I shut the door so my hysterics wouldn’t carry down the hall.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been going crazy here.”
“I’m so sorry. I just . . . I got busy doing something and I turned my phone off. I’m so sorry, Sunshine. It will never happen again. I didn’t think it was going to take me this long.”
“What? You didn’t think what was going to take you this long? You can’t keep secrets from me and then vanish. I love you and that makes me think that you’re dead on the street somewhere whenever you’re a second late. Loving you makes me into a crazy person, and I would think that you’d understand that.” It took all my strength not to scream at him, and I definitely wiped a few tears away. It was a fine line between angry and relieved. I wanted to throw my arms around him and I wanted to throw my knee into his crotch for doing this to me.
“I’m sorry, Rory. I’ll be back in a few minutes. We’ll talk tonight.” And he hung up on me.
WHAT THE FUCK?!
He thought he had seen my bitch face. Oh, no. He hadn’t seen my bitch face, but he was going to get it.
He hurried in about fifteen minutes later and came right into my office, shut the door and got down on his knees in front of me.
I was torn by the need to make sure he was okay and the need to strangle the life out of him. I did neither. It wasn’t just about not telling me where he was. It was all the secrets. I thought I could deal with them, but I couldn’t. We had keys to each other’s apartments, but there was a corner of his life that he wouldn’t let me in. How can you say you love someone, yet keep secrets from them?
I’d thought of everything it could be. From bodies, to a secret love child, to some sort of kinky sex room, to an obsession with My Little Ponies. Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth hiding.
The only thing was that I didn’t know who he was protecting. Me or himself.
“All I can say is that I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You have no idea how much this kills me. To keep things from you. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. I do. I’ve wanted to say, ‘fuck it’ so many thousands of times, but I can’t. My hands are tied. This is bigger than you and me and I wish I could. But I can’t. I wish I could for you. If anything would make me want to, it’s you, Sunshine.” He was a wreck. His eyes were red, his hair looked like he’d been tearing his hands through it and his suit was all over the place, his tie nearly coming undone, probably from him yanking on it.
I’d never seen him like this, and his honesty made me feel a bit better, but still.
“I love you, and you say you love me, but . . .” He put his hand on my mouth to stop me, and I almost bit his fingers, but let him speak. He was the one who had all the explaining to do.
“I do love you, but this isn’t about us.”
“Are you in the CIA?” I said, and my voice was muffled by his hand. He moved it and I repeated the question.
“I wish, but even if I was, I couldn’t tell you.” He was serious. I’d kind of been joking when I’d asked.
“Are you in the CIA?” I watched to see if his eye twitched or something to give me an indication I was on the right track. Nothing. And still, what would the CIA want with our company? Unless they thought we were funneling money to unsavory characters overseas, or making WMDs in our basement, and I knew that neither of those things was happening. At least I thought so . . .
Now my head was spinning with even more possibilities.
“Shit,” Lucah said.
“What?”
“I can see your head working right now, which means I’ve said too much.” He’d barely said anything. He got up and sighed.
“Are you still angry with me?”
“Yes,” I said, even though I didn’t sound convincing. I really was pissed at him, and I was going to make him work to get back in my good graces.
“Well. I think I can do something about that. You know there’s the stockholder meeting this afternoon and that they’re going out. No one is going to be in the office. Even Mrs. Andrews is going for the free food. So. We have more than enough work here and we should stay behind and get going on it and they can save us a pastry. What do you say to that?” He put both hands on the arms of my chair and leaned down.
Was I still pissed at him? Yes. Was I going to let that stop me from having amazing office sex again? Nope.
“I say that you’d better be absolutely sure this is going to work and then you’d better be absolutely sure that I am more than satisfied at the end of it,” I said, trying to keep my bitch face on.
“Yes, Miss Clarke. I will let you know the details later.” His face was close enough to kiss, but he didn’t. Instead he smiled and strolled out of the office as if he was very pleased with himself.
He’d gone from a man on his knees to a man that was practically skipping because he knew he was going to bang me on my desk. Not that I wasn’t looking forward to it, but that he could flip so easily was a little disconcerting.
And then he rushed back into my office, shut the door, came over and looked into my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Sunshine. I hope you can forgive me.” And then he was gone again, nearly crashing into Dad as he walked past my office. Dad gave him a strange look.
Being with Lucah was anything but boring and it was about to get really interesting . . .
“Are you coming to the meeting? You know they’re serving those little crab puffs you love,” Dad said later on his way past my door to go to the meeting. I tried to look as frazzled and stressed as I could and didn’t glance up from my computer.
“Would you hate me if I didn’t go? I’m absolutely buried right now. I have about twelve fires I’m trying to put out.”
“Sure, I just didn’t want you to miss anything. Why don’t you send Mr. Blaine along to take notes for you?”
“I need him,” I said, and then immediately realized how that sounded. “I need him to go down and get some of the old files for me. We’re kind of double teaming this right now, so it would just make more work if he left.” I typed faster and still didn’t look up.
“Oh, of course. It’s nothing earth shattering. Probably it will turn out like all the others with lots of golf talk and discussion on the Red Sox’ chances this year. I’ll give your excuses. Have a good rest of your afternoon. I’m headed home after the meeting.” I said good-bye and didn’t look up until the entire office went silent. I glanced at Lucah’s desk and made a thumbs-up sign and he did the same.