His Little Black Book

by Heather MacAllister

  She got into her car.

  “Follow me and I’ll lead you back to the main road.” He closed her door. He stood there a moment, his fingertips touching the window glass. Then he strode back to his truck.

  Mia followed him along a complicated route of unpaved roads she didn’t remember driving on before, and guessed that he was avoiding places that were still impassable. She never would have found her way on her own.

  When they turned onto a two-lane asphalt road, signs told Mia the main highway was just ahead. Kevin pulled over to the side of the road and waved Mia on.

  This was it. She drove alongside and lifted her hand in a farewell gesture Kevin didn’t see because he stared straight ahead.

  She hesitated, but he didn’t look over at her.

  Mia slowly rolled the car forward as everything inside her screamed that leaving was a huge mistake. Only it wasn’t. The mistake would be staying.

  But she couldn’t make her foot press the car’s accelerator. Her skin felt tight as though her emotions had grown too big for it to contain.

  She didn’t want to feel this say-anything-do-anything-just-don’t-leave-me desperation. She didn’t like feeling that life as she knew it wasn’t worth living without Kevin.

  She didn’t want anyone having that kind of power over her. She didn’t want her emotions having that kind of power over her. Not healthy. Not good.

  This was the beginning of obsession.

  And still she couldn’t drive away.

  She turned off the car and flung open the door, storming back to the truck. Kevin was already jogging toward her.

  “I…Love’s whomped me upside the head!” she wailed.

  He folded his arms around her. “I know, I know. Me, too.”

  “But you didn’t say anything!” she sobbed into his shoulder. “You were going to let me drive off!” She hated that she was crying and whining. It was pointless and distracting and embarrassing. And she couldn’t stop.

  “Mia, I want you in my life. But I don’t know how that can happen. There’s nothing for you here. You’d be bored out of your mind.”

  “There’s you.”

  He kissed her gently on the lips. Gentle was a new thing for them. She liked it. For variety.

  “I can’t be somebody’s whole life.” Emotion scraped his words into a rough whisper.

  Oh, no. She’d be begging next. She gritted her teeth to stop the words.

  Fortunately, he continued, “Don’t think I haven’t been trying to figure out a way you could work with Susan in City Services, or find somebody or something you can organize, but life here is real different than your life in Houston.”

  Mia stopped crying. Susan. She’d liked working with Susan. Susan was more a big-picture person and Mia was a detail person and one of those details triggered a thought about the big picture.

  Sniffling, she brushed at the corners of her eyes and raised her head. “You know,” she began carefully. “You said you want me in your life, but you didn’t say anything about being in my life.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Know anything about my life?” she finished for him.

  His mouth tightened. “I had a couple of meetings at the Peck and Davilla offices. I’ve dealt with the people at the beach house before.”

  “And based on that, you think you know my whole life?”

  “Based on a stormy weekend, you think you know mine?”

  They stared at each other. “Even so,” Kevin said after a moment, “my business is here.”

  “And my front door is about an hour, hour-and-a-half drive from the spot where we’re standing now. It’s not thousands of miles away in the thin air of the mountains. Trust me, there’s plenty of thick, humid air in Houston for you to breathe.”

  Kevin’s face eased and he laughed softly. “We may be over thinking this. We don’t have to make permanent decisions immediately.” He cupped her cheek. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a weekend job selling boxed meals to tourists?”

  Mia smiled. “I’ve been looking for a way to earn extra gas money. I kinda, sorta like this guy who lives in the area.”

  “Then you’re hired.” He looped his arms around her waist and Mia felt herself beaming up at him.

  “Now, I wonder if you can help me with another problem,” he said. “The Chamber of Commerce wants to draw tourists back to the area. It’s been rough since Hurricane Ike. I’m considering volunteering to be the representative to the regional tourism board that meets in Houston. I kinda, sorta have a thing for a woman who lives there and it would be a good excuse to see her.”

  “You probably don’t need an excuse.”

  “But I will need somewhere to stay. Any recommendations?”

  This might work. This might really work. “I’ve got a place in mind. Are there a lot of meetings?”

  “All the time.”

  “But you could just drive back home after them.”

  “Not after wining and dining convention organizers and the media until all hours. That wouldn’t be responsible of me,” he said solemnly.

  “You are to be commended for recognizing that.” Mia was having difficulty maintaining a straight face. Hope and happiness had grabbed her heart and were jumping up and down. “Before you officially volunteer, you should check out the place where you’ll stay.”

  “Absolutely. When?”

  “How does right now sound?”

  Kevin’s wide smile answered her before he did. “I’ve got no electricity and no food. Now sounds perfect.”

  Safe Text

  1

  “DUDE. GIVE IT UP.”

  “Stop calling me dude.” Gil Shaughnessy kept his gaze on the woman sitting at her desk at the opposite end of the hallway, past the deserted cubicle village.

  Beside him, his partner, Paul, slung a messenger bag crosswise over his chest. “Man, you are entering stalker territory.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You.” Paul gestured down the hall. “Watching her.”

  He meant Cammy Philips, Jonathan Black’s assistant. “I’m not watching her.”

  “You’re standing in the doorway so you can see her.”

  “I’m stretching my legs.”

  “That’s just sick.”

  “Stretching my legs?”

  “The way you look at her. You know the way Cammy looks at Jonathan? With that puppy-dog adoration? If she had a tail, she’d wag it.”

  Gil knew.

  “That’s the way you look at her.”

  Gil interrupted his Cammy surveillance to shoot a warning glare at Paul.

  “Don’t glower at me. You know I’m telling you the truth.”

  “‘Glower’? When did glower enter your vocabulary?”

  “It was in the script for that cell-phone ad we shot.”

  Gil hadn’t expected Paul to answer.

  “See, I read that the dad was supposed to glower at the daughter for using too many minutes but I thought it was a typo and they meant glow.”

  “Is that why you used glitter pens on the story boards?”

  “Yeah. I thought maybe he was getting the message about the better cell-phone plan from, you know.” Paul pointed upward. “On high.”

  “I think you were high.”

  “No, but sniffing those glitter pens will give you a buzz. Anyway, glower. Lowered brows, stern expression, chin down.” He gestured to Gil. “Yep. Just like that.”

  Gil crossed his arms over his chest and directed his glower toward Cammy Philips.

  “Gil…Go home, man. Have you seen how dark it’s getting out there? You know once the rain starts all the usual places will flood. It’s rush hour and the traffic will be a mess. Do you really want to spend your Friday evening trying to get home? Or even worse, get trapped here and be forced to work?”

  “I’m sticking around until she leaves.”

  “Spoken like a true stalker.”

  “Knock it off, Paul.
”

  Paul joined him in the doorway. “Why don’t you just make your move?”

  Gil shook his head. “She’ll never go out with me as long as she has a chance with Jonathan.”

  “She has no chance with Jonathan.”

  “I’m waiting for her to realize that.”

  “And how long have you been waiting?”

  Gil didn’t want to think about it. “Couple of years.”

  “Closer to three. I know, because that’s how long we’ve been partners, which, coincidentally, is when Cammy became Jonathan’s assistant.”

  “Your point?”

  “Move on.”

  Good advice. Great advice. But…“I can’t. I know she’s going to give up on Jonathan. He’s using her.”

  “Of course he is! She’s the most over-qualified assistant in the history of Peck and Davilla. He owes his last two promotions to her and he knows it. Do you think he’s going to jeopordize that? Hell, no. He’s going to string her along for as long as he can.”

  Gil hated that Paul was right. “Eventually, Jonathan will mess up and when he does, I’m going to be right there with a shoulder for Cammy to cry on.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Paul shake his head. “You’ll be rebound guy.”

  “Don’t care.” So what if she was crying on his shoulder? At least he’d be holding her in his arms, something he’d fantasized about often.

  Gil was stuck and he knew it. She was The One. Other women didn’t do it for him. Cammy had pushed the pause button on his love life the same way Jonathan had paused hers.

  “People are starting to talk,” Paul said.

  Gil straightened in surprise. “About me and Cammy?”

  “No. Just about you. They think you’re gay.”

  “Oh.” Gil slouched against the door jamb again.

  “Man, do you hear yourself? What I don’t get is why you didn’t hook up with her when she was your partner.”

  “Because she was my partner. It was tricky. I was laying groundwork.”

  “And?”

  “We never got off the ground. She was blinded by the dazzling sun that is Jonathan Black.”

  “Not that you’re bitter. Okay, lecture over.” Paul moved into the hallway. “I’m outta here.” He took two steps before pivoting. “I will say that lately, you haven’t been at the top of your game. That means you and I haven’t been a winning team. I like to win, so snap out of it.”

  Gil met his partner’s eyes. “Understood.”

  “Later, man.” Paul’s path to the elevators blocked Gil’s view of Cammy.

  Probably on purpose.

  Paul was right about everything he’d said. Gil was only surprised that he hadn’t brought it up before. He knew he hadn’t been on top of his game, as Paul put it, but watching Jonathan play Cammy made his teeth hurt.

  How could someone as smart as Cammy be so dumb about Jonathan?

  They’d both started at P&D at the same time and had been randomly paired. It was a good pairing, even though they were both copywriters and neither of them could sketch worth a darn. But Cammy was freakishly adept at anticipating what a client wanted, even if it wasn’t what the client asked for.

  Together they made creative magic, so it wasn’t long before Gil wondered if that would translate into physical magic.

  But was finding out worth possibly wrecking their creative partnership?

  Cammy never indicated a romantic interest in Gil, and he’d searched pretty hard for signs. It became disappointingly clear that Cammy wasn’t suppressing hidden desires because they worked together; she just didn’t think of him that way.

  So carefully, slowly, Gil set out to get her attention. During brainstorming sessions, he slipped in questions about her personal likes and dislikes on everything from men’s clothing and hair styles to whether she preferred oil and vinegar or cream-based salad dressings.

  And yes, he kept a spreadsheet which Paul didn’t know about.

  The result was that Gil now wore khakis and pale blue button-down shirts exclusively, styled his hair a little longer than he preferred and became a connoisseur of balsamic vinegars. He gave up wearing contacts when she complimented his heavy black “retro” glasses one day. They weren’t retro so much as old, and he only wore them then because he’d been up all night and contacts irritated his eyes.

  Gil was engaged in a subliminal advertising campaign with Cammy as his target market. All he’d lacked was the catalyst that would cause her to see him in a different way and put that gleam of awareness in her eyes.

  As it turned out, the catalyst was their transfer to Jonathan Black’s department and the gleam in Cammy’s eyes was for Jonathan.

  He had that effect on women, although Gil couldn’t see why. Jonathan dazzled them and they were never the same again.

  Frankly, they were a lot stupider.

  Cammy was the perfect example. She broke up their team to take an intern-level job as Jonathan’s assistant even though it meant a cut in pay and status.

  Three years later, Gil’s salary was double what it had been, and he and Paul had their own accounts and shared an office. Not a large one, but they’d moved out of Cubicle City.

  Cammy didn’t even rate a cubicle. She sat at a desk in the fourth-floor client-display gallery, which Jonathan had turned into his private reception area. Nice.

  Gil saw Cammy turn to look at the wall clock behind her and quietly cross the hallway to the conference room.

  Jonathan’s meeting was running into dinnertime and Cammy was probably checking to see if they wanted her to order something. She shouldn’t even be here at this hour. She wasn’t getting paid overtime.

  When she returned to her desk, she didn’t immediately pick up the phone, so Gil invented an excuse to walk down the hallway.

  “Hey, Cammy.” Gil’s overly casual tone masked the state of hyperawareness he was in every time he interacted with her.

  “Gil?” She barely acknowledged him. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

  “I was hoping to catch Ross when he got out of the meeting. Any idea when it’ll finish?”

  “They just took a break, but they’re not ordering food, so it’ll be soon.”

  Gil made a show of checking his watch, pulling back his cuff to reveal the brown leather strap because Cammy preferred leather straps over metal ones. “They’re running late for a Friday. I’m surprised Jonathan asked you to stay.”

  She glanced at him. “Oh, he didn’t ask, but I know he appreciates it when I do.”

  How? How do you know he appreciates it? Because of a smile and an offhand “Thanks, babe, you’re the best”? Do you realize you gave away three hours of your life and he doesn’t even notice and he’ll never notice because you’re not his type? You’re my type. But Gil said nothing. She wouldn’t have listened anyway.

  Instead, he went for the tried and true to extend his excuse to talk with her. “The weather is looking rotten.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced around pointedly. “I guess you can’t see out a window from here.”

  She rolled her chair around and brought up her computer. “That’s what weather-cam and traffic-cam sites are for.”

  They both watched as live video of the Southwest Freeway appeared. Cars were already running with their lights on, forming a solid ribbon of traffic. WEATHER ALERT: FLASH FLOOD WARNING scrolled across the bottom of the video. A tiny weather-radar picture was in the corner.

  Gil leaned forward. “Hey, click on that.”

  She did and the radar changed to full screen. They stared at the approaching lines of thunderstorms.

  “I’m going to zoom out.” Cammy clicked until the whole state and the Gulf of Mexico was visible. A swirling pinwheel of clouds sat off the coast of Northern Mexico.

  “The hurricane’s not that strong, but it sure got big,” Gil said. “And we’re on the wet side. I hope it moves inland and doesn’t sit there and dump a bunch of water on us.”
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  “I know.” Cammy sighed and straightened, forcing Gil to back up a little. “When it rains hard, our apartment parking-lot entrance floods. We have to leave our cars on the street or we can’t get in and out.”

  “What a pain. You should move,” he told her.

  “Can’t. That’s why my rent is low.”

  I own a house. I own a house because I didn’t spend the last three years working for peanuts. Gil looked down at her as Cammy checked more traffic reports. She’d like his house. Contemporary, clean lines, neutral colors. Her style.

  “Shall I tell Ross you’re looking for him?” she asked.

  Gil shook his head. “It’ll wait until Monday.”

  Walking back to his office, he marveled that Cammy could be so obtuse. He got her to admit that she was working unpaid overtime, probably unnecessarily, and pointed out the approaching bad weather. And still she stayed.

  And so Gill stayed, too. And when she did leave, he’d follow her car to make sure she got home okay. He wouldn’t tell her, and as long as the Jonathan dazzle was in her eyes, she wouldn’t notice.

  2

  IT WAS RAINING SO HARD, Cammy could hear it blowing against the windows through the closed door of Jonathan’s office.

  When she’d seen the meeting break up, she’d straightened her desk and had gathered her things, but Jonathan was still talking to the client in the conference room. Cammy left her computer on and watched live radar, since it was raining so hard the street cameras only showed white foggy images.

  Normally, she’d wait out the worst of it, but all the forecasts predicted a long night of storms. It was funny—well, not funny to the people experiencing it—but a monster hurricane could be a hundred miles away to the east and not a drop of rain would fall in Houston, but a weak one three hundred miles to the southwest could soak the area.

  Cammy wasn’t looking forward to driving home in the dark and possibly being surprised by deep water. She knew to avoid freeway underpasses and which roads on her route usually flooded, but with Houston’s constant construction, drainage patterns changed and would catch people off guard.

  And she was hungry. Maybe…maybe Jonathan would suggest they grab a sandwich and sit out the traffic together. Or maybe, since it was a weekend, he’d take her to dinner.