She flashed me a dry smile. “Nope, I’ve got one of those. Pretty sure when I was born there was a dictionary, a thesaurus and the consolidated works of the greatest philosophers of our time in my nursery.”
“Your parents are studious then?”
Stephanie raised her eyebrows. “Pretentious is what I prefer to call it, but whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t change that neither of them ever wasted time reading me a book they didn’t think would further me somehow.”
“So no ‘Cat in a Hat’ for you?”
“Dr. Seuss actually has many developmental—” She cut herself off, pursing her lips. “Dr. Seuss, yes. Fairytales? They had no use for those.”
“Don’t those also have moral lessons and whatnot?” I tried to think back to what our nanny used to tell us when she read to us, but I never really paid much attention to her.
Stephanie nodded. “Yes, but there are other ways to teach kids those lessons in my parents’ view. Fairytales are way too fluffy and enjoyable for them.”
“They sound like a delight.”
She sighed. “They’re lovely people unless you don’t meet their standards or fit their mold.”
“And you didn’t?”
She tapped her nose with her pointer finger. “Well done. I didn’t.”
“But you have a degree in business from NYU. What rules could you possibly have broken that were so heinous they abandoned you?”
“It’s not the degree, it was the way I got it.” Her blue eyes grew as she started shaking her head. “Wow that came out very wrong. Not the way I got it—I got it the way everyone else does. I studied and passed all the exams.”
“What was their problem then?”
Exhaling deeply, her jaw turned hard. Talking about this was difficult for her. “Their problem was that in high school and more so in college, I realized there was more to life than following their very set rules. You could say I discovered not following the rules was way more fun.”
“You and I are very much in agreement on that one.” In a way, Steph’s story reminded me very much of my own. I was the wild child too, the one who stepped outside the box.
Fuck, it was still hard for me to breathe in this box I’d been stuffed into after Jack’s death. “Life starts at the edge of what’s expected for you.”
She nodded her agreement. “Turns out, not following the rules also means you don’t study as many hours as what’s expected of you.”
I could see she was getting to the painful part now. There was a shadow in her eyes and her shoulders hunched like she was trying to make herself smaller. Wrapping my fingers around the end of my desk, I tightened my grip, bracing myself.
“My grades started slipping. I didn’t do so well. I still graduated when I was supposed to, but my antics in the years between leaving home and graduation were too much for them. They dropped out of my life completely. They told me it was my fault, and they refused to put up with a child who disrespected them by shirking their values.”
“And they just walked away?” I white-knuckled the table. I didn’t understand how parents could walk away from such a special girl. Whether or not she got into trouble, she was smart and driven, funny, witty and completely authentic. Her own person all the way. Who walked away from someone like that?
Smiling sadly, she closed her eyes for a second instead of nodding. “They did. I haven’t seen or heard from them since.”
When she opened her eyes, there was a vulnerability in them that made me feel like someone punched me in the gut. Along with that, I suddenly realized how intimate this conversation had gotten. Shit. Not good.
I caught sight of the clock behind my office door again, shocked when I saw the time. We spent more than an hour talking. Pushing up off my desk, I went to grab the files I needed for my next meeting. “We’ve got work that needs to be done. I should get to my meeting.”
She glanced down at her watch and jumped up, apparently as startled by the time as I was. “Absolutely.”
Grabbing the envelope with her credentials I gave her earlier, she walked to the door between our offices. I walked with her to her desk, making sure she had what she needed to get started. “You should find everything you need to access all our systems in that envelope. If you have any trouble, call the IT department. Their extension is in there as well.”
“Thanks, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
I knocked twice on her desk and turned to leave. “I sent you an e-mail with everything I need done today. As soon as you’re logged onto everything, it should come through. If you need anything else though, just give me a call.”
“I’ll do that, or I could wait until you come back. I should manage until then.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be attending meetings just about the rest of the day. Take an hour for lunch whenever you want, I only ask you give me a heads-up first.”
“Sure thing, boss.” She smiled, sinking into the cream leather office chair I had brought up for her. Turning it from side to side, she wiggled and tried to hide her widening smile.
Get the fuck out of here, Williams. You have work to do. I chided myself when I realized I could very easily spend another hour just watching her get settled in.