A Pregnant Proposal. Elizabeth Harbison

she asked, distractedly.

      “Jen Martin. Did she tell you that she might not stay with the company?”

      Leila turned back to him and shook her head. “I just heard it through the grapevine. Kane’s right, you do seem awfully concerned about her.”

      He wasn’t going to dignify that implication with an answer. He stood up. “If it has to do with staff changes, I’m concerned. I’m going to go see what she has to say about this herself.” He started out the door. “Print out that report on absenteeism and office day care.”

      “Okay. Should I send your calls to Jen’s office?”

      “Take messages,” Matt tossed over his shoulder.

      He punched the elevator button and stood back, impatiently tapping his foot. He didn’t see much of Jen at work, but he’d be awfully sorry if she left. There was just something nice about having her around. He’d miss seeing her face. He pushed the elevator button again. Maybe, if she was considering leaving, the day-care center would convince her to stay.

      Finally the elevator doors opened and Susan Bane stepped out.

      “Is Jen in her office?” he asked, without preamble.

      Susan nodded. “I just saw her. Why?”

      “I just need to talk to her for a minute.”

      “Well, you’d better hurry, she’ll be gone soon.”

      “What do you mean?” he asked sharply.

      Susan looked surprised. “She was getting ready to go to lunch.”

      “Oh.” Relief. “Maybe I can catch her.”

      “Watch out.” Susan laughed. “Lately, if Jen wants to eat, you’d better stay out of the way.”

      He smiled and the doors began to close. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

      When he got to her office, Jen was indeed on her way out. She already had her coat and scarf on. In one mittened hand she held a doughnut, and, as she tried to close her office door, her keys slipped out of the other.

      Matt swooped in and bent down to pick them up for her. “Hey,” he said, handing her the key chain.

      Her face flushed prettily, making her green eyes sparkle even more than usual. “Hey,” she said back. “Thanks. What are you doing down here?”

      “I came to see you, actually.”

      “Me?”

      “Yes, can you spare a few minutes?” Honestly, he’d never seen such a beautiful example of the “bloom of pregnancy.” Jen had it in spades.

      “Now?”

      “Unless you’re in too much of a hurry.”

      She shrugged. “I was just going to go home and eat. No biggie.”

      “How about I take you to Slates for lunch?”

      “Slates,” she repeated, with a raise of her brows. “What’s the occasion?”

      “I need to have a talk with you.”

      Her face paled. “You’re not firing me, are you? I know I’m going to need some time off, but—”

      “No, Jen, no.” He was so touched by her unexpected show of vulnerability that he wanted to take her into his arms. “Actually, I want to pick your brain about childcare. Kane’s interested in putting a center on-site for you and the other parents here.”

      Her shoulders relaxed. “That would be a godsend.”

      “Great. Let’s go, then. Maybe we can hammer out enough of the details to get something started.”

      Jen heaved her purse up onto her shoulder. “So whose idea was the day care? Yours?”

      He shook his head. “I’d like to take credit, but it was Kane’s idea.”

      She looked surprised. “No kidding?”

      “No kidding.”

      “Wow. He’s really been softening up lately. I saw him about ten minutes ago and he seemed unusually interested in how I’m feeling. I didn’t even know he knew who I was.”

      Matt remembered his conversation with Kane earlier. “He knows who you are. You’re hard to miss.”

      She made a face. “I know. Thanks for the reminder.” She gestured helplessly at her belly. “Not too much longer.”

      “I didn’t mean that,” Matt said, then laughed. “Although you have a point. But you’re a standout anyway.”

      She screwed up her face. “In a good way or a bad way?”

      “A good way, of course. If it was in a bad way, I wouldn’t have said anything.” He kept a straight face. “I would have just fired you.”

      She cocked her head ever so slightly, but before she could respond, a round, bespectacled man neither recognized called out, “Miss Martin?” from down the hall in front of them.

      Matt and Jen turned to see him trundling toward them, sweating, and holding a folder of some sort.

      “Yes?”

      “Jennifer Martin?” the man asked, mopping his brow with his forearm.

      A cannonball of apprehension lodged in Matt’s stomach. Instinctively he stepped in front of Jen and started to ask who the man was, but before he could get a word out, she said, “Yes, I’m Jennifer Martin.”

      The man shoved the folder roughly into her hand and said, “These are for you.”

      “What?”

      The man waddled back down the hall without another word.

      “Hey!” she called after him. “Who are you?”

      “He looks like a process server,” Matt said gently. “Just a messenger for someone else.”

      “An evil, soulless messenger.” She frowned and tried to look at the folder. “But for who?” She lost her grip and dropped the folder rather than her doughnut, then laughed. “Wouldn’t want to drop this. Would you mind picking that up?”

      “Not at all.” It went against his instincts to pick up someone else’s private papers, but he couldn’t very well stand there and make her bend over to get them. He lifted the folder and held it out to her.

      She gestured that she was holding keys in one hand and her doughnut in the other. “Would you look?” she asked with a charming smile. “Who’s it from?”

      He looked at the return address. “Sedgewick-Armour.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Ack. I should have known. It’s Philip’s father. I wonder what he wants now. An old pair of socks that Philip left at the apartment, no doubt. Open it up.”

      “Jen, I really don’t think I should.”

      “Oh, come on.” She dropped her keys into her pocket and pulled a mitten off with her teeth. “It’s no big deal.” She stuffed the mitten into her pocket, transferred the doughnut to her free hand and did the same with her other mitten, watching Matt all along.

      With a shrug, he opened the envelope and pulled out the papers. His heart sank. “Let’s go back in your office.”

      “Why?”

      He opened the door, put a hand on her small shoulder and guided her back into the office.

      “Matt, jeez, what’s the matter? What do they want, the stereo? They can have it.”

      “They don’t want the stereo, Jen.” She was eight months pregnant and single. That was hard enough without additional stresses. This was going to be devastating. And it was absolutely the last