Loving in the Light

by Alexandria Bishop

  “I’m going to stop you right there. Nobody is getting fired today. That’s not why I brought you in here. Wait,” he pauses briefly, and his mouth drops open. He turns toward his computer and starts clicking his mouse and types in a few things, more than likely to check on the validity of her story. When he sees whatever he’s looking for he looks from her to the screen and back again a few times before asking, “the Victoria? Seriously? How did you manage that one?”

  She nods her head furiously hoping that he’ll be impressed with her work. He must not have clicked into the actual reservation to get all the details so she tells him what happened. “I was just on the phone with Wren Danzig. He wanted to book a trip and I decided to go big and see what happened, and it worked.” He seems impressed by this, but it still doesn’t explain everything else. Maybe he’ll let her go back to her desk and finish out the day? “But why did you tell me to log out and bring everything with me? I’m sorry, I’m a little distracted today, so you’re going to have to spell it out for me.”

  “That’s actually why I brought you back here. I respect your dedication in coming into work today, but I’m honestly not sure why you’re here. We can’t even get word to corporate right now, and I’m sure you’re extremely stressed out not hearing from Marek. You really shouldn’t have the added stress of work on you right now, especially with your pregnancy.”

  All the air rips out of Tinley’s chest at the revelation that their secret wasn’t so secret after all. “You knew?” she whispers under her breath, not knowing if she even said it loud enough for him to hear.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were unaware that we knew about your relationship. Before Mr. Outlaw got his promotion, he disclosed that information to us. He wanted to make sure we knew about everything before he accepted. He didn’t tell you about that?”

  She laughs and can’t help the words tumbling out of her mouth. “Well between me finding out he had a daughter, which he kept a secret from me, and then me mistakenly thinking his sister was the mother of his child and they were secretly married, we had a lot going on. Oh, and then there was him finding out I was pregnant, so I guess he didn’t really have time to let me know he told our bosses we’re in a relationship. Hell, it’s not like we’re living together or even engaged, and now he could be dead thanks to fucking Mother Nature and this company, but who am I to complain? Life is just peachy.”

  Tinley’s hand flies to her mouth as she realizes what she just said. If she could crawl under a rock right now, that’s exactly what she would do, but unfortunately, there aren’t any boulders large enough to cover up a very pregnant woman in sight, and her boss is definitely staring at her from across the desk.

  He leans back in his desk chair and slides his hand across his face holding his chin briefly. “I’m going to assume there was some sort of huge misunderstanding and there isn’t anything incestuous going on between Marek and his sister, but you obviously have a lot on your plate right now, which is the reason I’m sending you home. Your job is here when you can come back, but I don’t want you to add the stress of work to everything else you have going on.”

  Wow.

  She doesn’t even know what to say to that. She’s never met the man before, but she has heard less than favorable things about him from other people in the past. To be honest, she’s actually always been a little terrified of him, but knowing he is a decent human being and not the monster everyone has made him out to be makes her shoulders relax a little bit. Not even five minutes ago she thought she might be losing her job, and now not only is it protected, she’s also getting time off because her current situation. Or really, it’s Marek’s situation. Maybe they’re hoping if they go easy on her they won’t have any lawsuits in their future. Whatever the company’s reasoning or motives, she’ll take it.

  Profuse appreciation leaves her mouth before she gets up from her seat and walks out the door. There are so many things running through her mind right now, and she’s grateful that work is no longer one of them. Now what the hell is she going to tell Dakota when she gets home? Home—that has an interesting ring to it. She’s been spending so much more time at Marek’s home than her own that it feels like it’s hers as well. With everything that has happened, she doesn’t even know why she fought him so hard about moving in together. All the drama in her life recently seems so inconsequential compared to everything else. If there’s one thing she’s learned lately, it’s that Tara is right. She’ll never admit that to her sister, but every time she’s told her to grow up and Tinley has just rolled her eyes or ignored her, it’s only made bigger problems for herself. She just hopes her realizations aren’t coming too late.

  Chapter Eleven

  As Tinley brings her car to a stop outside the house, she doesn’t know what to think about what just happened. Her mind is a complete blank as she gets out of her car and walks up toward the house. She moves almost on autopilot as if she’s just going through the motions and has zero control of anything she’s doing. She walks in the front door and freezes, unsure of what she should be doing right now. She doesn’t hear Luna, and odds are she’s currently napping. It is right about her nap time.

  “Tinley?”

  She looks up and sees Dakota standing in front of her with rubber gloves on her hands and a look of concern on her face. Has she been standing there long? “What? Oh, I’m sorry—did you ask me something?”

  Dakota pulls the gloves off her hand and tosses them to the console table to the right of them. She grabs Tinley by the arm and they move away from the door and toward the living room. With a little nudge from her best friend, she falls back into one of the armchairs, still trying to process everything that happened at work today. While she’s still running through everything, Dakota hands her a bottle of water and asks, “What is up with you? I just asked you what you’re doing home. You’re not supposed to get off work for another five hours. You just walked through the door and you’re acting like a zombie. Did something happen? Oh my gosh! Did you get fired?”

  “I thought I was going to.”

  “Wait, I’m confused—so if you didn’t get fired, what are you doing here? Did you quit?”

  Tinley’s voice comes out in a low whisper as she chokes out the words, “They know.”

  Dakota moves around the living room like she can’t sit still even for a second. She picks up a second water bottle from the coffee table and pours it over the plants next to the picture window. When she’s done with that she picks up a feather duster and sweeps it over the entertainment center and TV. She pauses for a moment in her cleaning obsession and turns to Tinley asking, “Come again?” Who knows what?”

  She takes a chug of water from the bottle in her hand then elaborates further. “At work, they know about Marek and me…that we’re together…that I’m having his baby.”

  Rushing to the couch, Dakota drops down next to Tinley. “Oh my gosh. What happened? Is everything okay? Do you need anything from me or for me to do anything for you?”

  “Everything is fine. Apparently Marek told them before he got the promotion. I just don’t understand why he kept me out of the loop. Why the secrets?”

  “Is that a problem for you? People at work knowing?”

  “What? No, of course not. I never had an issue with people knowing, it was always about Marek’s job. I mean, let’s face it: he’s the one who makes the big bucks, and his job is a hell of a lot more important. That’s all it was ever about, at least for me. I don’t know about him though.”

  Dakota nods her head but doesn’t say anything. As the silence drags on between them, Tinley realizes that even though she assumed Luna was taking a nap, she actually doesn’t know for sure where she’s at right now. “Where’s Luna?”

  “She’s napping with Giselle.” Tinley starts to panic and gets up from the chair she’s currently occupying, but Dakota stops her. “Don’t worry, the TV isn’t on in there, and Luna is still in the dark about what’s going on. Luna wanted to cheer
up her auntie, and we went in there about an hour ago. They snuggled up together and quickly fell asleep. I figured they both needed it and left them alone.”

  Relief travels through her as Tinley falls back into the recliner. Her heart beats out of her chest and her emotions take over. This time she doesn’t force it down and she lets the dam break free. Tears stream down her face and the sobs rack her body. Everything she’s been holding in is finally coming out, and she doesn’t even know if she could stop now if she wanted to.

  Dakota jumps up from the couch, falls to her knees on the floor next to Tinley, and wraps her arms around her. It feels like she finally has her friend back again, and it doesn’t take long for Tinley to rein in her emotions and compose herself. She brings her hand up to wipe away the tears that still linger and sniffles. “What am I going to do? What if he doesn’t come back to me?”

  “No, you can’t let yourself think that way. He has to come back to you. There isn’t another option.”

  “But what if he doesn’t? What then?”

  “Then I will help you in any way I can. Whatever you need, I am there for you.”

  She wants to believe her. Every fiber of her being needs to believe her, but she still can’t help herself as she falls back into the darkness thinking about all the what-ifs, and just focusing on this conversation right now isn’t helping make anything better. Dakota gets up off the floor and sits back down on the couch where she was previously, and Tinley releases a small laugh as she slides a tissue over her face. “Ugh, change of subject. I can’t have a breakdown like that. I need to get my shit together because Lord knows Giselle can’t take care of herself right now.”

  “Any particular topics you have in mind?”

  She starts to shake her head when she remembers the day she had at work. Although it was short, it was definitely eventful. Her mood swings are giving her whiplash as she wipes away her leftover tears, but she can’t help the small smile that forms on her lips. “Guess who I talked to on the phone today.”

  Dakota shrugs and asks, “Was it Betty White?”

  Tinley laughs and shakes her head, thinking about the older woman. She’s a longtime customer of Wanderlust International, and she’s been booking an annual vacation with them for over twenty years. No, she’s not the famous actress, although Tinley imagines they’re relatively close in age. She’s incredibly sweet and goes on the senior singles cruise “to meet some hotties”—her words. Every time she calls in and a newbie gets her, they go into full-blown fangirl mode until they realize she is not the hilarious and famous Golden Girl but another woman who shares the same name.

  “I didn’t even think of her. It was not, but good guess.”

  Dakota shrugs and replies, “Well then I’ve got nothing. Who was it?”

  She contemplates dragging this out and seeing how long she can drive Dakota crazy, but she’s barely containing this information as it is so she nonchalantly says, “Oh it was no big deal, just Wren Danzig.”

  “Holy forking shirt! Are you kidding me right now? You’re lying, right?”

  Before she can answer, Tinley busts out laughing. Dakota has been spending way too much time in toddler land, which equates to cleaning up her sailor language just a tad bit. The first time she heard her say, What the fudgecicle, Tinley wanted to laugh her head off, but then Luna would repeatedly ask for a fudgecicle and she had to let Auntie Dakota know she needed a new F-word. Apparently she has found one.

  “I’m not lying, but that isn’t even the best part.”

  Dakota leans forward, hanging on Tinley’s every word, and her eyes brighten with excitement. “What? Tell me, what is the best part?”

  Tinley leans back in her chair, relaxing her body and releasing some of the tension she was just holding in. She shrugs and leaves her face blank while bringing her hand up to look at her non-manicured fingernails. “Oh, you know, he just booked the Victoria—no biggie.”

  She waits a few moments and when her best friend doesn’t say anything, she looks over to her. Dakota’s bottom lip is practically lying on the floor in front of her. “Tinley Scott, you are a rock star and my superhero. Fucking amazing, woman. I can’t even believe it. You booked the Victoria? The ultimate motherfucking load? Are you kidding me right now?”

  She laughs and lets that F-bomb slide as she takes in the compliments from her best friend. Even in the darkness that is currently her life, she knows all hope isn’t lost since she can still find a little bit of lightness. She only hopes she finds her way out of the dark soon. Shaking herself from that thought process she says, “Yeah, it was the craziest thing ever. At first I thought it was a prank call because he was super wishy washy at first.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She thinks back to the call and how he raised almost every red flag from the beginning of the conversation. He’s probably so used to trying to be elusive, that he didn’t realize how it would come off when she couldn’t see his face. She’s seen so many of his movies that she assumed she would have recognized his voice right away, but it didn’t even register. Pulling herself back to the present she tells Dakota, “He started out the call wanting to book a bunch of cabins and said he would tell us later who would actually be staying in them. Oh, and I didn’t know who I was talking to at first either.”

  “That does sound a little odd, but you got him to book the Victoria. You’re amazing and I’m so incredibly proud of you. Any chance we can sneak aboard the yacht before it goes on its voyage and become stowaways? Could you imagine what kind of shenanigans we would get up to?”

  Oh, she definitely could imagine it. But that was the old Tinley she’s thinking of. Even if she half hoped during the call that he would invite her to come with him, never in a million years would she actually do it. She’s already found the love of her life and she’s a mom. She doesn’t need to be gallivanting off to Asia with some super attractive billionaire celebrity. Plus, it’s totally against company policy to accept any sort of gift from a customer, unless it’s like a fruit basket or something like that for the entire call center. They had one customer send them a gift once from that pear company in Oregon. Everyone kept raving about how good they were…they just tasted like pears to Tinley.

  Waving her off, Tinley says, “I don’t know if you remember, but I still work there, and I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “Semantics.”

  “Coming from the woman who was fired from said job.”

  Like the child that she is, Dakota sticks her tongue out at Tinley and blows making the most annoying sound ever. She almost wonders if Dakota is the one who taught Luna or if she’s just copying what Luna does. The last time she did it, Tinley reached out and grabbed her tongue and it shocked the shit out of the little girl. Come to think of it, Tinley can’t remember seeing her do it since then. Seems disciplining has been working out after all. She almost reaches forward to do the same thing to Dakota, but she quickly slides her tongue back into her mouth.

  Laughing she says, “Good thing you did that, I was about ready to grab that tongue of yours.”

  “Why do you think I put it back in my mouth so quickly? I don’t know where your hands have been.”

  She’s got a point there. She hasn’t exactly washed her hands since she got home from work. Even though she completely Lysol’s her station every day before starting her shift that doesn’t mean her computer keyboard is clean. That and she touched door handles and her car steering wheel all the way here. Just the thought of all of those germs has her overly grossed out and she jumps up from the couch running toward the kitchen to wash her hands with Dakota’s laughs echoing behind her.

  Chapter Twelve

  The more stressed she gets, the more Tinley has been cleaning. Sure, she’s normally a pretty clean person, but never in her life has she gone to levels she has been lately. She’s full blown taking it to Monica Gellar levels here and that’s saying something. She looked it up but apparently nesting is very common in the last trimester of y
our pregnancy and that’s exactly what she’s been doing. The bassinet is all set up in the master bedroom. She’s washed any and all clothing, blankets, and towels in the special free and clear detergent. Her hospital bag is packed, and she’s even started arranging a cupboard with freshly cleaned dishes the baby won’t need for quite some time.

  Eventually she wants to turn the guest bedroom into a nursery, but she didn’t want to kick Giselle out and she didn’t want to start changing up rooms in Marek’s house without his permission. Besides it’s not like their little peanut will need to sleep elsewhere at least for the first few months. After wiping down every single surface imaginable she’s taking a little bit of a rest and lifts her swollen and sore feet up onto the ottoman. For the most part she’s been hitting it really hard and going all day long. It wasn’t until now that she realizes how much work she’s been doing and the exhaustion starts setting in very fast. She closes her eyes and contemplates getting up to take a nice long hot bath.

  For the first time in over a week, Tinley’s phone rings, and her eyes pop wide open at the tone. Anyone who would normally call has been at her side so she almost forgot what it sounded like to hear her own ringtone. The sound blares from the other room and she runs back toward the master bedroom. Her feet pound against the hardwood in the hallway and she silently curses herself for setting it down. The damn thing has been attached to her and hasn’t left her sight for days. Of course the moment she leaves it for one minute, it would start ringing.

  She comes to a stop as soon as she steps one foot into the room and her phone stops ringing. Rushing toward the nightstand, she unplugs the device from the charger and unlocks it, bringing up the missed call list. Her heart drops into her stomach when she sees UNKNOWN written across the screen. Her gut told her Marek was on the other end of the line, but now she has no way of knowing. She can’t even call the number back.