Chapter 30

Millie

Was there any worse sentence than, “We need to talk?” I couldn’t think of one right now, especially when Knox delivered it so coolly. Those grey eyes didn’t give away a damn thing as he stared down at me. I, however, was freaking the hell out. First day on the job, doing something I hadn’t done before. I could run a whole pub with little effort, but the workings of government procurement were labyrinthine and complex. Then there was the little issue of telling Knox and the others the truth.

“You got it, girlfriend!” Judy’s enthusiasm was infectious, forcing me to smile through my distress. “And thank god for that. Brent had someone here, and let’s just say the guys thought she was amazing. Couldn’t do a damn thing right, but pretty, y’know?”

“Hey, sometimes it's better to be kinda average,” I said, clicking through the process of sending the purchase order for approval.

“Average.” She snorted. “Oh, you’ll have guys walking in this office looking for dumber things than a regular order of milk if you let them. Are you single?”

“It’s… complicated,” I replied, hitting send.

“I hear ya. Before I met Blue, I thought I’d never find anyone worth sticking around for, but he’s gonna be the best daddy.” She groaned as she eased her shoes off and then put her feet up on a nearby chair. “Even if my feet are swelling to the same size as my head during the process.”

Swelling feet, needing to pee a lot, aching back, my mind catalogued every symptom, but hey, at least I’d have good hair when I got further along in the pregnancy.

“He doesn’t have any single friends, does he?” I asked.

That got her laughing.

“None that you’d want. Too old, too set in their way, not able to keep their dicks in their pants.” She ticked each attribute off on a finger. “I couldn’t in all conscience recommend any of them, but…” A sly smile spread across her face. “What about Knox?”

“What about him?”

I tried to cover my reaction by turning to the next request in her inbox, but I couldn’t be sure she didn’t see my pulse leaping in my throat.

“He’s a good guy. Needs a wife badly, someone to look after him, make him smile every now and again.”

“Sounds like a full-time job.”

My voice was perfectly neutral, my hand shifting the mouse and click, click, clicking.

“I mean, you guys seemed to be vibing with each other at the party.” Click. I went still. “And apparently you ended up kissing?”

You bloody dickhead , I thought, kicking past-Millie’s arse in so many ways. For coming to the party, for playing drinking games with strangers, for… I sucked in a breath because wallowing time was over, and it was time to deal with my shit. I plastered a sheepish smile on my face and turned back to face Judy.

“That was just a dare. Honestly, I think we’re both a bit embarrassed about the whole thing. There won’t be a repeat. I never would’ve kissed him in the first place if I knew I’d end up working here.”

“Hey, you’re both consenting adults. You don’t need to explain. Just, firefighters are as gossipy as school girls?—”

“Who’s gossipy?” Rhett walked in the door with a piece of paper in hand. He grabbed a spare chair and turned it around with a flourish, then straddled it before regarding the two of us closely. “What’s the tea, Bun Bun?”

“I kissed Knox.” I blinked, he blinked, we were all taken aback by that I’m sure, but hey, all those years working in hospitality made clear that trying to hide this shit wasn’t going to work. People talked until they had something better to talk about. “On a dare at the Christmas party.”

“Well, we won’t hold that against you,” Rhett replied. That smile, those dimples, they caught my attention until I remembered who else had them. “Just makes you one of us. Hops here got caught banging Blue in one of the fire trucks at one of the Christmas parties.”

Judy shrugged, even as her face went bright red.

“He’d been on the road for ages and just got in.”

“So what sins have you committed in the name of festive cheer, Rhett?” I asked.

His smile faded, and for a moment I thought I’d overstepped. Instead, he shook his head and forged on.

“Said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. You know, the usual shit. Now, Hoppy?—”

“Not Hoppy,” Judy said. “I hate Hoppy.”

“As I was saying, Hoppy.” Rhett winked at me. “The boss wants to get the orders in for the school visits. Term is about to start again, and we’re going to get a lot of requests from teachers…”

Time ended up flying by. From requests from people walking into the office to the emails in Judy’s inbox, I got plenty of practise fielding requests and processing them through the system, as well as stuff I was more familiar with like receiving goods.

“You’ve got this,” Judy said, clapping me on the shoulder, “and now we’ve got a lunch break.”

“Jude—” Someone went to walk in the door, but she stopped them from taking another step.

“Mumma needs yet another pee break and some lunch.”

“Oh, I can look after this,” I told her.

The guy smiled, taking a step towards me.

“You can, after a lunch break. Don’t start working through the breaks. You’ll have people in here waving paper at you from dawn to dusk.”

“C’mon, Jude,” the guy said.

“Put your paperwork on my computer, and I promise to look at it as soon as we’re back from break,” she said.

I didn’t focus on his grateful nod, simply following her down the hall. It was her ungainly waddle, the winces she made with every step, and saw myself doing the same.

I didn’t have a plan, just a nebulous set of ideas strung together with a determination to get through. Part of me wanted to quiz Judy if she was the same, if she and her partner just went with the flow, making it work.

But I couldn’t.

One foot in front of the other, that’s all I could focus on, so that’s what I did.

“Bun Bun!”

Firefighters, firefighters everywhere. It was like a straight girl’s wet dream right now, because one rushed forward to pull out a chair for her, giving her shoulders a squeeze as she eased down.

“Blue lunchbox?” another asked, hanging from the fridge door as he peered inside.

“Pink one today.”

Her huffs were alarming, making me wonder just how much pain she was in. Not as much as when she gave birth , my brain supplied helpfully.

“Madame.”

Her lunchbox was placed before her by that guy, another setting a steaming hot cup of tea next to it. I blinked, comparing this treatment to the bullshit that raged at the pub. Bumming a cigarette after a particularly long shitty day was about all I could come up with.

“What about you, Millie?”

The break room was like a beehive, buzzing with life, but his voice was the hum of a wasp’s wings. I looked up to see Dave leering down at me.

“I’ll grab it.”

I smiled, because that’s what we women do. Keep things pleasant in the dim hope that the man would too. I grabbed the rest of the pad Thai I’d packed up and placed it into the microwave to reheat.

“Thai food.” Dave did not get the hint when I turned my back to him. My shoulder blades itched as he inched closer. “Don’t mind a bit of something spicy myself. Maybe we could grab dinner one night?”

I shook my head, unable to believe he’d be so blunt, especially when I remembered his girlfriend came and got him from the party. Rhett came to the same conclusion apparently.

“Katie doesn’t like Thai food, does she?”

Oh, there was some tea right here, steaming hot and ready to be served. Because as I removed my food and grabbed a fork, the two men faced off.

“I dunno what she likes, but seeing as she told me to piss off, I figure that’s not my problem anymore.” Dave prowled forward with all the menace of a big cat. “Maybe you’d like to ask her?”

“Maybe I will.”

Dave looked almost disappointed as Rhett backed off, but the expression on his face made clear he was struggling with that information. Maybe he went to deal with that, because Rhett left the break room in a hurry.

“So—”

“No.”

Dave went to slide into the seat before us, but Judy cut him off straight away.

“But—”

“Go. Away.”

I couldn’t help but grin at her firm reply, her fork hovering above her food as if she was tossing up whether or not to stab him with it.

“C’mon, Bunny, I might want to talk about a purchase order.”

His voice was so unctuous I found myself forking my noodles over but not actually eating them.

“Then you can come and see us in the office after lunch.” Judy smiled tightly. “Where Brent is in earshot.”

“Fine.”

I watched him jerk away, turning to hold my fist up for her to bump. She obliged with a smile, then balanced her lunchbox on her stomach and started eating.

“It goes without saying, but do not let yourself be in a room with just Dave,” she advised.

“I know Dave, or rather, I know his type. I managed a pub before this.” She shot me a sympathetic look. “There was this guy whose nose I broke with a pool cue…”

There was a whole story there. He kept on hassling the girls that worked for me and security was focussed on something else outside. I’d stepped in and because I was a woman, he thought he could get around me to Felicity. When my hands ‘slipped’ and I rapped him on the nose with a pool cue, he thought better of it. Went running to Jim to whine like a little bitch, but when all the regulars swore black and blue it was an accident, he’d been forced to back down.

I didn’t tell Judy that.

Knox and his team walked in and the conversation picked up, the guys already sitting down chatting to them, but I didn’t hear any of it.

This was just like school all over again.

I was looking across a crowded playground, unable to look anywhere else but the guy I was crushing on. The fact it was three this time probably would’ve had teenage me pumping her fist in the air, but still. Charlie was chatting to someone and then went silent when he caught my eye, sitting back in his chair with a glitter in his eye. Noah… He looked everywhere but at me, though I knew we’d lock eyes eventually, and when we did, I felt a jolt. Hunter’s words, his betrayal killing my appetite. Then Knox sat down, nodding my way, as if to acknowledge the plan we’d made.

I’d talk to him first, and hey, maybe he could have the conversation with the others.

Coward.

I looked down at the noodles, the surface of each strand now too oily, too saucy, for me to eat.

“Not hungry?”

Judy nodded to my takeaway container.

“I’ve had a stomach bug that’s hanging around,” I explained. “Had some dodgy seafood at Christmas and haven’t been able to get into the doctor’s until this week.”

“You poor thing.” She rustled around in her lunchbox and produced part of a sleeve of dry crackers. “Try these.”

“Oh, I can’t?—”

“I’ll swap them for the pad Thai” She peered at my lunch. “Never liked Thai food myself, but the babies are getting ideas.”

I smiled and pushed it her way, taking the crackers gladly. Dry, salty, bland, they helped settle my stomach again.

Just not my heart.

I hoped no one saw its rapid skitter, getting faster and faster as more and more people left the lunchroom. Less and less witnesses to what was about to happen. I forced myself to my feet, not wanting to wait for the axe to fall, before turning to Judy.

“I’ve just gotta call the doctors to see if I can bring the appointment forward. I’ll be back in the office in a tick.”

“You got it.”

She levered herself up to her feet, even as men rushed to help her, and I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d do the same for me when my time came. Unfortunately, there was a crucial difference. She’d been here for ages and was well loved, whereas I was here under false pretences. Taking a pay check to keep me going until my own pregnancy stopped me from working, I hoped I had permanency in place by then. I’d take the bare minimum of time off, taking Mum up on her generous offer of babysitting, and support my family.

Just take the next step , I told myself, disposing of the pad Thai container as a way to prepare myself as I walked across the room, but it was hard not to see the last time I’d approached Noah and his friends at school. He wasn’t the one I was going to talk to today, so there was no risk of further embarrassment, right? I wasn’t sure, but he looked up and stared when I got close.

“Knox.” I said the man’s voice smoothly, with the same professional tones I used for dealing with drunk customers. “You wanted to talk?”

You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. I tried to gee myself up as he turned my way, then nodded sharply, getting to his feet and then heading for the door. I didn’t pause to see who saw us or their reaction, because they didn’t matter. He did. The knowledge of the baby was a weight that had grown too heavy to carry, and I was ready to set it down.