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Warmth suffused her at the compliment and she tried to ignore it. “You’re just saying that.”
“No, I’m not. Worth needs you. I need you.” He paused, eyes wide, expression one of shock. She wondered just how much he might need her. “In the marketing department, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t leave before I completed my project,” she whispered. She was fooling herself. He didn’t need her beyond work purposes. She’d been a fling, nothing more, nothing less.
He slipped his hands into his pockets, an air of defeat lingering around him. “You’ve already made up your mind.”
“It’s what’s best.”
“According to who?”
“According to me, Hunter. I have to take care of myself. I’m all I have. You have this—this business that consumes you. It belongs to your family, it’s your heritage, your past and your future all rolled up into one, and I think that’s so wonderful. Truthfully, I’m jealous of it. Of you and what you have with your family, your brothers and Alex’s wife, your niece. Your family surrounds you and supports you. It’s important to you, and it shows.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he didn’t say a word.
“I, on the other hand, have always been alone. Always. My parents abandoned me. No one wanted me, ever. I finally find acceptance here at Worth, and I screwed it up.”
“By screwing me,” he murmured.
It was true. She’d fooled around with him, and look where it got her. “I’m a big girl. I know what’s right and wrong. I made the conscious choice to have sex with you.”
A flare of heat lit his gaze, subtle, but yes, most definitely there. And then it was gone. “At least consider staying with Worth.”
“How?” She shook her head. “I can’t. I just—can’t.”
“I mean maybe you could transfer. Go to another department. Talk to your friend Becky. Since she’s the human resources manager, I’m sure she could help you tremendously.”
She'd never thought of transferring to another department. And she definitely hadn’t thought of tapping into Becky’s brain and seeing what she could come up with. “You think that would work?” she asked cautiously.
“I know I don’t want you to leave. I’d rather give you up to another department within Worth rather than watch you go away forever.”
“I appreciate you saying that.” She tried to smile, but it was tremulous at best.
If she didn’t watch out, she just might break down into tears.
Gracie left work promptly at five, unusual for her considering the last few weeks of nonstop late nights devoted to the launch project. Hunter hadn’t said a word to her when she left beyond a casual good night. It shouldn’t have bothered her, his easy dismissal.
But it did.
Their earlier argument/discussion still rang in her head. She knew he didn’t want to lose her. But was it more work-related than anything else? It had to be. Even if he’d felt a glimmer of something toward her, she’d demolished that with how she constantly pushed him away. No man would stand around and take that sort of treatment, especially one like Hunter. He could have anyone he wanted with a snap of his fingers. And he knew it.
It was what she said to him about having no one that stood out more than anything. She’d always believed she had no one, but was that really true? Were there other family members out there she’d forgotten or didn’t even know existed? Everything had happened when she was so young. And it had all been so terrible she’d immediately blacked out most of it on purpose. Her memories were fuzzy.
She’d never been curious before, too bitter to consider what relatives might be out there still. Today, though, she’d become consumed with it.
The minute she came home, she’d gone to her laptop and opened it up. Brought up Google and typed in her mother’s name and hometown.
Her heart racing, she hit enter and scanned the results. An old arrest mention, her high school looking for her, which was funny considering she hadn’t graduated, and the fourth listing was a link to her obituary.
Gracie clicked on it, waited with held breath while it loaded. The write-up was depressingly meager in details.
Angela Hayes, 24, died Sunday, January 15. She leaves behind a daughter…
Pressing her fingers against her lips to stifle a sob, her eyes filled with tears. They’d mentioned her in her mother’s obituary. How they’d known she existed, she hadn’t a clue. She scanned the rest of the details, read the website header to see exactly what town newspaper it was.
Her mother had died in some tiny town in upstate New York, a place Gracie had never been but her mother had somehow ended up at. Alone and with no family around her and probably no friends either.
She’d heard whispers from past foster parents that her mother had been found in an abandoned house—a drug house. Alone, bruised and dead most likely for well over twenty-four hours, they’d discovered her in one of the bedrooms. Needle marks in her arm and dressed shabbily, her hair a knotted mess. As if she hadn’t bathed in weeks.
