Page 65 of Wishing for Love

When one of his machines broke down today, he’d never cursed and swore so much in his life. He literally had to go to his office and cool down and pray that tears didn’t fall from his eyes in front of his employees.

The price to fix it was more than he had without not being able to make payroll, which he’d never jeopardize, so he did the unthinkable in his mind. He dipped into some of Elsie’s money in the bank and told himself he’d put it back as soon as possible.

He didn’t have a choice though, without fronting the costs for the parts and the labor, the company wouldn’t even schedule him to repair it.

Then he came home and saw all that he missed with Elsie and worried that he was not doing right by her.

He was paying someone else to raise his best friend’s daughter and worried Maryn would be disappointed in him. His pride had him focusing on his career rather than time with the two people he loved in this house.

But he saw the smiles and giggles on Elsie’s face and knew that he was doing something right and had to push everything else aside. He had a choice to fix his business, if he could just swallow his pride and listen to his father and ask for help.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you do with Elsie,” he said to Crystal. “When I decided to hire a nanny I had figured it was going to be someone here to watch her while I was gone. Feed her and bring her places. That I’d be rushing home and getting dinner on the table and then doing her laundry and cleaning the house and it feels as if I don’t need to do any of it.”

“Don’t feel guilty over those things,” she said. “Consider me a good deal.”

He laughed at her joke. “It’s the best deal ever,” he said. “I feel as if I get more out of it than I pay you.”

“And here I think I don’t give you enough. Why don’t we just agree that it’s the best partnership imaginable and table it for the night? It’s date night.”

“It is date night,” he said. And next weekend he was going to take her on a real date and have a sitter watch Elsie.

He felt he owed it not just to Crystal but also to himself. They had to be able to experience what a normal dating couple would be doing too.

“I found a few movies we could watch,” she said. “We can do it in the family room back here or maybe upstairs. I don’t care. If you think Elsie will wake up and look for us we can stay down here. I don’t know that she is thinking of this as a holiday people are staying up late for.”

“Did you play it down for that reason?” he asked.

“Yes. I didn’t bring it up at all. She’s not in school to realize it. I kind of wanted her to just assume we’d be going to bed at our normal time. Was that wrong of me?”

“No,” he said, reaching his hand over to lay it on hers next to him at the island. “It’s not at all. I think we can watch TV upstairs. There is a monitor in her room that I hear in mine. I’ll bring it upstairs in case she gets up.”

“What?” she asked. “I didn’t know that?”

He started to laugh. “Relax. You should see the panicked look on your face. It’s only there from when she was younger. It’s on but so low it’s not even something I notice. I don’t even think she realizes it’s in her room. At some point I’ll take it out. But I’m still getting comfortable. I wanted to make sure I knew if she was crying or something at the other end of the house.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “Do you hear her talking to herself or ever crying?”

“No,” he said. “Not at night. She sleeps well and barely makes a noise. I think she might have had some bad dreams since she’s been here that I went in to check on her, but she never woke up and I let her go.”

He wasn’t sure what to do but then realized it might be better to let Elsie sleep through it and she didn’t remember it the next day.

When the two of them were done with dinner, they cleaned up together. He opened a bottle of wine and poured her a glass and he got some whiskey to drink in the glasses she gave him for Christmas. Then they went upstairs to her room to watch amovie. He’d stopped to get the monitor and bring it up and set it on the coffee table.

“Before we watch a movie, don’t suppose I could get you naked?”

He laughed. “You most certainly can do that.”

They left their drinks on the coffee table in her living room and she pulled him by his hand to her bedroom.

He hadn’t been in here once since she’d moved into the house. And if he was thinking she was making the first move again, he was going to tell himself to cut the shit and get over it.

He shut the door to her room and locked it. Then he walked over to the bedside drawer and opened it and then another until he found what he was looking for.

“Oh boy,” she said. “What are you doing with that?”

“I’m going to use it on you,” he said. “I’ve been thinking of what was in this little bag ever since it dropped out of the box.”

He opened the black velvet bag and removed a blue vibrator. Not very big. Not even the size of his full hand. Didn’t women buy these things to have something bigger? Maryn always joked about that. Though it’s not like she had anything real either.