Crown's Chance at Love

by Mayra Statham

  “Your calls, umm they weren’t too complicated?” I ask, but he knows what I am asking, I know he does because his eyes soften and he shakes his head.

  “No. There a couple of things, but I think I can work around all of it,” he says smiling. He looks over at Mark taking out his wallet, and hands him a twenty.

  “Hey Ace, why don’t you go in and help your brother and sister get their frozen yogurt and pay for the three of you. Your mom and I will be in there, give us a minute?” he asks and Marks smiles looking at me and I frown. Now it made sense why he wanted me to fix my hair.

  “Sure Mike. Come on guys, let’s go.” I watch them go inside, Mark holding Chris’s hand as Penny stands next to Chris.

  “Hey,” he says looking at me. His face looks a little worried, “Want to sit with me?”

  “Mike…” I start to say and he grabs for my hand, lacing his fingers with mine and damn it if I don’t really like how his hand feels in mine. Safe. The only word in my mind is safe. Protected. something about that, makes me swallow hard, how long had it been since I had felt that way?

  “I don’t want an out,” he states confidently, but there is something in his pale baby blue eyes that makes me wary.

  “Why do I feel like there is a ‘but’ in what you are going to say?” I ask.

  “Because there is. Look I don’t want you to give me an out. I want to get to know you and you get to know me. But I don’t know where this will go. I’m the VP, but I’m single and I am usually the one they send off out of town at the drop of a hat. I’m almost forty and I told you I’ve been in a relationship for a decade, but honestly babe we were like friends, She didn’t need me around. Once we hadn’t seen each other in six months and neither of us had even noticed. I don’t know why that didn’t throw a red flag at us but it didn’t. Thinking about it now that should have been like a huge neon light telling me we weren’t meant to be together.”

  “You guys had just grown accustom to each other. It happens.”

  “Did it happen to you and Sean?” he asks softly and his eyes are warm and sweet, almost genuinely seeking an answer, and hearing Sean’s name on his lips doesn’t feel weird.

  “Sometimes, maybe not six months or anything drastic, but yeah,” I answer honestly. I remember times that life got overwhelmingly busy and how easy it was to feel disconnected from one another at those times; how we always made it a point to talk to one another when we started to feel disconnected.

  “So you think maybe we could try this out… I mean get to know each other, see where this thing goes?” he asks and I look inside the shop, watching the kids staring over at us, each of them with their own cup of frozen yogurt.

  “You are sure you want to give this a chance? I mean, you know how busy I am, not just work wise, but family wise…” I start to ramble. Why am I pointing out reasons for him to say no? Why am I pushing him away?

  “Sabrina. I get it. It’s a different situation than I am used to, but I want to get to know you,” he says his eyes clear and honest.

  “Okay,” I say seriously. His face softens and we both smile. The earlier awkwardness disappearing as the familiarity we had started grew between us again..

  “Okay,” he says as he takes a step closer to me, his warm fingers in mine. He leans in and kisses my forehead, his goatee lightly tickling my skin, but its his lips on my skin that make it feel as if I am somehow holding my breath, “Let’s go get some FroYo.”

  “Okay,” I say grinning like an idiot walking into the shop with him.

  Sabrina

  Sitting at my desk, drinking my warm cup of coffee, I knew I was daydreaming, but I couldn’t help it. With a silly little grin on my face, I couldn’t shake all the thoughts in my head. I felt like a teenager with a crush. Trying to focus on the wedding invitations in front of me I dive into work, a discipline that impressed most. I hadn’t even realized it was almost three until my stomach growled at me. I had accidently worked through lunch without thinking. Picking up my huge bag I dug into it, taking out my phone and a granola bar. It was too late to go out and grab lunch. I had left my phone on silent and that was why I hadn’t been disturbed as I worked. Looking at my phone reading I had seven missed calls and eight text messages to return.

  I returned calls pertaining to work first, then calls to make sure the kids were all at Emmi’s house, letting them know I would pick them up on my way home from work. I wasn’t sure what I would do without Emmi.

  My office phone starts to ring and I leaned over to grab the headset.

  “Ritz Events, Sabrina speaking how can I help you?”

  “Hey,” a deep voice chimes and I smile, somehow breathing easier as I hear Nick’s voice.

  “Hey stranger. I thought you forgot about us little people,” I say to him leaning back into my comfy office chair, extremely glad that the power-tool wielding construction guys fixing up our new offices have the day off.

  “Shut up, “ His deep voice chuckling makes me smile. “I’m in Hong Kong closing a new deal on some new software. Miss me?” he asks and I smile shaking my head.

  “You know I miss you. Kids were asking about you yesterday.”

  “How did Mark’s game go?” he asks. I love my best friend. Even being half a world away doesn’t stop him from thinking or worrying about us. He is such a great guy.

  “They won. He hit a double and a single and made two runs,” I share proudly. “ I’ll send you the video in an email.”

  “Good. Tell him I will try to call him tomorrow,” he says sounding tired. “This time difference is killer.”

  “I bet. So what’s new? Did you take your secretary with you?” I joke, because both Emmi and I think his secretary, Trish, has the hots for him, but he is completely oblivious to it.

  “Don’t start. Trish is my assistant, that’s it. Trust me, a girl like that doesn’t need a guy like me,” he says sounding a bit annoyed and I smile thinking he doth protest too much. He snaps me out of my matchmaking scheming thoughts when he continues, “Oh hey so, a friend of mine emailed me, he lives in LA and wanted to see if I knew any single, beautiful women I could set him up with. I was wondering…” I groan.

  This is classic Nick. Trying to set me up on these horrible blind dates. It isn’t necessarily the fact that they were terrible men that he set me up with, it’s the fact that I bring a lot to the table and the men he sets me up with weren’t the types of men looking to date single moms.

  “Nick!” I groan.

  “What? he is a great guy… single, never married, loaded,” he starts to say but I just spit out what I have been wanting to tell him since I had met Mike.

  “I met someone,” I blurt out.

  Nick and I have a wonderful friendship. We have shared every bad and good thing in our lives since we were kids. He has been my constant. My rock. Especially with everything that had happened with Sean. I remember how he had made sure to drag me out of bed every morning the first month after the funeral to make sure the kids saw that I was okay, and then he would let me hide in my room until thirty minutes before they were home from school so that they never had to see their mom fall apart and broken. He had driven my U-Haul filled with everything we owned, without having to ask him to, when we had moved from Berkeley to Pasadena. He had been there for the kids in countless ways from: Penny’s dance recitals, to Mark’s baseball games to even Chris’ first day of kindergarten. Because of all of these reasons, and because of the thing that happened between us that we don’t ever talk about, I was worried as to how I would tell him. But me being me, when I am nervous, I tended to blurt things out instead of thinking out how to say them.

  “You met someone?” he repeats slowly. I can hear him breathing, I can almost picture him stewing.

  “Yeah Nick. I did.” After a bit of silence he finally speaks.

  “When? How? Was it Dan’s co-worker Emmi said she was going to set you up with?” he asked.

  “No. Last week I was walking into Starbucks, you know the on
e right by my office? Well I was searching for my phone not paying attention, because the stupid thing feel to the bottom of my bag…”

  “I’ve told you before, you need to clean that thing up, or at least try and be a little more organized, or maybe get a new bag…” he chimes in. He is always on my case about my bag.

  “I know I know, and no I am not buying a new bag, I love that bag…”

  “Pick a designer bag, I’ll order it online…”

  This was typical Nick. He was always worried about us. He always wanted to give us things. He knews I made good money, but he also knew that the kids are smart and I was setting up college funds for them. He knew all of this because Nick being Nick, helped me set them up. He is a really great friend. He was family to me.

  “Nick! Focus! Anyhow, I wasn’t looking and I walked right into him, like hard, and he held me so I wouldn’t fall back, and next thing I know he bought me coffee and we sat and in talking we found out that I put in a bid for a couple of the charity events his company hosts every year.”

  I know I am rambling, and so help me I can’t stop rambling and Nick knows this about me and knows how to stop me, yet he doesn’t.

  He stays quiet and lets me talk. I spill everything, from how we’d had lunch all last week to what happened yesterday when Mike came over, made meatballs met the kids and I had essentially kicked him out, to him finding us at Tutti Frutti for Frozen Yogurt.

  “So what happened after you guys had frozen yogurt?” he asks, his tone serious and damn it if that doesn’t make a pit in my stomach.

  “He came over, we watched the Avengers with the kids and then he left,” I say, trying not to smile. Nick would know I was smiling and figure out I was keeping something out.

  What I didn’t tell Nick was that when I walked Mike to his car, he had pulled me up close to him, one hand around my waist, the other in my hair and had pulled me into him. Then Mike gave me one of the sweetest, hottest first kisses I had ever experienced in my thirty-six years of life.

  I close my eyes and can almost smell his cologne, feel his hard chest against mine, his hands gentle and rough all at the same time, and oh my-my his mouth! His mouth had been hot and tasted so wonderful, like a little bit of the sweet chocolate from his frozen yogurt and salty from the popcorn. The way he kissed was beautiful. Confident. Dominating. Powerful. I accidently sigh at the thought of it.

  “You like him,” he says.

  “Yeah I do. He is a really good guy Nick. I want you to meet him. I mean if I am even talking to him still next time you are out here.”

  “Why do you say it like that Rin?” he asks.

  “Come on Nick. You know what I bring to the table. You know what my schedule is like. Yeah he says he is busy, but he’s never dated anyone that has as much on their plate like I do. Plus, he is like freaking gorgeous. Next time some twenty year old model passes by him, he probably won’t even remember my name.” There it is. My insecurities. I’m not one to show them to anyone, but those closest to me, those who know me better than I know myself at times. Nick happens to be at the top of that list.

  “If that’s the case, then he isn’t worth it Rin. Trust me, the guy would be a fucking idiot if he didn’t see the type of woman you are.”

  I scoff, “What’s that? A sad lonely widow with too much on her plate juggling so much in the air that she is deathly afraid of it all tumbling down?”

  “No. A once in a lifetime woman who shines brighter than the fucking sun,” he states. Plain and simple, this is Nick, honest to the bone with his opinions.

  “Nick…” I start to say.

  “No. I know Sabrina, trust me I know. You and I… Shit, if I thought we had even a fucking five percent chance of working out, you wouldn’t be seeing anyone. Trust me honey. But you and I we both know we are just friends. We would be a mess waiting to happen. You know you’re the sister I never wanted. I love you baby girl, and if this guy is an idiot and hurts you, I’ll break his fucking face.” To this I laugh.

  How simple it would have been if there had been that connection between Nick and I. We know everything there is to know about one another, it would be easy. To this thought I smile. It really wouldn’t be easy; we would fight like cats and dogs, and life would be completely predictable and filled with suffocating monotony. But we both know that it would never be more than friendship, and if we had tried to make it go further, we’d hate one another for letting the other settle for a lifetime of friendship instead of a lifetime of the whole package. Especially after that night a year ago.That horrible embarrassing night we don’t ever talk about, that we have never told anyone about.

  “So what’s his name?” he asks.

  “Mike. He works for the corporate offices of Edwards Automotive.”

  “The chain of dealerships?” he asks, curiosity piquing his interest.

  “Yup. That’s the company he works for. Anyhow he is thirty-nine, never married,” I tell him. I liked that Nick was asking questions and sounded mildly interesting in getting to know things about Mike.

  “What did the kids think about him?” Nicks voice sounds cautious.

  “They liked him I think. Mark told him where he could find us, that’s how he knew to go to Tutti Frutti last night. Penny chatted him up, but you know thats just Penny’s way, she chats with everyone.”

  “And Chris?”

  “Believe it or not, Mr. Serious took a liking to Mike. He even rolled meatballs with him. It was nice to see. He talked football with him and from what I can tell Mike’s a big football guy, so they hit it off great,” I say smiling thinking about my beautiful little guy cooking next to Mike.

  “Wow,” he says and then stays quiet and I know his silence isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  “So, you sure you don’t see something happening with Trish?” I ask and he laughs.

  “You will never give up will you?” he asks with a happy tinge in his voice that tells me he is smiling.

  “You deserve happiness Nick. You need a good partner in your life, someone to take care of you the way you take care of everyone around you,” I tell him and he scoffs so I continue, “Emmi and I worry about you.”

  “I’m okay baby girl,” he says and then sighs. “Look I better get some sleep, promise me you will be careful with this guy okay?”

  “I promise Nick.”

  “Okay, tell the kids I say ‘hi,’ and we will skype tomorrow okay? Eight your time work okay?”

  “Eight tomorrow is fine. I’ll see you then,” and we hang up. I stare out the window thinking about Nick. He took the news pretty well, and I’m glad.

  My receptionist Janelle knocks at the door of my office and I look up and smile at her. She’s a tall, curvy blonde twenty-two year old who is working for us to help get herself through school.

  “There is a delivery for you at the front, they need you to sign for,” she says, with a big smile on her face and I raise my eyebrow.

  I wasn’t expecting anything, but maybe some catalogs or fabric samples have arrived early, I thought to myself. I stand and stretch, my back slightly aching from having been at my desk so long. Straightening my slate grey pencil skirt down, looking down at my white button down sleeveless shirt to make sure no extra buttons have been undone. I walk towards the front of the office, my bright blue heels clicking on the hardwood floors beneath me. I look at my watch and then at the front, and that’s when I see him. Standing there in a black suit, that was most definitely custom tailored to his extremely masculine body. White crisp shirt underneath with the first two buttons popped open. It’s such a classic look, but on him he looks better than classic. It’s utterly delicious. His blue eyes glitter at me and his smile can charm a nun out of her promises of celibacy.

  “Hey Mike. What are you doing here?” I ask, not even trying to hide the smile I feel all the way to my eyes..

  “I brought you lunch. I called and Janelle here, your lovely receptionist, told me you hadn’t gone out yet, so I thought I’d deliver,”
he says and I look at Janelle, poor girl blushing like a schoolgirl, but who could blame her, he has that same affect on me.

  “Thanks, come into my office please.”

  Mike

  He had tried to stay away. He really had. He had tried not to call or text or even e-mail her. He hadn’t heard from her since last night, after he had kissed her goodnight. He had been tempted to throw her into his car and drive to the nearest empty parking lot to make out with her. Kissing her soft lips had been like a slice of heaven and he couldn’t stop thinking about what her lips had felt like beneath his, what her mouth had tasted like. Her scent haunted him, a light coconut scent from the shampoo she used, to the light clean scent of her perfume. All he wanted was to be next to her. He had got home and they had texted back and forth until he just gave in and called her. They had stayed on the phone until she had fallen asleep, and he had wanted to be lying beside her. Shit he had even dreamt about it.

  Around one in the afternoon he had given in and texted her, and was slightly disappointed when he had not heard back from her. Then disappointment had drifted to worry. What if she knew who he was, had been all that had ran through his mind. An hour later he had called her office and talked to her receptionist, Janelle. She had told him that Sabrina hadn’t gone out to lunch, having been completely busy in her office all morning. Since he couldn’t focus, he went out and grabbed them some lunch to surprise her with.

  He had gone to his favorite deli and picked them up sandwiches and drinks, then had stopped by a little bakery his assistant, Robin, had mentioned and had picked up two dozen assorted cupcakes for her office.

  Now finally she was standing in front of him, smiling at him, her eyes bright and happy.

  “Thanks, come into my office please.”

  I follow her, my eyes going to her round ass, and damn it looks fucking wonderful in her tight pencil skirt. Images of her in my office bent over in front of me, her arms on the flat surface of my desk, as I lift that tight skirt over the roundness of her ass drift into my head and without any control, my body reacts to the images that filter it. My cock starts to twitch to life and I take a deep breath as I try to think about something else. My inability to control my body’s reaction to her surprises me and makes me nervous.