Maybe Marie? Marie was a good friend from my knitting group, and—more importantly—the only other single friend I had.
That’s not true.
Ms. Opal was also single; her husband had died a few years ago . . .
Am I really considering this? Asking my widowed coworker to marry me? Am I this desperate? Think of what you would be asking of her!
Whoever agreed—if anyone agreed—I knew Caleb would not hesitate making both our lives a complete hell.
How can I ask this of anyone?
I cleared my throat of sentiment and asked, “How soon?”
“With your father. . . you need to move fast.” I listened as he took another deep breath, palpable worry turning his tone a new, troubling shade of bleak. “Kathleen, please, please listen and understand. This blindsided me. I wish I could’ve given you more warning, but this will keep you safe. Getting married today wouldn’t be too soon. We’ll . . . talk soon.”
Eugene ended the call and it felt like I’d been tossed off a cliff. Numbly, I glanced at the screen of my phone. We’d been talking for twenty-three minutes. Twenty-three minutes was all it had taken to completely scramble my world.
My phone was almost out of battery.
I hastened to call Steven. He didn’t answer and I cursed, turning off my phone before it went dead. I then indulged in five more minutes of allowing myself to feel. Then another five minutes of hiding within the closet of despair while I collected myself.
When I stepped out of the supply closet, I had Ms. Opal’s number-ten envelopes. I was also calm, cool, and focused.
I was on a mission. I would hold myself together until that mission was complete, and that mission started with finding Steven.
Both Steven and I worked in the Fairbanks building in downtown Chicago; he worked on the top floor, I worked on the fifty-second.
Steven had a fancy job title at Cypher Systems—a corporate security firm—that translated to a senior accountant type of position. We’d been introduced by my friend Janie, a member of my knitting group (except she crocheted). Janie used to work with me at the firm, but she’d been let go when her ex-boyfriend’s father pulled some strings and had her downsized.
It had all worked out, because that’s how Janie met her husband, Quinn Sullivan.
Anyway, that’s a long, convoluted story with very little relevance on what was happening today.
Steven worked for Janie’s husband’s company and we all worked in the same building, that’s the important part. Moving on.
Wearing my detached resolve like armor, I tucked Ms. Opal’s envelopes under my arm and took the elevator to the lobby. Cypher Systems headquarters was on a secure floor and a keycard was needed to access the level. My plan was to ask the security guards to call Steven’s desk, and then have my friend escort me to his office where we would talk.
So I can propose marriage.
Acutely nauseous, I placed a hand over my stomach and walked out of the elevator doors as soon as they opened to the lobby. But then I stopped as soon as I saw who was standing at the security desk.
Dressed in all black, looking the definition of ruggedly gorgeous, was the man of my dreams. Literally.
It was Dan.
Dan the Security Man.
My façade slipped.
I did not appreciate his ability to discombobulate me by merely existing.
Daniel O’Malley was second in command at Cypher Systems and my . . . my . . . Honestly, I didn’t know how to describe him.
We’d almost had a thing, but I’d messed it up before anything real could happen. He was that guy. That guy I’d been successfully avoiding ever since I messed everything up. That guy I’d known for years and against whom all other men were compared.
Basically, I lusted him.
Before I’d ruined my chance, I used to frequently wish I were someone else. Anyone else. Maybe someone who’d grown up in a middle-class, two-parent household. With a family dog rather than a pack of German shepherd/wolf hybrids who ferociously guarded the gates of my grandparents’ compound in Duxbury.
And a mother who tucked me in at night with a kiss, rather than a billionaire heiress who hid me in the second attic in the east wing from the imaginary clown in her head for a week and a half when I was four.
And a father who took me to baseball games instead of having the house butler drop me off at boarding school when I was five and never visiting me. Or allowing me to go home to visit instead of me running away one too many times and being expelled.
But enough charming and hilarious anecdotes from my childhood, let’s talk about Dan.
As I looked at him, standing behind the lobby security desk talking to one of the guards, I hesitated. The call with Eugene had left me off-kilter.
The last time I was off-kilter and within Dan’s proximity, my brain had suggested topics like, Talk about the weather. My mouth had translated ‘weather’ to mean, hurricanes are a type of weather, let’s talk about death by drowning.