Leigh Michaels - The Tycoon's Baby

Outside the classroom, a petite blonde was waiting for her, leaning against the wall with her books folded in her arms. She fell into step beside Janey. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

Janey shook her head. “I’m due at work in an hour. You can walk over to the apartment with me if you like, and talk while I change clothes. What is it, Ellen? Boyfriend problems again?”

“Dennis is being a jerk.” Ellen sounded almost absentminded. “But that’s nothing new. I can’t believe you’ve still got this job.”

“Why? I’m a good worker. In another month, I’ll be finished with my probation, and I’ll even get a raise—”

“And another noisy, greasy, disgusting machine to run.”

“Somebody has to make drive shafts, honey, or your little red car would be a paperweight instead of transportation.” Janey dodged traffic to cross the street, which separated the campus from a residential area.

Ellen broke into a run to catch up. “But why does it have to be you? If you soak your hands for a year, you’ll never get all the grease out of your skin. I can’t believe you haven’t quit by now.”

“It’s good money, and the hours are compatible with the classes I need to take. Besides, what would I do instead? Wait tables? Sorry, dear, but I’d rather smell of machine oil than french-fry grease. To say nothing of dealing with obnoxious customers...”

Which wouldn’t be any easier than dealing with the jerks on the manufacturing line, she reminded herself.

Ellen seemed to have read her mind. “Are the men still harassing you?”

“Now and then,” Janey admitted. She pulled out her keys as she ducked down the stairs beside a run-down old house to her apartment in the basement.

“What does that mean? Is it a constant hassle, or do they let you take breaks from it once in a while?” Ellen shook her head. “And you still haven’t reported them?”

“What good would it do? I’d just get myself labeled a troublemaker, which is hardly what I want before I’m even through my trial employment period. The things they do are never so clearly abusive that it’s obvious, you know, or the supervisors would have seen it already.”

“So go over their heads.”

“Oh, right. I’ll just march into Webb Copeland’s office and announce that he has a bunch of sexist redneck jerks working on the manufacturing line. And I’m sure he’ll promote me to corporate vice president and put me in charge of sensitivity training.”

She pushed the door open. The apartment looked worse than usual, with her roommate’s clothes and belongings strewn across the living-room furniture.

Ellen looked around. “Has Kasey been hosting police raids? It looks like someone’s been executing a search warrant in here.”

Janey smiled. “Actually it’s an improvement over the upholstery. Kasey has better taste in clothes than the landlord does in furniture.”

Ellen’s face was tight. “You have a horrible job, you study the most incredible hours, you live in a rat hole...”

“Ellen, please—”

“I just hate it that you have to work so hard for this!” Tears gleamed in Ellen’s eyes, and her fists clenched.

Janey said lightly, “Oh, it’s good for my soul to work hard. Besides, it’s what I get for not starting college on time. Since I had a job those few years in between and I actually made a little money, I can’t get any real financial help now.” She unearthed a box of tissues buried under a pile of Kasey’s sweaters and handed it to Ellen.

Absently Ellen pulled a tissue from the box. “Maybe my father could loan you some money.”

“Don’t you dare ask him,” Janey ordered. “Even if he had the spare cash, it wouldn’t be fair to put him on the spot. Anyway, I won’t ask anybody to loan me money unless I can come up with something to offer as security—and that’s about as likely as being struck by lightning. Look, Ellen, I know you only bring it up because you care. But being reminded of my circumstances doesn’t change them, it just encourages me to feel sorry for myself.”

Ellen sniffed and blew her nose. “I have never known you to feel sorry for yourself.”

Janey smiled. “I’m glad to find out it doesn’t show.” She went into her tiny bedroom to change into the faded jeans and shabby flannel shirt she wore to work.

She wiped off her makeup, since in the factory’s heat it would slide off her face anyway, and pulled her hair into a tight braid, which would keep it out of reach of the machines she’d be running—and tried to put what Ellen had said out of her mind.

It wasn’t as if anyone was holding a gun to her head, forcing her to live this way, Janey reminded herself. She’d chosen to sacrifice her living standard and to work at a job she didn’t like because her long-term goals were more important.

In another couple of years, she’d be far enough along in her education to qualify for internships in her field, and she’d be able to build experience and develop contacts that would help in her eventual search for a full-time job. But most internships didn’t pay, and even if she was lucky enough to land one of the few that did, she couldn’t make enough money to support herself and finish her last year of school, too.

So in the meantime she needed to put away all the money she could—and that meant for the next two years she’d be working the swing shift at Copeland Products.

Two more years of running noisy, messy machines, carving and bending solid metal into vehicle parts. Two more years of fellow employees who were unused to working side by side with women on the production line, men who vented their discomfort in crude remarks. Two more years of coming home after midnight exhausted and filthy, to be greeted by a stack of homework and an alarm clock already ticking ominously toward a too-early morning.

Two more years. It sounded like eternity.

Janey took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. She’d take it one day at a time, and she’d pull through...because she had to.

* * *

THE COPELAND PRODUCTS factory was brilliantly lit and incredibly noisy, for even during the change of shifts the machines kept running. As Janey crossed the factory floor to check in with her supervisor, her safety goggles were still dangling on their strap around her neck, but she made sure her electronic earmuffs were already in place. The earmuffs were less than comfortable, but the up-to-date engineering muted the roar of the machinery while allowing the human voice to come through loud and strong. Janey wasn’t so sure that was really a technological advance; given her choice, she’d have opted for cotton balls instead so she wouldn’t have to listen to her fellow workers. Certain ones of them, at any rate.

She arrived at her assigned post with a minute to spare, and the man who’d operated the machine on the day shift stepped aside. “It’s been running a little wild,” he said. “I’ve been adjusting it all day, but it keeps throwing the shavings instead of dropping them into the bin. I’m starting to think we’ve got a bad batch of steel and it’s not the machine at all.”

“Great,” Janey muttered, and watched intently as he showed her the adjustments he’d made. As soon as he left she pulled up a tall stool so she could perch high enough to keep an eye on every moving part. If she was going to have to baby-sit the machine, she might as well be comfortable.

The man at the next machine called, “Wish I could sit down on the job.”

She looked over in surprise. The man who usually ran that piece of equipment—the one who so frequently entertained himself by tossing suggestive remarks at Janey—was nowhere to be seen, and this worker was obviously settling in for the shift.