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Asking for a Friend Shocker
LAYTON“Care to make another wager?” Marissa asked now, drawing me out of my head and bringing me back into my office with her. Her sweet scent hung in the air around me—vanilla and flowery today. It intoxicated me, made me want to invite her home again so I could get that scent all over my sheets.Looking into her happy blue eyes, I nodded. “I’m always ready to make a wager with you. What will it be this time?”She held up the crumpled piece of paper in her hand. “If I can hit you in the head, you tell me what’s on your mind. You checked out on me for a second there. Don’t even bother denying it. You had this weirdly soft look in your eyes.”“Weirdly soft?” I scoffed, trying my best to sound wounded. “Nothing about me is weird. And I don’t do soft, I’m hard all over babe.”Her cheeks flushed, but she refused to back down. “Don’t I know it? That’s what makes it so interesting to know what you were thinking about.”You, I wanted to say. Telling her the truth was on the tip of my tongue
Asking for a Friend What's Wrong with My Daughter?
MARISSA“Why didn’t you call, Dee? How long has she been like this? What’s wrong?” The questions tumbled out of my mind one after the other. I was sitting in the back of Denise’s car, as close to Annie as our respective seat belts would allow.I had her clammy hand in mine, my thumb rubbing comforting circles on the back of her hand. Denise caught my eyes in the rearview mirror, worry shining through stress clouded by more worry. “It started a couple of hours ago. She threw up once, then it just kept happening.”I reached for Annie’s forehead, trying to determine if her fever had gotten any worse since we left my office. She felt the same, but she looked much worse.Her eyes were closed, her head resting against the window. She was breathing fine, but deeply. Denise looked at me again. “I’m not sure what it is. I gave her some flu medication, but I don’t know if she kept it down long enough for it to make a difference. I don’t think it’s the flu. She keeps complaining about her stomac
Asking for a Friend At the Doctor
MARISSAScooping a shivering, green around the gills Annie into my arms, I carried her into the office. She snuggled her face into the crook of my neck, clinging to me. “I don’t like doctors, Mommy.”I stroked her hair and held her tight. “I know sweetie, but they’re going to make you feel better.”There were four other children waiting with their parents to be seen by the doctors. Several other people sat waiting their turn. Some sniffled, their noses red and their pallor gray.One little boy cried loudly, holding his arm. His fingers were swollen and his mother was causing a scene, insisting they couldn’t wait. From the look of him, I tended to agree with her.They were swept into the doctor’s consulting room next, causing some other people who had been waiting longer to grumble. Denise came in a few minutes later, taking a seat on the other side of Annie.We waited in tense silence for our turn. Denise tried to assure me there was no way I could’ve seen Annie’s illness coming.“Don
Asking for a Friend Not Her
LAYTONTwenty-four hours and still no word from Marissa. I consulted with a new client in the morning. An interesting man who wanted to build an off the grid tree house to live in about an hour outside the city.The project was bound to be both challenging and something totally different than anything I was used to. I was excited to get into it, but struggling to concentrate on the design.Sitting behind my drafting table, I stared down at the empty sheet of paper in front of me. My pencil clutched between my fingers, I had yet to draw so much as one line.Marissa was on my mind. I kept wondering what she might think of the project. I wondered if she would be as excited about it as I was, and I looked forward to seeing how she put the reports on this one together.The client was adventurous, but his budget didn’t match his dream. To say it would be tight was an understatement. There was no doubt in my mind that if anyone could put it together inside budget and make his residential dre
Asking for a Friend Nothing More Than a Boss
LAYTONFrowning, she seemed surprised by the question. She brushed a tendril of hair that had escaped off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “She’s okay. It was only a stomach bug. She’s already feeling better. Thanks for asking.”I waited for her to continue, to explain why she hadn’t told me about Annie. She didn’t say anything though. It looked like she was, very uncharacteristically, at a loss for words.“Why didn’t you tell me about her, Marissa?” I asked quietly, crossing my arms as I leaned against the windows behind my desk. “You should have told me you were a mom.”She bristled visibly. I could practically hear her defenses slamming into place. “Why?”Her tone was challenging, flat. “Why should I have told you? You’re my boss, Layton. I haven’t told anyone here about Annie, why would I have told you?”Everything about her screamed defiance. She was cold and withdrawn, defensive. I sighed, running a hand through my hair. I didn’t want to fight with her, but things seem
Asking for a Friend Thanks for the Favor
LAYTONFreezing rain pelted the office windows, the skies angry and miserable. I stood with my back to my office, staring at the Boston skyline –what little of it not obscured by the weather. Lightning cracked the sky in half, adding to the general gloom outside.It wasn’t much better in my office. Sighing, I dragged my hands through my hair. In the two weeks since Marissa came into my office and went off about how we had to forget anything ever happened between us, we’d managed to avoid each other.It was no easy feat in an office the size of ours, but I hadn’t so much as caught a glimpse of the buxom blonde who had intrigued me as much as she’d annoyed me from day one. The last two Fridays, I’d let my second in command handle the weekly staff meetings.Marissa had sent the reports she needed to get to me via email to my assistant, and several times had dropped documents with her. One morning I arrived to find a pile of papers neatly stacked on my desk.The loopy handwriting on the n
Asking for a Friend You Look Like Hell
LAYTONThe old tick to modulate my urges to set things straight had returned with ten times the intensity it had before I met her. For a couple of days there, I learned to let things go, to let them just be the way they are around her. She brought organizational chaos wherever she went and somehow, I managed to relax my urge to correct it around her.Those days were long over. Horrified, I watched the stack of papers wobble, but Marissa didn’t even seem to notice. Meeting my eyes again, she gave me a pointed look. “Was there anything else you needed?”“Not a thing,” I said curtly, then gave her a quick nod and walked out of her office.I didn’t thank her for the reports or for promising to get the work done by day’s end. There was no need. She was just an employee and I was just her boss. If I had to run around thanking every one of my staff members for doing their work, I wouldn’t get any of my own done.On my way to my car to meet Craig at the site, I shook out my tense muscles. My
Asking for a Friend Not His Fault
MARISSADays at the office dragged on and on. The clock seemed to have slowed down, hours passing as slowly as an antagonizing snail. One who knew you’d bet on him and was intentionally showing you why it had been a mistake to do so.At the same time as it felt like years had passed since that day in Layton’s office when I broke things off, it also felt like the conversation had happened mere minutes ago.With the stubborn refusal of the hands on the clock to move at any freaking decent speed, I had way too much time to think about the man in the office on the other side of the building. I found myself bracing for when I would finally see him again, both hoping I would and dreading the minute it would happen.When he came to my office earlier, it was all I could do to not burst into tears. I hated the distance between us, the frigid tension. I wished more than anything that things could be different between us.Those few weeks I’d spent being more than just his employee—if not as his
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