by Avery James
Then her buzzer rang. She walked over to the intercom and said, "I thought you were going to be a gentleman.”
"Not quite yet," he said. When he arrived in the door way, he looked at her with complete desire in his eyes. "I was hoping to be the opposite of a gentleman for a few hours. What do you say?”
Abby crossed the room and closed the door behind him before jumping up and wrapping her legs around his hips. She felt a rush of excitement as her lips met his in a kiss that was decidedly hotter than the one they’d shared downstairs. Nolan ran his hands over her thighs and grabbed her ass with both hands. He kissed her neck and her collarbone and started to work his way down to her breasts. Then he placed her down on her couch and continued working his way lower, slipping her out of her dress a little too easily. When he kissed her stomach, Abby trembled in anticipation. Then he pressed his lips against her hip and slowly worked his way down between her thighs. She couldn’t believe how badly she wanted him. Each motion of his lips sent waves of motion through her body.
“God, Nolan, that’s incredible,” she said as she reached down and ran her fingers through his hair.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re just getting started.”
Chapter 9
The next morning, Abby met Maggie at a coffee shop around the corner from the Senator's house in one of D.C.'s most expensive neighborhoods. She arrived ten minutes late and almost didn’t see her friend sitting at one end of a large oak table near the large plate glass window that looked across the street. Thankfully, Maggie already had a cup of coffee waiting. She pushed it across the table as Abby sat down. When she took the first sip, Abby could feel the life coming back into her body. She wondered if she looked as tired as she felt.
Tell me everything," Maggie said. "From the looks of it, your night was either great or terrible."
Abby took another long sip and sighed. “Need sleep.” After another sip she added, “So tired.” She thought back to the way Nolan had looked at her as she kissed him, the way she felt as they tore at each other’s clothing as they tumbled into bed. Mind-bending, incredible—she couldn’t even come up with the words to describe it. The sex was somehow even better than before. The whole thing defied logic. “It was unbelievable.” She couldn’t help but bite her lower lip as she thought about it.
"Unbelievably good, right?" Maggie asked. “Is that what that smile is?” She was drinking another smoothie that looked like algae and smelled like cough medicine. “Is that a smile?”
"What is in that thing?" Abby asked, avoiding the question.
"Harry makes them. I don’t really know,” she said. “We’re on version 3.0. He keeps tweaking the formula.”
"It smells as bad as the original,” Abby told her. "I just thought you should know in case you're around someone other than me like a client or anyone with olfactory glands.”
“Oh,” Maggie said. She took the cap off the smoothie and raised it to her nose. Abby watched her face scrunch up as she sniffed it. "I think that's the prenatal vitamins. I can't do the pills so I have Harry blend the chewables into the drink. It tastes fine, though." It was cute how much Harry wanted to take care of Maggie, and how much Maggie wanted to take care of the baby, but Abby just didn’t have the energy to listen to what was going to be a ten minute treatise on prenatal vitamins and the development of the frontal cortex or whatever Maggie was about to say. At the same time, she wanted to be supportive.
"I still can't believe you drink that. Couldn’t you just drink decaf and take a pill?”
"I got here early just to bask in the smell of fresh coffee," she said. “And enough about me. You’re avoiding my question. Tell me about this date. You’ve never been one to kiss and not tell.”
“The sex was incredible,” she said. “Oh, and he was sweet and charming and he wants to take me away.”
Maggie sat up a little straighter. "Over my dead, pregnant body."
"I mean for a trip."
"Oh, you totally should," Maggie said. "You never take time off."
"I told him it wasn't a good time."
"When is it ever a good time?" Maggie asked. "Where does he want to take you?"
"He won't say."
"When?" Maggie asked.
"He didn't set a date."
"Well, what about next week? The senator and her husband will be back in their home state for a few days. You could go then. The twins and I will cover for you."
"I don't know," Abby said.
"Abigail Hardigan, if you don't say yes, I'm going to take your phone, call your boyfriend, and say yes for you,” Maggie said.
Abby laughed. "You're getting more assertive in your pregnancy. I like it."
"I've always been assertive."
"When it comes to relationship advice? You've never been like this."
"That's because you haven't dated anyone worthy of you until now," Maggie said. "The jury is still out, but the early signs are encouraging. You always seem to find a problem with a guy and get rid of him before things can get serious.”
Abby couldn't help but agree with each of those statements.
“So go ahead,” Maggie said.
“Go ahead and what?”
“Tell him you’ll go.”
“I don’t even know where yet,” Abby said.
“Like that matters. Let go of a little control, I promise you’ll thank yourself for it later.”
“This, coming from you? You never give up control.”
“If you remember correctly, I believe you played a part in my husband all but kidnapping me to Cuba, and look how well that worked out.”
“Well, you can’t expect every guy to be like Harry,” Abby said.
“No, but Nolan might be exactly what you need.”
“Fine.” Abby reached into her purse and grabbed her phone. She shot off the text before she could change her mind. Next week, one night.
Nolan texted back immediately. Abby looked at her phone for a second and then handed it to Maggie. “What is this supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Fire emoji, fire emoji, rocket ship?” Maggie said. “I think it means he’s excited.” The phone buzzed and Abby watched Maggie turn bright red. “I think that’s meant for you.”
Abby looked down at the text and read enough to tell that it was about the night before. “I hope so.” It was her turn to blush.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this flustered over a guy,” Maggie said. “Then again, if I read what I think I just read, I can see why.” She squinted like she was thinking something over. “Did I just read that? I mean, is that even possible?” She looked skeptically at Abby. “Did you?”
Abby nodded and raised her hand. “Four times.”
“No wonder you’re exhausted,” Maggie said. Then she jumped up in her seat. “You know who’s on the move, and he’s with someone.” Her eyes widened. “Abby, you’re not going to believe who he’s with.” But Abby had already turned, and she believed it just fine. Tall. Blond. Treacherous. Nolan’s reporter was smiling and laughing with Andrew Heck. Just about every alarm in Abby’s head was going off at once.
***
If there was one thing Abby liked about Andrew Heck, it was that he at least had the good sense to live across the street from a really good coffee shop. The next afternoon, after seeing the ex-governor with Nolan’s reporter, Abby and Maggie were back at their spot next to the front window of the coffee shop, waiting to see who was coming and going. It was tiring keeping someone on the man nearly round the clock. It must have been expensive, too. “This place is starting to grow on me,” Abby said.
“If we stay much longer, I think they’d going to start charging us rent,” Maggie said. She was right. This whole thing felt ridiculous.
Abby had never been a fan of this part of the job. Prevention was what they called it, but mostly it meant sitting around waiting for something to happen. Abby liked to be in action, putting out fires, solving problems. Instead, she was sitting by a window won
dering if she should order yet another coffee. She also found herself wondering why anyone cared about the private life of a man who hadn’t even lived in the same house as his wife in close to twenty years. They both agreed that this was one of the stranger cases they’d worked together. And more and more, Abby was starting to wonder if there was some part of the picture they hadn’t seen yet, some crucial detail that they didn’t know. “Why doesn’t she just sit him down and tell him to behave?” Abby asked. “We could seriously avoid all of this trouble if the two of them just hashed things out.”
“Do you really think it’s that simple?” Maggie asked in a way that made Abby wonder if she had some kind of special married-person insight into the whole matter. “We’re very expensive. I’m assuming if a sit down would have worked, we wouldn’t be here.”
“So you think he wants to get in trouble?”
“Maybe,” Maggie said. “Weirder things have happened. He was a governor and he was star of the show. Then he had his whole scandal, and he put all his political clout behind his wife. Now she’s the one with the power. Maybe she stopped giving him as much of a say in important decisions. Maybe she decided she just didn’t want to sleep with him anymore. It could be anything.”
“So let’s say any of those scenarios are true, and he’s not a happy camper. Do we really want him hanging around with a pretty, young, ambitious reporter?” Abby asked.
“I’m guessing the answer is no,” Maggie said. “But we can’t exactly pull them aside and tell them not to talk to each other. That would kind of ruin the whole invisible hand thing we’ve got going on, and my guess is it would make things worse.”
“Right.”
“You’re antsy, aren’t you?” Maggie said.
“It’s all the waiting,” Abby said. “You know I can’t stand it.”
“It’s good for you. It builds character.”
“You don’t believe that at all.”
“Nope, but there is another way,” Maggie said.
“We knock down the door and administer a tranquilizer that lasts until after the election?”
“We find out what’s going on with the reporter.” Abby suspected she wasn’t going to like what came next. “You are kind of dating the reporter’s boss, who forced this whole issue in order to sleep with you,” Maggie said.
Yup, her suspicion was right. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s not really… I made it clear after his whole stunt with the senator that I didn’t want our work lives and personal lives getting mixed up.”
“That’s smart,” Maggie said. She sighed and gave Abby a kind of puppy dog look that said, “buuut…?”
“You want me to ask him anyway,” Abby said.
“Maybe you could just mention that you saw her with him.”
This felt like a line to Abby, one that she couldn’t uncross once she crossed it. “Just this time,” she said. She picked up her phone and texted: Any idea what your reporter is doing with Andrew Heck?
Erin? Nolan replied.
Yeah.
Probably background.
Of course. Something about Erin just didn’t sit right with Abby. Why was she meeting with Andrew Heck at his house? Erin. Abby didn’t like the whole first name thing. She couldn’t just be jealous, could she?
Dinner tonight?
Work.
I could bring you dinner…
Then I wouldn’t get any work done. Abby typed. She couldn’t help but smile as she read Nolan’s texts.
I know.
Maggie cleared her throat. “Get a room already.”
“What?” Abby asked.
“Actually, have you gotten a room? I mean, wasn’t he going to take you on a trip?”
“I’ll ask him,” she said.
So, about that trip I finally agreed to go on… she wrote.
Life changing, he replied. You’ll never be the same.
That tells me nothing. I need something to go off of, she wrote.
I pulled a few strings.
“Is that a clue?” Abby asked. She tried to think of anything string related. Orchestras, maybe? she wondered. Or maybe it was a thinly veiled reference to bondage. One of the two seemed more like Nolan.
I came up with something I think we’ll both really enjoy.
Sex?
Ok, two things.
Abby thought about making a joke about alcohol, but decided against it. I can’t wait, she replied.
“So did you find out what’s going on?” Maggie asked.
“Nope,” Abby said.
“Your boyfriend must be smooth.”
Smooth, charming, sweet, a little bit cocky, Nolan Ross was a lot of things. Abby just wasn’t sure if she was ready to call him her boyfriend. This was Maggie’s way of trying to get a little more information about their relationship out of Abby. “I guess he is,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d use the term boyfriend, though.”
“Just thought I’d see,” Maggie said.
“Weren’t you the one telling me to be careful?”
“Yeah, but you’re a grown woman. I know you can take care of yourself. I just want you to be happy, and so far, it seems like he’s making you happy.”
“He is,” she said. “You know what else makes me happy?”
“The coffee?” Maggie asked.
Abby nodded.
Andrew Heck didn’t leave his place for the rest of the afternoon, which gave Abby and Maggie time to catch up about their lives, talk about the progress of their trainees—who were in the middle of working through a batch of press releases for every possible contingency with the Heck case—and for Abby to try and guess what names Maggie had chosen for her baby-to-be. After all of those, Maggie decided it was time to play another game: guess the destination.
The game was simple enough. Maggie would guess a place, and Abby would say no. This went on until Abby saw the now familiar sight of a blonde getting out of a car and walking up the front steps of Andrew Heck’s brownstone.
“It’s probably nothing,” Maggie said. Erin had been at the senator’s office that morning, looking for clarification on a few comments, so there was the possibility that she was just doing the same with the senator’s husband.
“Yeah, it’s probably nothing,” Abby said half-heartedly.
“Your boyfriend said everything was fine, right?”
“Yeah,” Abby said.
“I guess we’ll have to take his word for it. Or you could always tease a little more information out of him.”
Abby wasn’t so thrilled about that idea. “I think I’m going to trust him on this one.” Of course, she had her doubts, but she hated to think that Nolan would be interested in her because of her job. She couldn’t use him for her own professional benefit. She laughed to herself. A few weeks ago, she would have done exactly that. She’d have leveraged him for everything he was worth. So what had changed? At some level, she was holding out hope that maybe he was as good as he seemed, but there was only one way to find out for sure. And it was something she wasn’t any good at. She’d have to wait.
Chapter 10
How or why Abby agreed to head off on a trip with Nolan without knowing the destination was beyond her. In the week that had passed since their last date, Abby had texted back and forth with Nolan almost nonstop. When she was at work, she could barely keep her mind on the job at hand. When she heard something funny or interesting, he was the first person she wanted to tell. Each night, when she fell asleep, she dreamed of him. She knew she was letting herself get carried away with the whole relationship. They’d only gone out a few times, and he wasn’t even in the same city, but she couldn’t help herself.
Maybe that was why she agreed to go on a trip with him without knowing the destination, or maybe it was the thrill of the unknown, or a chance to let go for once in her adult life and let someone else be in control. Whatever the reason was, Abby couldn’t think of another person she’d have let take her away without so much as a clue to the destination.
Ok, there were a few clues. Nolan had been dropping them like breadcrumbs from the moment she agreed to go away with him. The first clue was to bring warm clothes. So Cuba was out of the question. She was sure Maggie would be happy to hear that. The next hint was about breakfast, but Abby couldn’t make any sense of it. Little by little Nolan dropped more hints as the week went on so that, by the time Abby got into the SUV, she felt like she absolutely had to know where they were going. The fact that half of the clues had been texted as emoji didn’t help either.
“So… New York?” she asked. “Do I get to see your place?”
“I barely think of my place in New York as my place, if you know what I mean,” he said, “and I was thinking just going from one city to another wouldn’t be much of a change, so I arranged something else. I thought I’d bring you somewhere that reminds me of home.”
“You’re not taking me to Scotland, are you?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said. He gave her a quick, almost imperceptible wink.
“Then where are we going?” she asked.
“My first thought had been Nantucket,” he said. “Have you ever been?”
“Isn’t it a little off season for Nantucket?” she asked. “It seems like it would be a little cold there this time of year.”
He nodded and leaned in. “Can I make a confession?” he whispered in her ear. “I love Nantucket this time of year, the Vineyard, too. Gray and gloomy is my favorite kind of weather. It reminds me of home.”
“I thought you weren’t a big fan of home.”
“I don’t like the complications. There are a lot of memories, good and bad, but few are fonder than my memories of wandering through the foggy fields on days like this. It was like its own world, my own world. But we’re not going to Nantucket. I think you’ll like our destination better.”