She almost wanted to laugh. If she didn’t know how to categorize Ben, she sure in the hell didn’t know what to do with Damien.
And while she knew they couldn’t renew their physical relationship, and that it wasn’t practical that they could be friends when he was her boss and she was pregnant with another man’s child, they had slept together. She thought about Damien nonstop. She cared about him a great deal, which she could admit when she was feeling honest. And she worried that he needed something more than she had been able to give him.
He needed to relax, not work so hard. He needed a distraction, and not one that was her baby. Because that was driving her batty.
His final email was actually work related, of all things, and Mandy was typing a response to his inquiry when her instant message window popped up. She knew it was Damien before sheeven read it because of the ring tone she had set up exclusively for him.
Have you thought of any names?
Names for what?
She lost the thread of what she’d been typing in the email and sighed with frustration. Maybe she needed more sleep. Her ability to do two things at once seemed to have disappeared lately.
The baby.
Of course. Why didn’t she think of that? It made perfect sense for her to discuss naming her child with her boss. She debated telling him she hadn’t thought of any, but she did want to put out feelers about a couple of names. Somehow it seemed more natural to do that with Damien than it did with Ben, which was completely wrong, but it was too late to fix that.
I was thinking about Cecilia for a girl and Simon for a boy.
Her heart swelled a little at the thought of giving a name to her child. Giving him or her an identity.
I don’t know...those sound very British.
All the good feelings she’d been having fled.
I am British!
“Bloody idiot.”
Mandy’s groan of frustration was so loud that the woman in the cubicle next to her peered around at her. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m just thinking that my boss is insane.” What on earth made Damien wonder at eleven A.M. on a Tuesday more than four months from her due date what she was going to name her baby? And then criticize her choice.
The woman next door laughed. “All bosses are insane, but I’ve heard yours is the worst.”
That brought Mandy up short. “Oh, he’s not so bad as all that.”
He wasn’t bad at all, in fact. Damien was at least asking—that was more than she could say for Ben. He seemed more concerned with investigating her new breasts than wondering about their child. Maybe she wasn’t being fair to him, but then again, maybe she wasn’t being fair to Damien.
I was thinking that Rebecca is a nice name.
Did he now? And who the hell had asked him? Pursing her lips together, Mandy clicked the “close” button to get rid of the offensive window.
She was done with that conversation.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t get rid of her thoughts about Damien as easily as that window. Especially when the tickets she’d ordered for the Saturday Yankees game showed up in her mail at the office.
She had bought them in a moment of weakness, thinking that Damien really needed to pursue outside interests. At the time, she had been secretly hoping those outside interests would involve her and how many sexual positions they could try, but she realized now that was exactly the wrong thing to do.
She’d told herself all along that she couldn’t get involved with Damien, long term or short term. She had a child and Ben to contend with. But that didn’t stop her from repeatedly entertaining sex with Damien again.
So she had ordered the tickets as a reminder to him of their time together. But Damien seemed completely over his attraction to her, given all the energy he’d put into pursuing her since their return.
Which was none. He hadn’t once even tried to see her in person, yet he’d obviously spent hours surfing online looking up baby furniture and birthing classes.
The tickets shouldn’t go to waste, but she didn’t think she could spend an afternoon listening to Damien extol the virtues of breastfeeding.
As far as she knew, Rob Turner was Damien’s only friend in the office. She’d take the tickets to him and suggest he invite Damien. If she gave the tickets directly to Damien, she had no doubt he would stick them in his fastidious drawer and never use them.
