Afraid to Hope (Secrets & Seduction) Read online

  Lou went into the NAMI offices and quickly bypassed the young receptionist, Bella, who stood up as Lou entered the suite of offices five minutes late. Bella was already gathering her things together so she could go on her lunch break. Lou hoped she wasn’t too upset, but with her loud movements, it sounded like she was.

  “Just let me go put my purse away, Bella, and use the restroom.” She heard Bella’s long sigh. “Two Minutes. Promise,” Lou called over her shoulder, as the younger woman sat back down and buzzed her in past the security door.

  “Okay, but hurry though,” the impatient Bella sighed again as she absently swiped the desk for particles of dust.

  Lou made her way down the short hallway past reception to her office. She had a nice view on the fifth floor of the rear of the building and the forested area behind it. Setting her bag down, she put on her phone and checked it one last time. No other texts had come in from her daughter. She put it on silent.

  She closed her door, made a quick trip into the employee restroom assuring her eyes were no longer puffy, and then she went to go relieve Bella who was probably anxious for her own lunch break. This was when Lou took over reception each day to allow Bella her lunch break. She enjoyed doing it as well, seeing the patients and conversing with them politely while they awaited their appointments with Dr. Phillip Fairbanks, Dr. Harold Carroll, or for group therapy on Wednesdays.

  Bella grabbed her purse, and bee-lined it for the door no sooner than Louisa had muttered her thanks and apologies for being a few minutes late. Just twenty-one, Bella was still young and anxious to meet her new boyfriend for lunch. He worked in the building as well, and they had lunch together every day. They had met in the cafeteria a month before Lou began working there. The young couple was still in the honeymoon stage of their relationship and Lou groaned thinking about her own daughter having this kind of relationship. On occasion, Lou suspected Bella and her boyfriend were not just having lunch together, that food wasn’t the only thing on the menu. God, her daughter having these kinds of grown up relationships terrified her, but she was just a year younger than Bella. She had to shake her head and clear those thoughts from her mind. Bella was not her daughter and she did not want to go there.

  As Lou sat, she gazed down at the appointment calendar, and saw that there was an appointment scheduled for 1:00, but since the patient was not in the empty waiting room, she began to look up his phone number, and have it ready just in case. The appointment she saw in the records had been confirmed and it was their procedure to wait ten minutes and then call to let the patient know, or the family of the patient if it was appropriate, that an appointment had been missed.

  At that moment Dr. Fairbanks popped his head out of his office. ““Nelson Roberts’ not here?” he asked.

  “No, doctor,” Lou answered. “Not yet.”

  “Okay,” he stated and combed his hands through his grey disheveled hair. “Give him five minutes and then give him a ring, Louisa.”

  The doctor made his way back into his office after Lou nodded, and Lou called after him. “Will do, doc.” Lou pulled up the screen on the computer that held the contact information for their patient, Nelson Roberts, just as the phone rang.

  “NAMI,” Lou chirped into the receiver. “Oh, Nelson I was just about to call.” Dr. Fairbanks’ head popped back out the door while she listened to Mr. Roberts. “Yes, Okay. Sorry to hear that. I will let him know.”

  Seeing the doctor had listened to half the conversation she quickly filled in the gaps. “He had to go to school to pick up one of his daughters. She became ill. He will be here next week.”

  “Okay, no problem. He is doing fine now, anyhow. He won’t be needing to come in much longer on a regular basis. “ He gazed down at his watch, “Well, since I have some time, I am going to run out for a bit, Lou. I needed to speak to another doctor about one of my PTSD cases downstairs. I want to confer with some of my colleagues. We don’t have any other appointments for half an hour, so hold down the fort for me.”

  “No problem, doctor.” Lou responded as her fingers flew over the keys adding information to Mr. Roberts’ record.

  Dr. Fairbanks disappeared again into his office and came back out with his briefcase. “See you in a bit, Lou. I’ll be down in Dr. Terrain’s office if you need me.”

  Once alone in the office, Lou did some filing and other things that she saw needed to be done, but there was never much to do. Bella was young, but good at her job, efficient, and organized. Since she had to remain in reception, she was not able to work on her own files or records, in case someone came in. Today was a slow day. Thursdays and Fridays were usually light, with only one of the two doctors on duty, while the other was at the hospital. The beginning of the week was always super busy as both doctors’ held office hours, and did their group therapy sessions on Wednesdays.

  A quick call though, would not be out of the question, so she went to get her cell phone and hit on Ana’s name for the call to be put through. She wanted to let her know that Veronica had cancelled on Thanksgiving and with thoughts of Jay still in the back of her mind, she wanted to see what her friend thought about that situation.

  “Hell Yes,” Ana’s voice blasted through the receiver ten minutes later. Lou pulled her head back from the receiver. Maybe calling her friend hadn’t been the greatest idea since sliced bread, even though it had seemed like one at the time. Lou had filled her in on the chance encounter with t-shirt man as Ana called him.

  “Ana . . .” Lou’s words were cut off by her exuberant sex addicted friend.

  “If you run into him again, my advice is to fuck his brains out. Or better yet, on his motorcycle! God, I’ve always wanted to have sex on a motorcycle,” Ana mused out loud.

  Lou laughed nervously. “Ana, I can’t believe you said that. Well, I can, but you have me fucking him already,” she lowered her voice for that comment in case the doctor or Bella returned early, “but I was just asking if I should go to the flea market this weekend and ask him out.”

  “And, my response was ‘hell yes’, and then fuck him on his motorcycle. What don’t you understand? The guy is sex on legs. And get that shocked tone out of your voice, my sweet friend, and get back in the game. Give that vibrator of yours a break.”

  “Ana,” Lou’s voice rose, and then more quietly, “I think I will go ask him out, but I’m not going to fuck him on his motorcycle, and definitely not on the first date. Plus, I don’t even know if he has a motorcycle.”

  Ana’s laughter was loud and raucous. “Oh, girl.” She laughed. “You’re thirty-five, not eighteen. If you use precautions, you can fuck a guy on the first date. You don’t have to marry him. No one is going to come running out with a shotgun and demand you get hitched. And a guy like that, well he’s got to ride a motorcycle.” Ana’s voice had taken on a southern drawl at the end of her little speech.

  “Ana, you are too much.” Lou stated. “I just . . . well . . . it’s just been awhile. I dated and stuff, but . . .”

  “But nothing. Dive in, girl. You were wild once. Get back in the saddle. But instead of fearing the bucking broncos, you kind of want this kind to buck, a lot,” she laughed. “Just be careful. Use precautions. You know how to do this. It’s like riding a bike or a motorbike. . . Speaking of bikes, if you fall off just get back on, again, and again, and again,” she laughed again at her own joke. Ana was queen of the tasteless sex jokes, but when she said them it was actually funny.

  “Okay, Ana. I got you,” Lou stifled her own laugh, but the image of having Jay grip her waist and pump into her while he was seated on a motorcycle was now firmly embedded in her mind. She needed to get off the phone as well. “I guess I am going to go to the market Saturday.”

  “Thatta girl,” Ana encouraged. “Shopping at the meat market. My kind of girl.”

  “Stop, Ana.” Lou giggled. “You haven’t done any shopping in months. You’ve got Teddy and that is all you need.”

  “True,” Ana laughed. “I got a porterhouse,
baby, no need to go price checking the hamburger. And if my memory serves me right, Jay is right up there with prime rib.”

  “God, Ana. Your metaphors kill me!” She laughed again. “Let me go. I will call you tomorrow. You’re going to be at Teddy’s this weekend, right?”

  “Yup, check in on Mon for me though, will you?” she asked. Mon, was Monica, Ana’s sister. She had gone through a break up a few months back, was still healing, and Ana was very protective over her baby sister.

  “Will do.” Lou promised. “Bye.”

  “Do everything I would do,” Ana added always getting the last word, and clicked off in the middle of another peal of her own laughter. Lou just shook her head, and powered off her phone.

  The rest of the afternoon flew by quickly. The one-thirty appointment arrived a few minutes early, with Dr. Fairbanks shortly behind. Lou completed all the paper work on the first patient as another two patients arrived with Bella, who took over for her smoothly.

  Lou went to her office and began to work on the filings and coding for their Blue Cross patients. She did them every Thursday spending most of the day on them as they were the health provider for nearly half of their patients. On Fridays, she handled several of the smaller group insurances that they dealt with. Some may have thought her job was boring or routine, but it wasn’t. She enjoyed it, perhaps because she was good at it, good at dealing with bureaucracy, red tape, and numbers. It was how her mind worked. Rarely were her claims denied and operations had run smoothly for the office since she had gotten there. She knew the system, she knew the codes, and kept up to date with the insurance providers. She ensured the doctor’s got paid, the clients didn’t have to pay, and that the people who needed help got the services they needed; including their meds, counselling, and therapies. She felt accomplished, and that she was doing her part.

  Despite her busy afternoon, always in the back of her mind though was that meeting, the encounter with Jay. She shivered as she packed up her things and shut her computer down for the day. She licked her suddenly dry lips. She was nervous, but she knew come Saturday, she was forcing herself to go the flea market come hell or high water. She wanted to see that man again. Eventually without clothes on!

  Jay had other plans. Waiting for Lou to come to him, wasn’t an option. It wasn’t the clothes part of Lou’s plan that he would have had issues with, but the timing that concerned him more. He would have been in full agreement with the no clothes idea if he had been privy to her thoughts. But, seeing her again, and his recent talk with his dad had lit a fire under him. It was time to move on. Time to try again. Perhaps. And seeing her tits bounce under her cotton blouse today, had made him want to move on, and in. Inside of her. He wasn’t going to wait around for “this one” to accidentally wander on by his stall at the flea market batting her eyes. He was going to charge on ahead.

  She had given him the idea after all, had in fact, and perhaps it had been subconsciously, even suggested it. “And, you know where I work now,” she had murmured. His fantasy had her purring it, rubbing up against him, rubbing those plump tits along his ribcage, nipples hard like diamonds.

  He had rushed home to the little cabin he rented most of the year off of State Road Fifty. It was off of Shoal Line Boulevard in the Weeki Wachee Gardens area. He loved the solitude, the water, the woods, and the fishing. The cabin was rustic and simple; it was his home ten months of the year, for the last two years anyway, and he liked things simple. He rented the place cheaply from friends of his father, snow birds that only came two months of the year. He could afford it while he was in school, and he kept it up for them and did chores while they were up North. He hoped he could even buy a place like it when he was done with school. He loved the natural surroundings, and being near the water. He found that the quiet nights by the water with only the crickets and night sounds to soothe his soul, peaceful. On his days off from school and work, he liked to fish peacefully and he was able to block out the memories of his past, the ones that kept him up at night. Being here these past two years, near his father whom he hadn’t even known most of his life, had done more good for him than anything in the past seven years. He was coming to terms with it all, his father had told him. Healing. Well, beginning to anyway.

  He gave the cabin a quick cleaning, nothing was too out of place anyhow. He always had been neat and organized in contrast to his mom, and the rest of his family. Different even then. He took a shower when he was satisfied with the place, changed his clothes selecting another one of his favorite t-shirts, and ran out to get a six pack of beer and a bottle of wine. He didn’t even know if Louisa would come here, but he hoped so and wanted the place ready just in case. He saw in the bathroom, his condom supply was low, and he needed to remedy that situation. Not that he was a man whore, or anything, but he was a man, had lots of offers, ones he couldn’t refuse, like the twins last month, he smiled guiltily.

  He enjoyed that part of his life, and was thankful for that at least. But there had only been one girl since Madeleine that he dated for any length of time, and no one, not even Josie, had been able to crack the armor that sealed his heart off from more than a one night stand, well sometimes two nights. Josie had lasted a few months, but she hadn’t been able to handle his drinking back then, and his mood swings. That’s when he picked up and moved here to Florida.

  But the twins had made an offer he couldn’t refuse. He laughed remembering that weekend last month. Tina and Tania had even called him last weekend asking him if he wanted another go around, but he had politely refused. He thanked them for the memory, wasn’t it every man’s fantasy to have twins, but he knew those two were trouble with a capital “T” and “T”. He was ready to move on, and he hoped in another direction. Louisa, of the awesome tits, was his new direction.

  He had not dated seriously in what seemed like forever, definitely not since moving to Florida from Arizona, but he hung out at places, bars and dives on the weekends, with friends and buddies from school and work, and in his crowd, woman were not shy about making their desire for him known. He was twenty-nine, even though he looked older, and so that part of him had most assuredly not died. He was ready and willing, it just took a little bit of imagination, and he had plenty of that. So when it was offered, and it pleased him to do so, he took advantage of those offers. Sometimes a few at a time. Damn that Tina and Tania, he chuckled to himself. Hmm, that was fun. But then Lou’s tits bounced into his brain again. If things didn’t work out with Louisa, he might have to call them.

  At four-thirty, he was ready. He hoped she was as well. He locked up the secluded house, only five miles away from the Gulf of Mexico along the crystal clear Weeki Wachee River. He got on his bike, grabbing the extra helmet and thundered out of the dirt driveway leaving a trail of dust in his wake. He made one quick stop at Walgreens for the extra pharmaceutical products he may or may not need, and drove on down the road the remaining mile to the Medical Arts building near the hospital. Oh yes, he knew exactly where she worked.

  At five o’clock precisely, his Harley Davidson humming between his massive thighs, he waited for Lou to come. And hoping she would come, was definitely on his agenda. He just had to charm that tight little skirt off of her.

  And there he was. What was she a fucking psychic? Lou thought about Ana’s earlier comment. A man on a motorcycle was parked right outside the double glass doors. And that man was Jay. His biceps gleamed and flexed in the waning sun. He had on a helmet, but she recognized the body, the tattoo running down his arm, the length of Ivy that ran down his arm like a Roman warrior.

  On one handle bar, another helmet rocked softly, swaying, waiting. Her stomach lurched. She was wearing a skirt. She shook her head. That was her first frigging thought. Really? Is he an axe murderer, should have been her first thought. But, no, she thinks about her skirt. She tugged on the cloth, polyester. It would stretch. What would Ana do? That silly thought came to her mind. She knew what Ana would do, Ana had told her what she would do, and she felt th
e heat in between her legs pool at her core. She shook her head. What should Lou do? Her car was there. He saw her get out of it, there was no avoiding him. She could wait for Dr. Fairbanks, and ask him to play decoy. He usually left around five-thirty, finishing up his own paper work before he made it home to his wife. No, she didn’t want to do that. Involve her boss. She was a big girl, and . . . she wanted to go. That thought had come to her suddenly. Yes, she wanted to do this.

  Forcing her legs to move, so she wouldn’t change her mind, she walked out the doors. Jay was beaming. Pure mischief in his eyes. Then the glint. The dare. He said nothing. She looked at the bike. It was nice, not one of the “new” Harley’s either. It was old, rebuilt, and well taken care of. She knew bikes, drove motor cross when she was younger, and dirt bikes were popular recreational devices in her neck of the woods. She could see the detail and workmanship that had gone into this bike, and she appreciated it.

  “Nice,” she offered. He took the compliment.

  “Get on,” he dared.

  With a barely perceptible hesitation she took the bait. Never let them see you sweat was the sole thought that crossed her mind as she shoved her purse towards him to keep the nerves at bay. He grabbed the bag in surprise, startled by her action. She reached up behind her to pull the butterfly clip out of her hair that she wore to control the chaos, shook her head to loosen the strands and a mass of curls fell down her shoulders and blew in the breeze swirling in beautiful disarray. Jay had to suck in a breath at the sight of all that hair. It was wild. He couldn’t wait to grab a fistful of it.