Page 93 of The Work Wife

He shrugged and kept his gaze straight ahead. He didn’t want to discuss the future. Not when the here and now was so perfect. Jamie wasn’t deterred.

“Are you planning to stay at Blain and Douglas forever?” she pushed.

“I don’t know. I’m happy there for now.” But he had only until the beginning of April to decide if he was going to take up the reins at his family’s company. Out of respect for his brother, he had been thinking about it. But he wasn’t any closer to making the decision.

“Your family lives in New York. Don’t you want to get a job closer to them?”

“I like Boston.” He didn’t answer her question, but she let it pass.

“What do you like about it?” She winced, and he knew she was remembering the dingy snow they’d left at the airport.

“I like that it’s not New York.”

“You don’t want to be near your family.” She knew very little about his family. Mainly because he didn’t like to talk about them. He was too riddled with guilt to discuss his brother. Too annoyed to talk about his mother. And too angry to speak of his deceased father. He’d told her the basics and she’d met Ben. That was all he felt comfortable to share.

Throw in the fact that he didn’t want her to know about his family’s business, and that didn’t leave much for him to share. He wanted nothing more than to be able to tell Jamie about the decision he faced and get her thoughts on what he should do.

But he found he was terrified that she would send him off to New York to do the right thing, while she stayed in Boston. It would be the end of them, and he didn’t think he could take it.

“Let’s just say, I like my privacy and the distance between me and the obligations they’ve created for me.”

“I hear you. I didn’t want to be in Virginia because I didn’t want my dad in my business, but now I wish I was closer so I could be there for his appointments.”

They’d called her father that morning and he sounded better. The call was cut short, as always, when her father insisted they had to have better things to do in paradise than fuss over him.

The few minutes each day were enough to keep Jamie from worrying, and it was fun to annoy his father-in-law.

“You could always move back to Virginia. You have a lot of experience. Anyone would hire you.” If she was willing to move, maybe she’d consider New York.

“I thought about it, but . . .” She bit her bottom lip.

“But?” Some part of him wished the reason she stayed in Boston was because of him. They made such a great team.

“I really want to make it to the top team of Blain and Douglas. I’ve invested so much into getting there, I want to see it through. And what if I go somewhere else and get put with some lame partner who doesn’t bring it to the table? I would be stuck. Or worse, what if the other company doesn’t have partners, and I would be on my own with no one to bounce the engineering piece off of? Do you know how invaluable it is to be able to ask you about the load on a wall without even picking up my phone?”

He smiled. Everything she’d just described told him what he’d wanted to hear. She was in Boston because he was in Boston. Oddly enough, he was still in Boston because she was there too. While he didn’t necessarily want to work at his family’s company, he could have opened his own firm or moved on by now.

“I feel the same way,” he told her, stealing a glance at her.

“Well, of course. Who would walk away from this?” Jamie joked. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t want to walk away.

He was so busy thinking about how he could keep what they had, he hadn’t been paying attention to their footing. Not until Jamie slipped on a damp rock and lost her balance.

Instinctively he reached for her and pulled her to him, using his body to absorb the impact. Fortunately they fell on a sandy patch that was void of other rocks. Their weight still managed to knock the wind from him for a few seconds.

Jamie sat up, and once he was breathing okay he sat up too. Their hips were next to each other as they faced the opposite direction.

“Are you okay?” he asked, taking her hand to check her palms for scratches.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry I smashed you.”

“I didn’t mind.” He didn’t mind at all. Having her body up against his was one of his new favorite things.

He looked at her face and noticed her eyes moving as she searched his face for something.

“What?” Did he have something on his face?

Her only answer was to lean closer. A completely different instinct took over and he leaned in to meet her. When their lips touched, he let out a groan he’d been holding in for days.