LITMIR.BIZ

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Adam tried again with humor. “Come on, Moll, maybe you’re over the hill but you’re not totally decrepit yet. You looked pretty good the last time I saw you.” In that short black dress and illegally high heels, she’d looked better than pretty good, in fact. And he hadn’t been the only one who’d thought so.

      “Thirty-two is not over the hill, Shibbs,” she finally said, petulance obvious even under the sniffling.

      “Sure it is. It’s all downhill from here.”

      “I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.”

      That wasn’t what worried Adam, because Molly wasn’t exactly someone aligned to Adam’s constant levity. It was the tears that were concerning. “Come on. Didn’t your birthday wishes come true?”

      “Actually, let me think,” she said, sniffling so hard she coughed twice. “You know, I guess they did come true after all. This morning I woke up and thought, ‘Oh, it’s my birthday. I think the best gift anyone can give me today is a nice big stack of walking papers!’ And I had to wait the whole day, but just as I was finishing up work, at the very last second, I got my wish!”

      Adam’s mouth hung open, and he thought it was very possible he was just as surprised as Molly must have been. “You got fired?”

      “Only by my biggest client. No big deal.” She sighed, and a little sob came out with it.

      “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

      “I never got fired before.”

      Neither had Adam, but he considered it best to keep that to himself. Molly was well aware of his relaxed work style, and it wasn’t going to make her feel any better that she’d now been canned one more time than he had.

      “What happened?”

      “Nothing happened. It wasn’t me. It was budget cuts. They had to let a lot of people go. An outside consultant wasn’t someone they were willing to save at the expense of one of their full-timers.”

      “Of course not.”

      “I begged them to keep me. I told them I’d revise our plans, make it more affordable, anything. It was humiliating, the way I acted. It was even worse than the firing part.”

      “Then why did you?”

      “I’m losing a big chunk of income.”

      “Listen, it wasn’t your fault.”

      “Well, I can’t exactly write ‘Not my fault’ on my mortgage check.”

      “No, but your business has been going well enough to land you that gig in the first place. M.J. Consulting has a great rep. You’ll get another job soon enough. And you’ve got other clients. So you’ll eat mac-and-cheese and Ramen noodles for a couple of weeks, and by then you’ll have recovered. Tighten your belt a little.”

      “Trust me, that’s not even physically possible.”

      “What do you mean?”

      She sighed again, and this time it wasn’t accompanied by sobs and sniffles. Just noisy mouth breathing, caused by her now certainly stuffed nose.

      “You know, I’ve been asking you for years to breathe heavy for me on the phone, babe, but you refused,” he joked.

      “We can’t eat Ramen for weeks,” Molly said flatly.

      “Sure you can. I can teach you 750 ways to cook that stuff—” Wait a minute. We? “We?” he asked. Was Zach Jones—there? Sitting next to her while she had this conversation? And if he was, why wasn’t he the one reassuring her, comforting her, trying to make her smile?

      “Yeah. We. There’s two of us now, Adam. I haven’t— I suppose we haven’t talked in a while.”

      “Well, I guess I should have known when you left with Jones at the reunion.”

      She sputtered. “What? What do you take me for?”

      “Just a woman who’s in love with a jerk.” Adam cringed. That just slipped out. He couldn’t help it. “Just tell him if he loves you, mac-and-cheese shouldn’t be a problem.”

      “Oh, my God, Adam,” Molly said slowly. “If I didn’t know for a fact you’re smart, I’d call you an idiot. Zach’s not here. He dumped me when that weekend was barely over.”

      “Molly, I’m—”

      “Adam, I’m pregnant. It’s Zach’s.”

      Adam opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and found he couldn’t stop doing it.

      “I can’t believe I told you that. Actually, I’m glad I did,” Molly amended. “I’m sick of keeping it to myself. No one knows.”

      “About the baby?”

      “Well, it’s kind of hard to hide a baby when you’re six months pregnant. No one knows about where the baby came from. Everyone around here, all my neighbors and friends, sort of quietly assumed I went to a sperm bank.”

      “And you sort of quietly didn’t correct them.”

      “What’s your point?”

      “No point. Getting it all straight.” So Molly, my-life-is-a-well-oiled-machine Molly, was single, pregnant and financially shaky. That would be all of it straight.

      “So you were right,” Molly said. “Zach is a jerk.”

      For some reason, Adam was missing the deep satisfaction he’d expected to have upon hopefully hearing those words.

      “So,” Adam said, “what’s your plan for this? Molly Jackson has an answer to everything.”

      A long pause. “I know. But my best answer is far from a sure thing.”

      “What’s the plan?”

      “Well, there’s this Dutch chemical company called ALCOP that’s ready to open up a big plant here in Rosewood in a couple of weeks. They’re looking for a consultant to implement their human resources needs.”

      “That’s right up your alley.”

      “I’ve got great experience, sterling references—including the firm who just fired me, by the way, because they actually did like me—and I know I’d be the best local person this chem company can find. And it will be about six times the size of any other firm I’ve done work for. It’s a yearlong commitment, so I can count on the money being good for at least that long.”

      “What’s not the sure thing?”

      “Well, see, I heard about ALCOP not too long ago, and I decided then not to go for it. I had that other big client and besides, I’ve heard that the company president, Pieter Tilberg, is notorious for not hiring women for key positions.”

      “Isn’t that illegal?”

      “Illegal or not, the glass ceiling hangs in too many places to count. That’s the way it is. That’s part of the reason why I struck out on my own in the first place.”

      “You are woman. I hear you roaring.”

      “Funny, Shibbs. So I figured, I’m doing fine, I don’t have the time, and besides, if this ALCOP guy’s got an issue with women, I can only imagine the issues he’d have with a single, pregnant one. But now—”

      “Now you’ve got to take that chance?”

      “I got fired at four o’clock. And I’ve now spent about five hours putting together a proposal,” she said. “And you know what? It’s flawless. Anyone would hire me. Even I would hire me. But when I walk in there, Tilberg won’t see my brain. He’ll see my big belly. And he won’t want to see it again. I’ll lose this chance, not because of my résumé but because of my private life.”

      She broke down again, sobbing hard.

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