by Kay Harris
“Sorry,” she said, though she couldn’t hide the smile on her face.
“No. You’ve just made my day. You know, I actually told my mom during the divorce it was all her fault. She’d made it so that I expected a woman to wallop the crap out of me.”
“And how did she take that?”
“She laughed. My mom could take it. Anyway.” He straightened up and his expression grew more stoic. “I really shouldn’t talk about Kim with you. I’m sorry. I never talk about her with co-workers. I really don’t. It seems my mouth gets away from me when you’re around.”
Amy put her hand on her hip and gazed at him. “I like that.” It was not only the unadulterated truth, it was also—believe it or not—flirty.
Carlos looked down at the plastic grass for a moment. Then he grumbled. “Better see if you can get that thing in the hole. Then we’ll talk about how this activity is relevant to your future career in business.”
****
Her bright blue eyes shining, her mouth turned up in a smile, Amy was stunning. Carlos had a whole speech planned about mini-golf being a metaphor for conducting yourself in business. It had been good, but as soon as she’d made that cheeky little move, her hand resting on her hip, it all completely left him.
They spent the rest of the afternoon in quiet conversation. Since neither of them was particularly verbose anyway, it was an easy companionship. Their discussions consisted of talk about the golf game and how Amy’s first week in the finance department had gone.
By the time they drove back to the office, Carlos had already decided what they’d do that following week and he told Amy as they left for the weekend, “Next Friday bring shorts and a T-shirt to change into.”
****
As Amy ascended the rock wall in front of Carlos he congratulated himself on thinking up this particular activity for their weekly mentoring time while simultaneously giving himself a good internal kick in the ass. The reason for the dichotomy tied directly to the way Amy looked in her shorts and tank top dangling twenty feet above him.
Since the divorce, Carlos had dated exactly twice, as in exactly two dates. Both were arranged by his best friend, Everett, and both were a complete disaster. “Get back out there,” Everett had said. “You gotta see women again or you’ll stay stuck in your bitter little Carlos world.”
The first woman had been simply dreadful. Possibly, Everett was trying too hard to find someone that was like his ex-wife, because she was deeply mean. Carlos had run as fast as could away from that one. He hadn’t let Everett forget it either.
The second one had been a nice enough lady, but she didn’t hold any interest for him. She was just…bland. Since that date, which he figured was at least six months ago, he hadn’t really even shown much interest in women. And, of course, he tried to look only outside the company.
There was no company policy against dating, except that a supervisor could not date someone directly beneath them. There were certainly couples who worked together and a few married folks who were in different departments. But Carlos had learned his lesson. Kim’s presence reminded him of it every day.
So looking at the firm and muscular ass of his mentee was a terrible, terrible idea.
When she lowered back down and unharnessed, she turned to him, her eyes alight with excitement. “That was amazing!”
“Yeah?”
She bounced on her toes. “I have always wanted to do stuff like that. I must have watched a million videos of extreme sports on the Internet when I was a kid. I watch the X Games religiously. And I know climbing a fake rock wall doesn’t even rate on that scale, but it’s more than I’ve ever been allowed to do.”
Carlos wanted to ask her why she hadn’t been allowed to do the things she was obviously so excited about. Instead, he said, “I got some good pictures.” He held out her phone. She took it from him, brushing her hand against his. The touch was somehow so much more significant than it should have been.
“Awesome.” Her face turned down as she quickly scrolled through the few dozens shots he’d taken of her. “I just have to be careful never to show them to my family.”
“Why’s that?” He took her upper arm in his hand and moved her toward the front of the rec center.
Amy looked up at him. “They’re…” She bit her lip. Carlos’ stomach clenched as he focused in on it. “Overprotective. I don’t mean regular overprotective. I mean extremely overprotective.”
That explained some of what she’d said earlier. “Your mother and cousins?”
She nodded. “And worse, my uncles and aunt. My mom has two brothers and a sister, all of them like major mother hens. They excel at worrying, and all of it is focused on me.”
“Do they live around here?”
She shook her head. “Only me and my cousin, YaYa. Everyone else lives in San Diego.”
Carlos opened the door for her. She stepped through and angled toward his car parked in the lot. He wanted to know so much more. “YaYa?” he asked.
“Yeah. Her real name is Yasmine. But I haven’t called her that…ever, I guess.” Amy paused in front of his SUV. “What about your family? Where do they live?”
Why had the tables turned? He wanted to talk about her. “Mostly in the Bay Area. I was born and raised in Vallejo. We have a big, rowdy Mexican family. Most of them stayed nearby.”
“Are your parents married?”
“Yes.”
She cocked her head to one side. It was adorable. “I am so fascinated by people whose parents are married. Most of my friends’ parents are divorced and, of course, I have a single mom. My uncles and aunt are all divorced.”
“What’s the story with your dad?” He knew he was stepping over the bounds, but he couldn’t stop finding things out about her.
“He was a lawyer, a married lawyer. And my mom was his paralegal. She got me and a hefty monthly payment, and he got out of any responsibility to us.” She shrugged. “I never minded. I had my uncles in my life. I was lucky.”
Carlos couldn’t help but be intrigued by Amy’s easy acceptance of everything. He’d felt an almost constant need to change or better himself and his situation all his life. It wasn’t until he’d come to E.E.R. that he’d calmed down about his career situation. But the itch had not left other parts of his consciousness.
Carlos opened the car door for her and she slid inside. As she did, she looked up at him with a massive grin on her face. If he survived the next six weeks it would be a miracle.
Chapter 4
It was late in the afternoon on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when Amy’s desk phone rang. There were only a few possibilities, either it was one of her birthday buddies making an internal call, or it was her mother. She answered with dread pitching in her stomach.
“Amy!” Her mother sounded panicked.
“Mom, I’m okay,” she said, beginning with the foremost way to calm her mother down. “What’s going on?”
“They let him out! Amy, they let him out!”
Amy took a deep breath. The news didn’t hit her the same way it did her poor mother and her uncles. The terror he instilled was theirs, not hers.
“We knew this day would come, Mom. And remember how worked up you got when she got released five years ago. And we haven’t heard word one from her.”
“Amy,” her mother’s voice cracked.
“Okay. Calm down. Where are you?”
“I’m at work.”
Vera Trinkus worked for her brother, a tax accountant with his own business. “Where’s Uncle Clint?”
“Out at a meeting.”
“Okay, so take Glenda and walk the two blocks down to the store to see Beth.” Amy knew that her mother’s good friend and co-worker would have no problem accompanying her to the store where Vera’s sister worked.
“Okay,” her mother agreed. “But first, tell me where you are?”
“I’m at work. I’m safe.”
“Do they have security there?”
“Yes. The
y have a security contractor and there are always like a dozen guards stationed all over the complex.”
“Where exactly are you in the building?”
“I am in my cubicle in the finance department.”
“Is that in the middle of the building or on a quiet floor, or…?”
“It’s in the middle of a large central area,” Amy explained. “There are two other departments up here so there’s like twenty or thirty cubicles. And I am personally surrounded by like six other people in their cubies. Then my boss has his office about twenty feet away.”
“Your boss. Your temporary boss? That man?”
“Carlos, yes.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“I don’t know…”
It was at that moment Carlos appeared around the wall of her cubicle, a concerned frown on his face. “Is everything all right?”
Amy nodded. She held her hand over the phone and tried to swallow back her utter embarrassment. What must this conversation sound like on the outside?
“Max,” he said gesturing to the cubicle beside her. “Said it sounded like you were on the phone with a terrorist or something. Describing the offices?”
Oh, God. Great, now her mother had caused her to be the office freak. “It’s my mom,” she admitted.
While Amy was trying to deal with the fallout of family panic at the office, her mother was still occupying one ear with babble about how she should get the chance to talk to Carlos so he could fully understand the danger Amy might be in. Amy sat there like a statue, eyes glued on her boss, phone pressed to her ear, when Carlos curled his fingers in a gesture she understood completely. With great trepidation, she handed the phone over to him.
“Ms. Trinkus. This is Carlos Diaz.”
Amy held her breath, her gaze focused on Carlos as he listened to the paranoid rambling her mother was prone to. When Carlos provided her mother with strong assurances that he would take care of Amy and ensure the building’s security, Amy knew she would have to spill the whole story to him. There would be no way around it now.
“Ms. Trinkus. I will put Amy on a plane to San Diego myself tomorrow morning.” For the first time since the conversation began, he looked down at Amy, still perched in her office chair, feeling incredibly small. “So you won’t have to wait until Thursday to see her. Then you’ll have five whole days to squeeze her tight.”
At that moment, Amy imagined, her mother was already in love with Carlos. When he had further soothed Vera, he gave her a sweet goodbye and hung up the phone. Then he turned to Amy. “We need to talk.” His tone was severe, which wasn’t unusual. In fact, it was the norm. But it made Amy’s insides twist. Nonetheless, she nodded and stood.
Neither of them spoke as they headed to his office. As they walked through the puddle of cubicles scattered through the area, Amy felt as if she were on display. Every eye in the department was on her as she took her march of shame across the stiff carpet and through the tall wooden door of Carlos’ office.
Once Carlos was all the way into his private space, he spun around and leaned against his desk, his lithe frame looking far more casual than his tightened jaw. Amy closed the door behind her. The faint click of the knob engaging caused her to cringe.
“Amy, I don’t know what’s going on. And I normally wouldn’t pry into an employee’s personal life. But from the conversation I just had with your mother, I am very concerned about your safety.”
“I’m going to tell you the entire story.” Amy tried to keep her tone strong and confident, even though she felt anything but. “First, you should know that my mother is over exaggerating. I am not in any danger.”
“Okay.” He let out a heavy breath. “Let’s sit then.”
He walked around to the other side of his desk and planted himself there while Amy took a seat in the massive chair across from him. This particular piece of furniture had always made her feel small, but today it seemed to completely shrink her down to the size of a child’s doll. Which was appropriate, she supposed.
“When I was four years old, I was kidnapped.”
Most people gave an audible gasp when hearing this statement for the first time. Some dropped their jaws. Others clapped hands over mouths. Carlos’ face made one small movement. His brow furrowed.
Amy’s hands twisted in her lap. Her eyes fell so they could aptly focus on the contortionist act her fingers were performing. “A couple. A man and a woman took me. She was my nanny. My mother worked days and my father gave her enough money to have an in-house nanny, rather than taking me to daycare. Cassandra was her name. She took me. She and her boyfriend had me for over two weeks before we were found in a hotel room in Nevada. I have no memory of any of it. But, as you can imagine, it was extremely traumatic for my mother, my uncles, and aunt. My grandparents were alive then, too. Even my cousins, who were pretty young, were affected.”
Amy paused to gauge his reaction. She looked up at the handsome man across from her. Carlos merely nodded for her to continue, the furrowed brow still very much intact.
“Anyway. I went to therapy for the next twenty years, as did my mother, though I don’t think it helped her much to be honest. And the couple went to jail, for a long time. Between the kidnapping charges, crossing state lines with a minor, and…other charges…they got a lot of time. Five years ago, Cassandra got released. She’s in the sex offender database and we know that she’s in Houston. Rodney got released today and will also be registered. The D.A. expects him to join her in Houston. He’s already been asking for a parole transfer there. I am thirty years old and I don’t expect to ever lay eyes on either of these people. But my mom…she’s…”
“Upset,” Carlos said. “And I don’t blame her.”
Amy let out a deep breath. “I tried to prepare her. The D.A. called us months ago and told us to expect this. I’ve tried to get her to accept it. I even got her to go back to her psychologist recently. But…”
“I don’t blame her,” he said again. “Are you really as all right as you seem?”
“I am. I don’t remember a single thing about that time. If I hadn’t seen the mug shots I wouldn’t know those two people if I met them on the street.”
“But you are worried about your family,” he guessed.
She nodded.
“Go home and pack, Amy. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
****
After Amy left that afternoon, Carlos had Kenny book her a plane flight home, then he made an overreaching phone call. His brother’s brother-in-law, Sam, worked at the San Francisco district attorney’s office. It didn’t take Sam long to contact a colleague in San Diego and get the goods on Rodney Goethe.
Amy’s assessment had been correct. Rodney had asked permission to move to Houston and seemed to be headed to meet up with his old girlfriend. He was also forbidden to contact Amy or her family as a condition of his parole. There was no reason to think he posed a threat to her. Still, it was unnerving.
The next morning, as he drove Amy to the airport, he tried to repress the urge to smother her in the same way he imagined her family did. When he’d picked her up she hadn’t allowed him up to her apartment. Instead, she and her roommate had been waiting with her luggage on the building’s wide porch.
It occurred to Carlos as the three of them stood at the trunk of his car while Marcel slid the one small suitcase inside, that if Marcel wasn’t so obviously gay, Carlos would be jealous of the other man. It was another in a line of startling realizations when it came to Amy.
The ride to the airport was awkward as hell. After a long silence that was anything but comfortable, he decided to address what had happened the day before. “Listen, Amy. I realize I may have overstepped my bounds yesterday. I mean, between making you tell me about your past, and booking you a flight, and talking to your mom…”
“It’s fine, Carlos. I’m used to it.” She let out a heavy sigh.
He narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin as he watched the road ahead. “I should
n’t have added to that. I do see you as a grown woman. I know you are capable and independent and I know you don’t need my protection.” A deep silence overtook the car for a long beat. “I just wanted you to know that.”
Amy didn’t move, not a muscle. Carlos tightened his grip on the steering wheel and tried to remember to breathe in and out. Time ticked by. Eventually its passage was marked by the tink, tink, tink of the turn signal. Carlos pulled into short term parking, rather than sliding into a spot at passenger drop off.
Amy still didn’t make a sound as he parked the car and stepped out. She stayed put, allowing him to walk around the car and open her door. She followed him, mute, as he pulled her suitcase out of the trunk and kept it in the hand opposite her.
She glanced briefly at him before walking toward the terminal. That’s how they moved through the crowded Oakland airport, like mimes coincidentally occupying the same space.
When they reached the entrance to security, Amy stopped and turned to face him. “How did you do it?”
“Um…what?” he asked, feeling flabbergasted, not only by her unexpected and unexplained question, but also by how near she was to him. How her face, tipped up to see his, was so stunning.
“How did you know exactly what I wanted to hear? No one. No one has ever said to me what you did in the car, and it was exactly what I always wanted to hear. Damn,” she said under her breath, her eyes darting down to his chest for a moment.
Then, as if the whole thing weren’t already surreal enough, she reached up on her tiptoes. On instinct, Carlos leaned down. And she kissed him. Her aim may have originally been for his cheek, but she caught the corner of his mouth. Her lips lingered, soft and warm for a blissful moment. Then they were gone.
Before he could even process what had happened, she grabbed her suitcase from his hand and practically ran away from him, blending into the line for security and blurring his vision.
****
“Do you think my mom is finally chilling out over the Rodney thing?” Amy asked her cousin.
During the traditional Trinkus family Black Friday shopping trip, Amy and Gina had managed to escape the rest of the clan and slip off to get a soft pretzel together in a noisy corner of the food court.