It was still so incredibly bizarre to think that she was, in fact, pregnant. She didn’t feel maternal, so it shouldn’t be that hard to fake. She felt as though she had a horrific case of the flu, but she couldn’t really fathom there was a baby growing inside her. She touched her stomach, brushing her hands over the button on her blouse.

She was thrilled. She was terrified.

She was going to be sick.

Mandy clamped her lips tightly shut and breathed through her nose.

“Mr. Sharpton won’t hire you if he thinks you’re pregnant. But if he hires you and we hide the pregnancy from him for a while, well, when the truth finally becomes obvious, he won’t be able to fire you because of discrimination. And he absolutely hates to think there was something his superior intelligence didn’t pick up on, so he’ll never, ever admit that he didn’t realize you were pregnant when he hired you.”

It sounded all rather complicated to Mandy at the moment, when she was fighting to stay vertical and not slide to the floor like a narcoleptic. She had never been so tired in her entire life. Vampire victims probably had more energy than she did.

“But won’t he be angry when he finds out?” And given how pleasant Mr. Sharpton sounded, Mandy didn’t think that would be a fun day in the office.

“We’ll just act like we told him you were back in the beginning. I told you, he’ll never admit he didn’t know.”

Caroline started walking toward the elevators, and Mandy followed, shuffling in her boots. She had heels in the bag on her shoulder to change into, unwilling to tromp through the slushy March snow in them. Somehow Caroline had managed to stay completely intact on the two-block walk from the subway, whereas Mandy felt rumpled and pimply and swollen. She felt like she was thirteen and facing her mother over the table.

How could you have wrinkled that blouse in the three minutes it takes to walk from your bedroom to the dining room?

“Thanks, Caroline, for getting me this interview. It couldn’t have been easy since I have no marketable skills to speak of.”

Caroline looked outraged. “Mandy! Check that defeatist attitude at the door. You have run your own business for three years. Everything Mr. Sharpton asks you can be answered in some way with that. You have computer experience; employee management experience; you’ve dealt with distributors and done your own marketing. You are overqualified for this job. Besides, I got you the first interview with HR, but you passed that round and got yourself the actual interview with Sharpton.”