Commitment

by K. M. Golland

  About to type him a response, I received one instead.

  Dale: And I don’t want to cut your grass,

  but your son is pretty neat.

  I smiled, agreeing with him.

  Tash: Yeah, he is. But beware,

  he’ll talk the joint down if you let him.

  Dale: Lol. He already is.

  Tash: Doesn’t surprise me.

  Okay. Gotta go.

  I have to inspect the ballroom.

  Btw, thank you for the flowers.

  They’re stunning.

  He didn’t respond so I stood from my desk and bent over the bouquet, inhaling long and admiring the exquisite floral notes of rose and lavender. They were divine, almost hypnotic. They were also perfect and a very thoughtful peace offering, not to mention extremely purple. I loved them. I also loved the fact that he recognised his bad behaviour and thought to apologise for it. That spoke volumes about the type of person he truly was.

  Whiffing them one final time, I leaned back just as my phone beeped, again.

  Dale: Stop sniffing the flowers and do some work.

  Whaaa? I read it again, confused for a moment before my heart jumped in my chest. My jaw fell open, and a sense of holy shitsicles prickled my entire body. He’s watching me.

  Spinning full circle, I checked that he wasn’t standing at the door again then searched the ceiling until a security camera caught my eye. No fucking way! The shiny black dome had always been there, right outside my office door, but I’d never given much thought as to whether or not it actually worked. Clearly, it did.

  Memories of moments spent in my office when I’d thought no one was looking started flicking across my mind like pages in a book. Moments like when I’d unashamedly nuded down on several occasions when changing for an event. Shit!

  Had the door ever been open? No. Yes. Maybe … Donuts!

  Had I picked my nose? Probably.

  Had I scratched my arse? Highly likely.

  Had I taken my bra off and adjusted my boobs when working late? Most definitely.

  My stomach lurched and I was on the verge of a panic attack when the dreaded beep of my phone sounded for the gazillionth time. It was him. Maybe it’s not. Of course it was. Goddamn it.

  I didn’t want mortification’s horrid bear-hug again, so I glared at the phone. Breathe, Tash. It’s not that bad. You have great boobs. And everyone scratches their arse and picks their nose at some point.

  Nodding to myself, I blew a slow breath out of my mouth and hesitated before swiping the screen and reading his message.

  Dale: This camera is rarely checked.

  Stop hyperventilating.

  And Thomas says wave.

  I blinked.

  I blinked some more.

  Then I waved.

  And I wasn’t exactly sure when I stopped.

  * * *

  For the second day in a row, Mr Dale Somewhat Inappropriate Hardy had left me feeling all kinds of unusual. At least this time around, it wasn’t entirely his fault. I mean, I couldn’t exactly blame him and label him a perve. He’d never installed the security cameras; he just monitored them. Regardless, it was all a little intrusive.

  ‘Ms Jones, how many seats per table for the next setup?’

  Raising my gaze from my iPad, I met Dylan’s eyes. He was one of many conference staff on Allison’s and my team. A cute little Ginger Ninja with Clark Kent–inspired reading glasses.

  ‘Um … let me just check,’ I answered, swiping the screen until I stopped at the details of the next scheduled event, which was a catering expo luncheon under the jurisdiction of our conference manager, Kristine. ‘That would be ten to a table with thirty tables in total.’ I smiled, although I was a little concerned as to where Kristine was and why she hadn’t relayed the event information to the team.

  Bluetoothing the event digital package to the large screen at the front of the ballroom, I queried Dylan for information. ‘Yep. It’s a standard conference setup. Did Kristine not pass that on? And have you seen her by any chance?’

  ‘No, she didn’t, which is strange. It’s normally the first thing she does. And yeah, I saw her this morning, but then she left. I haven’t seen her since.’

  I acknowledged his response with a nod. ‘Yeah, you’re right. That is weird.’

  Dylan smiled warily and thanked me before proceeding to arrange tables and chairs according to the information I’d provided. I stayed and supervised for a few minutes longer while wondering if Kristine had taken ill or needed to leave for an emergency. My gut told me that wasn’t the case because, had it been, she would’ve contacted me. She was normally so diligent and organised.

  Something wasn’t adding up.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my phone and dialled her number. She didn’t answer. Hmm … curiouser and curiouser.

  ‘Rightio, guys and gals,’ I shouted to the room. ‘Everything looks in order here, so I’m gonna head back to the office. If you need anything, buzz me. Oh, and if any of you see Kristine, please tell her I’m looking for her.’

  Waving goodbye, I left the room. I needed to find Kristine. I also had an idea as to how I could do that. It wasn’t an idea I was too fond of but I kind of had no choice … unless I waited for her to contact me. Nah! I was an impatient bitch at the best of times and a petulant princess at the worst of them. I wasn’t going to wait for anybody.

  I wanted answers and I wanted them as soon as possible.

  Opening my messages, I typed one to Dale.

  Tash: Are you able to track down an employee for me?

  He didn’t answer right away, but by the time I reached my office once again, my phone buzzed in my hand.

  Dale: Sure … as soon as your son has finished his business in the toilet.

  Oh! OH! That can’t be good. A niggly feeling in my mummy-tummy churned. I hoped my baby boy was okay.

  Tash: Is it bad? Is he all right? Where are you?

  Dale: Standing guard outside the toilets on level five.

  Tash: How long has he been in there?

  Dale: I don’t know. I didn’t realise I was supposed to time him.

  Ugh! Amateur.

  Tash: He may be in trouble.

  He had an upset tummy this morning.

  Go in there and check on him.

  Dale: Now you tell me.

  Okay. I’m heading in.

  Plonking my arse down in my chair, I waited — impatiently, mind you — but it didn’t take long for him to message me back.

  Dale: Abort. Abort.

  Code Brown.

  Code Black.

  Code … fuck knows.

  I laughed out loud, but at the same time I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Tash: What? What does that mean?

  Dale: You just sent a friendly into enemy territory.

  Enemy territory? Oh … code brown. Ew.

  Tash: Really? Shit! I’m on my way.

  I went to stand and make my way to what sounded like an ‘explosive’ situation when Dale’s response stopped me.

  Dale: NO! ‘Shit’ is an understatement.

  I’ve officially declared this area a disaster zone.

  It’s highly contaminated with an alien, airborne toxin.

  Stay put.

  You’ll be safer there.

  Tash: Lol. Okay. Stay safe.

  But is Thomas all right?

  Dale: Affirmative.

  Not sure how though.

  This time, I snort-laughed, a full-on Miss Piggy nostril reverberation. Oh my God, what have I done to the poor bastard?

  Tash: Neither am I at times.

  Little boys are just gross.

  Dale: Hey! I was a little boy once.

  Tash: Once? You sure you still aren’t?

  He didn’t answer for nearly ten minutes, and I wondered if I’d bruised his little ego. Surely not? I was about to offer a non-apology when the beep of my phone stopped me.

  Dale: Little? No. I’m a big boy now.
>
  A shot of pleasure fired through my body, ricocheting like a pinball and touching places it shouldn’t, places that buzzed, and I wondered for the smallest of seconds just how big of a boy he really was. ‘Oh I bet you’ve a huge intruder in your trousers, Mr Hardy,’ I murmured to myself, squirming in my seat and grinning like a greedy little imp.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Tashy, I do.’

  The low voice that sounded from behind caused me to jump and whip my head around, my phone jumping from my hand and bouncing onto the floor as a result.

  ‘Jesus,’ I shouted, clutching my chest.

  Leaning against the frame of my office door, tattooed arms crossed over his chest, his eyes alight with humour and fixed on mine, was Mr Trouser Intruder himself.

  I coughed, diverted my gaze and bent forward, dropping to my knees and fishing for my phone, deliberately taking much longer than necessary. Fuck the living stealthy fuck. What is he, the son of a cat burglar? And oh my God, he just heard what I said.

  Donuts. I needed donuts. ALL the freaking donuts. I also needed to locate the litter of monkeys that had just birthed from my stunned-as-fuck vagina.

  ‘You all right down there?’ he asked, amusement lacing his voice.

  My eyes closed momentarily, and I scrunched my nose. ‘Yep. All good. Just grabbing my phone.’

  ‘Need help?’

  ‘Nope. Got it. Thanks.’

  My hands gripped the edge of my desk for leverage, and I awkwardly pulled myself up to stand. ‘Where’s Tommy?’ I croaked out, dusting myself down and maintaining the avoidance of eye contact. I couldn’t bear to look at him. The bitch named mortification was back and she was lovin’ it.

  ‘He’s with Reed and Bill in the camera room.’

  My eyes snapped to his. So much for eye-contact avoidance. ‘Why? Why didn’t you bring him back here?’

  The cocky delicious bastard gave me a once-over. ‘Because I’m taking you down there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Didn’t you want me to find someone for you?’

  ‘Oh, um, yeah, I did.’

  ‘Then best we get going.’ Dale twitched his head towards the corridor. ‘After you.’

  I nodded and kept my eyes trained dead ahead, my cheeks flaming as I walked up to him, his position at my doorframe unmoving. Our bodies brushed as I stepped past, and I quietly gasped at the contact.

  Warmth. Musk. Spice. In that brief second he completely consumed me, but I wasn’t stupid. Dale’s decision not to budge was outright deliberate. He wanted to touch. He wanted to unnerve me. He wanted to cross yet another line. The question was, did I want all of that too?

  Yeah. In that moment, I did.

  * * *

  Dale’s presence was felt on the very surface of my skin with every second it took to reach the camera operating room. My shoulders were taut, my steps purposeful but shaky, and my nipples were as hard as croutons sans the soup. I didn’t want them to be, but they kinda had their own agenda and enjoyed the delicate caress of my satin bra as I walked in silence beside him.

  ‘Soo, this trouser intrude—’

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, lowering my voice to barely a whisper. ‘Please don’t.’

  He glanced sideways, and I’m guessing took note of the horrified expression on my face. My cheeks were no doubt the shade of a stop sign, their burn burying into my skull, and my hand had covered my mouth as my eyes darted to anywhere but him.

  I wished I’d never said what I said, and I wished he’d never heard it.

  ‘Okay,’ he sighed, holding a door open for me. ‘This way.’

  As I stepped into the room, the first thing I noticed was another room behind a screen of glass, comprised of a wall of televisions.

  ‘Mum!’ Thomas screeched when he looked over his shoulder and spotted my arrival. ‘How cool is this place?’

  ‘Pretty cool.’ I stepped up to where he was standing with his face practically pressed against the glass screen. ‘How you feeling, matey?’

  ‘Good! I did what you said.’

  My brow pinched. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘You said fart and I might do a poo instead,’ Thomas blurted out.

  My hand shot to his mouth, muzzling it. For the love of feral little humans.

  ‘Mummmm,’ he mumbled into my palm before wiggling loose.

  I gave him a stern look. One that said ‘shut the ever-loving fruitcake up’. ‘Shh … they’re working,’ I hissed instead, pointing to the two security staff seated in the room on the other side of the glass. ‘They need to concentrate.’

  He pouted and crossed his arms, which was when I heard a chuckle and a knuckle rapping on the glass beside me.

  ‘Actually, they can’t hear a word you’re saying,’ Dale explained, continuing to tap until both men turned around, looking a little confused. ‘Buttheads say what?’ he shouted at them.

  Both men mouthed the word ‘what’.

  ‘Buttheads say what?’ he repeated.

  Again, the guys said ‘what’ and we all cracked up laughing.

  Dale held up his hand in apology to his staff then laughed and directed Thomas and me towards the door of the room. He swiped his security card and waited for the door to unlock before gesturing us inside.

  ‘Hit your head today, boss?’ the younger guy asked.

  I didn’t know who he was. I’d never seen him before.

  ‘No, Reed, I didn’t. I was just proving a point.’ Dale placed his hand on the centre of my back and guided me to sit at a desk. ‘Have you met Reed and Bill, Tashy?’

  I glared at him.

  He smiled.

  ‘I haven’t met Reed,’ I said between gritted teeth. ‘And it’s Tash, not Tashy.’ I leaned over the desk and extended my hand to Reed just as Dale cleared his throat and Thomas added that my ‘frilly jocks’ were showing.

  Snapping my head back to see what he was talking about, I noticed that, yes, my black lacy rufflebutts were making an appearance at the top of my waistband and that Dale had seen them. For all the fucks in the world of fuck, can this day get any more mortifying?

  ‘Muuuuuuum?’

  ‘What, Thomas?’ I asked, hiking up my trousers and slowly closing my eyes.

  ‘I farted again, but it might not be just a fart.’

  Apparently it can.

  CHAPTER

  7

  TASH

  Embarrassed was the mother of all understatements. I wanted to hide in the toilet with Thomas for all eternity, until the moment of Code Brown, Black … Code Holy Fuck occurred, and then I wanted out of that hazardous death zone as quickly as freakin’ possible.

  What the hell had my son eaten? I mean really … what had entered his mouth, slid down his oesophagus, mutated in his gut and burst out of his arse in a whoosh, splat and simmer? On second thought, I did not want to know, because whatever it was had to be the most hideous thing I’d ever encountered. And I’d encountered two placentas.

  ‘Are you done?’ I asked, tapping on the toilet cubicle door.

  ‘Yes.’ He unlocked the latch and stepped out, pulling up his pants and adjusting them as he made his way to the basin to wash his hands.

  I pushed on the soap dispenser button for him. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘YES! Mum, can we please go back now? I don’t have any more farts.’

  ‘Okay … unless you want to go lie down in my office? We can just head straight back there instead.’

  ‘NO! I want to watch the security screens again and catch bad guys. Dale said I was a really good cadet. I like him.’

  Ugh! I really didn’t want to go back to where Dale was, but I seemed to have no choice. And there was the whole finding-out-what-happened-to-Kristine thing as well. Damn it!

  Sucking in a deep breath, I quickly gave my reflection a once-over and tucked some loose strands of hair behind my ears. It was always in my face. Wayward. Boofy. There was far too much ’fro goin’ on, and I’d been m
eaning to chop most of it off for some time now. But then Dean would be pissed at me. Then again, he might not care anymore. He hadn’t mentioned anything about my hair in years.

  ‘Should Mummy cut her hair short?’ I asked, twisting my head to the side so that I could see my neck.

  Thomas grabbed some paper towels and dried his hands. ‘Why?’

  ‘Something different.’

  ‘Okay then.’

  ‘Yeah? You think it would look good?’

  ‘Yep. You’re the most beautiful mum in the world.’

  I smiled at my little golden sunrise. How he happened to be fair-skinned and fair-haired when both Dean and I were darker was beyond me. ‘And you, my sweet angel, are the cutest little seven-year-old in the world.’

  ‘Eight,’ he corrected me.

  ‘Not yet. You have a few more days to wait.’

  He pouted.

  I winked. ‘Come on. We better get back.’

  Thomas and I made our way along the corridor, and just as we were about to enter the security camera operations room, I stopped him. ‘No more talk of farts, okay?’

  ‘But you told me to always tell you—’

  ‘Never mind what I told you. There’s a time and place to talk about that sort of thing. Mummy’s work and in front of Mummy’s colleagues is not that place.’ I slowly pushed the door open to let us back in the room.

  ‘But Allison isn’t here.’

  ‘Allison is not my only colleague.’

  ‘There’s two Allisons?’

  ‘NO!’ I huffed. ‘Thomas, just … just … never mind.’

  He shrugged and pushed past me, heading straight for the glass door where he stopped, pounded his fists on it and shouted, ‘BUTTHEADS SAY WHAT?’

  I facepalmed and peeked through my fingers, watching and smiling as Dale placed his hand to his ear and mouthed ‘what?’ Thomas giggled, as did I. It was an incredibly cute gesture.

  ‘All done?’ Dale asked as he opened the door to let us back into the screen room. ‘No need to declare a state of emergency or man down?’

  I simultaneously shook and nodded my head, as if to say yes and no, as if to say ‘I don’t freakin’ know’.

  Thomas scratched his head. ‘What’s “man down”?’

  ‘It’s when a soldier or, in your case, a cadet is injured in battle.’ Dale scruffed Thomas’s hair, stopping Thomas from scratching any further, and seeing him do that reminded me of Dean. It was something my husband did often, and watching Dale do it felt strange. Sure, it was endearing and sweet and it made me smile, but it also felt a little wrong.