She didn’t know how to answer that.
Sheryl moved on just fine without a response. “I want you to come home for Christmas. No excuses, Dessie. It’s been too long.”
What was it, Slap Desta in the Face with All Her Truths Day? It was time for her to go home. Truthfully, she’d been foolish to stay away for so long. Her family loved her; they wouldn’t have judged her. But she’d judged and blamed herself for something she knew hadn’t been her fault.
“Yeah, Ma. I’ll come home for Christmas.” Saying the words lifted a weight from her she hadn’t known she’d been carrying. Desta wondered about those other words she and Nina had discussed. She considered the possibility that she might be falling in love with a guy who’d been her friend for the last five years. More importantly, she wondered how that guy was feeling about her.
“Thought you’d still be here.” She hadn’t heard his voice all day. Not since they’d stepped off the elevators this morning and walked in different directions to their offices.
Glancing down at her watch, she sighed. Once she’d finally decided on the picture and sent it off, she’d jumped right into the next project to be completed. She sat back in her chair and looked at him. “Lost track of time.”
“I see, back to your usual pace.” Pushing away from the doorframe where he’d been leaning, Maurice closed the door behind him and made his way into her office.
She recalled watching him dress in the heather-gray suit, light blue shirt and tie this morning. When he’d gone to his place and grabbed a change of clothes yesterday, she’d had no idea. But after last night’s dinner meeting with Parker Donovan to discuss the exclusive articles on Riley and Chaz to be printed in Infinity over the next six months, they’d gone directly to her apartment. And straight to bed like an old married couple, because they’d both been working nonstop since seven that morning. Now he walked his sexy self across the floor of her office as if he totally belonged here.
“You’ve got nerve. You’re still here at seven thirty at night, too,” she pointed out.
Normally, when he came to her office, he’d sit in one of the guest chairs positioned across from her desk. Tonight, he came around the side and perched a hip on the corner by the sleek speakers she’d purchased last year during a Black Friday sale. “We’re both workaholics. There’s a remedy for that, though.”
She rested her hands on the arms of the chair, settling into the comfortable ease they’d had around each other for years. “Yeah? What’s the remedy?”
“I’d say another one of those massages we had at the resort. But for tonight, a hot bath. Order-in dinner. Football game on TV, or in your case one of those sappy holiday movies you bribed me into watching the other night.” Even taking a deliberate jab at her, he was charming. From the even tone of his voice to the sexy grin that punctuated his words and the casual way he lounged his toned body on her desk as if that were the only place in her office for him to sit, his allure was incomparable.
“I’ve got a better suggestion,” she said, and he raised a brow in question. “I’ll pick the takeout, and you pick what we watch on TV.”
His nod of agreement came quickly. “Your place or mine?”
Maurice had a very nice and spacious apartment in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. She’d been there twice—once to drop off files from work and another time to pick up a painting she’d won from him in one of their monthly poker games. He hadn’t invited her there since they’d returned from the Finger Lakes, and she hadn’t minded. Her place was her comfort zone. It offered her complete control over when the date would end. Or at least, that was how it’d worked on the past few dates she’d had.
“Don’t overthink this. It’s not that big a deal,” he said, tapping the lines she knew appeared on her forehead when she was deep in thought. “We’ll go to your place. Did you drive today?”
“No.” She rarely ever drove her car to work. The subway was easier than fighting traffic.
“Then, gather your things, and we’ll get ready to leave.” While the Golds all used the company car service for transportation to and from work, Maurice always drove his car. He called it an extension of his daily routine and noted he’d be lost without Sweet Sally—the name he’d given his black Porsche 718 Boxster.
She didn’t move when he eased off the edge of her desk and started walking toward the door. She couldn’t—the sense that something was crawling just beneath her skin had started again, and she clenched her teeth in an effort to ease the discomfort.
“You okay?” She heard him ask through the haze of emotion swirling around her.
“No.” A lie would’ve been easier, and then she could’ve pushed past the occurrence and told herself she was making progress. She had been, at least during the past week. Between work and spending her evenings with Maurice, she hadn’t thought about her past, until today during her conversation with Nina about falling in love.
“Hey.” He was back, circling around her desk this time, grabbing the back of her chair and turning it so she faced him when he knelt in front of her. “What’s going on? You were drifting away like this on and off at the resort. Is it about your ex?” A muscle twitched in his jaw.
There was concern in his tone and sincerity in his eyes. She knew those eyes, had known them for a long time. They’d never made her feel the way she was feeling right now, though. The change was a bit discomforting.
“It’s this. Us. What we’ve been doing since the trip.” There, she’d said it. The thing that was stopping her from fully grasping all that Nina had talked
