Everyone Mocks the Pregnant "Nobody," She's Secretly the Boss's Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Floor Forty

On the executive floor she is mocked again, Nolan's hand finds the baby kicking, and she finds her father's company name in the archive index.

I said nothing back to him in the elevator.

At nine the doors opened and I walked out, and he let them close on him.

The next morning I came in at eight with a cardboard box that held a mug, a stapler and a framed photo of my mother.

My new desk was on forty, at the end of a hall, beside the printer.

It sat directly outside Nolan's office door.

The woman at the next desk looked at my stomach, then at my box, and then back at her screen.

"The payroll girl," she said to nobody. "She got a desk. I got eleven years."

Two men from the finance suite stopped at the water cooler to look at me.

"Is she here for the vote?" one asked.

"She's here because somebody wants to see who flinches," the other said, and they both laughed.

I sat down with my hands flat on the desk.

At nine, a courier put a basket on my keyboard.

It held cashmere socks, prenatal vitamins and a card in neat blue ink.

Welcome to forty! Eat something. Ask me anything. -I.

Imogen had thought of everything, including the brand of vitamins I took.

I had not told her the brand.

I noticed that, and then I read the card again and put it out of my head.

Nolan's door opened at ten.

"Ms. Collins," he said, and everyone on the hall looked up. "Contracts in the supply closet. Bring the Hollister file."

"Yes, Mr. Tunstall."

I took the long way around the printer so that nobody could see my face.

The supply closet was a room with metal shelves and a single bulb.

I found the file on the second shelf.

The door closed behind me, and I did not have to turn around to know who had shut it.

"Ten minutes," Nolan said. "I only have ten."

I turned with the file against my chest.

"You told me to go back to my desk," I said. "In front of forty people who were laughing at me."

"If I'd claimed you at that table, my father would have had you in a car by two o'clock."

"You told me you were in Boston."

"I was with Imogen to get her father's name on my vote," he said. "I can't tell you more than that. Not yet."

"Because you can't, or because you won't?"

His jaw moved.

He had been standing very straight, and he let his shoulders drop.

"Avery," he said. "I am asking you for four more days."

"I gave you four months."

The baby kicked then, hard enough that I pressed my free hand to my side.

He saw it.

"Is that him?" he said.

"Her. I think. She does this when she's angry."

He crossed the closet in two steps and stopped just short of touching me.

His hand lifted and stopped in the air between us.

I should have stepped away.

I took his hand and put it under the file, flat against the left side of my stomach.

His palm was warm, and it shook slightly.

The baby kicked into it.

Nolan breathed out through his nose, and his eyes closed.

"There," he said, very quietly. "Hello."

I stood with his hand on my stomach and all the anger I had brought in slipped half an inch.

It slipped for exactly as long as it took me to remember where we were.

"Ten minutes are up," I said, and I stepped back.

His hand stayed in the air for a second before he lowered it.

"Friday," he said. "Please."

I walked out with the Hollister file and did not answer him.

On my way back to my desk I passed the corner where the records binders sat.

The binder at the front was labeled ARCHIVE INDEX, closed projects by year.

I turned to 2019 without really deciding to.

My finger moved down the page and stopped at a line near the bottom.

Collins & Son Builders. Harbor Point Tower, final invoice, disputed. File 40-E, drawer 3.

My father had built one tower in his life.

Lionel Tunstall had refused to pay for the last six floors, and my father had not recovered.

He had died the next spring in our kitchen, holding the invoice.

I had taken a payroll desk in his building to find the paper that proved Lionel knew what he was doing.

I looked at the door marked ARCHIVE across the hall, with its card reader glowing red.

I had been fifty feet from it for one day.

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