Page 34 of Ashes of Us
Danica winced. As she heard more of Alex's side, she really couldn't blame him for thinking she was sleeping with Alexander, because he had hired her as his executive assistant three weeks before his sixty-fifth birthday party. It now sounded like he had postponed his retirement because of her.
“Your father never told anyone he was planning to retire at sixty-five.” She said quietly. “Not even your mother. I don'tknow if he was going to make a surprise announcement at the party and changed his mind, but in my opinion, he never intended to.”
“Yeah,” Alex let out a deep sigh. “Everything I've found out since I came back and started going through his files says the same thing. He had no intention of retiring; he was just trying to appease me. From what I managed to piece together from various people, and as you already know, Mom was very worried about what would happen to Craig and made him promise not to cut him out of things. He knew it would be the first thing I did when I took over. According to Veronica, it made him resent everyone. Mom for making him promise, himself for letting her coddle Craig, Craig for being a fuck-up and me for pushing things. Which left you.”
“Believe me, he didn't like it when I overstepped my bounds,” Danica muttered. The way Alexander pushed his sons away after his wife died was suddenly making a lot more sense to her.
Alex chuckled dryly. “No, but you never pushed, and you only overstepped because you cared about him. He knew that and loved you for it, trust me.” He smiled at her briefly, then stretched and looked up at the ceiling. “So, yeah, I feel guilty and want to make up for my mistake, because I made you the enemy in my head and you aren't, at all. You've also proven yourself to be an amazing executive assistant. You work hard, you take initiative, and you're not afraid to share your opinions and ask for more information to help you understand something better. When you were planning to leave, you never slacked off or tried to pass your work off to other people. You stepped up when and where I needed you to after Dad's death, and you didn't complain or make excuses. If there was an issue with something I wanted you to do, you were upfront about it without beingwhiny or rude and offered compromises or other solutions. Even now, with everything you have going on, you aren't playing the victim or rolling over and taking it, you're fighting back and not letting them walk all over you. You're strong and resilient, and I admire and respect that in a person.”
Danica felt her cheeks heat up as Alex praised her work ethic and admitted that he admired and respected her, a mixture of embarrassment and pride filling her. “Yeah, well, you're not the asshole I thought you were either.” She deflected, pulling the smoothie closer and lowering her head to take a sip so her hair fell between them and hid her red cheeks. “And you're a good boss.”
“I deserve that and thank you.” Alex chuckled as he stood up. “Make yourself at home, I'm just going to check and make sure there are clean sheets on the spare bed and towels in the bathroom.”
Danica looked up, the knot of anxiety in her stomach growing tighter. “I appreciate it, but I should really go home. I don't have anything here.” She tried to play off how nervous she was sleeping in his condo as if she wasn't prepared for a sleepover, but she could see he wasn't taking her seriously.
Alex walked down a short hall off the kitchen. “I've got you covered for tonight, and we'll leave early in the morning so you can change before you have to go to the funeral home.” his voice faded as he disappeared into the room on the left, and then he poked his head back out. “Or is there another reason you're fighting me on this?”
Danica fidgeted as he called her out. She knew the anxiety was rooted in a baseless fear of someone seeing her, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she needed to go home. “I just...” She sighed and turned to face him. “Don't laugh, but I have this feeling that I should go home. Like my brain is freaking out andmy stomach is in knots about it.” Alex frowned, and she thought she saw a flash of hurt for a second, but it was gone before she could confirm it.
“Am I making you nervous?” He asked after a moment of silence.
“No!” She shook her head emphatically. “It's not you at all, I know you'd never try something, and to be perfectly honest, I could put you on your ass if I needed to.” She tried to smile reassuringly, but her anxiety was building to the point that she was starting to feel the tightness in her chest again. “I'm afraid someone will see me here.”
Alex seemed to relax a little when she assured him it wasn't about trusting him to be a gentleman, but it was clear he still didn't understand. “See you here? How? We're on the twentieth floor.”
“Look, I can't explain it, but I know spending the night here will bite me in the ass at some point.” Danica tried to explain again. She didn't want to insult him or seem ungrateful, but she was soon going to leave.
“Do you think your in-laws followed you here? Because I was getting serious side-eye while they waited for their lawyer.” He turned and walked into the other room as he spoke. “Give me a second to change out of my suit, and I'll take you back to the hotel for your car.”
Danica almost sagged in relief when he said he'd take her back. “I don't know if they followed me here or not, but the judge told them to give him evidence that Jasper wanted the child, and they knew we were having issues and were working on our marriage. Spending the night here after taking Jasper off life support this evening would be terrible optics, and I hired a PI, who's to say they didn't?”
“True.” Alex came back out, dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a black t-shirt. “Take the smoothie with you and let's go.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Crossing the Threshold
Danica groaned as she woke up, rolling over and reaching for her phone to check the time, as the banging on her door that had woken her sounded again. Who the hell was trying to get in her house at three-twenty in the morning? There were no missed calls or texts, so no one was trying to get in touch with her and was worried that she hadn't answered her phone. Getting up, she grabbed her robe and wrapped it around her, covering up Jasper's old Boston Celtics t-shirt that she was wearing as a nightdress and flicking on all the lights as she moved through the house. If someone was about to attempt to break into her home, she was going to make sure they did it in full view of any neighbours who might be awake and looking.
When Alex dropped her off the previous evening, she had spent some time on the phone with Emilia, bringing her up to date with everything and telling her about her thoughts that Amy and Lucy might have her followed. Emilia had promised to look into things from her end but had agreed with Danica that she had been right to come home and not stay at Alex's.
“I know you're not in the right frame of mind to even consider dating or what your future without Jasper will look like, but you're right, it wouldn't look good. Even if he had security cameras inside his place that showed you both going to separate rooms and staying put all night, Amy would probably have her lawyer claim the footage was tampered with.”She had then offered to arrange for her mother-in-law to come stay with Xavier and the kids so she could keep Danica company while she met with the funeral home in the morning, something Danica hadn't wanted to ask her to do, knowing how hard it was for her and Xavier to manage Gracie's attachment issues, but desperately wanted. Emilia had gotten a little upset with her relieved”Yes, please”and reprimanded her for not asking for help when she needed it.
“Xavier and I discussed things, and we agreed that we will make things work with Gracie until you're on the other side of this. I can't read your mind, Danica, you need to talk to me.”She paused and then said, with a hint of pride in her voice.”Besides, the new play therapy we're doing with her is working wonders; she actually played quietly for over an hour in the playroom by herself while I cleaned the kitchen the other day and is showing huge leaps in her independent learning and play.”
In the mudroom off the kitchen, she hit the light switch that lit up the driveway and outside the garage and cautiously pulled the blinds aside to look out and see who was so determined to speak with her. Seeing Cecil standing on the step with an overnight bag in his hand wasn't the shock most people would have thought it would be. She was surprised to see him standing there at three in the morning, but she had been expecting him to show up. Cecil was much smarter than anyone gave him credit for, and Jasper had more respect for his fatherthan anyone else. She was a little surprised it had taken him this long to come around.
Opening the door, she stepped back and let him come in without saying a word. Then closed it and led him into the kitchen. “Spare room has clean sheets,” she told him quietly, turning and walking toward the living room and the stairs to the second floor. “You know where everything is.” As curious as she was about what had been the final straw to make him leave Amy, she was too tired to listen right now. “We'll talk when the sun comes up.”
“Thanks.” He locked the door behind him and followed her through the house, turning off the lights behind them. She could tell he was just as relieved that she hadn't demanded an explanation as he was that she let him in. “Sorry, I woke you up. I didn't want to use my key and end up on my ass at the bottom of the stairs.”
That got a small smile out of her. She was a light sleeper when she was alone and would have woken up and waited at the top of the stairs for the intruder, armed with the baseball bat she kept in the corner next to her bed. “Smart. Night, Cecil.”
“Night, Danica.”
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The second time Danica was woken up, it was to the smell of bacon and fresh coffee. She had a moment of confusion, wondering why Jasper was cooking breakfast, then everything came back and she had to blink back tears for a moment, before she got up, went to the bathroom, then pulled on a sports bra under the Celtics shirt and a pair of shorts before making her way to the kitchen. Cecil was standing at the stove, transferring bacon from a pan to a plate with paper towels on the counter. The toaster popped, and Danica walked over, took the fourslices of toast, and began buttering them. They moved in silence around each other as they prepped breakfast, and it wasn't until they were sitting at the table and halfway through the meal that Danica finally asked him what happened.
Cecil finished chewing his bite of peanut butter toast and washed it down with some coffee before looking at her. “After we left the hospital yesterday, I brought Amy and Lucy home and then went for a long drive, something I've been doing quite a bit. Talking to Jasper and just trying to make sense of what's going on. I've been telling myself that Amy is grieving and I needed to support her through this, even if I don't agree with everything she's doing. I never dreamed the judge would actually agree to the emergency junction we filed, but unlike Amy, Lucy and Ken, I did do my research about extracting sperm from someone who is, for all intents and purposes, dead, so when the judge gave us three weeks, I felt better about things because I knew they wouldn't be able to get a viable specimen.” He leaned forward and took another bite of scrambled eggs. “Then you fucked things up.”
