Page 10 of British Daddy to Go

4

Sean

Ican still taste Maggie on my lips. Will I ever get the real thing again? I sure hope so.

“We’ll have your suit ready…” Roger begins. I can’t listen to this man’s chirping any longer, so I hold up my hand to stop him.

“I have a meeting to attend to,” I lie. “Can you call my assistant with the details?”

Roger nods. “Of course, sir. We’ll handle the details.”

The small man bows. What’s up with that? Does he think I’m a prince or something? I’m rich, but I’m not royal. There’s no need to bow. I’ve told Roger this a million times, but he won’t stop. It’s one of the many annoying things about him.

If the suits at Havisham’s weren’t the best in the city, I’d find somewhere with less obnoxious workers.

Now that I’ve met Maggie, though, there’s no way I’m going anywhere else. That woman was my undoing. I don’t go around having sex in dressing rooms often. Even if I did, I doubt the encounters would have been anything like what I’d just experienced with Maggie. Her soft, warm lips around me… it had been clear this was her first time engaging in the activity, but she would have gotten the hang of it if she’d had more time. Damn Roger for interrupting us before she was finished!

My phone rings. “Curses,” I mutter, knowing exactly who is calling me.

“Mother,” I say. If nothing else, at least this calms down my nether regions after my dressing room romp. It would have been embarrassing to walk around the city with a hard-on.

“Is that how you always answer your phone?”

I sigh. “Of course not. I knew it was you.”

She may be an ocean away, but I can see her fixing her dyed blonde hair, a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. How she can balance her vices and her phone is a mystery I’ve never figured out.

“All the more reason to be polite, my dear. You could be nicer to your old mother.”

My mother is hardly old. She and my father married young and had me at twenty-two, making her just shy of sixty-seven. Plus, her plastic surgery and expensive beauty routines make her look closer to my age. On the rare occasion we’re seen in public together, people assume she’s my sister. Or, unfortunately, my wife.

“Is there a particular reason for your call, Mum?”

She huffs into the receiver. “Does a mother need a reason to call her son?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. You haven’t come home to visit in years, dear. You had to suspect this was coming.”

It’s been less than a year since I’d traveled to England to see my parents, but telling my mother this is pointless. Time travels at her speed. Plus, she gets mad when she’s not the primary reason for my visit. My last trip to England was for business, so I’d only spent an evening with my parents. If we’re going by the last time I went to England solely to spend time with Mum and Dad, then it’s been two and a half years. I still don’t think that’s long enough for her to be in a tizzy.

“What are you saying, Mother? I have work to do.”

“Your father and I are coming to visit,” she informs me in her clipped, proper English accent. I tried hard to lose mine when I moved to America for school. It’s twenty-five years later now, and I still sound like I should be having tea with the queen.

I’m so distracted by the whole accent thing that I nearly miss what she told me. “You’re coming where to visit?”

“America, of course! We’ve always wanted to come to the colonies, and now is the perfect time. Your father is retired, and I don’t have any events coming up that need my attention.”

“Wait a second, Mother. When is this visit happening?” I stop walking, much to the chagrin of the other busy New York City patrons.

Mum sighs again. I might get that habit from her. My assistant is especially unimpressed by how often I sigh. “Two weeks.”

“And how long are you staying?”

“A month!” she cheers. “Isn’t that exciting? We want to see the city you abandoned us for!”

There’s the zinger. Mother always brings it back to that. I went to Columbia for university instead of staying in England, and she’s never forgiven me for it. To make matters worse, I decided to work in New York and climb the corporate ladder quickly rather than join my father’s law firm. He has been far more forgiving than my mother, since he was able to sell his partnership in the firm and retire early. If I’d joined him at the firm, he would have felt obligated to stay in practice for a lot longer than he had. And retirement is serving him well.