Vanessa squeezed his hand. Her phone beeped, but she ignored it. Probably just work. She sighed, wondering if she was being overly insistent about her promotion being all on her own merit. At the same time she couldn’t help but mull over the fact that John put her on a series of odd assignments. Perhaps he was testing her to see if she’d use her connections to make him stop or something.
If she’d brought in her family’s or the Sterlings’ business, maybe he would quit driving her insane. On the other hand, she didn’t want to get promoted based on that. She never wanted anybody to wonder if she had become successful because of her family. She’d worked too damn hard to allow that kind of talk.
“Who spat in your soup?” Justin asked.
“What?”
“You looked like somebody spat in your soup.”
“It’s nothing.”
She didn’t want to talk about it with Justin in case he decided to “help” by intervening with her partners. He’d become extremely protective recently. The one good thing about only working forty hours was that it preempted Justin from calling the firm and telling the partners that they were driving her too hard. A sudden thought crossed her mind, but she dismissed it immediately. Not even Justin would be able to make Highsmith put a perfectly good associate on a forty-hour week schedule. If the mystery client wanted to pay a hundred hours for only forty of real work, Highsmith would have had her put in the remaining sixty on other cases. There was always something to do at the firm.
“Really. I’m fine,” she added when Justin looked skeptical.
“Okay. Hey, have you thought about moving?”
“No… Why?”
“The place is too small for a family of three. And I know we haven’t talked about it, but I think you should get someone to come in for housekeeping. Maybe once a week or so.”
She made a face. “You’re risking the couch, you know, with your thinly-veiled criticism.”
He laughed. “Just thought it’d make your life easier. It’s going to get harder and harder for you to move around.”
“Let me think about moving. But in the meantime, I guess we can have housekeeping.” Actually Vanessa had been wanting to scrub the place from top to bottom. She just never had much time after work and yoga, and she didn’t want to waste her evenings with Justin.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it? We’ll find a trustworthy service that can come in, clean and do the laundry and so on while you’re at work.”
“Perfect. You think of everything.”
“Somebody’s got to.” He kissed her. “You have no idea how anxious it makes me that we can’t announce to everyone we’re married already. If I had it my way, you’d be on leave from the firm to rest with your feet up all day long.”
“You’re sweet when you get all protective. But the doctor said it’s okay for me to work. Apparently it’s actually good that I get out and not bore myself to death. The baby can feel my moods. I don’t want a bad one to affect it.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to quit worrying. You don’t know what you and this baby mean to me.”
When he spoke like that, she could almost forget her doubts about their future and impending motherhood. She snuggled close to him and held his hand. Was this what a good, loving relationship was supposed to feel like? She tightened her grip on him. “I’ll be careful, Justin.”
Chapter Thirteen
Vanessa went to the office the next morning. Justin had left early, promising to come back as soon as he could. Now that she couldn’t work weekends, he’d reintroduced the idea of flying to Mexico for a getaway. She’d agreed. She was going stir-crazy without anything to do at the firm.
“Hi, Zoe,” Vanessa said to her secretary, but Zoe didn’t even raise her head to say hi back. She was staring at her monitor in rapt absorption. “Zoe?”
“Oh my gosh! I didn’t see you.” Zoe put a hand on her chest. “Did you hear the news?”
“What news?”
“There’s been an accident. A private jet lost control and skidded off the runway in San Francisco and crashed into a crane.”
“A crane? At the airport?”
“It says they were doing some expansion work.”
A cold dread formed in her belly. “Whose plane?”
“Justin Sterling’s.”