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She listened to the tale of how I’d spent my evening. She groaned and looked a bit queasy.
“I was the only one drinking,” I insisted, “and I only had one rum and Coke, I swear.”
“As if that makes a difference,” she said wearily. “You were still withhim.He’s the kind of guy that they invented the phrase ‘bad influence’ for. Elijah, you know this. You changed your whole life around to get away from him and the effect that he had on your life. And, youtook him out to dinner?Really? Honey, when you’ve pulled your hand out of the fire, you don’t go and stick it right back in.”
Slumping my shoulders, I sighed. “I couldn’t help wanting to see if he could really change. And, he said he’s on the up-and-up now, but after spending the evening with him, I’m getting some of the same old vibes from him. He says one thing, but he gives off the opposite vibe, like he’s trying to convince you about something. You canfeelhim trying. He acts remorseful. He acts like he wants things to be different. And then…” I trailed off, filled with uncertainties, my head swimming in things I knew were true but for some reason I was resisting.
“You know, I looked up his recent record and saw the kind of trouble he’d gotten himself into before he came back here. I gave him the chance to say something about it. But, he wouldn’t. And, it’s what Kanedoesn’tsay that you have to worry about.”
“But, you took him to dinner anyway,” she said. “You know he’s going to think he has his foot back in the door of your life now, right? He’s going to keep at it, trying to see how much more he can get out of you, and how much more than that, and more thanthat…”
I couldn’t sidestep the depressingrightnessof what my sister was saying. That was exactly how Elijah would operate. “I know,” was all I could say.
I felt relieved when Sarah continued to speak with sincerity and no judgement. “Elijah, you have to face the fact that you’re a better person than Kane is and he’s never going to get any better.
“You know, there are women who think they can take on a broken, damaged man as a project, fix him up, improve him. And, you know that happens? They regret that they tried. You can’t fix a friend any more than a woman can fix a boyfriend or a husband. Some people just are what they are. You were fixable. He’s not. You have to accept that.”
Sarah’s dose of reality could have been a slap in the face. She could have practiced tough love on me. She went easy on me instead, and I wasn’t entirely sure I deserved it. “I just wanted to be there for him if he really had changed,” I said. “But, I keep coming back around to the fact that he knows how to lie and he knows how to work a lie once he’s told it.”
“That shows how well you know him. Justrememberhow well you know him and don’t let him work you. Kane could wreck everything good that you’ve made of your life if you let him. So,don’t let him.”
My sister hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know. I understood now the reason why I had to come and see her. What I knew all along, I just had to hear from someone else.
CHAPTER18
Corinne. Monday
Sometimes, you have a nameless, inexplicable instinct that tells you at a given time to do a particular thing. On the first day of the work week, my nameless instinct told me to look up from my cubicle in the direction of the hall that led out to the elevators. I obeyed my instinct. My reward was to see Elijah coming in from around the corner and walking down the row of cubicles towards me.
No one was calling or logging in for a chat at that moment, so I had just that moment to look at him. Something about the way Elijah moved said he wasn’t really aware of his own hotness. He was naturally handsome and would have been beautiful to look at even if he didn’t work out the way he did. He was just one of those people to whom nature is very kind.
I shouldn’t have sat staring at him that way. If anyone else, like Brett and Jerome, looked up from their cubicle and noticed me watching him, they might have thought I was having some rather inappropriate thoughts about our boss. And, they would have been right. I just couldn’t help myself, though.
Elijah came right to my cubicle, but didn’t step inside. He stood there, looking like that, and let me swivel my chair around to face him. The smile on my face was automatic.
“How are things going today?” he asked.
“Great,” I said. “I’m enjoying the job.” I wasn’t making it up; I really felt as if I had found my groove.
“I’m glad,” he said. “So, let me ask you something. How would you enjoy maybe going back to Ben’s sometime this week?”
“Well, I would,” I said, “but that might not be my first choice.”
“Is that right?” He pondered for a moment.Lord, he even made it look sexy to stand there just thinking. Was there anything hedidn’tlook sexy doing?“Maybe we could come up with something else. Like…dinner, perhaps?”
“Now, you’re moving more in my direction.” I grinned at him.
He gave me an All-American Boy sort of smile, which gave me the flutters inside, as did a little laugh that said he enjoyed the prospect of giving me a little bit of wining and dining.
I wrote my phone number on a little yellow sticky note, peeled it off, and handed it to him. He folded it neatly and stuck it in his jacket breast pocket. “Have a good rest of your day,” said Elijah, and walked back out the way he came.
Brett on one side of me and Jerome on the other had witnessed this whole little exchange. As Elijah walked off, I looked to my right and then to my left and caught the looks of quiet, curious surprise coming from them.
My only reaction was to smile a little smile and tell them, “Well, everyone has to eat, don’t they?” I swiveled my chair around and got back to work, leaving the guys dumbfounded.
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I didn’t hear from Elijah or see him again that day, but I carried the happy feeling of his invitation and the anticipation of our next evening out through the hours that followed and down into the lobby with me when it was time to go home. I’d gotten halfway to the front entrance of the building when one set of heels clattering on the floor seemed to stand out from all the others. Accompanying it was a voice that I knew and had grown to like.