• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“I’ve got a date after work,” I said.

“That brings me to another problem,” he said. He leaned forward and folded his hands on his desk. He was trying for fatherly, but he never quite made it. It came off more as pretentious.

I did straighten up in my chair, because I simply wasn’t comfortable. I straightened the skirt as I sat up. There was enough skirt to smooth down the back of my thighs. My rule for skirts was that it was too short if there was no skirt to smooth over your ass. This skirt passed the test, so I was glad Bert had given up. I really wasn’t comfortable in skirts much shorter than this one. Wearing them just to spite Bert wouldn’t have been as fun as it once would have been.

“And what problem would that be, Bert?”

“Mary tells me that the young man in our waiting room is your boyfriend.”

I nodded. “He is.” Strangely, the ardeur hadn’t risen today at all, not a quiver, not a shake. But we’d all been a little concerned about what might happen if it suddenly sprang to life at work. There was nobody at work that I wanted to have sex with, so that meant I needed someone nearby, just in case. Nathaniel was sitting outside in the warm sienna orange waiting room, looking very decorative in one of the brown leather chairs. He was wearing street clothes—black slacks, a violet business shirt that was almost a match to the one he’d worn to the wedding, and black over-the-ankle boots. He’d braided his hair so it looked as professional as ankle-length hair can, and he was reading back issues of some music magazine that he had a subscription to and had fallen behind on reading. He’d brought a messenger bag full of magazines from home and was prepared to wait until I dropped him off at work, or until he was needed, whichever came first.

“Why is your boyfriend out in our waiting room, when you’re supposed to be working?”

“I’m dropping him at work later,” I said, and my voice was much more neutral than his had managed to be.

“Doesn’t he have a car?”

“We only have two cars at the house, and Micah may need the other one if he gets called into work.”

Bert did the slow blink, and what little warmth he’d managed to get into his gray eyes faded. “I thought the one in the other room was your boyfriend.”

“He is.”

“Doesn’t that mean that you’ve broken up with Micah?”

“Your assumption is your problem, Bert.”

He gave another long blink and leaned back in his chair, looking puzzled. I’d always puzzled Bert, but just not in the personal departement. “Does Micah know you’re dating . . .”

“Nathaniel,” I said.

“Nathaniel,” Bert said.

“He knows,” I said.

He licked his thin lips and tried a different tact. “Would you think it was professional if Charles or Manny brought their wives into sit in our waiting room?”

I shrugged. “Not my business.”

He sighed and started rubbing his temples. “Anita, your boyfriend cannot sit out there the entire time you’re in the office.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because if I let you start bringing in people, everybody else will want to, and it would be a mess. It would disrupt business.”

I sighed. “I don’t think anyone else will be bringing their sweeties to work,” I said. “Charles’s wife is a full-time registered nurse, she’s a little busy, and Rosita hates Manny’s job. She wouldn’t darken the door. Jamison might bring a girl around, if he thought it would impress her.”

He sighed again. “Anita, you’re being deliberately difficult about this.”

“Me, deliberately difficult, why, Bert, you know me better than that.”

He gave a surprised burst of laughter and sat back in his chair and stopped trying to treat me like a client. He looked instantly more comfortable, and less trustworthy. “Why did you bring your new boyfriend to work?”

“None of your business.”

“It is, if he’s sitting in the waiting room that we all share. It is, if you’re going to let him sit in on clients.”

“He won’t sit in on clients,” I said.

“Then he’s going to be in our waiting room for how long?”

“A few hours,” I said.

“Why?” he asked again.

“I told you, none of your business.”

“It is, if you bring him to work,