“Yeah,” Rebecca nodded. “That’s it. Like she’s seeing everything for the first time. Today, when she saw her fries came with a dipping sauce, not ketchup, it was like this amazing surprise.”
Yes. It made it impossible not to always want to watch her. Waiting to see how she would react.
Once, I’d watched her delicately spit out a piece of food into a napkin during a business lunch when she realized there were orange chunks in a Chinese Mandarin salad.
The face she’d made. As if the salad had betrayed her.
However, I couldn’t spend too much time thinking about that, because that led to other thoughts.
Like how she might react if I went down on her. Kissed her pussy. Fucked her with my tongue.
I squeezed my eyes closed in an attempt to banish the thought.
Because the other thing that was coming back to life along with everything else was my dick.
Not Flowers. Please dick. Anyone but her.
“Do you think she’ll come tomorrow, or make an excuse to bail?”
My mind was wandering to a list of other women I might call for a casual hook up to relieve some of this built-up sexual energy, so I had to replay Beck’s question.
Was Flowers going to come tomorrow?
Yes. Because she was the bravest fucking person I knew. Still, I kept it lighter than that. “She’ll come. I told her there is going to be pie.”
Rebecca finished off the last of her wine and stood up. “Well, I better go and get some sleep so I cannothelp Mom tomorrow. Night, Grant. I’m glad we came.”
“I’m glad you came too,” I said honestly. I was so very glad.
In fact, I was pretty sure I was actually content to have my family sleeping under my roof tonight. Tomorrow, there would be only more of that. Banter, teasing, laughter. Especially when Flowers showed up.
I’m sorry, Allison. I’m so sorry. I never meant to be happy again.
I just didn’t know how to stop it.
Or maybe I did.
Tomorrow I would showcase to everyone that Flowers was nothing more than an assistant.
I’d make a point.
Keep things…hell, I didn’t know. But one thing would be clear to everyone, including Flowers, they would know she meant nothing to me beyond a professional working relationship.
TWENTY-THREE
ANNA
He betrayed her. Why did he do that?
Thanksgiving
I stoodin front of his massive front door and took a deep breath.
I’d splurged on an Uber to get here instead of taking public transportation so I wouldn’t be sweaty. And I’d brought, what the guy at the liquor store said anyway, a nice bottle of wine.
I had also made cookies. They were just the break and bake kind, but I thought they’d turned out okay. It felt wrong not to contribute more than just a bottle of wine. After all, this was Thanksgiving. It was a big deal.
I’d finished my shift at the homeless shelter, which had been tough because I’d seen myself in so many of the people who I’d scooped out food for. I wanted to tell them all that anything was possible. That none of this was permanent if they didn’t want it to be.
