Page 38 of Mile High Baby

I thought of all the places in the world she could go. I could show her the fairy pools she'd missed in Scotland. Then I could take her on safari in Africa and later explore the Amazon.

Fuck! No, I couldn't. Good Christ. I needed to stop thinking of her.

I punched my pillow and prayed for Henry to finish his business and return quickly. I needed to finish this job and return to my life.

14

Victoria

Idid my best. I really did. I tried to keep myself busy. But by the third day cooped up at home, I was at my wit's end. The problem I had was that I knew Alex wouldn't take me anywhere and I couldn't sneak out because Saint Security men were guarding the house.

I sat in my office window seat, looking longingly out the window at the world passing by. Perhaps that was my problem. I couldn’t distract myself from all that I was missing by staring at all I was missing.

With my laptop in tow, I moved to the table and focused on work. writing, editing, and checking all the data that told me how my business was doing. An hour later, I had a conference with my staff, and after that, I worked on marketing. When that was done, I continued to distract my irritation by brainstorming ideas to expand services and scale up.

When the lure of life outside won out, I called Samantha, hating that I couldn't tell her the real deal of what was going on. I worried she'd avoid me if she knew I was entangled with George Pitney. So, we mostly talked about her son and some of my travels and work. I told her Dad was still a workaholic.

“The guy is always on,” I said. “I wish he’d get a life.”

“He’s never met anyone outside of work?”

"Nope. My dad is a confirmed bachelor. I think he envies his friend Alex.” Alex. He could have been a distraction, but he’d made his position clear. So now I had to distract myself from him too. It wasn’t too hard. He was my bodyguard, but I rarely saw him.

"The man who was with you the other day?” she asked.

"Yeah, him.”

She was probably waiting for an explanation about why Alex was with me, but I couldn't tell the truth and I didn't want to lie.

"Why would your dad envy him?"

“Alex is the love 'em and leave 'em type. He's all about excitement and adventure in the moment.” He was sexy as hell, although I wasn't going to admit that. Samantha would probably think it was weird that I had the hots for my father’s friend.

“So your dad never met anyone he could love?"

I remembered dinner with him in which I had an inkling that maybe there had been a woman, but for some reason, it couldn't become anything.

"I don't know, actually. Maybe. He was sort of cryptic about it.”

"When?"

"What?"

There was a pause. "I just wondered if it was recent. Maybe he's seeing her in California or something."

I thought about that and realized she could be right. With George Pitney trying to get at Dad, that was something that could get in the way of a relationship. There were just too many problems. One was that he wouldn’t be visiting her in California if there was no future with them, and two, the feeling I got from Dad was that the relationship took place a while ago.

"Maybe, but I think it was in the past."

"It's too bad things didn't work out for him." Samantha had a surprising attitude considering her father's abandonment of her mother. Plus, being a single mom suggested she hadn't been lucky in love either. I wanted to ask her about it, but I got the feeling she didn’t want to talk about it.

We chatted a little longer and then said our goodbyes. The minute the call ended, the stirring of discontent came again.

Reaching my limit, I marched downstairs to the area off the kitchen where Alex worked. He was staring intently at something on the computer.

"I have to get out of here."

"No" He didn't even bother looking up from his computer screen at me.

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