Crossing the Line

“Don’t know. Phone, Bobby,” Caite said firmly. For a guy who worked for a company that dealt in handling the media affairs of celebrities, he hadn’t yet mastered the art of not being nosy.

She took the water to Elise, who didn’t look any better but sipped slowly from the cup. Caite looked her over, cataloging the symptoms she could see so that when she got the doctor on the phone, she’d be ready to describe them. The phone on her desk rang with the distinctive one-two beat of an internal transfer. That would be Steph.

“Hey,” she said, wasting no time with a greeting. “It’s Caite. Elise isn’t feeling well. She asked me to call you.”

Steph reacted immediately. “What’s wrong? Is she sick? Oh, God. Is it the baby? Is the baby coming early?”

“I don’t think so.” Caite quickly described the symptoms she’d noted, listening to the rapid sound of Steph’s breathing. She was going to hyperventilate at this rate. “Did you give Bobby the doctor’s number?”

“Yes. Oh, God. It sounds like it’s preeclampsia. I told her not to go into work today!”

“It’s going to be all right.” Caite looked over at Elise, whose color was slightly better, but nothing else seemed to have changed. “Do you want to talk to her?”

Elise opened her eyes then and shook her head with a small smile. “Bathroom,” she mouthed.

“Steph, she went to the bathroom. Listen, when... Hold on. Bobby’s putting a call through.” Caite transferred to the other line, where she ran through the symptoms again with the doctor, who determined that it did indeed sound as if Elise was suffering from preeclampsia and who told Caite she needed to be brought into the hospital immediately.

After handing the phone to Elise so she could speak with the doctor, Caite ducked back to reception, where Bobby was busy dealing with an increasingly hysterical Steph. He was good at this aspect of his job, and he handled Elise’s wife with easy efficiency. Fortunately, none of them had any scheduled appointments yet this morning, and the reception waiting area was empty.

“She’s going to come here,” Bobby said with a hand over the mouthpiece.

“No,” Caite countered. “Tell her to meet us at the hospital.”

She could hear Steph’s shriek of dismay all the way from across the room, but there wasn’t any time to deal with that. Caite went back to rap on Jamison’s door. He still had the phone pressed to his ear and gave her an irritated wave, dismissing her. Not sure how important it was to interrupt him at this point anyway—it wasn’t as if the doc were calling for an ambulance or anything, right?—Caite went back to her own office to find Elise on her feet. Unsteady, still pale, but looking determined.

“I need to get my stuff.”

“I’ll have Bobby call us a cab.” Caite put out a hand to help keep Elise on her feet. “It’s going to be all right.”

Elise nodded, mouth wobbling as she managed to find a small false smile. “I hope so.”

Caite had no idea if everything was going to be okay or not, but one thing she was really good at was holding the hands, both literally and figuratively, of nervous people. She took Elise’s hand now and squeezed. “It will be okay. You’ll see.”

* * *

Part of the reason Jamison liked working with Brett Dennison over at Ace Talent was that the other man knew when to stop negotiating. Not that Jamison didn’t love digging down deep to figure out the right angles for the contract and getting the other guy to agree to what was best for Wolfe and Baron and nobody else. Jamison liked the power of getting someone to do what he wanted them to do...but there was also that perfect, sweet moment when the other person at last capitulated, and everything could move on from there.

“I’ll have Caite work up the final agreements and send them over,” Jamison said now. “Good to be working with you again, Brett.”

Brett laughed. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what you say when you’re riding in that Beemer on my dime.”

“It’s not your dime,” Jamison said, not bothering to point out that he did not, and never would, drive a BMW. Jamison had a ’64 Mustang that had been his old man’s. Completely restored. “It’s the blood, sweat and tears of your clients.”

“Fair enough. Lunch next week?”

“Call Bobby. He’ll set it up.”

With the pleasantries out of the way, both men disconnected. Jamison sat back in his chair, finally, to put his feet up on the desk and take a breath. He’d been so caught up in his negotiation with Brett that he hadn’t been paying much attention to the passing of time, but damn, the office had gone quiet. The blinking light on his desk phone told him he had messages waiting, but he didn’t bother to check them. Anyone he really wanted to talk to had his cell number; anyone calling him on the office line was going to have to wait until he felt like checking in.

His stomach rumbled, and the hunger he’d been fending off since lunch, when he’d taken the time only to grab a protein bar, roared into full life. The headache followed after, poking at his temples like a dozen tiny devils dancing. With a muttered invective, Jamison pulled open his desk drawer to grab another protein bar, but the bin held only dust and disappointment.

“Dammit.” He got to his feet and went to the front desk, where Bobby usually kept a basket of candy, but a few mints weren’t going to do the trick.

Where the hell was everyone? Bobby might’ve been out the door on the dot of five, but Elise and Caite certainly should’ve still been finishing up some work. Elise especially, since her plan was to get as much done as she could before she went on maternity leave. She’d planned to work from home for the first couple of months but even so needed to get everything settled before then. Caite, on the other hand... Jamison frowned. The girl had worked in the office for all of a few months, not long enough to start slacking off, in his opinion. And dammit, there wasn’t even any hot coffee in the pot Bobby was supposed to keep fresh for waiting clients. Grumbling, Jamison strode back to his office to shut everything down before he headed out.

He’d missed the ding of the elevator door opening but looked up as the scent of pizza wafted toward him. Not pizza. Stromboli, the best kind, from Gino’s down the street. He found Caite in the conference room, setting out the familiar cardboard takeout box, along with a couple of paper plates and napkins. A six pack of Tröegs Pale Ale, too. She looked up when he came in.

“Hey.”

Jamison paused in the doorway. “I thought everyone was gone for the night.”

Caite straightened and put a hand on one hip, her head tilting to study him for a second, lips pursed. “And you were pissed off, huh?”

“No.” Well, he had been, hadn’t he? At least a little. “Okay, annoyed.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “You have no idea, do you?”

“About what? That everyone else around here seems to think that it’s okay to skip off, whatever, just because the clock says it’s time?” He frowned at her, trying to remember what they’d gonoe over in her initial interview, but Elise had handled most of that. “I thought we made it clear when we took you on that this wasn’t going to be a nine-to-fiver.”

“For your information, Mr. Wolfe,” Caite said coolly, going back to setting out the food, “I was a little busy this afternoon, helping Elise.”

“And that’s an excuse?” The words spilled out of him, tasting irrational, and he knew it, but still a little high from his fierce negotiations with Brett, Jamison was having a little trouble coming back to the world of getting along with other people.

“You skipped lunch today, didn’t you.”

Jamison frowned harder. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“I had to take Elise to the hospital because she was having preeclampsia and possibly going into an early labor,” Caite said, voice hard, “which you’d have known if you paid any attention to what goes on in here aside from ragging on people for not living up to your kind of asinine expectations. But if you’d eaten lunch today, I bet you’d have at least asked me what was going on before you launched into a tirade about my lack of work ethic, so sit down and eat something before your blood pressure gets too high.”

He froze. “Elise? What? Is she all right? What the hell? Why didn’t someone—?”

“Sit. Down,” Caite commanded in a tone that sliced right through him. “Now.”

Jamison sat.

They stared at each other for a moment before she pushed a plate of stromboli toward him. “Eat.”

He dug in, tearing off a hunk of soft bread and gooey cheese and chewing rapidly before taking another bite. He was starving, and she was right. He was an asshole when he was hungry. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care about his partner.

“She’s fine,” Caite said before he could ask her anything else. She picked daintily at her own stromboli, cutting it neatly with her fork and knife and letting it cool before taking a bite. “They put her on some meds and are monitoring her overnight. Steph’s with her. But they’re not sure when she’ll be back to work. Definitely not tomorrow, anyway.”

“Tomorrow’s the big meeting with that bunch of yahoos from that reality show. The one about the house.” Jamison reached for a beer and passed her one. He cracked the top and took a gulp, relishing the crisp flavor of the ale. “Elise was point person on that one. She knows how I feel about working with those types.”

“Those types,” Caite said, “are willing to pay a lot of money for our services.”

Jamison paused, stromboli halfway to his mouth. He set it down. “Do I detect a note of disapproval, Ms. Fox?”

“Just truth.” Caite gave him another one of those assessing looks. “They’ll bring Wolfe and Baron a lot of attention, too. It’s why Elise took them on.”