She Fell for Her Stepbrother, Then Found Out She Was Pregnant novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Wrong Numbers
Caleb corrects Lena's Hartwell budget in front of the whole leadership table and their father gives him the numbers; later he walks in on her changing, and that night she hears him say her name through his office door.
Caleb told the entire leadership table that my numbers were wrong.
He did it four minutes into my presentation.
The Hartwell Avenue budget was still glowing on the screen behind me.
"Page eleven," he said, and he didn't even stand up. "You left out freight."
Everyone at the table turned to look at the slide.
My father sat at the head of the table with his reading glasses on their cord and said nothing.
"It's in appendix C," I said.
"Nobody reads appendix C."
"Anyone who plans to vote on a showroom does."
"Then they'd find a number that's off by two hundred thousand dollars."
He said it calmly, which is how Caleb says everything he wants to win.
I'd worked on that budget for six weeks.
I had also checked page eleven twice.
For one awful second I couldn't remember whether I'd checked the freight line.
Caleb's green eyes stayed on me the whole time.
My father cleared his throat. "Okay. Enough, both of you."
That is what my father says when two people he loves are fighting in front of staff.
"Caleb will take the Hartwell numbers from here," he said. "Lena, you keep design and the opening plan."
"Dad."
"We'll talk about it later, sweetheart."
Everyone looked at their notes.
I closed my laptop and sat down, and my face was so hot I could feel it in my ears.
Since my father married his mother, every meeting Caleb and I share ends this way.
The week the two families merged, Caleb moved his desk to the far end of the fifth floor.
He also took the parking space beside the loading dock.
He has never told me why, and I've never given him the satisfaction of asking.
Diane caught me in the hallway after the meeting.
She is Caleb's mother and my stepmother, and she can make any hard thing sound easy.
"He isn't trying to hurt you, honey," she said, and she squeezed my arm.
"Your father only wants peace. Give it a few weeks. It'll all smooth over."
"It always smooths over for him."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant."
I noticed that she hadn't asked whether the budget was right.
Nobody had.
Not my father, not the people around the table, and not the woman who had spent three years telling me to be patient.
I stood there with my laptop against my chest and felt very alone in a building with my family's name on it.
She smiled the calm smile she uses on vendors and patted my arm again.
Then she went down the hall toward the elevators and didn't look back.
I made it three steps before an intern came around the corner with a tray of four coffees.
She walked straight into me.
All four cups went down my white blouse.
The intern started apologizing, and I told her it was fine.
I walked to my office with hot coffee soaking through to my skin.
I keep a spare blouse in my bottom drawer for exactly this kind of week.
I shut the door, peeled off the ruined one and dropped it in the trash.
Then I stood there in my bra and my skirt, shaking out my hands.
Then the door opened.
"Your father wants you to have the corrected file," Caleb said.
He stopped.
He had a folder in one hand and the other on the doorknob.
I didn't cover myself.
I have no idea why, except that he'd just taken my project away in front of the whole room.
I was not going to scramble for him.
"Knock," I said.
"I did."
"You did not."
He didn't answer that.
The office smelled of spilled coffee, and the hallway behind him was empty, and neither of us moved.
He looked at me.
It was not the look he gives me across a conference table.
That one has the jaw set and the scarred eyebrow going up.
His eyes went down and came back up, slowly, and he forgot to blink.
His knuckles were white on the doorknob.
I have spent three years learning what Caleb Mercer looks like when he hates me.
This wasn't it.
"Get out," I said, and my voice came out much lower than I meant it to.
He put the folder on my desk without looking at it.
"Appendix C starts on page forty," he said. "You were right that it's in there. You just buried it."
Then he left, and shut the door very softly.
I stood there for a while with my skin still stinging from the coffee.
My heart was going much too fast for a woman who was supposed to be furious.
I told myself it was anger.
Anger was the only thing Caleb had ever given me a reason to feel.
Then I put on the clean blouse and buttoned it wrong and had to start over.
I stayed late that night.
At twenty to nine the fifth floor was dark.
The only light came from the far end, past the conference rooms, where Caleb's office sits alone.
I picked up the folder.
I had read it twice.
He was wrong about page eleven but right about the freight, and I was not going to let that stand overnight.
So I walked down the dark hall to give it back to him myself.
His door was open about two inches.
The lamp was on.
I heard the creak of his chair.
I heard him breathing, hard and uneven, and I stopped with my hand in the air.
Then I saw through the gap what his hand was doing.
His voice, when it came, was low and rough and nothing like the one he'd used on me that morning.
"Lena," he said. "God. Lena."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend