The Ex Who Hired Her. Kate Hardy
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said than done, Jordan thought wryly the following day, when he saw Alexandra balanced precariously on the top of a ladder in the toy department. She was standing on tiptoe, for pity’s sake. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.
‘Putting up a banner in the department to publicise the first story-time session, next week,’ Alexandra said. ‘What does it look like?’
‘Dangerous, with a flagrant disregard for health and safety. You could hurt yourself, as well as customers or colleagues. Why didn’t you ask Bill—or anyone taller than you, for that matter—to do it?’
‘Bill was busy, and I wanted the banner up as soon as possible. The kids have worked hard on this.’
‘Kids?’ Jordan wasn’t following.
‘My friend Meggie’s Year Two class.’
Meggie? He narrowed his eyes. He remembered Meggie. Alexandra’s best friend. Ten years ago, she’d had great pleasure in telling him that Alexandra was married to someone who would treat her properly, and he could go and take a running jump. Or words to that effect. ‘I see,’ he said crisply.
But he noticed that the banner was composed of the words ‘story time here Monday 10 a.m.’, with each letter carefully cut out, painted and glued to the banner. And all around them were glued drawings of book covers, clearly the children’s favourite books. The children had obviously worked really hard to make the banner bright and colourful. To make it special, for Alexandra.
Year Two. The children in the class would all be aged seven. If things had been different, he and Alexandra might’ve had a child of their own in that class, as well as another in Year Five …
The thought made him snap at her. ‘Will you get down from there before you fall?’
‘I won’t fall.’
In a suit and high heels? He wasn’t going to take the risk. ‘Get down,’ he said again. ‘I’ll put the damn thing up for you.’
For a moment, he thought she was going to defy him, but then she shrugged. ‘Fine. Thank you.’
He had to take his eyes off her legs as she descended from the ladder, carefully holding the banner.
Then she handed him one end. He’d just finished fixing it to the ceiling when he glanced down at her, and realised that she had a camera in her hands. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking shots for social media. To show that our CEO isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.’
‘You’re photographing me?’
‘I’ll let you vet the pictures, first.’ She gave him a wicked grin. ‘Maybe.’
Infuriating woman. He was about to say something cutting, when she asked, ‘Would you mind putting the other end up for me, too, please, as you’re here?’
After the fuss he’d made about her being up the ladder, he could hardly say no. He gave her a speaking look, but did so.
‘My hero,’ she purred.
‘Don’t push it,’ he warned.
She just batted her eyelashes at him. And it made him want to grab her shoulders and …
Kiss her.
Shake her, he corrected himself. ‘Don’t take unnecessary risks again,’ he said when he got down from the ladder.
‘No, sir.’ She gave him a smart salute.
He resisted the provocation, just, and stomped back to his office.
Later, his email pinged. The message contained a picture of him up the ladder, and a note from her.
Using this one. If I don’t hear back within the hour, will assume OK.
He went straight to her office. ‘How exactly are you intending to use that photograph?’
‘Here.’ She flicked into a screen on her computer and indicated the monitor so he could see the web page.
‘What if I said no?’
‘Let me see. This shows you as hands-on. All the mums are going to go weak at the knees and want to be here in case you walk by. All the grandmothers are going to think of their own sons and warm to you. The grandfathers will do the same, and the dads will see themselves in your shoes. So you’re generating customer warmth. Plus you’re creating links with the local community, as a local school worked on the banner—using material that Field’s supplied. Now, why would you say no to that kind of PR?’
He didn’t have an answer to that, because he knew she was right. ‘Just stay inside health and safety guidelines in future,’ he muttered.
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not planning to have an accident and sue Field’s or anything like that. I’m part of the team here. And I like being hands on.’
Hands on. He wished she hadn’t used that phrase. He could still remember the feel of her hands against his skin. ‘Whatever,’ he said, annoyed by the fact that she could still unsettle him like that. ‘If you’ll excuse me. I have things that need sorting.’ And he left her office before he did or said anything really rash.
On Monday morning, Jordan headed for the toy department. It was the first of their story-time sessions, and Alexandra had managed to get a minor children’s TV presenter in to do the first one.
Except it seemed that the presenter had gone down with tonsillitis and wasn’t able to appear. And Alexandra had stepped into the breach.
Jordan stood on the sidelines, watching her. She was sitting on a bean bag, with the children gathered round her and the mums sitting on chairs that looked as if they came from the staff canteen—no doubt she’d asked very nicely, with those huge eyes and the sweetest smile, and charmed the catering manager into helping. She was reading a rhyming story for the younger ones; some of them were clearly familiar with it, because she got them to join in on the chorus sections. She had a gorgeous voice, he thought, and he wasn’t surprised that all the children were hanging onto every single word.
And then he found himself imagining her with their child. If she hadn’t had the termination, would she have sat curled on the sofa with their toddler on her lap, pointing out the pictures and the words, gently teaching their little one to recognise letters?
Their child would’ve been ten, now. Nearly ready for high school. Would they have had a boy or a girl? And would they have had more children? A boy with his own dark hair and blue eyes, a girl with Alexandra’s huge brown eyes and sunny smile …
Jordan was cross with himself for even thinking about it. It was pointless dwelling on what might have been, because you couldn’t change the past. And right now children weren’t part of his future in any case.
Quietly, without catching her eye, Jordan moved away. Alexandra was doing just fine on her own; she didn’t need any support from him. And he wasn’t going to crowd her.
Though he did return right at the end, just as Alexandra was finishing the story, with a camera.
She glanced up at him and for a moment he could see laughter in her eyes; she clearly recognised this as a bit of tit-for-tat. And he took more photographs of the line of children thanking her for the story and the queue of mums at the tills with books under their arms, before sliding the camera back into his jacket pocket and starting to stack the chairs.
‘I saw that camera, you know,’ she said, joining him in the chair-stacking.
‘My marketing manager is very keen on social media and taking every photo opportunity we can,’ he said.
‘Good man. You’re learning.’ She patted his arm. ‘Though I’m afraid we’ll need to get all the mums to sign a release form before we can use those pics.’
Just as well there was a jacket sleeve and