Page 68 of Dreaming of Dawson

“Of course I do.”

“Then tell me. Explain why you think it’s such a bad idea for us to be together.”

“Because I’ve done it before.”

“I kinda got that already. And can I guess it didn’t end well?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Give me another,” he says, shifting just a little closer.

“I lost everything. And I mean everything.”

He nods his head, staring at me, and says, “Tell me what happened.”

It’s hard to know where to start, but I guess the beginning is the best place. “D—Do you remember when you interviewed me, you asked how I got from working as a web designer in Boston to applying for a job in your bar?”

“Yes. You said it was personal.”

“I did. But that wasn’t strictly true.”

“What was it about, then?” he asks, frowning slightly.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, determined to get that out there, before he assumes things are even worse than they already are. “I didn’t commit any kind of professional misdemeanor. All I did was let the lines get blurred.”

“Between your personal and professional lives?” he says. It’s an easy assumption to make, and I nod my head.

“After I finished college and moved back to Boston, it took me a couple months to get a job,” I explain. “I interviewed at several places, but they wanted experience, or a different style of designer, or someone with an ‘R’ in their name. You knowthe drill.” He nods his head. “Then a placement came up with WJT Design. They were a medium-sized outfit, with some fairly important clients, and I was delighted when Mr. Thornton offered me the job.”

“Mr. Thornton? Was he your boss?” he asks, tilting his head slightly.

“He was my boss’s boss. My boss was James Thornton.”

“I’m gonna hazard a wild guess that they were related?”

“James was William Thornton’s nephew. But it went a little deeper than that. James’s parents had died when he was eight, and his uncle had raised him, paid for his education, and given him a job in his company.”

“I see. So William employed you, but you worked for James?”

“Yes. He was in charge of my department.”

“And what was he like?”

I let out a sigh. “He was a little older than me, but not much, and he was a good boss. He was kinda handsome, too,” I say, feeling a blush creep up my cheeks.

“It’s okay,” Dawson says, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. “You don’t have to tell me the guy was ugly just to make me feel better. That would be like me pretending Stevie wasn’t a beautiful woman. She was…” He leans a little closer. “She just wasn’t as beautiful as you.”

I smile, my blush deepening, even if I can’t think how to reply to him… which means I may as well get back to my story.

“I’d been working there for about six months, and we’d just finished an extensive project that had meant a lot of extra hours. Everyone in the department was exhausted, and as it was a Friday, I think we all just wanted to go home and forget about work for two days. People were already clearing away and shutting down their computers when James came over and asked if I wanted to join him for a drink at a bar down thestreet from the office. Naturally, I thought he was extending his invitation to everyone, as a way of thanking them for their hard work, so I was surprised when I got there and found it was just the two of us.”

“You weren’t worried about that?”

“No. I’d spent quite a lot of my six-month tenure quietly admiring James, and it seemed he’d been doing the same. Drinks became dinner…” I let my voice fade, recalling the easy conversation, the hand-holding, the way we gazed into each other’s eyes in the candlelight.

“Did dinner become anything else?” Dawson asks. It’s a reasonable question, I suppose, and I feel I have to answer, even though I’d rather forget what happened next.

“Not that night,” I tell him honestly. “James spent most of the evening talking, or rather moaning, about his uncle and how controlling he’d become. I got the feeling he didn’t get to talk about his personal life very much, and I was happy to listen.”

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