by Holly Rayner
you the last time he was here for one of his business dinners. He speaks very highly of you.” That gave me a warm feeling in my chest, to know that Aaron talked to other people about me was the highest compliment that I could receive.
We were led straight back to a little table in one corner of the restaurant with a glowing red candle in the center of it. Aaron pulled out my chair and I sat down and took a look around. There were lush, green potted plants in large red vases sitting strategically around the room providing a sense of privacy to each table. The floor was a shiny red and white marble tile and the tables were made of thick, dark cherry wood. 1930’s style paintings framed in heavy ancient frames surrounded the walls. I was relaxed and happy and when the waiter came over he only made it better by saying, “This must be Miss Hurst?”
“Yes, hello,” I told him.
“Hello Madame,” he said. “Mr. Winters, you were right, she does take the breath away.”
I looked at Aaron and smiled. He was amazing and I was so damned lucky. I can’t imagine what I ever did to deserve all of this.
I ordered the grilled sea bass and Aaron got the steak tartare which looked amazing. We ate fresh bread while we enjoyed our meals and light conversation. I asked him if he’d ever been to Paris.
“A few times,” he said. “It’s nice, but if I take you to Europe I would like to take you to Italy first.”
“Why is that?” I asked, all aglow inside with the fact that he thought about taking me to Europe. It seemed like we were moving closer every day to the possibility of a lifetime together and I realized that I wanted that more than anything.
“Because I find it much more romantic. The buildings are like works of art and there are flower boxes everywhere filled with these big flowers that just pop with color. They have music piping out of speakers along the streets and the gondolier’s can all sing as well as the cast of that play you just loved so much.”
“Wow that does sound amazing. I went on a Gondola ride once,” I told him.
“You did? Where?”
I laughed and then told him, “Don’t laugh.”
“Oh, you can laugh, but I can’t?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, I won’t laugh.”
Rolling my eyes at him I smiled and said, “In Las Vegas. My girlfriend’s and I all have birthday’s one month apart. After the third of us, who was me, turned twenty one we flew out there for a weekend. It was so much fun. We took a gondola ride in front of the Venetian hotel. Our Gondolier’s name was Marco and he sang like an angel.”
“You remember his name five years later? He must have been an amazing singer.” I felt my cheeks flush and he grinned and said, “You went out with him, didn’t you?”
“Oh look, a dessert cart,” I said.
“Uh oh, it must have been more than a one date thing,” he said. “She’s avoiding.”
“I’m not avoiding, it’s just that old rule about what happens in Vegas staying in Vegas.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Did you marry him?” he said, catching me off guard.
I got that feeling again, the instant guilt, nausea, racing pulse, feeling like it was hard to catch my breath every time anything was mentioned that reminded me of what I did or why. I realized that Aaron was looking at me funny. I’d sat there spacing out for too long and he was wondering why.
“Yes,” I finally said. “We got married on one side of the street and then we drove to the other side and got a divorce. They have drive-through divorces there you know?” He smiled again and said, “If I ever get married, it will be forever.” My breath caught in my throat and I was thankful for the server. She came up right then and asked if we wanted dessert.
“Share a chocolate mousse with me?” I asked him.
“I love a girl with an appetite,” he said. We shared the dessert and the conversation of Las Vegas and marriage was forgotten. I was so stuffed full afterwards that I could hardly breathe again. I really needed to stop eating like this. Either that or maybe start going out for a run at the crack of dawn every morning like Aaron does. That was how he stayed so fit and fantastic looking.
Jeffrey was waiting for us outside when we finished but Aaron looked at me and said, “How about a walk? It’s a lovely night and we’re only a few blocks from my apartment.”
“I’d love that,” I told him. “I was just thinking that I’d eaten too much and some exercise would be nice.”
As we walked along Aaron said, “When I was a boy, after my parents died, I used to dream of nights like this.”
It was a rare thing for Aaron to talk about those days, so I stayed silent until he was ready to go on. When he was ready he said, “I always felt so closed in, you know? I spent years at the Foundling Hospital for orphans. It was a dark, dank place. They let us go outside and play during the day, but it was on a playground that was enclosed with a big cyclone fence and everything on the other side of it was old and decrepit. I used to lie in bed at night and imagine what it would be like to stroll free someday. I made up scenarios in my head. When I was really young I would imagine strolling through a neighborhood… a nice one and I would meet a nice family and they’d invite me in out of the dark and they’d make me part of the family. They would adopt me and my troubles would be over.”
I stopped walking and looked up at him. The thought of that little boy with his heart aching, all alone in that place… it tore at my own heart. “What did you fantasize about your life for when you got older?” I asked him.
He looked down at me and took my hands in his. He said, “This, this is what I dreamed about. Strolling through a place like this, my own neighborhood with my own true love. You’re what I dreamed of, Robyn.”
He brought his lips down to meet mine and we kissed. This man was magic and although I’d only known him for a few months, I already couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without him.
~
CHAPTER FIVE
~
ROBYN
I fell asleep Saturday night in Aaron’s arms and woke up there Sunday morning. After we shared a hearty breakfast together he had a meeting to get to. He dropped me at home on his way and I spent all day Sunday with a goofy smile on my face. I worked on small projects around the house and every so often I would catch myself staring off into space, remembering how magical the night before had been.
The smile bled through to the next day because I also woke up on Monday morning with it still painted there. I went to work that morning looking like I slept with a coat hanger in my mouth and it had gotten stretched out into a permanent smile.
“Good morning, Hayley,” I said, when I saw my pretty young friend at her cubicle.
“Good morning Robyn. How was your weekend?”
“It was fabulous,” I told her, honestly. “I’m so glad you asked because it was so great I had to tell someone or I was going to bust. How was yours?” She smiled brightly, looking almost as happy as I was.
“Mine was the same,” she said. “I’m glad you asked too. You’re actually the person I’d like to talk to about it.”
“Maybe we can have lunch and you can tell me all about it,” I told her.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me about yours,” she said.
“It’s a date then. I’ll meet you in the cafeteria at noon.” I wanted to tell someone how amazing Aaron was. I wanted to brag on him for taking me to a club dancing and taking me to see Wicked and learning how to do things that I know he has no interest in at all, just for me. I headed into my office and sat down at my desk. While I waited for the computer to load I called my bank and checked to make sure my paycheck had been deposited into my personal account and checked my balance. After I did that, I turned back to the computer. I transferred five hundred dollars out of my account and into one of the business accounts that I had “borrowed” the seventy-five thousand dollars from. That’s how I was thinking of it now. I’d forced myself to stop thinking of it as stealing. That was self-preserva
tion, I know. But I was losing my mind over it and I’d had to do something.
I felt so much better after making my first “payment.” At five hundred dollars every two weeks I’d be long dead before I paid it off completely, but I was going to give it my best shot. I got to work then and around ten Gary came into the office again, only this time he was sporting a huge smile.
“Hi Robyn, how was your weekend?” he asked.
“Amazing,” I told him. I was still smiling. “It was a lot of fun, actually. I was sorry to have to come back here when it was over. How was yours?”
He sat down in the chair on the other side of my desk and said, “Even more amazing,” with a big grin on his face.
“Really? I noticed that Hayley looked really happy when I came in this morning. Did you have anything to do with that?”
Gary laughed and said, “I don’t usually kiss and tell, but yes! I mean nothing like… we just…”
I laughed, “You went out?”
“Yes, we had dinner and we went to a comedy show. It was the most fun that I’ve had in years, Robyn. I did what you said. I tried hard to concentrate on my good qualities… I think it worked. She seemed like she had a really good time too. We took a walk in the park on the way home and she let me kiss her. It was even better than I imagined it would be. She said she would like to go out with me again. More than like to, she said she’d be really happy about it.”
“I’m so glad,” I said, sincerely. Gary’s a good guy. He deserves to be happy. I was just not the girl to do that for him.
He stood up and said, “I just wanted to thank you.”
“Aw, it was all you, Gary,” I told him. “You don’t have anything to thank me for.”
“Yeah, I do. If it wasn’t for you taking the time to talk to me and tell me nice things about myself… Well, I probably would have screwed things up with Hayley. You’ve boosted my confidence many times. So, thank you. You’re awesome.”
“You’re welcome,” I told him. “So are you.”
Gary left and I worked until about eleven-forty five. We had a new ad campaign coming soon for television. Winters had only done radio so far, so we’ll see how it goes. I had been online watching commercial after commercial for other companies trying to decide what people might find funny or interesting about them. Those were the ones that people remembered, the fun ones. I was seeing double from watching so many of them by lunch time. Maybe if Hayley is not too busy, she could watch a few more for me after lunch. I shut things down and got ready for lunch then. I grabbed my bag and went to meet Hayley. She wasn’t at her cubicle when I went by, so I assumed that she was already waiting for me downstairs. When I got to the cafeteria I looked around but I didn’t see her. I saw Gary in line and I went over and said, “Hey, I was supposed to have lunch with Hayley. Have you seen her?”
“Not since this morning. It was weird. She got called upstairs to the executive offices. She never came back.”
“Hmm, that is weird. I’m her supervisor, you would think if there was a problem they would have gone through me.”
“You don’t think she’s in trouble do you?”
“No, I can’t imagine what it could be for. She’s been the best paid intern we’ve had around here since I started.”
“Yeah, maybe it was a personal issue. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well or something…”
“That’s probably it,” I said. “I’ll call her later.”
“Me too,” he said.
I did call Hayley that evening, but she didn’t answer. I left her a message and told her I wanted to make sure everything was okay. I asked her to call me back. I didn’t hear back from her that night and the next day when I got to work, she wasn’t there either. I ran into Gary in the hallway and he said, “Hey Robyn. Did you talk to Hayley?”
“No, I left her a message. Did you get ahold of her?”