Fired!
She was fired.
She was drowning. As a non-swimmer that was the most horrible end she could imagine, and Sabrina knew this was how it felt. Desperate cold. No air. Head ready to split open with pain. Heart bursting out of her chest. Unable to call out for help, unable to even think. Sinking fast. This could not be happening.
This was really happening.
Not quite aware of how she got there, Sabrina was back in her cubicle stuffing her oversized purse with random items from her desk. The insistent chirp of her cell finally shattered the ice enclosing her numbed brain.
Mrs. Egan. Alex!
Like a coma victim returned to consciousness, Sabrina had a blanked out feeling; not knowing if she’d lost days from her life or just minutes. Hyperventilating, she pulled the elastic from her hair and pressed her thumbs along her temples in an effort to squash the gallows drumbeat of her pulse there. Sitting on the edge of her chair, she took a gulp from the water bottle she always kept on her desk. Either that or she would faint. She shivered as the water slid down her throat and looked at the clock. Only twenty minutes had
passed. Twenty, life-altering, minutes.
She found Mrs. Egan in the lobby amusing her little brother with a nursery rhyme that always evoked lots of giggling from Alex. She didn’t have the heart to tell her sitter what had just happened. Because Sabrina losing her job, meant Mrs. Egan lost hers. And with her husband sick and unable to work, that would not be welcome news.
“No worries, I’ll take him home and reschedule the checkup. Sorry you had to wait,” Sabrina said.
Mrs. Egan planted a kiss on Alex’s head before hurrying out of the VGI lobby.
It was just so unfair.
This was the best job she’d ever had. It was the best job she would get in her current situation with a child to raise and college to finish.
Now that the shock was wearing off a little, Sabrina’s brain turned back on with cold clarity. One thing was very clear.
Vladimir Grigory was an unfeeling bastard.
Nine months after she began working at VGI, her mother had died in a hit and run. Overnight, Sabrina plunged into a waking nightmare of nonstop work and fulltime care of an infant. Life was a constant, chaotic juggle of priorities, all of which had equal value in her mind. Every day was endless and yet shorter than what she needed to accomplish her goals.
Her job at VGI had been a literal lifesaver when her mother died. She turned part time hours into a full time position. She couldn’t just walk away now, not when she and Alex were finally so close to achieving the next major step. Alex in preschool. Her own college degree. So what the hell was wrong with her? She would not allow this to happen. No way was she going to meekly turn tail and disappear without a fight.
Vladimir freakin’ Grigory needed a reality check.
And she was just the person to give it to him.
Settling Alex in the stroller, Sabrina headed back to the elevator bank.
****
Once again, she passed through the gauntlet that was the VGI executive floor and kept her head up, gaze focused straight ahead. The whispers buzzed feverishly around the woman in the train wreck of an outfit as she strode down the corridor—this time with a toddler in a stroller.
“Ms. Boyd,” his assistant stepped in front of her, guarding the domain of the boss like a rabid pit bull, “you can’t—”
Sabrina looked her straight in the eye. That was what you did to make a dog back down. Or was that what made a dog attack? She couldn’t remember, and she didn’t care.
“I’m not leaving, so you might as well move before I shout this place down.”
There was steel in Sabrina’s tone, and her voice was pitched loud enough for the hapless woman to know that she couldn’t care less who heard.
The assistant stepped aside. “Now this should be interesting,” she muttered.
She shoved the door open and pushed the stroller inside as if she did it every day of the week, then nudged the door shut with her elbow.
“It’s not gonna be that easy to get rid of me.”
“I get the feeling nothing is easy with you,” he
said.
His gaze was trained on her, and, as he leaned back in his seat, his relaxed body language was like a red flag to Sabrina’s overwrought senses.
Then, belatedly, he noticed Alex sitting quietly in his stroller, plucking Cheerios from a plastic cup and popping them into his mouth with toddler concentration all the while staring up at him with huge eyes.
His spine straightened at the sight of the little boy, disbelief evident on his face for an instant before being replaced by an impassive, clenched jaw.
Sabrina launched into speech.
“Yes, this is Alex. He’s the reason I’m here. You need to know, to understand. I want you to think about what you’re doing to us.”
“I just fired you. This is where you…”
“No.” She was emphatic. “I’m not going to just get out. I can’t just fade away. I need this job. We…need this job.”
She raised her chin, forced strength into her voice, forbidding the emotion to emerge.
“There is no one else. Alex needs me, and I need to work.”
Sabrina had her pride. She didn’t want him to know how close to the edge they lived. But unless he understood some of it, she had no chance of survival.
“Ms. Boyd…”
“My name is Sabrina and after last night, I can’t believe you have the nerve not to use it.”
“After last night, the last thing I’m going to do is use it,” he said. He looked up for a moment straight into her eyes.
Sabrina absorbed that admission, wearing her anger like a shield protecting her lest the fear push through.
She looked over his shoulder, away from the eyes that were so different from last night. Last night, they’d glittered silver with sensual heat. Today, they were as opaque and distant as the storm clouds rolling past the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him.
“Enough.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Collect your things. The child has a father to provide…”
“Alex’s father? I…”
Ha, that was a good one. Her mom had never divulged that salient bit of information.
Lily was embarrassed at first that a new boyfriend at age thirty-six had resulted in a pregnancy. Hadn’t she learned to stay away from fickle bad boys when she had fallen pregnant with Sabrina and married at eighteen? But as her first child, Sabrina, was the joy of her life, she viewed the new baby as a blessing. The baby’s father promised to settle in New York. He’d promised they’d be a proper family. With his help and Sabrina’s, Lily figured she’d retain her position in real estate sales, and all of their lives would be full.
That had been the plan. Sabrina shook her head.
“No, no, Alex’s dad isn’t in the picture.”
She said that as calmly as possible, but still she tensed at the path this conversation was taking. No one could know; no one could ever find out she was Alex’s sister rather than his mom. Social services would descend on them just the way they had when she was a girl. Her care would be found wanting. God only knew where they would go if they couldn’t pay the rent. They would take Alex away. She shivered. No. I can’t go back to that life again. I won’t.
“Alex has only me. His father doesn’t, isn’t.” She stumbled over her lie.
****
Vlad was quick to sense any weakness. His innate ruthlessness and personal experience of the most sordid failings of human nature was no match for this young woman’s evasions and half-truths.
He straightened in his state-of-the art leather desk chair, the kind that was so good for his back. It did nothing for the migraine beginning to form behind his eyes. What the hell was she playing at? For the life of him, he was slipping. How had he been so overcome with lust that he failed to see the cuckoo that’d come into his nest? This is where thinking with your cock got you.
In spite of it all, he was still attracted. Whatever mermaid’s spell she’d cast on him in the break room and later in the car, still had him firm in its grip. She was so far from his usual type it was laughable. Her torrent of hair cascaded down her back in unruly waves and, with a motion he was starting to recognize, she pushed it over her shoulder, then pulled at the hem of her chain store sweater. And what was it about this generation and the fad of ripped tights? Completely inappropriate, even if she did work in VGI’s unseen tech pub division.
He knew she lived in a rundown building, in an untrendy section of Brooklyn close to the old docks. But like all New York real estate, it probably cost a bundle on her terms.
He didn’t care. He couldn’t care. He’d fired her. He stood, crossed to the window to put some distance between them. The breathtaking view of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty from the vantage point of fifty stories had always served to dazzle visitors and energize him. But right now, all he could see in his mind’s eye was a distant port on the Baltic Sea, imposing cargo ships and grimy tankers crowding the aging docks.
He was uncomfortable in so many ways with this. She got to him on some elemental level he hadn’t cared to look at in years. Father providing? Like his did? Like he even knew who the guy was? Like he’d ever met him?
He turned abruptly away from the memory and addressed a point above her head.
“He may not want to contribute but that’s tough; if you bring a child into this world you need to be responsible for it.”
He knew that for a fact he felt deep in his bones. Children had a habit of needing to be fed and clothed and some of them, if they were lucky, loved. It was a truism. Kids didn’t ask to be born, but once they were on the planet, parents had to be responsible.
“It’s not that simple.” Her cheeks reddened at his piercing stare.
Vlad had used his eyes when he was too young to understand spoken words, and, as he grew older when the English language had still been a mystery to him. He learned fast how to read faces and body language and prided himself on his ability to spot a lie even as it was emerging from the liar’s mouth. He strode toward her, his gaze pinning her in place like a dart on a bullseye.
“You don’t know who the father of your child is,” he said. His voice was harsh and accusing.