My Secret Lover Is Actually My Boss novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Pick It Up

Leon orders her to pick up her badge in front of everyone, she stays for her coworkers, ends the Thursdays in the stairwell, and Norma arrives with the buyer, who Lyle greets like an old friend.

Nobody in the big room breathed.

Sixty-one people looked from the new owner to me, standing at the front with no badge on.

I had kissed that mouth twelve hours ago.

Now it had just told my whole company it was for sale.

Leon Winship walked down the aisle between the tables.

He stopped at the table where my badge lay face up.

He looked at it for a long second.

Then he looked at Lyle.

"What's happening here?"

Lyle put on his meeting smile. "Nothing, sir. A little studio drama. Della's resigning."

"Is she."

"She gets emotional about credit."

Leon turned to me.

His grey eyes gave away nothing. Not the elevator, not the glass, not my name in his mouth last night.

"Ms. Ruddick," he said, like he'd just read it off the badge. "Pick it up."

"Excuse me?"

"Your badge. Pick it up."

"I just quit," I said.

"I heard. I'm asking you to pick it up anyway."

"In front of everyone?"

"That's where you put it down."

My face went hot.

I wanted to throw the badge at his perfect jaw.

He turned back to Lyle before I could.

"Mr. Truax. Good presentation."

"Thank you, sir."

"What was the working folder called?"

Lyle blinked. "Plain Words."

"Before that. When it was drafts on the server. What was the folder called?"

Lyle's smile held, but his eyes went to the screen like the answer might be on it.

"We went through a lot of names," he said. "It was a team process."

"Name one."

The room was so quiet I could hear the air conditioning.

Lyle laughed. "I honestly don't remember. Does it matter?"

"Not to me," Leon said. "I'm selling the company. I just like to know who made what I'm selling."

He let that sit.

I looked down the tables.

The sales guys who sang at every birthday.

The two women in accounts who'd brought casseroles when my mom died.

The junior writer who sat next to me and asked me about commas.

The old men from shipping who'd worked for the old man since before I was born.

Sixty-one people who had just heard the word sell.

If I walked out today, I walked out on all of them.

I picked up my badge.

I clipped it back onto my skirt with my hands shaking.

"I'm staying," I said to the room. "Not for you. For them."

"Noted," Leon said.

That was all he said.

He took the remote out of Lyle's hand, switched off the screen, and told everyone to go back to their desks.

I made it as far as the stairwell.

The stairwell at Winship was the only place on thirty-one with no glass.

Concrete, a steel rail, a fire door that banged.

I heard it bang behind me two flights down.

"Della."

I didn't stop.

"Della. Please."

I stopped on the landing and turned around.

He came down the last steps and stood one above me, so for once we were the same height.

Up close he looked like he hadn't slept.

Good.

"You knew last night," I said.

"Yes."

"You saw the logo on the door and you knew."

"Yes."

"You picked up my card and you asked who was presenting it."

"Yes."

"And you sent me home to sleep."

He closed his eyes for a second.

"I didn't know what he was going to do," he said. "I knew something was wrong. I didn't know what."

"You could have told me who you were."

"You made the rules."

I laughed, and it came out ugly.

"Don't you dare. I said no last names. I didn't say lie about owning my building."

"I didn't own it until Monday."

"Oh, well, then."

He reached for my hand on the rail.

I pulled it back.

"Four months, Win."

"Leon."

"I don't know who that is."

That landed. I watched it land.

He put his hands in his pockets.

"I came here to sell it," he said quietly. "I came to Chicago to sign papers and leave. Then I sat down at a bar next to a woman trying to write a sympathy card, and I kept coming back on Thursdays."

"And you never once thought to ask where I worked."

"You told me not to."

"So it's my fault."

"No. It's mine. I should have asked last night, at the latest. I didn't."

At least he didn't lie.

I hated that he didn't lie. It made it harder to hit him.

"It's over," I said. "The Thursdays. All of it."

He didn't argue.

He just nodded once, slowly.

"Okay."

"You're my boss. You're selling my job. You're selling everyone's job."

"I know."

"Then we're done."

I went back up the stairs past him.

My shoulder brushed his chest and I felt him hold his breath.

I didn't look back.

On thirty-one the elevator chimed as I came through the fire door.

The doors opened on a woman in a camel coat with a silver bob and pearls.

Norma Winship.

She didn't take the coat off. She never took the coat off.

Behind her stepped a heavy man in a grey suit with a Halvern Greetings lanyard around his neck.

"Leon," Norma called past me, to the stairwell door. "There you are. I brought our buyer."

Lyle came across the floor fast, arms already open.

He called the Halvern man by his first name.

Then he hugged him, back slaps and all.

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