Page 112 of Pipe Dreams
The next morning Lauren woke up to a flurry of texts from Nate. The investment bankers had found a third bidder for Nate’s router division. Nate—and therefore Lauren—was going to see a presentation from the new bidder first thing that morning.
“Shit,” Lauren said, perched on the edge of the bed.
“Whassamatter?” Mike asked into the pillow.
She took a moment to appreciate the geography of his back muscles before answering. “More top secret dealings at the office tower. There goes my idea to ask Nate for a day off so I could fly out to see game five.”
He lifted his chin and squinted at her. “Bummer, honey. I’ll miss you, but you gotta do what you gotta do.” That handsome face dropped into the pillow again.
She crawled onto the bed and kissed the back of his neck. “It’s been fun to be your fan girl again.”
“I’d love to see your pretty face in Dallas. But I have a weird job, babe. It’s not always going to be convenient.” Hereached out and took her hand in his warm one. “I’ll take what you can give me and be happy.”
She lay down beside him again, if only for another minute.
He rolled and curved his body around hers. “When are you going to tell Nate you’ll need a maternity leave?”
“I don’t know. Soon, I guess?”
“Are you worried about his reaction?”
“Not at all. I just want to be sure the pregnancy takes before I talk about it. Telling Nate will be fine. He’ll stop trying to transfer me to California.”
“What’s that?” Mike lifted his head off the pillow.
“Nate offered me a pretty cool job in Silicon Valley. I keep putting him off.”
“Are you thinking about taking it?”
“No! Not happening.”
“Is that a problem, though?”
She shook her head. “I was never going to California. I want to be here. There’syou, there’s the pretty damned good job I already have. And my family, not that they’re at the top of my list. But even when I was planning to have a baby without you, I knew I’d need my family nearby.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You never told me about the California job.”
“That’s because it’s not interesting to me unless I’m both single and childless.”
Mike kicked a leg over her hip, pulling her closer. “I don’t want you to be either of those things.”
“Me neither, then.”
•••
She had a long day at work, which stretched into the evening. Lauren had been assigned the task of “bullshit-proofing” the new bidder’s claims about its company.
“Didn’t the bankers do their due diligence?” she asked Nate.
“Yeah, up to a point. But they want the fee, right? I wantyou to go over their claims of market dominance and see if anything looks too good to be true. I’m going to take a look at their technical specs.”
“All right. Sure.” It was the second time in as many weeks that she’d been asked to perform a task above her pay grade. She was glad Nate had begun to trust her with more interesting work, but the timing was a little dicey. If he wanted to talk about the California job again soon, she’d have to spill her secret.
There had been many nights when Lauren worked late, assisting Nate and an analyst or two. This time shewasthe analyst. They didn’t leave the office until ten, and Lauren went in at seven thirty the next morning because she knew Nate had to leave early.
He took several meetings that morning, then sat following up with Lauren in his office. “Let’s go over the financials before I go. I called a car to take me to the airport at two thirty.”
“Okay.” Lauren felt a pang of jealousy. A big one. Nate was flying out on his Gulfstream just in time to see game five, and coming home again in the morning. And she wasn’t. Her tentative plan to surprise Mike in Dallas had been sidelined by the new bidder.
