Pete took the initiative. “I’m not intuitive or anything like that, but do you suppose our meeting like this means something?”
Lily felt her face grow warm. “That we’re both embarrassed? How’s the tuna?”
“Too much mayo. Try the corned beef.”
“Okay. So you work here, huh?”
“Yep. Just the lunch hour. Three hours, actually. Then I pack groceries for three more hours. The jobs work with my schedule, but since we’re on Christmas break I log all the hours I can. How about you?”
“Okay, I’ll take a corned beef on rye. I waitress and tutor. I owe a ton of money on my student loans,” she blurted.
“Yeah, me, too. Coffee or soda?”
“Coffee.”
“I’m about done here, so I’ll bring your order and have coffee with you if you don’t mind. I get to eat here for free, that’s why I keep this job. That’s probably more than you wanted to know.”
Lily shook her head and smiled. Suddenly, she wanted to know everything there was to know about the guy standing next to her.
While she waited for her food, Lily looked around. Crisp black-and-white-check curtains hung on the windows. There was nothing flyspecked about this eatery. The floors were tile and exceptionally clean. The chairs had seat cushions with the same black-and-white-check pattern. Green plants were on the windowsills. On closer examination, Lily decided they were herbs and not plants. She wasn’t sure, but she rather thought the special of the day was meat loaf. The aromas were just like the ones she remembered from her grandmother’s kitchen.
“This is a nice place,” Lily said, when Pete joined her with his coffee.
“Two sisters own it, and they do all their own cooking and baking. Once in a while they try out new recipes on me.” He laughed.
Lily loved his laugh, his smile. An awkward silence followed.
Pete stopped drinking his coffee long enough to ask, “So, do you want to talk about it, or do you want to talk about…stuff?”
“By it, I guess you mean our donations at the clinic. I’d just as soon forget it. It’s no big deal, you know.”
Pete rolled the words around in his head. No big deal. He looked at her. Her eyes were telling him it was a big deal. “Yeah, right, no big deal. Well, I have to run. It was nice to meet you, Lily. Maybe we’ll run into each other again someplace.”
He wasn’t interested in her. For some reason she thought he was going to ask for her phone number or her address. “Yeah, right,” she said flatly before she bit into her sandwich.
At the door, Pete turned and waved. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the young girl with the sad eyes and the sunflower hat. I should have asked her for her phone number.
The minute the door closed behind Pete, Lily placed some bills on the table and left the café. It’s no big deal, it’s no big deal, she told herself over and over as she slid into the Nissan. Five more months, and I can put this all behind me. Just five months.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she drove away from the café.
Little did she know how wrong she was.
Chapter 1
Peter Aaron Kelly looked around his suite of offices and grinned. He’d done it. He’d made it happen. And he’d pulled it off right on schedule. He patted himself on the back as he made his way into the private lavatory that was as big as his family’s living room back in Idaho.
Pete, as he liked to be called, stared at his reflection in the huge plate glass mirror that took up one entire wall of his private bathroom. He straightened the knot in his tie. Not just any knot but a Windsor knot. He loved Windsor knots because they looked so neat and finished. The suit wasn’t half-bad either. Custom-made Armani that draped his lanky frame to perfection. Not that he normally wore such attire, but it was a special day, and he owed it to his people to look his best. If he showed up in his jeans, a washed-out, ragged Berkeley T-shirt, and his tattered baseball cap, no one would take him seriously. The power suit and the Windsor knot shrieked: PAY ATTENTION.
The eight-hundred-pound gorilla and founder of PAK Industries continued to study himself in the mirror. No one would ever call him handsome. Nor would they say he was cute. Articles, and there were hundreds of them, said he was “interesting.” One even said he was “chameleon-like,” whatever the hell that meant. Those same articles then fast-forwarded to his financials and more or less said he could be ugly as sin because no one cared, and with all that money in the bank, he was the CIC. His secretary had to translate that for him. CIC, she said, meant Cat in Charge. If he wanted to, he could start purring right then. He laughed at the thought.
“Hey, Pete, you in here somewhere?” his longtime motherly secretary shouted from the doorway.
Pete ran a loose ship, and as long as the work got done, he didn’t care who wore what or who said what. Familiarity in the workplace worked for everyone’s comfort zone.
“Just checking my tie, Millie. Do you need me for something?”
Hands on her plump hips, Millie stared at her boss. “Well, would you look at you! You want some advice?”
“No, but that isn’t going to stop you. Spit it out.”
“You look silly. Ditch the duds and go back to being you. You only get dressed up like that when you go to funerals. Did someone die, and you forgot to tell me? We always send flowers or a fruit basket. By the way, some personal mail just came for you. I put it on your desk earlier while you were getting dressed. I think it’s the third request for your RSVP in regard to your alma mater’s fund-raiser. You might want to take care of that.”
Pete walked over to his desk to see a large, cream-colored square envelope with the return address of his alma mater. Millie was right, he needed to get on the stick and make a decision one way or the other.
“Well? So, who died?”
He was off-balance. Just the sight of the cream-colored envelope and the return address rushed him back to another part of his life. A part of his life he didn’t want to deal with just then. “No one died. I’m dressed like this for the ten o’clock meeting. Then I have that photo op with Senator what’s-his-name. I still don’t know how I got roped into that.”
His voice was so cool, so curt, Millie drew back and closed the door. She rushed around the floor warning everyone that the boss had his knickers in a twist and was all dressed up. Something was going on. The entire floor huddled as they tried to understand why the boss would attend a meeting in a suit and tie even though he was going to have his picture taken later. Peter Aaron Kelly didn’t give a damn about suiting up for photo ops. Everyone in the whole world knew that.
“And,” Millie said importantly, “the boss is wearing Armani and not his regular hand-stitched HUGO BOSS funeral attire. Something is definitely going down this morning. He’s chipper, though, so it must be a good thing. Well, he was chipper until the mail came,” Millie muttered as an afterthought.
While Pete’s staff whispered among themselves, he was busy ripping open the envelope Millie had left for him. She was right, he had twenty-four hours to say yea or nay. Even at that late date they were still willing to have him as their guest speaker if he would commit. “Well, boys and girls, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I’ll send you a check, and we’ll call it square.” To make himself feel better, he scribbled off a sizable check and tossed it in the top drawer along with the two previous invitations. Millie would take care of it. He’d have her send off an e-mail or overnight letter nixing the speaking gig.
Screw