Andie poked her head into Doug’s office.
“Fancy finding you here,” she said with a little laugh. She meant the statement to be ironic, poking fun at the fact that too often when she had stepped past this same office in the last week, Doug hadn’t been inside. She’d thought he’d been avoiding her. Maybe he’d only been busy.
She stepped into the office. Doug had always been messy. It was in direct contrast with his neatly trimmed beard threaded with silver and the suits and ties or sweater vests he tended to wear to the office. But as much as the clutter of his office sometimes got on Andie’s nerves, it was also kind of charming in a distracted-professor sort of way.
She trailed her fingers over the edge of the desk as she waited for him to look at her. “When did you get back in? I didn’t realize you’d come back.”
“Is there something you need? I’m really busy.”
His voice was curt, and it cut her. She gritted her teeth, trying not to show it. She’d feel better if he looked like a mess, stressed up to his eyeballs or overworked and exhausted. But no, he looked pristine. Cold and pristine.
She could take a hint, even if it stung.
She should have known she would get hurt if she carried on with a married man. A part of her had hated it—and herself—from the start. It was why she pushed him about the divorce. She’d wondered all along if the separation was really as final as he’d said. But now she was starting to wonder if maybe his lack of attention had more to do with a certain new employee than it had to do with his not really wanting to make the break from his wife.
Well, the heck with him.
“I need time off,” she blurted out.
He frowned. He pulled the reading glasses off his nose and tossed them haphazardly onto the desk. How he’d be able to find them again in the pile of all that junk was anybody’s guess. “You can submit a vacation request.”
“Actually, I need time off now. Today. I finished my cataloguing for today, and I have a family emergency at home.”
His eyebrows climbed. “I didn’t know anyone in your family was sick.”
If he’d even remotely listened to her, he would have known about her mother’s health problems. But Doug had always been all about himself. Tightly, she told him, “There’s been a decline in my mom’s health, and I have to go home.”
“Home is… where?”
“Lobster Bay. It’s in Maine.”
He grunted. Why wasn’t he consoling her? She didn’t expect him to leap over the desk or anything, especially not here at work where everyone could see, but a few friendly words would have been nice.
“That’s a long way from here. What if the Richhaven estate comes up while you’re away?”
“Text me if that happens, and I’ll fly back.”
He was treating her like she was a new, flaky employee, not a woman he’d known and dated for the past few years. When they’d started their affair, she had felt as though he had seen her, valued her. Now it was clear he didn’t.
But maybe, if she left, he would. Not as a girlfriend—now that she was seeing another side of him, she realized that she’d known for quite some time their relationship was going nowhere. And oddly, it didn’t hurt as much as it should have. Maybe she’d dated him because deep down she knew he would never be able to make things more permanent.
She hadn’t been satisfied for months with their arrangement, and he didn’t care enough about her to keep her happy. Besides, didn’t she deserve somebody who gave her his full attention, who didn’t keep her as his dirty little secret?
“Okay, fair enough. If it’s an emergency, you must go, then.”
“I’ll call you later in the week and let you know how long I think this emergency will take. Text or email me if the Richhaven estate comes up. Goodbye, Doug.”
She turned and walked out of the room, feeling lighter for having turned her back on him. She needed to get away—from all of this, but especially from Doug. And maybe, with her gone, he’d realize how big of an asset she was to this company.
After all, no kid barely out of college could do her job like Andie could. It was about time somebody acknowledged that.