Home Free - Fern Michaels [68]
The dogs barked on cue. Abner groaned again and got up. He threw on some clothes and his heavy jacket. By the time he got to the elevator, the dogs were waiting with their leashes. In spite of himself, he laughed. He couldn’t ever remember a time when he felt this good, so at peace with himself and his life.
Isabelle heard the elevator thirty-five minutes later, just as she flipped the last of the pancakes. “Just keep them warm till I brush my teeth,” Abner said, loping off to the bathroom.
They ate in happy silence, silly smiles on their faces.
“You’ll do it, right?” Isabelle said.
“Of course. It shouldn’t take long. I want to go over the final report on the other stuff, and then you can take it out to Ms. de Silva. What time is your morning meeting over?”
“Depends on the client. Some of them like to chat it up, you know, be reassured that the plans will be exact. Some of them don’t understand Murphy’s Law and inspections. To be safe, I’d say noon. I’ll come back here. By the way, why do you keep calling Annie ‘Ms. de Silva’? She likes to be called Annie.”
“She never told me to call her Annie, and she is my employer and as such deserves my respect. To be totally honest, I am worried about what Maggie might have said to you all.”
Isabelle looked Abner in the eye and said, “Maggie never ever said a negative word about you. In fact, we never even knew your name until a month or so ago. Maggie holds you in the highest regard. She was very hard on herself where you were and are concerned.”
Abner seemed content with Isabelle’s explanation. “You go ahead and take the bathroom. I’m going to feed your latest request into the computers. I can shower and shave later. I’ll clean up, too.”
“Don’t forget to add water to the tree stand,” Isabelle called over her shoulder.
“Yes, ‘Mom.’” A moment later, Abner was off his stool and barreling down the hall to his workstation, where he typed furiously for several minutes, sat back, then typed some more. Two hours, tops, and he should have every JJ in the District of Columbia plus fifty miles around.
Abner pressed another button on a different computer and waited for the printer to activate. He watched, a smile of satisfaction on his face, as page after page flew out of the printer. Within minutes he knew he had more than a ream of paper. Translated, five-hundred-plus pages of background material on the four subjects he’d been hired to vet.
Now all he had to do was make sense of it all. He looked up at one of the many clocks that adorned his walls. He had plenty of time. He was, after all, a computer whiz, wasn’t he?
As he was stapling and sifting through the stack of papers, Isabelle appeared in the doorway. “I watered the tree. If I’m going to be late, I’ll call you, okay?” She wanted to go over to the stool where Abner was sitting and kiss him, but she held back. At that moment, he was in another world, a world that didn’t include her. She forced cheerfulness into her voice and said, “Bye.”
Abner looked up and over at the sound of her voice. Isabelle watched as the transition from computer world to personal world fought a battle. For a nanosecond, she thought she had lost the battle, but Abner scooted the stool he was sitting on across the floor and leaped off. A second later, she was in his arms, and he was kissing her so hard, she thought her back teeth were going to come loose. She’d never been kissed with such passion in her whole life. And she liked it. No! She loved it. She said so.
Abner laughed, a heartwarming sound that stayed with her all the way to her office.
Isabelle Flanders was in love.
Back in the loft, Abner scooted his stool back to his workstation, but for the first time in his life, he didn