“Good morning, Carol Ann,” Pam said as she breezed by, barely giving her an opportunity to respond.
Pam’s first stop was her office, where she turned on her computer and checked her e-mails. Next, she proceeded to Bill’s office and knocked sternly.
“It’s open.”
Pam walked in on what looked like a cozy rendezvous between Bill and Pete. They were seated at his conference table, drinking coffee, and there was a third cup across from them.
Pete spoke first. “Pam, hello.”
“Hello,” Pam said dryly. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Bill asked.
“Amanda.” As if you didn’t know.
“She’s not here,” Pete answered back.
“I just saw her car in the parking lot.”
“Her boyfriend, Melvin, stopped by briefly to drop some of her things off. You must have just missed each another.”
“Why is Melvin dropping some of her things off ?”
“She had an emergency this morning,” Bill replied.
“That’s not what I’m talking about and I think you know that. Why is she having her things dropped off if she is no longer employed here? Additionally, I have already expressed to both of you that I wanted to speak with her.”
“And we’ve arranged that,” Pete added.
“Really? So, when am I going to be able to meet with her?”
“She’ll be working as Bill’s chief paralegal starting next week. She’ll be in at 8:00 a.m. and you can set up a meeting with her then.”
“Oh, I see. So you hired her back with a promotion, and you’ve refused to make me a partner?”
“Listen, Pam, let’s not end up like we did last time, all right? We can discuss your issues calmly and rationally. With all of us in here as you requested.”
“I think we’ve discussed it enough.” Her tone was strangely mysterious and obviously made the men uncomfortable—and she was enjoying every minute of it. “If I wasn’t clear before, then I definitely am now.” She grinned then walked over to the door. “This isn’t over, gentlemen. Not by a long shot!”
Grab Your Oxygen Mask
Amanda felt like her air was cut off. “Amanda?” The sexy, silky voice echoed as Amanda looked up at him, feeling an eerie sense of déjà vu. “Rickey?” She looked into his raisin-colored eyes and at his smooth mocha skin, which looked as flawless and youthful as the day she’d first me him in high school. She looked at Dee and Tony in bewilderment.
“Dee? Tony? I don’t understand.”
Shit! Tony thought as he looked up and saw that he was caught right in the middle of the crossfire between Tracey’s mama, new daddy, and now the Auntie.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, almost as blown away as Amanda. “How have you been?” Rickey laughed nervously.
“Why are the three of you here? And together?” she said, pointing her finger at them.
Tony was stunned. He wanted to say something, but nothing would come out of his mouth. Meanwhile, Rickey was trying to figure out what to say to her. Dee was speechless, too.
“Are any of you going to answer me? Dee?”
“I just ran into everyone on my way to work, Amanda. Go ahead. Ask them.”
Without blinking, Amanda stared straight at Dee. “Why do I get the feeling that there is more to this than you are telling me?”
Dee shrugged her shoulders and started staring at the floor, and Amanda immediately knew there was more to this story. “Tony, let’s start with you.”
“Hey, let’s leave Tony out of this, okay?” Dee insisted. “Why don’t you just go on home, son? Ms. Shipman and I—”
“Tony, you’re not leaving until I get an explanation,” Amanda demanded.
“Amanda, I’ll handle it,” Rickey intervened.
Tony’s head was bouncing back and forth between the two of them like a ping-pong ball. He didn’t know who to answer first.
“What in God’s name is there for you to handle, Rickey?” Amanda said, doing her best to avoid making a scene at the airport.
“Amanda, please. Just let the boy go.”
“He’s right,” Dee chimed in, surprising herself that she was siding with Rickey.
Amanda nodded and looked at Tony shamefully.
He felt like Judas, the disciple, who betrayed Jesus. He knew she would never feel the same way about him again. She threw her hand up for him to leave.
“Ms. Shipman,” Tony spoke cautiously. “I hope when you find out what happened you’ll see that I really wanted you know the truth. I’m sorry.”
“What in the world is going on here? How come everybody seems to know what’s going on except me?” she shouted.
“Go on, Tony, please. I’ll handle it from here,” Rickey said.
Tony looked at Amanda one last time, hoping to see some sign of forgiveness in her eyes before he left. Unfortunately, there was none.
“Well?” Amanda looked at Rickey, impatiently tapping her foot. “And you, Dee! Are you flying in or flying out? When I last saw you, you told me you practiced law during the week.”
Dee had to think fast. She had already forgotten that she had told Amanda that lie at the restaurant. “Ah, this is my off week, so I’m flying.”
“I can see that.” Amanda answered mockingly.
Dee knew by the sound of her tone that she was not convinced.
Rickey placed his hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “Hey, if you would just calm down a moment, I can explain.”
Amanda pulled her sweater taut around her breasts and jerked away from him. She didn’t know if she felt more anger or nervousness. “I’m waiting.” She paused. “How do you and Tony know each other?
And how are you involved in all of this, Dee?”
Rickey knew that he had to come clean with Amanda. He didn’t like the fact that she looked at him like she was waiting for a lie to come out his mouth, but under the circumstances, he understood her position.
“The long and short of it is that Tony brought Tracey to the airport and I met her here. Dee was here already. She just happened to run into us.” He exhaled as he waited for her reaction.
Amanda thought that her ears were playing tricks on her. She shook her head swiftly to make sure she heard him right. “You’ve been here to see who?” Amanda looked straight at him, daring him to repeat his sentence.
“This is really awkward, Amanda.”
“I’ll say it is ! You’ve never been in contact with Tracey before. So why now?”
“That’s the same thing I’ve been asking Tracey ever since she told me,” Dee blurted out.
“That’s because you’ve never allowed me to be a part of her life!” Rickey spat.
“Oh, no! Hold it just one minute, here, Dee. Do you mean to tell me that Tracey told YOU and not ME that she has been seeing him?” Dee looked nervously at her watch. “Are you going to find the answer in that watch of yours? Dee, what do you have to say for yourself ?”
Dee started breathing heavily. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this. I had hoped that Tracey would. She’s been calling me lately, and she told me that she’s been seeing Rickey, but we never got around to the details.”
Rickey threw his hands up innocently as Amanda followed her eyes toward him. Amanda’s eyes were set on Dee’s mouth. It was moving, but she couldn’t believe what was coming out of it.
“I still don’t know the entire story,” Dee said innocently. “But, I did insist that she tell you because I did not want what happened with you and Pam to happen to us.”
Amanda thought quietly to herself for a moment. Dee was probably telling the truth. Tracey had been acting so distant lately that it made sense that she would reach out to Dee. Dee had always been there for Tracey and for her too, even before all of this Pam Shenanigans started.
“Okay,” Amanda said slowly. “I believe you.”
“Good, because right now I was going to have to make a decision if I was going to have to stand here and argue to defend mys
elf, or leave you mad so I can make my flight.”
Amanda laughed to herself. “Go to work.”
“Thank you. I will.”
“But you ain’t goin’ nowhere, Mister!” she said, pointing her finger in Rickey’s face.
It had been years since Dee had heard Amanda talk like that. She didn’t know she still had it in her to go off on him. She looked at Rickey and whispered, “That’s my cue to go. Good luck cuz you are certainly in for the beat down of your life,” she warned as she rushed toward the security checkpoint.
“Bye,” Rickey mumbled. His hands were shoved in his pockets, and his head was down like a schoolboy who was waiting for a disciplinary meeting in the principal’s office.
Amanda was so close to slapping Rickey that she had to step away from him. “You are really something.”
“C’mon, Amanda, what do you want me to say?”
“How can you stand there in front of Dee and say that I didn’t want you to be a part of Tracey’s life when year after year, month after month, I’ve written you letters and you sent them all back to me.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I never once got any letter from you.”
“Don’t you curse at me, Rickey Mavers. I’m not one of your groupies you can disrespect.”
“Is there a problem here, folks?” An undercover police officer dressed in street clothing came up to them. He pulled out his badge and showed it to them. Rickey spotted his large gun and immediately lowered his voice.
“Good morning, officer,” Rickey said, a little embarrassed.
“Mornin’,” he nodded. “You two don’t seem like you’re having such a good one today. I’ve been watching you for the past fifteen minutes, and your discussion is looking like it’s getting pretty intense, so I’m going to have to ask you to take this outside of the airport grounds.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry for the outburst. We’re about to wrap this up, because I do have a flight to catch in about two hours, if that’s okay.”
The officer nodded and gave him a warning look.
“I apologize too, officer. Thank you,” Amanda said as she looked up at Rickey and rolled her eyes. She thought about how she had kept every single letter that she had ever written to him in a box on the top shelf of her closet. She didn’t know why she kept sending him more letters since he’d returned all of them. And the even bigger unanswered question was why she still had them.
The officer kept a close eye on the two of them as Rickey pulled Amanda by her arm and led her through the doorway. “This conversation is not over. You do know that, don’t you?” he said firmly.
“Let go of me,” she whispered loudly in his ear.
“I will, when we get outside, okay? I don’t feel like getting arrested today by Bubba.” He smiled at the officer as he escorted her out.
“Don’t you have a flight to catch?”
“I’ll cancel it, Amanda.”
“Now, that’s a switch. You’d cancel something for me?”
“Listen, there’s obviously a seventeen-year disconnect here and we need to get it straightened out. Can we go somewhere for coffee?’
“No, I have to go into the office today for a meeting.”
“So how about you meet me for dinner later this evening?”
Amanda looked at him with contempt. She was so incensed at his pretense of innocence in all this. She didn’t understand why he felt like he had to lie about not responding to her letters.
“Dinner after seventeen years? You’ve got to be joking.”
“Why? Would Melvin mind?”
“Melvin? How did you know about—”
Rickey was silent as he watched her get more worked up by the minute. He still knew how to throw a bone at her and watch her chew on it and spit it back at him. She had not changed since they were in high school, and even though she was mad as hell at him, she was still appealing.
“Don’t you dare bring him into this mess. You’re not good enough to even say his name out loud.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Look, you got me going here, okay? That wasn’t fair. I know it. But you said it yourself. It’s been seventeen years. I’ve changed a lot in those years, and I think we need to discuss this, especially since I’m going to continue to have a relationship with our daughter.”
Amanda couldn’t take any more of his arrogance. She pulled her hand back as far as she could and slapped him hard across his face. “You obviously have had too many passes hit you in your head. The answer is no!”
Rickey rubbed the side of his face and tightly grabbed hold of Amanda’s wrist. She looked in his eyes, but the display of anger she’d expected was nonexistent. What she saw was the high school sweetheart she’d fallen in love with so many years ago. She saw the hurt look on his face and tried to gain her composure while he spoke to her in a low voice.
“All right, I probably deserved that. But Amanda, if you won’t do it for me, do it for Tracey. In a few more months she will be eighteen, and she will legally be able to make her own decisions.”
Amanda thought for a moment about what Rickey was saying. Her mind raced with a series of questions. She felt her composure eroding as she began to think about what a conceited jerk he was. He was planning on having a relationship with Tracey with or without her permission. The nerve of him to try and take away her baby. She wouldn’t let it happen.
“You know, Rickey, you’re right. On second thought, I will have dinner with you.”
“Really, that’s great,” Rickey said with a great amount of relief in his voice. “We can settle all of this then.”
She faked a sincere smile. She wasn’t going to settle anything.
“How about that Italian restaurant, Veni Vidi Vici, in Midtown?”
“Okay, that’s fine,” she said, trying her best to sound believable. “I’ll meet you there around 6:30.”
“Thanks, Amanda. I’ll see you then.”
Preparing for Touchdown
Dee said playfully into the phone’s receiver, “Hey baby, I’m baaaack!”
“I see that. When did you get in?” Chris asked groggily.
“Just a few hours ago. Did I wake you?”
“I was just getting up. I had a hard practice today, and I was kind of beat, but I knew that I had to get my energy up because my girl was coming to town.”
Dee loved to hear him refer to her as his girl. She wished that he would always feel that way about her. But after tonight, those words might soon be only a memory.
“So, do you want to come over here tonight, or I come there?” The frog slowly left his throat, and his voice returned to a normal baritone.
Dee thought for a moment about his oasis with a backyard beach. After her almost disastrous encounter with Amanda and Quinton, she would love to take a dip in the warm ocean, and then soak her worries away in his oversized Jacuzzi. Later, they could take a sauna together and make love until their bodies were too hot to touch. Their evening would end with a tepid shower that cooled their bodies just long enough to give them the energy they needed to rekindle their desires again in his oversize king bed.
Her thoughts stopped short when she remembered what tonight was really about—her lies. The airport scene was minor in comparison to the assignment that she had agreed to complete for her psychiatrist. She was scheduled to meet him again next week, and she had to do this or else she would be a failure in her own eyes as well as in his.
“I think I’d rather you come over here. I’ve got to leave mid-morning, so it would be easier for me to leave from here to the airport.”
“All right, no problem.”
“I’ll see you in a half-hour, baby.”
After she hung up the phone she went over to the full-length mirror and unbuttoned her long satin black blouse down to her navel. She smoothed out her thigh-fitted black leggings and briefly considered changing into one of her usual “come hither” negligees, but she knew that if she was going to move forward, she needed to do it full
y clothed. Fifteen minutes had passed since she spoke with Chris and there was a knock at the door.
“Room service.”
“Yes, I’ll be right there,” she said, relieved that it was not Chris. She had almost forgotten she had ordered up Chris’s favorite foods. She clutched the opening of her blouse as she opened the door. The waiter walked in with a white linen table and a single red rose. He rolled the tray over to the sitting area and lifted each silver tray for her to inspect.
“Here you are, Miss Bridge: two lobsters, baked potatoes, chef salad, and two bottles of Chablis that you requested. Over here, we have two cheese pies and regular and decaf coffee.”
“Everything looks fine, thank you,” she said, barely glancing over at the entrée as she pulled out a twenty from her shirt pocket and handed it to him.
“Thank you, Miss Bridge, but the tip is already included in your check.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. I hadn’t even looked at the ticket,” she said despondently. “Thanks.” She placed the money back into her pocket and walked him to the door. She nervously checked her watch again and decided to go into the bathroom and freshen up one last time before Chris’s arrival.
She brushed her hair and touched up her makeup as she thought long and hard about how she had gotten herself into this predicament. Things had begun to change for Dee on the day she graduated from law school. Everyone she knew seemed to know what they wanted to do with their lives, except Dee. Even her little brother, Michael, was a successful doctor. She remembered her family standing up and clapping when they called her name. “Deirdre Bridge,” her law professor called out, but Dee didn’t hear her. “Deirdre Bridge,” she called out again, while Dee stared at the professor standing at the dais. She could read her professor’s lips forming her name. Dee slowly stood up, walked toward her, shook her hand, and finally took her diploma. She took a quick glance at her family, gave them a slow wave, and returned to her seat.
Destination D Page 24
