Honor Bound by Joey Hill (speld decodable readers .txt) 📕

gender-diversified—filed from the conference room, Ford stopped her before she could sneak off to her office to lick her wounds. “Everything all right, Sophia?”

Ford Connelly, CEO of Caprice, her boss. He was sharp, didn’t miss a beat, and he’d known she was off her game.

“Everything’s good, Ford.” Except the acrid scent of hours-old coffee, made during the afternoon break, turned her stomach.

“You look a little tired.”

Now she looked like her dream. She pasted on a smile. “Thank goodness it’s Friday. I can have a nice restful weekend.” There was rain in the forecast. February in San Francisco was usually rainy. She could light a fire, watch old movies. Her stomach plunged. After her nice restful weekend, there’d be Monday and her procedure. She hadn’t told Ford yet that she’d be out Monday. She’d planned to tell him this morning, but she’d forgotten the board meeting, then things became too hectic.

Ford closed the boardroom door after his ever-efficient administrative aide, Constance, left. “Sit down a minute.” He politely indicated the chair Sophia had just vacated.

She perched on the edge of the cushy conference chair, then jumped in to explain the disjointed delivery of her presentation. “I apologize for the few stumbles I had. It won’t happen again.”

God, she hated Ford seeing her as incompetent. He was handsome, intelligent, urbane, with short dark hair, penetrating hazel eyes, a chiseled jaw, and a cleft in his chin. And tall, six-three. At five-nine, she felt delicate beside him. Not that she had designs on Ford.

He was her boss. She’d never cross that line. It was just that she knew she was a figurehead for Caprice, the supermodel who exemplified the products they peddled, the pretty face that illustrated how well their products worked. Unlike the other vice presidents, she didn’t even have a domain; she was simply executive vice president. Of nothing. She’d wanted this position, needed it. In the throwaway world of high fashion, you might as well be dead after forty, unless you did ads for anti-aging products. She’d wanted something more. Yet her accomplishments at Caprice so far didn’t amount to much. She hated for Ford to think she was totally useless. Even if she was.

He took the chair next to hers, swiveling until their knees almost touched. “Your idea is good, but we need more hard-line data before committing dollars.”

Her plan was to market a new line of skin care specifically for teenage girls. Caprice dealt with that demographic only in terms of acne management, concentrating the bulk of research dollars on baby boomers. But teenage girls could be a huge market share, starting them early on a skin-care regimen that, when they reached their midforties, would cut ten years off the aging process. She knew she needed data to back up her proposal, she’d just been distracted. Since this whole thing started during her annual exam two weeks ago, there’d been the sonogram, a probe, and now the so-called “minor procedure” on Monday.

Her throat clogged up, and she couldn’t get a word out for a long moment. Then she forced herself past it. “I’ll have that data on your desk on . . .” Not Monday. She wasn’t even sure about Tuesday. God, she wasn’t sure about the rest of her life.

“The end of the week is fine.” Ford stretched out a hand, stopped short of actually touching her. “But there’s something else bothering you.”

She had to tell him she’d be gone on Monday. She just hadn’t decided what to tell him.

Maybe the best approach was not to give him any explanation. “I need to take Monday off. I should be back Tuesday. I’ll use a vacation day.” The anesthesia would wear off quickly, and the doctor said she would have only mild soreness, if anything at all.

It seemed sacrilege that something so potentially devastating would have so little discomfort.

Ford simply stared at her.

The silence beat at her until a flush rose to her cheeks. “What?” She wasn’t usually so blunt, but he unnerved her.

“In the three years you’ve worked for me, you have never taken a vacation day on the spur of the moment.”

He remembered? She took a one-week vacation three times a year to visit her mom in Texas. Her dad had passed ten years ago, and her mother now suffered from Alzheimer’s.

Sophia made sure she had the best care possible.

So Ford was right. She didn’t take off at the spur of the moment. “There’s always a first time.” She smiled brightly.

Ford held her with a steady, penetrating gaze that made her want to fidget. He obviously wasn’t buying it. Sophia tried to wait out his silence. Her heart pounded, her temple throbbed. And still he didn’t say a word. She should have noticed he’d used that technique in staff meetings when someone was holding back the full story on a messy issue.

“It’s personal,” she finally said. “Female issues.” That would cut him off. Men couldn’t abide discussing female things.

“A troublesome boyfriend?”

“Of course not.” Sophia hadn’t dated since she started at Caprice. She didn’t have time for men. Besides, she avoided even the slightest hint of scandal like she spurned fast food. She’d had enough scandal when she was younger.

“Then what other female issues could there be?”

She couldn’t believe he was so persistent. Or that he didn’t get what she meant. He’d been married for twenty-five years, and had three children, two of them girls. He’d gotten divorced last year, but he still had to understand what “female issues” meant. God, this was excruciating. “I mean physical female issues.”

“I’ve never known you to have issues before, Sophia. You’re the calmest person I’ve met. But something’s been bothering you for a couple of weeks, and we need to discuss the problem. Don’t fob me off with this female crap.”

He thought she was talking about PMS. She wanted to laugh—really, she did. Most

bosses, most men, would have backed off long ago. Why did he have to push? Maybe she needed to hit him over the head with