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Wesley
Again, at work the next day, I was unable to focus.
From the moment Cara refused me, I spiraled into a state of self-loathing.
You’re an idiot. A creep. A predator.
She had been so gentle and polite, and yet it had cut me so damn deep. Had I been reading the signals wrong? Had it really been that long since a woman had paid attention to me that I didn’t know when she was into me and when she was just being nice?
I wouldn’t have even been surprised if Cara hadn’t shown up the next morning for work. It would have been completely reasonable for her to not want her employer to be making moves on her.
Thankfully, though, she did show up. And as awkward as things were between the two of us, it didn’t seem to rub off on the way she treated Lucy. She was a professional. A mature young woman.
And she was driving memad.
My dreams, both sleeping and waking, were plagued with Cara. Thoughts of kissing her, of fucking her, of just feeling her in bed next to me were never far from my mind.
And it was starting to impact my work.
“Hey, you got a minute?”
I looked up from my computer, abandoning an open document in which I didn’t have a single word written, to find Jenson in the doorway of my office. His expression was grim.Shit. What have I forgotten this time?“Yeah, come on in.”
Jenson stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He had been very patient with me the past week or so as my brain started turning to mush. I hadn’t confided in him my feelings about my nanny, not wanting to prove him right in the first place. But I knew he could tell something was up. It would have been fully within his right to be annoyed at having to pick up my slack.
“What’s going on?”
Jenson didn’t take a seat in the chair across from my desk. He stood awkwardly opposite me, holding his laptop close to his chest.
“Shit. Did I miss a meeting?”
“No, Wesley.”
“Well, from the look on your face, it looks like I fucked something up. So tell me what it is and I’ll get right to it.”
“Wesley.”
I stopped my monologue and looked Jenson dead in the eye.
“Lisbeth’s engaged.”
I didn’t process his words at first, unable to connect the name and the adjective. “What?”
Jenson put his laptop in front of me and opened it. I was assaulted with an image of my ex-wife and an overly tan man that looked at least fifty years old. The caption on the photo read, “Miami’s most eligible bachelor puts a ring on it.”
“What kind of website is this?”
“Some website called ‘Ocean’s Edge.’ It covers Miami high society or whatever bullcrap.”
I stared harder at the photo. Lisbeth was ensconced in the man’s arms, looking like an enigmatic siren. Her dark hair was flowing in long waves, a catlike smile perked at the corners, her hand on his chest, showing off a huge, gaudy ring.
“Who the hell is this guy?”
“Yves St. Pierre. He’s in yachting. Apparently been breaking hearts since the moment he hit puberty.”
I shook my head. “That’s not Lisbeth’s type at all.” And it wasn’t. I wasn’t some playboy that she tamed. Lisbeth and I had both been ambitious and young. We barely found enough time to see each other between our work hours, until we finally realized how much we wanted to be together. How much we thought we wanted to be together…
I scrolled down to read the article, but only phrases jumped out at me as my eyes blurred. “…romantic proposal on the beach…” and “…been courting her for two years…” Until I landed on the last sentence of the article. “When asked if she would take his last name, Lisbeth Anderson smiled. ‘Lisbeth St. Pierre’ has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’”
