The answer was pretty simple. I had. I didn't give him a chance to say anything. I just asked him if he had a daughter, and then when he said he did, I told him to leave. I was actually quite horrible, and I could completely understand if he didn't want to talk to me.
“So, you heard about Caroline? Where at?”
“At the diner. The waitress made a comment about it after your daughter came in.”
“That is probably Gail. She never shuts her mouth.”
I told him that I didn't remember her name, but I didn't think that it really mattered. I was there for something completely different. Not to talk about who was gossiping, but to talk about the gossip itself.
“I feel stupid about the way I acted to you, Frank. It was just weird because everything changed all of a sudden. We had this great week together and then you just kind of disappeared. I started to suspect that something was going on. I actually thought that you were married. And then I saw that little girl, and she got Blue Moon ice cream, and then you had it on your shirt later that night when you came over. I just knew then that she was part of the family that you had hidden from me, and I was really upset.”
He told me that I sounded like Sherlock Holmes, and I just kind of waved him off. I had been right, but I didn't think it was the right time for me to bring up such a thing. Not the right time at all.
“I don't have a hidden family.”
“I know. I know now that you did it to help your friends and to make sure that she had a good life outside of foster care. I know that you are the hero of the story, and I'm the jerk. I also know that you're probably not going to forgive me, but I wanted to make sure that you knew that I knew I was a jerk. I probably messed something up that could have been great, and I will always regret that.
“Why do you have to regret it?”
I asked him what he meant, and he got up out of his chair and started walking around the desk toward me. He pulled me up to my feet and pressed his lips against mine. It was hard for me to regret anything that had brought me to this very instance in my life. Almost impossible, really.
17
Frank
As soon as I realized that Amber wasn’t mad at me anymore, it was all I could do to get my hands on her. She was the sort of woman that loved hard, and once that little hiccup was through, I knew that she would want to be close. It was relentlessly on my mind, and we were a lot alike in that way.
Amber took a minute to get with the program, but she finally seemed to be on the same page as me. I don’t know what came over me, relief more than anything, and I just had to have her. I think I had to prove to myself that I could have her.
Once we started kissing, I didn’t think about the fact that we were in my office and that the assistant wasn’t that far from where we were. All I could think about was the fact that she was back in my arms, seemingly where she needed to be the whole time.
Amber whimpered as I moved her toward the desk. She stopped me when I was ready to swipe it all away.
“Don’t. You’ll make a mess.”
I just chuckled, because that was not at all what I wanted her to be thinking about right now. I wanted her to know that I would make any mess that I had to, to get her in my arms. I was committed.
“Do you really think I am so worried about a mess? I thought that you were going to leave me. Do you know what that did to my head?”
Amber didn’t know how to answer me. I know I can be intense, and she was finding it hard to look away. It was pulling her in, much like everything about me. That was the point. I held her gaze as I wiped everything off the desk in one go. All of the papers started drifting to the ground, making the mess she had warned about, and I couldn’t have been happier.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“Well, you needed somewhere to sit. It’s been a long time since I’ve had my hands on you and it’s going to take some time. I can’t just rush it and bend you over it. I want to do it right.”
“What about your secretary?”
Amber was worried about all these things that I hadn’t even thought about. Why did she have to sidetrack me? I didn’t know if she thought it was going to do her any good, because it wasn’t.
“Carla, take a long lunch!”
I hollered the words to my secretary, not sure how she would take it, but honestly not caring one way or another. I wanted Amber to know that I wasn’t going to give up on the moment. She had a skirt on and before I heard Carla getting up to leave, I already had my hands in a very moist situation. The rest of me was dying to be there, too.
“Damn, you are wet and hot.”
“Damn, you’re embarrassing me. I am never going to be able to look at her again. This is a small town and you know how people gossip.”
“I suspect that the diner waitresses will have something to say. Are you really worried about it?”
She said that she wasn’t, but by the look on her face and in her eyes before they
