The Job Offer (22 page)

The only down side of her job was that
she spent far too much time looking for Ben on campus even though she knew that
he would not be back until next week.  Dr. Rudolph told her that his trip was being
extended another week but did not go into details as to why.  Not that she
missed him, she told herself again.  If she told herself that long enough,
maybe one day she would believe it.

Oh, who was she kidding?  Except for her
professional life she was miserable.  Even that would change once he returned. 
Carla noticed and commented a few times over the past few weeks about Anne’s
brooding and weight loss, wanting to know what was wrong.  But Anne just was
not ready to talk to her about Ben, yet.  Not with Carla and not with her
mother who asked her again if she wanted to talk about Ben when she heard the
sadness in Anne’s voice the last time they talked on the phone.  All Anne could
do was hope that her heart would heal in time.  She just needed to survive the
next year.

But having a baby changed everything.  If
Ben thought that she used him to get the position in the company, what would he
think when he found out that she was pregnant with his child?  She could not
continue to work for the company over the next year knowing that Ben would
think that she was only trying to trap him into marriage like Chelsea and his
other past girlfriend.  Or worse, that she was trapping him just so that she
could collect child payments from him for the next eighteen years.  But Ben
needed to know about the baby.  He had a right to know.  Even if he did not
want her or the baby, he had a right to know.  Eventually she would have to
tell him.  She just could not do it yet.  Once she found another job, she would
tell him.

Maybe she would tell him, she thought.

Yes, she would tell him.

Her indecisiveness was driving her
crazy, and she left her house for work while she lectured herself.  She just
hoped her indecisiveness would not start to cross over into her professional
life, too.

She drove into the parking lot of
Building Two a half an hour later, grabbed her umbrella from the passenger seat,
and ran for the employee entrance through the pouring rain.  Shaking the water
from her umbrella when she walked through the door, she rounded the corner at
the end of the hall and went into the Research and Development wing.  Her
office was the second one in, and she quickly stored her things, turned on her
computer, and pulled out her files.  She needed to get her notes together for
the morning meeting she was to attend with Dr. Rudolph, Mr. Winfield, and the
science technicians who worked on the project with her.

They were going to discuss proposed
compounds with which they might experiment and lay out a game plan for combining
them.  Compounds needed to be mixed in a certain order to gain the results they
were looking for.  Ben usually joined these initial meetings, Dr. Rudolph told
her last Friday, when he also told her that Ben would not be there.  Anne was
just happy that this morning, of all mornings, he would miss the meeting
because he was still in Asia.  She did not think that she could handle seeing
him today.

Anne walked into the first floor R &
D conference room of her building at five minutes to ten and saw the technicians
already sitting at the large oblong table.  Before she left her desk, she
uploaded her PowerPoint presentation to the Research drive, and now went to the
front of the room to pull the presentation up on the digital board so that it
would be ready for the beginning of the meeting.  She could hear Mr. Winfield
and Dr. Rudolph talking as they came into the conference room, but she did not
turn around to acknowledge them.  Finally, once the program was ready, she
turned around and stopped frozen in place.  Her body went into shock, and her
heart filled with sudden pain.

Oh, God!

Ben was sitting at the table looking at
her closely.  He wasn’t supposed to be here.  What was he doing here, and why
was he staring at her so intently?  He was the one who called off their
relationship, not her.  When he saw that she was aware of him looking at her,
he turned away and began talking to Dr. Rudolph who sat next to him at the
table.

Seeing him again drove home to her that
she was no closer to getting over her feelings for him then she was seven weeks
ago, and the sudden pain in her chest knocked the wind out of her.  She wanted
to keep looking at him but did not dare because she was not sure she would be
able to do it without the pain shining through her eyes.  She sneaked a peek at
him again while he looked away.  He looked tired and like he had lost some
weight, but otherwise he was just as handsome as she remembered.  Noting the
time, she cleared her throat and picked up the clicker to begin giving her
presentation.  Ben focused on the digital screen instead of looking at her
directly throughout the meeting, a fact that helped her continue speaking
instead of becoming a bundle of nerves.  When he finally did speak to her to
ask questions, his voice was distant like she was a stranger to him.

After the meeting and the technicians
had left the room, Dr. Rudolph introduced her to Ben and she shook his hand.  Her
hand was cold, and she pulled it away as quickly as she could without being
rude.  Their smaller group talked for a few minutes about the project and her
move to Seattle.  The whole time Ben continued to act as if they were meeting
for the first time, as if she had never laughed with him or loved him.  Realizing
her thoughts were wandering into areas that would only lead her to trouble, she
looked down at her notes and waited until she could get them back under
control.  The meeting ended fifteen minutes later, and Ben walked out with Dr.
Rudolph and Mr. Winfield leaving her to shut off the digital board and turn off
the lights.

After they left, she sat in the silence
of the room for several minutes as she worked to compose herself.  Her emotions
were in turmoil, and she wiped away several tears before she felt like she was
in control enough to move again.  After taking several deep breaths, she slowly
stood up, feeling a pain throughout her body that had nothing to do with her
pregnancy or feeling under the weather.  Stop wasting your time, she told
herself.  Pull yourself together!  She stifled a laugh of hysteria and began
closing up the room by turning off the digital board, picking up her notes, and
turning off the lights.

Anne did not see Ben for the rest of the
week which gave her time to contemplate her future.  The fact that he did not
seek her out only served to cement the idea that he really never cared about
her like she cared for him and that there was no hope.  On Wednesday, she
confirmed her pregnancy with an OB-GYN, started a regiment of vitamins, and
adjusted her diet.  With her pregnancy confirmed, she began to consider her
options.  On Thursday she saw an attorney, not from her father’s firm, and
looked into having paperwork written up for Ben to give up his parental
rights.  She would not seek child support.  She remembered what he said about
feeling trapped, and she did not want him to ever feel that way about their
child.  He would resent the baby eventually if he did.  She did not want their
child to go through what she went through with her own father.

Her options for future work were a
little more complicated.  She had signed a non-compete clause in her contract,
so she could not work for a rival research company for a least another year.  She
liked working at Stanford Enterprises, but she also knew that she had to
leave.  Staying would not be an option.  She could see about doing adjunct
teaching and consulting again to make ends meet until the year was up.  To fill
in the gaps in her income, she only had one option.  As much as she hated it to
use it, it would help her until she found a different position or until her
inheritance came through.

On Friday she worked late and stayed to
enter her notes into a file the team used to track their observations and
results.  It was well after eight pm and the research area was empty except for
her in her office.  She looked down at her peanut butter and jelly sandwich
without much interest but ate it anyway.  In the past few weeks, she discovered
that she could not stomach lunch meat.  What she would not give for a diet soda
and a slice of pizza right now, she thought, but they were not on her diet.  She
finished typing her last note from the day’s experiment and future ideas then
closed out the file.  Then she opened up her email program and typed out an
email before pressing the "send" button.  After closing down her
computer, she grabbed her purse and walked out into the warm evening air before
heading home.

Ben drove over to his parents’ house on
Lake Washington in the Benny-Blaine neighborhood of Seattle late on Saturday
morning for lunch.  It would be good to see them again after eight weeks away,
but he was not looking forward to their response to seeing him looking so
gaunt.  For weeks he waited for Anne to call his cell phone while he was in
China.  But she never called, and he knew now that he should have waited until
he spoke with her in person before leaving the inn.  Maybe then he could have
convinced her to forgive him.  But he didn't, and now he lost his chance.

He kept himself busy over the last
several weeks trying to remove her from his mind once he realized that she
would not call.  It worked during the day because he had too much business to
see to, but at night he would dream about her and remember being with her,
seeing her laugh as they watched the ball game, her smile when they were out
doing something together, and the glaze of passion that filled her eyes when he
made love to her.  His body ached as much as his heart.  At one point he tried
calling her cell phone again, but her number was disconnected, and he did not
know her new one.

He was aware that she was planning on
being at the meeting on Monday morning, so seeing her there did not come as a
surprise.  He did not sleep a wink the night before because of his anticipation
in seeing her and his fear at how she would react upon seeing him.  What did
come as a surprise was how much he wanted to take her in his arms the minute
that he saw her so that he could hold her, just hold her, and apologize.  Even
if she did not accept his apology, he needed to give her one.  He also needed
to be honest and tell her how he really felt about her and face her possible
rejection.

She looked good to him even though she
looked like she had also lost weight.  But it was not the right time to talk to
her on Monday.  She acted so remotely that he found it difficult looking at her
because the pain in his chest was too heavy.  He remembered how quickly she
removed her hand from his when Rudolph introduced them and how she would not
look at him in the eye.  After the meeting he decided he could not wait any
longer to talk to her face to face and had gotten her address and telephone
information from Bernie.  His plan was to bring her dinner that evening.  But
then a call came from San Diego that he was needed there on Tuesday morning,
and he left on Monday afternoon.  He returned to Seattle around five yesterday afternoon
giving him just enough time to change into formal wear and make it to the
award's dinner downtown.

The dinner went much as he expected it
to, he remembered.  He had hoped to see Anne there.  Several Stanford
Enterprise employees were in attendance.  It was not until after the award was
given and people were milling around talking that Ben was glad that Anne was
not in attendance.  The situation would have been too explosive.  It began when
he was talking with Davis Wynn, the chairman of the foundation, and he felt a
hand move up his arm almost stroking him.  He looked over at who was touching
him and just about tossed the woman’s hand off of his arm which would have caused
a scene.  The hand belonged to none other than Chelsea who was doing her best
to insinuate to Wynn that he and Chelsea were together.

As politely as he could, Ben excused
himself from the conversation and walked to the bar for a glass of soda.  She
followed him.  He could smell her liberally applied perfume that made her smell
like a gardenia garden run amok.  She put her hand on his arm, and he shrugged
it away before he turned to glare at her.  Right now he was too tired, too much
in pain, and too revved up with anger directed toward her to stomach even a
minute in her presence.

"What are you doing here, Chelsea?"

"I’ve come to support you, Ben. 
What do you think I’m doing here?"  Ben was not fooled for one minute by
her sugary sweet tone or her innocent expression.  "I see your girlfriend
is noticeably absent tonight.  Did you break up, Ben?  Not that I’m surprised. 
She got what she wanted.  She may have only wanted a job.  But I want you, Ben." 
She said the last sentence seductively and put her hand on his chest.

Ben grabbed her wrist and pushed her
hand down.  He did not let go.  Right now, all he saw was red.  Putting his
glass of soda on the bar, he walked with Chelsea by his side out into the hotel
lobby.  When they were by the front desk, Ben asked the front desk clerk if
there was a private meeting room available for just a few minutes.  They were
shown to a small conference room that looked like it was used by hotel staff
for booking high profile events, and Ben closed the door when the clerk left. 
Chelsea, who stood beside him quietly up until this point, seemed to take
encouragement by them being alone because she wrapped her arms around his neck
and kissed him.