me why you can’t just do it the—”
“Yes, yes, the old-fashioned way.” She sniffed, straightened her shoulders and held her head high. “I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
“You’re probably right.” His lips twisted in a sardonic grin. “But you’ve already given me your ovulation schedule. I mean, why hold back the rest?”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ellie said. “Look, we both know that what I do in my free time is nobody’s business but my own.”
“Of course it is,” he said reasonably. “But you have to realize how concerned I am. As I’ve already said, I’m your friend as well as your employer, and this isn’t exactly a vacation you’re taking. You’re planning to go off to get pregnant. And then what happens? Then you’ll come back and work? For how long?”
“Until the baby’s born,” she said immediately. “At that point I’ll take maternity leave for three months and then I’ll be back at work.”
The resort had an excellent childcare facility so Ellie wasn’t worried about finding someone to care for her baby while she worked. That was another benefit of working for the Sutherland brothers.
“Three months.” Aidan pushed away from the desk and stood to pace the floor for a full minute. Finally he looked at her. “Okay, I’m not going to think about your being gone for three months. We’ll just deal with these upcoming three weeks.”
“That might be best,” she murmured.
“I can’t stand in the way of you going, but what will we do without you for three weeks? It might not sound like a lot of time to you, but we’ve never gone that long without you before. And right now we’re swamped with work and no one else is qualified to fill your shoes.”
She smiled because she’d already made a point of finding solutions to those particular problems, thanks to her best friend, Serena, the catering manager.
“Serena and her secretary have agreed to assist the sales force with the convention work. And my secretary will take care of making sure the day-to-day office work gets done. I’ll be available by phone if there are any questions.”
“Damn, Ellie.”
She stood and met him face-to-face. “Look, Aidan. I wouldn’t leave if there was a doctor on the island who specialized in fertilization. But there isn’t, so I’m going to Atlanta.”
“But what if you go through all this and it doesn’t…” He seemed to weigh his words and decided not to finish that sentence. Probably smart of him.
She finished the thought for him. “What if the procedure doesn’t work?” She’d considered that possibility, too. “I’ll try again in a few months.”
He gritted his teeth. “Okay, I understand what you want to do and it’s not like I have a say in your decision, but I still think you’re jumping the gun here. You’re so young. What are you? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?”
“Thirty.”
“That’s young,” he insisted. “You still have plenty of time to do it the—”
“Yes, yes, the old-fashioned way. You’ve mentioned it several times already.”
“It bears repeating,” he said amiably.
She quickly looked down at her tablet to avoid his knowing gaze. Was it getting hot in here? All this conversation about babies and “doing it the old-fashioned way” was stirring up feelings for Aidan that she’d long ago squelched. And not just emotional feelings, but an actual physical attraction to him. And that had to stop right now. “You realize this is absolutely none of your business, right?”
He had the nerve to grin. “Yeah.”
She sighed again. “Look, even if I do have plenty of time, I don’t have a partner. You know, someone who’s interested in providing the necessary equipment to get the job done.”
Could she make it any clearer than that?
“Oh. Right.” Aidan seemed to ponder that for a moment. “But what about that guy you were dating? Aren’t you still seeing him? What’s his name?”
“You know very well what his name is,” she said drily. “You introduced us, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said snidely. “Brad.”
“Blake,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Blake Farrell.”
“Right. What about Blake?”
Self-conscious now, Ellie avoided eye contact. “What about Blake for what?”
Aidan raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Oh, fine,” she said, exasperated. She knew exactly what he was referring to. Sex. “If you must know, I’m not seeing Blake anymore.”
His mouth opened, then closed. After a pause, he said, “Ah. Sorry it didn’t work out.”
“You don’t sound sorry at all.”
“You’re right.” He grinned wolfishly. “I’m not. He wasn’t the guy for you.”
“But you introduced me to him.”
“You were both standing there,” he said with a shrug.