sort of thing from happening. It was the reason Mr. Jennings had brought her in. It was why he paid her well and told her he couldn’t live without her.
This job was her confidence and her pride and her self-worth. The only thing in the world she was good at. Without this job, she was just a girl with a high-school diploma and an expensive wardrobe. She wouldnotlet this slip away.
“Where is it?” she muttered, glancing one last time through the open file drawer. The proposal didn’t stick its head up and wink at her, so she slammed that drawer and moved on to the next.
“It’s got to be here. It’s got to.” At some point her brain poked her in the back of her spinning head and told her she could reconstruct most of it from Mr. Jennings’s computer files, but that wasn’t the point.
Fifteen minutes later Jane was at the last cabinet, hands shaking as she flipped through every single file, when she found it. She found it. Filed underEfor Edward, instead ofCfor Cohen. “Oh, thank God,” she breathed, clutching the proposal to her chest.
“Jane?” a female voice asked from the front door.
“I found it!” Jane said as she swung toward Lori Love.
“Good! That’s really great.” But Lori didn’t seem to understand just how much relief Jane was feeling, because her voice sounded downright strained.
Jane got up from her knees, still clutching the papers to her chest. “Sorry, I lost something. Whew. Now I have to order a basket of cookies for a contractor. Contractors like food, right? That should smooth things over. Mr. Jennings is in his office, by the way. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
“Wait,” Lori said. Her brown curls swung when she let the front door close behind her. “I’m here to see you, Jane. Quinn called me. He’s worried.”
“There’s no need to be. It won’t happen again. I’m mortified, but—”
“Jane.”
She shut her mouth in response to Lori’s serious tone.
“You remember how screwed up my life was last year?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“So when I tell you I can recognize the signs of a woman falling apart, do you think you can trust that?”
Hmm. This was a more difficult question to answer, because Lori was obviously about to point out that Jane was falling apart. “I suppose it depends on the woman.”
“Jane.” Lori was a no-nonsense kind of girl and her voice made clear she wasn’t interested in coddling Jane.
“Yes?” She wanted to hold the papers for a little longer, but she made herself set them neatly on her desk before wiping her sweaty hands on her chocolate-brown skirt.
“Youare falling apart.”
Unwilling to answer, Jane cleared her throat and took a seat.
“If you want privacy, you know I have no problem with that, but know that if you want to talk, I’m here.”
