Page 39 of Peaches

Shut up, evil Grace!

When the silence stretches a little too long, I keep up my pathetic wall, eyes trained ahead of me on the gibberish, and ask, “Who’s Michelle?”

“Press Manager’s wife,” he quickly responds. “Had a miscarriage last week,” my heart aches as I frown at the screen and my typing pauses momentarily, but I don’t look up. That’s horrible, even if I don’t know the woman. No one should have to go through that.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter, as I start typing again. “Was she far along?”

“Five months.”

At that my fingers stop, and I look up at him abruptly. “Five!”

His head nods as his face grows more somber. I’m struggling, staring dumbfoundedly into his eyes, trying to find some words to say, when he knocks me off my game and asks, “You want kids, Peaches?”

I sit back a little and put some space between us. His question is like throwing cold water on a scorching hot flame. Well, almost. Because, hell yes I was just thinking about spreading my legs, but in no way was I thinking about the nine months after I let myself loose it to the charmer sitting before me.

Remember?

Infatuation.

Intense. Short lived.

Infatuation!

That question, even in retrospect, throws everything about short-lived out the damn window.

When I still haven’t answered, he leans forward, attempting to see what I was typing, and I slam the computer shut instantly. His eyes flash back up to mine, a little startled and edgy, but he hides it well a second later as a small laugh escapes his seductive lips.

“A no would have sufficed,” he slowly says, as he rises off the bed and watches me. “I didn’t have much of an old man to look up to when I was young,” he continues, shocking me I must admit as I get a glimpse into his personal life. “Marie and my mother did their best, but I always… craved more, ya know? Never understood why. Always wondered….”

His thoughts trail off as his eyes look across the room. I can see it. The rejection. The hurt. The unanswered question. Thewhy. Because it’s all the things I felt when my father walked out on Arnie, my mother and I, and I’ve never been able to solve it, either. Never been able to understand. Always doubted, just like I see the man before me doing now.

He glances back my way as a sudden connection completely out of our control fuses us together. I feel it. The buzz running through our veins as I slowly take in a shaky breath and notice a second later as it quickens.

What I told him standing in his office that first day was true. I don’t care to know my father. Don’t care to know the man that walked out and made life harder for us. He doesn’t know more, and I don’t know half of his issues with The General, but we don’t have to tell one another things that we bothfeel. That we canseejust by looking in each other’s eyes. That undeniable fact that we understand one another.

And that crosses every damn line of infatuation!

That makes what we are doing here impossible to ever be short-lived.

Forget the babies in the future that I was moments before contemplating having.

Nothing is temporary when hearts connect.

When souls collide.

When circumstances out of your control cross an invisible border, a thin line, that takes an intense short-lived infatuation and turns it into something that will always mean so much more.

I was wrong.

I don’t need to spread my legs to be claimed by the man before me.

He’s beginning to do that without even touching my skin.

Without even being pressed up against my body.

Or pressed into it, for that matter.

I find myself looking in his eyes and know the moment a piece of this wall between us, the one that we are trying to keep in place for professional reasons, slowly crumbles and a personal connection begins to turn our tables.

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