Chapter 12 - The Sound of Footsteps
By the middle of January, the character of the executive floor had shifted irrevocably.
Hannah had been assigned a small, glass-walled office adjacent to the facilities planning department on the ninth floor. It had a desk, a dual-monitor workstation, and—by Ethan’s personal decree—a sturdy, modern wooden crib positioned in the corner away from the air vents.
Ellie spent her mornings there, gurgling happily as she watched the dust drift in the sunlight or batting at a wooden mobile Hannah had hung from the ceiling. Whenever Hannah had to attend a contractor briefing on the site, Mrs. Gable—Ethan’s usually stern, iron-haired executive assistant—would mysteriously find an excuse to bring her paperwork into Hannah’s office, sitting beside the crib and humming old Appalachian folk tunes while rocking the infant with one polished foot.
The corporate rumors were inevitable.
“She’s the CEO’s charity pet,” Hannah overheard one of the junior marketing coordinators whisper near the breakroom espresso machine. “Found her in the basement on Christmas Eve. Now she has an office with a view and gets to tell the contractors how to pour concrete.”
“I heard Marcus Whitmore is trying to get corporate ethics to look into the payroll records,” another voice replied. “There’s no way he’s paying her operations rates just for knowing where the pipes are.”
Hannah had stood behind the frosted glass door of the breakroom, her hands gripping her coffee mug until her knuckles were white. The shame had flared hot in her chest, but she hadn't run. She had walked directly into the room, filled her mug with boiling water, looked both women dead in the eye with a calm, unyielding expression, and walked back to her desk.
At five o'clock that evening, Ethan appeared at the door of her office. He had discarded his suit jacket, his crisp white sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing the lean, corded muscle beneath.
“Pack up,” he said.
Hannah looked up from a spreadsheet tracking delivery dates for commercial carpet tiles. “I still have to cross-reference the fire retardant certifications for the nursery flooring.”
“It’s five o'clock. You’ve been here since seven.”
“I’m salaried now, Ethan. Salaried people work until the job is done.”
A faint trace of an amused smile touched the corner of Ethan’s mouth. It was a fleeting, rare thing, but it transformed his face, stripping away the harshness of the boardroom and revealing the handsome, gentle man who had once existed before grief had hollowed him out.
“The carpet tiles are fire-rated Class A, ASTM E-84 compliant,” he said, stepping into the room and walking over to the crib. “I checked the manufacturer’s specification sheet while you were in the planning meeting. Ellie, on the other hand, is currently trying to eat the corner of her blanket.”
He reached down and lifted the baby with an ease that had become second nature over the past three weeks. Ellie immediately buried her face in his neck, blowing a damp, noisy bubble against his collar.
Ethan didn't flinch. He didn't reach for a handkerchief. He simply supported the baby’s small back with his large hand, his expression softening into an intense, quiet peace.
“You’re getting attached,” Hannah said, her voice dropping. The warning in her tone was gentle, born of concern not for herself, but for him.
Ethan looked at her over the baby’s head. “Is that a problem, Miss Miller?”
“It’s dangerous,” she said, meeting his gaze. “For you. The people on this floor are already sharpening their knives. Marcus is looking for any excuse to claim you’re unstable. If they think you’re… using us to replace what you lost…”
“Marcus can sharpen whatever he likes,” Ethan said quietly, his voice hard as iron. “My daughter Clara died in a sterile room while three monitors screamed that her heart was stopping. For three years, I believed that if I let myself care about another human being, I was betraying the time she didn't get to have.”
May you like
He looked down at Ellie, who had gripped the lapel of his shirt with both hands.
“Caring for this child doesn't betray Clara,” Ethan whispered, his throat moving as he swallowed against a sudden swell of emotion. “Ignoring you both on that floor on Christmas Eve would have been the betrayal.”
