Michelle Celmer - The Secretary's Secret

“None taken.” How could he be offended when he’d been thinking the same thing earlier. Although maybe not the last on earth part.

She walked over to the couch and crumpled onto the cushions. “My parents are going to kill me. They think I’m still a good Catholic girl. A twenty-eight-year-old, snow-white virgin who goes to church twice a week. What am I going to tell them?”

Nick sat down beside her. He slipped an arm around her shoulder and she leaned into him, soft and warm.

Yeah, this was nice. It felt…right.

And just like that he knew exactly what he needed to do.

“I guess you only have one choice,” he said.

“Live the rest of my life in shame?”

Her pessimism made him grin. “No. I think you should marry me.”

Zoë pulled out of Nick’s arms and stared up at him. “Marry you? Are you crazy?”

Dumb question, Zoë. Of course he was crazy.

Rather than being angry with her, he smiled, as if he’d been expecting her to question his sanity. “What’s so crazy about it?”

If he couldn’t figure that out himself, he really was nuts.

“If we get married right away, your parents don’t have to know you were already pregnant. Problem solved.”

And he thought marrying someone he didn’t love wouldn’t be a problem? Not that kind of love anyway. She didn’t doubt that he loved her as a friend, and she him, but that wasn’t enough.

“We’re both feeling emotional and confused,” she said. He more than her, obviously. “Maybe we should take a day or two to process this before we make any kind of life altering decisions.”

“We’re having a baby together, Zoë. You don’t get much more life altering than that.”

“My point exactly. We have a lot to consider.”

“Look, I know you’re not crazy about the idea of getting married to anyone—”

“And you’re too crazy about it. Did you even stop to think that you would be marrying me for all the wrong reasons? You want Susie homemaker. Someone to squeeze out your babies, keep your house clean and have dinner waiting in the oven when you get home from work. Well, take a look around you, Nick. My life is in shambles. My house is a disaster and if I can’t microwave myself a meal in five minutes or less, I don’t buy it.”

He didn’t look hurt by her refusal, which made her that much more certain marrying him would be a bad idea. She could never be the cardboard cutout wife he was looking for. She wouldn’t be any kind of a wife at all.

And even if they could get past all of that, it still wouldn’t work. He was such a good guy. Perfect in so many ways. Except the one that counted the most.

He didn’t love her.

She took his hand between her two. It was rough and slightly calloused from years of working construction with his employees. He may have owned the company, may have had more money than God, but he liked getting his hands dirty. He liked to feel the sun on his back and fresh air in his lungs. One day cooped up in the office and he was climbing the walls.

She didn’t doubt that he would put just as much of himself into his marriage. He was going to make some lucky woman one hell of a good husband.

Just not her.

“It was a noble gesture. But I think we both need to take some time and decide what it is we really want.”

“How much time?” he asked.

“I’m going to have to make a doctor’s appointment. Let’s get through that first then we’ll worry about the other stuff.”

Who knows, maybe she got a false positive from the pregnancy test. Maybe she would get a blood test at the doctor’s office and find out they had done all this worrying for nothing.

“Congratulations! Your test was positive! If you haven’t yet made a follow-up appointment with Doctor Gordon, please dial one. If you need to speak to a nurse, dial two—”

Zoë hung up the phone in her office, cutting short the obnoxiously perky prerecorded message she’d gotten when she phoned the doctor’s office for her blood test results.

It was official. Not that it hadn’t been official before. The blood test had just been a formality. She was definitely, without a doubt, having Nick’s baby.

Oh boy.

Or girl, she supposed.

She would walk down to his office and tell him, but he’d been in her office every ten minutes wondering if she’d made the call.

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