by Ava Storm
I was trying to resurrect the boundaries of our relationship. We couldn’t keep up this rigid boss-employee dynamic, eventually it would implode from the internal pressure of our past. My new strategy was to vent the heat that built up between us through the guise of a platonic friendship. I’m not sure why I thought it would work any better, but I was desperate. Not only did I need this job, I liked it.
Ford looked at me like he knew what I was doing. Good. He recognized a peace offer when he heard it. Now I held my breath, wondering if he would take it.
“No, thank you, Miss Stafford,” he said, his voice dismissive, his face closed-off.
Rejected.
I was frustrated, but I couldn’t even show it without admitting what I was doing. I put on my most cheerful smile and said, “Let me know if you change your mind!”
The day dragged, even though when I realized it was time to go get Madelyn, I wished it had taken longer. I didn’t want to leave her, and I really didn’t want to go to this conference. Ford and I were flying out a day early, so it would be just the two of us on the plane. In the rental car. At the check-in counter. It was too much pressure. Either the barriers would breakdown altogether, or it would be a miserable week of stiff silences and terse conversations.
Madelyn had made a patriotic suncatcher in honor of Memorial Day during craft time, and she was very excited to rip it up into small pieces as we rode the bus home. Shelly and Amanda were going to take turns staying at the apartment with her.
“Mommy wanted that,” I said, watching her pry apart the contact paper and yank out the red and blue tissue paper stuffed inside.
She handed me a piece and then emptied out the paper stars. With a sigh, I gathered them up. I knew I should try to make her do it, but I didn’t feel like it right now. I just wanted to cuddle her and watch Paw Patrol. Besides, Shelly would make sure she didn’t become a litterbug. By the time I came back from Nashville, Madelyn would probably be separating our plastics and composting.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders that still felt small in her puffy jacket and kissed the side of her head. She gave me a brief, uninterested look, shrugged me off, then took back her piece of tissue paper.
Shelly was already at the apartment when we got back. She had an array of takeout brochures spread out on the coffee table for Madelyn to look at. “She still lives on pouches and ravioli,” I said. “You might not want to let her have a deciding vote on dinner.”
“She doesn’t,” Shelly said. “I’m just trying to make her feel like she does. Even a false choice makes people feel more proactive.”
She followed me into my bedroom. I’d considered traveling in my work clothes, but decided that a three-hour flight deserved something comfortable, Ford’s opinion be damned. “Do you have time to eat with us?”
“No, I’ll grab something at the airport.” I pulled on my jeans and a loose, v-neck t-shirt. I had three pairs of heels packed for the four-day conference, but for the plane I was wearing my sneakers. “All of my contact information is on the fridge. If you can’t reach me on my cell, you can—”
A knock at the door cut me off. I frowned. “Is Amanda coming over?”
“Oh, yeah. She said she might.” Shelly disappeared down the hall. I heard her undoing the locks and announcing, “Madelyn, Aunt Amanda is—”
And then a shocked silence as she opened the door.
Christ, had Alex gotten my address somehow? I shoved my feet into my sneakers and grabbed my bag. I really didn’t have time for this.
But when I left my bedroom, it wasn’t Alex standing in the small entryway. It was Ford. And he was looking at something over Shelly’s shoulder that could only be Madelyn.
20
Ford
She had a kid. She had a fucking kid. I stared at the small girl whose hair was much darker than Paige’s hair, but whose eyes were the exact same shade of brown and just as expressive as she studied the flyers in front of her.
My heart froze in my chest. I didn’t know much about kids, but that one didn’t look like she was much more than a year or so. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Paige come out of her bedroom. She stopped dead when she saw me, and her gaze shot to the girl.
“Mamama,” the girl said when she saw Paige, putting an end to any fantasies I still harbored about her belonging to Shelly. She waved a pizza flyer. “Mamama.”
“Pizza it is!” Shelly exclaimed brightly. She grabbed the girl and the flyer and disappeared into the kitchen.
On legs that I could barely feel, I turned to face Paige. She was breathing rapidly, her eyes still on the couch. Slowly, she dragged them back to me, blinked a few times like she was having trouble bringing me into focus. “What are you doing here?” She asked. She sounded winded, like I’d knocked the air out of her by showing up.
“I’m picking you up for the airport,” I said. “You have a kid?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
I thought about the times we’d ridden down to the lobby together and she’d gone the opposite way of the front door. She’d been going to the childcare center, and she’d never once mentioned it. When I’d asked her about her weekend or her plans in the evening, always the same vague, brush off answers. Her refusal to answer when I asked outright why she never went out with the office crew. The way she couldn’t go out for drinks with me. I’d thought she was hiding another man. I’d had no idea. How could I have? She’d been purposefully evasive. But why? A sudden thought jarred me.
“How old is she?” I asked abruptly.
“Not old enough,” Paige said quickly.
“How old is she, Paige, and I’ll decide for myself,” I said dangerously.
“Fifteen months,” Paige lifted her chin defiantly.
Lie.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” Shelly said, pointing to the clock, “but shouldn’t you continue this conversation on the way there so you don’t miss your flight?”
Avoiding my eyes, Paige hugged the little girl and Shelly goodbye. “I’ll text you when we land. Call me if anything comes up.”
“Don’t worry about us, we’re going to have a great time.” Shelly ushered us out the door. “Wave goodbye to mommy, Madelyn,” she instructed. The little girl waved the pizza flyer as the door closed behind us.
Paige started down the hallway, clearly thinking that if she put enough distance between us, we wouldn’t talk about this.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I asked, trying to get her to talk.
She sighed impatiently and glanced back. “What’s there to talk about, Ford? I have a daughter. She has nothing to do with you.”
“She’s Alex’s?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” She jabbed at the down button, then crossed her arms and stared straight ahead at the wall.
I didn’t believe her.
“Shawn in accounting has two kids,” I said. “Mrs. Winthrop has three. Grown now. Four grandchildren. Thomas Perdue’s wife is pregnant. Priya has a dog.”
“What a fascinating list. Thanks for telling me.”
“You know how I know?” I took hold of her elbow and tugged her around to face me. “Because people love to talk about their fucking kids. It’s not like I’m asking about them, but they come up. Unless they’re trying to hide them.”
“I never tried to hide Madelyn,” Paige said defensively. “I just never mentioned her. You’re the one who said we should keep our relationship strictly professional.”
“Which we already failed at in a number of ways,” I said, remembering how it felt to press her up against the wall.
Paige flushed and her gaze slid sideways. “Those weren’t exactly opportune times to mention kids either,” she said.
I stared at her until she risked looking at me again. She looked defensive and irritated, but there was something underneath it. Something I couldn’t quite identify. The elevator opened with a ding that made her jump. She was nervous. Silently, I gestured for her to get on first. She t
ucked herself in the far-right corner, as far from me as she could get. But for once, being alone with her on an elevator didn’t make the blood rush to my dick.
We didn’t speak a word to each other the entire way to the airport. It was only when we pulled into the parking lot that she broke her silence to say, “This isn’t O’Hare.”
“Change of plans. We’re taking the company plane.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re taking enough people that Griffin could justify it to Kai.”
At the entrance, we got out of the car, and the driver pulled her small, roll-on suitcase from the trunk. “I thought I’d have to fit it in an overhead bin,” she explained. “I bought miniature shampoo and quart-sized plastic bags. Shelly was pissed.”
“Wait until she hears about the private plane.”
She smiled a little, and the tension between us eased. I still didn’t understand it, but now that the surprise of it was wearing off, the strange sense that I’d been deceived was fading. I led the way into the small private airport. The company plane was kept in a shared hangar on the property, and I’d already seen it parked on the tarmac. Kai was probably monitoring the pre-flight inspection. He had a license to fly the twelve-seater Cessna, but Jameson insisted on the pilot who had ten thousand hours of flight time, and for once, Griffin and I were in agreement.
Griffin and his pre-conference team were already in the lounge. We did the lightning fast check-in and then joined them. Griffin grinned too widely when he saw Paige. She gave him a polite smile in return. I gave him a look that promised instant death if the words mile high club came out of his mouth.
“Team, meet Paige. She’s Ford’s executive assistant. Paige, meet the team.”
While the others were introducing themselves to Paige, Griffin said quietly, “So this is why you backed me on the private jet with Kai.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?” He nodded toward Paige. “Impressing her had nothing to do with it?”
“No, jackass, it didn’t.”
He laughed. “Now I know it did. You don’t resort to insults unless you’re caught red-handed.
That was the problem with having friends you’d know since you were nineteen. They knew too much about you. I blew off Griffin for the small, complimentary bar. Their beer selection was shit, but they had a decent bottle of whiskey. I poured myself two fingers’ worth and rejoined the group.
Paige was sitting at the edge of it, half-listening in a distracted sort of way while she texted. She looked up when I sat next to her.
“Shelly says you’re a carbon-ivore,” she said without looking up.
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s an insult.”
I wasn’t surprised. “Tell her about the monstrous donation we’ll make to Carbon Footprint to offset this flight.”
“Tell her yourself when I’m not around. I can recite her ‘myth of the carbon neutral footprint’ speech by heart.” Paige sniffed and glanced over. “Is that whiskey?”
I swilled it around. “Want some?”
I expected her to say no, but she took the glass and finished it.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping her sleeve across her mouth. “I know that wasn’t very professional, but I’m a nervous flyer.”
“Nothing to be nervous about, Paige,” Griffin called from two seats away. “Captain Kai hasn’t lost one yet.”
Her face paled. “Kai is flying the plane?”
“I’m not flying the plane,” Kai said irritably from behind me. I twisted to see my brother. He looked windblown, so I had been right. He’d been shadowing the pre-flight check. If he was in here with us now, that meant it was done. “I could fly the plane though,” he added to no one in particular. “I’m licensed.”
“We will keep that in mind, pal.” Griffin raised his drink to him in a mock salute. “Can we board the vessel?”
The actual captain came in then to say it was ready, and everyone began to get up and gather their things. Paige was still holding the whiskey glass, her fingers clenched tightly around it. She held her phone in a similar death grip with the other hand. I looked down to see that she was scrolling through pictures of Madelyn.
I pried the whiskey glass away and returned it to the bar. When I came back, she was standing up, but she hadn’t taken another step toward the door to join the others. “Come on,” I said, grabbing her suitcase. “There’s more whiskey on board if you need it.”
“I really hate flying,” she said. “We did a semester in Italy in college. It was amazing, but I’ll never go back.”
“You’ll like flying this way,” I told her. “Everyone does.”
I was wrong though. Paige didn’t like it one bit. I’d forgotten how loud takeoff can be in the Cessna. She slugged back another two fingers of whiskey before we even got to cruising altitude. “God, this is so unprofessional,” she moaned into her hands when it hit her all at once.
“Don’t worry about it,” Griffin said, patting her back. “You’re technically off duty.”
“She’s technically on duty,” Kai corrected him. “Everyone is. We pay them from the second they leave their front door to the second they return.”
“Don’t you have a plane to fly?” Griffin asked, giving him the finger. “You’re off duty, Paige. Have some more whiskey.”
I sat across the aisle, not trusting myself to get too close while Paige was letting professionalism fly out the window. Part of me wanted to comfort her, part of me wanted to laugh. She’d never been closer to being the girl at the bar again than she was right now.
“People die in private planes,” she said to her fingers. “All the time. They overload them.”
“Not this one,” I said. “Remember? You bought miniature shampoo.”
“I did,” she agreed. “That’s true. Probably ruined the planet.”
Griffin patted her shoulder again, giving me a what-the-fuck look over her back. I shrugged.
Eventually, Griffin and Kai joined the others who had congregated in the back seats, but I stayed up front with Paige. She glanced back at them suspiciously. “What about even weight distribution?”
“It’s not a prop plane, Paige. It can handle it.”
“Whew.” She blew out her breath hard and looked up. “Distract me.”
In any other context, it would have been a blatant invitation. Even though I knew it wasn’t now, lust tightened in my groin. If Griffin and the others weren’t here, I could think of more than a few ways to distract her. Now, I had to reach. I ended up telling her about last year’s conference in excruciating detail, hoping to put her to sleep. She trained her wide brown eyes on the back of the seat ahead of her, nodding sometimes to let me know she was listening.
“And then we flew home,” I finished. I checked my watch. We still had another hour of flight time. Jesus. What the hell else was I going to tell her? A fascinating play-by-play of my laundry routine? Maybe a spinoff about bleaching my whites?
“Madelyn made a suncatcher today,” she said, shifting her eyes from the leather upholstery to meet mine. They latched on, like her gaze was careening from one handhold to another. “I was going to hang it in my bedroom window, but she tore it up. She likes to take things apart. I don’t know if that makes her smart or crazy.”
“It could be both,” I said, thinking of my business partners.
“I hope she’s not crazy,” Paige mused. Her fingers uncurled from the arm of the chair. The whiskey was finally having its intended effect.
“What does her dad think?”
Paige blinked, like she’d never even considered the question. “I don’t tell him about it.”
“Maybe you should.” Kai and I came from divorced parents. It had been an ugly split. We had been the main battleground. We could have needed a kidney, and one of them would’ve kept it a secret from the other to use later in court. “How can he get unsupervised visits, your honor. He didn’t even know his child h
ad an organ transplant. Does that sound like an involved father to you?”
“Maybe,” she echoed. “God, why am I talking about Madelyn?”
“Because that’s what parents do when they’re not keeping their kids a secret.”
She didn’t even try to deny it this time, just pulled the inside of her lip between her teeth and chewed. The mask of professionalism really was off, and I couldn’t have been happier for it. I felt like I was seeing her again for the first time in a while. I’d gotten hot flashes—temper and lust—but she was so much more than that. I wanted so much more from her. That was my secret.
“It’s boring though, to talk about your kids. Isn’t it?” She was looking at me again, like she really wanted to know the answer. “I remember before I had kids, co-workers would show me pictures. Talk about driving Jimmy and Janie to three different soccer games over the weekend. Sounded like hell.”
Before I could respond, she kept going.
“I don’t think Madelyn will be a team player though. She’s not what you’d call cooperative. Or—” she hesitated. “Friendly.”
“How old is Madelyn?” I asked again, seeing if her answer would change now that she was well lubricated and distracted.
She didn’t miss a beat. “Fifteen months.”
I did some quick arithmetic of my own. That meant she had been conceived a month or two after our night together. The split with Alex hadn’t lasted long. Of course, neither had the marriage. I leaned across the aisle and turned her face toward mine. She blinked as she focused on me, but there wasn’t a hint of wariness in her eyes. For tonight, anyway, we were on neutral ground.
“Listen, I’m not an expert on kids. I know fuck all about them, actually. But I’m pretty sure that fifteen months is too early to start deciding what your kid will and won’t be.”
“That’s true.” She blew out her breath again, like she was trying to expel negative energy.