Page 17 of XX Love Affair

“If that’s what you want.”

What I want is to drag you away from here right now. Delia wasn’t sure what she’d do with Helena once they were back… where? Home? The office? My car, for God’s sake. Delia knew how to get busy in any location. So did Helena, probably. Wasn’t that part of the appeal? Someone I don’t have to worry about scaring away… Someone all to Delia’s self, at least when they were together.

“Friday evening.” Helena stood up. “I look forward to it.”

She glanced over her shoulder as she walked away. Delia watched after Helena long after she was gone.

Her phone informed her that she had new matches on a dating app she rarely used. Sure enough, one of the first matches to appear was Helena, whose profile said, “New in town. Ready for anything.”

Delia would see about that.

Chapter 6

Delia had been in the offices of The Boyle Group every day that week, a rarity since the business adjusted to new work-from-home ventures. Yet it was all hands on deck since one of their biggest clients from Europe had arrived for in-person meetings, tours of city properties, and wining-dining dinners that Delia had to attend twice that week. By the time Friday rolled around, she was both sick of restaurant food and ready to sleep the weekend away. Her hormones had shifted toward PMS. It was the right thing to do.

Except she had a date that night and no time to go home to change, let alone freshen up with a shower.

“Benoist,” her boss, Jerry Amaranth, stopped by her downtown corner office that wasn’t anywhere near as nice and comfortable as the one she set up at home. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“You’re kidding,” she scoffed. “I was about to get out of here for the weekend.”

“Yeah, well…” Jerry leaned back out into the hallway before poking his head in again. “Someone’s in town and wants to surprise you. So I thought I’d warn you before you head out into the lobby.”

“Who is it, Jerry?”

He shrugged. “Someone you know very well.”

Christ. No, not Him. The other man who thought himself God in her life.

“Delia! There’s my baby!”

She plastered on a daddy’s girl smile as she walked into the lobby, arms wide for a welcoming hug from her father, Eustace Benoist. Choking imminent. Since his mid-life crisis ten years ago, Eustace had hired a personal trainer and ran 10ks whenever he made the time. The man could hug.

And he smelled like the same aftershave that he had worn when tucking in his daughter, so there was that.

“What are you doing here?” Delia asked him once she was free from his embrace. “You didn’t say you were coming out this way.” Normally, her father was terrible at keeping surprises to himself. This was the man who picked her up from softball practice after school and spilled on the way home that a surprise birthday party was waiting for her the moment they arrived. Oh, and the man whose mouth had to be Duct taped shut on Christmas morning, otherwise he’d tell everyone what was in their presents. Delia was only half-joking.

“We’re only passing through on the way to Boston. Emma’s mom’s birthday is happening tonight, and we can’t miss it for the world.”

“Emma, huh?”

“Ah, don’t be like that, Deely-Wheel.” She was thirty years old, and her daddy was still calling her Deely-Wheel. “Your old man stopped by to say hello to his favorite daughter, didn’t he? You know I won’t keep you from whatever big plans you have tonight.”

As it so happens, my plans aren’t that much different from yours. Delia kept that to herself. “It’s fine.”

Yet it wasn’t fine. Because coming through the frosted double doors of The Boyle Group was a woman five years younger than Delia, a fur stole wrapped around her shoulders as she deigned the staff around her with smiles and pleasant laughter. I hate how pretty her smile is. Emma Benoist, née Walczak, filled every room she entered with grace. Unlike Delia’s mother, the much-maligned ex-wife of the man before her.

It was one thing for her parents to divorce when Delia was graduating college. It was quite another for the catalyst to be her father cheating with a girl fresh out of high school.

“Hello, Delia.” Emma wrapped her hand around her husband’s arm as he blushed in her presence. Gag me. Blind me. Get me out of here. “I trust that you’re well?”

“As well as that healthy glow to your skin, Emma.” Delia had to keep the cattiness in check. She reminded herself that her father was responsible for this mess, not the eighteen-year-old he met at a high school job fair he volunteered at because “he was bored.” So Delia minded her manners through the affair, the divorce, and the subsequent engagement and remarriage to a girl who went through it all while attending college classes. Both Delia and her sister Lemon bonded over the bullshit that was their father acting like a stereotype right out of The New York Post. It’s also when Mom started drinking. Harder than she ever had.

None of the original Benoist women had forgiven Eustace for this, although Delia kept the peace with him. And it was getting harder to tolerate Emma, who had completely adopted the mannerisms and haughty airs of a socialite’s wife. Manhattan looks good on her, that’s for sure.

“It’s your mother’s birthday, huh?” Delia asked her younger stepmother.

“Yes. She turns fifty, so we’re making a bit of a big deal about it, despite her protests.”

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