Call from Home Part I
January tiptoed past the tent where giggles were still happening, but they were sleepy, drowsy laughs which held long pauses between the next ones. Kaylee was having a wonderful night and for it she was grateful to Gulliver.
She raised her hand to knock on his door, but it opened at the same time. Her eyes widened at the sight in front of her. He’d evidently just come out of shower. He was wearing a pair of pajama bottoms, no shirt and his hair was wet and slicked back. Her tongue felt two times too large for her mouth and as dry as sandpaper as she looked at the muscular taut torso in front of her.
“Hey beautiful, you came,” he smiled down at her. “I was just going to grab the rest of the bottle of wine. Go climb up on my bed and open the laptop. You can pick out the movie. I need another piece of pizza. Want one?”
The casual way he was behaving made her blink up at him in confusion. Her entire body was on fire from the sight in front of her and he was behaving like they were old buddies. She swallowed the lump in her throat and mentally chastised her libido like an errant schoolchild.
“I don’t really want pizza. I just brushed my teeth, but I won’t Яano to a refill on my wine,” she moved past him, in aling495 pull her stomach in to avoid touching him and then
immediately regretting her actions. He smelled divine.
“Be right back then. Password on the laptop is your birthday, year first.”
She turned to look at him, but he was gone quietly to find the bottle of wine and leftover pizza and walked to the bed. He’d put a bunch of pillows against the headboard and a throw-blanket on one side and she knew it was for her to snuggle under. She climbed atop the bed and pulled the blanket over her bare feet and opened the laptop. The movie app was right on the very simple desktop.
He was being very trusting letting her into his laptop. If she wanted, she could potentially dig around a bit and he’d likely never know. She looked up at him as he came in balancing pizza on napkins, two clean wineglasses and a bottle.
“What is the face for?” he asked as he moved to sit with her, letting the wine glasses drop beside her on the bed.
“You’re very trusting for a man who wronged me. If I were a bitch, I could be pilfering around your files.”
“Go for it.” He laughed. “This is my laptop for my father’s business. It’s all engineering and shipping shit. There’s a lot of things in there which other companies might want but if it
14:55 makes you feel better about the hell I put you through, then I’ll 2/5. put it on a USB for you to deliver to my competitors. Though if
we lose a lot of money over it, I may need to sleep on your sofa in your new house because I might not be able to afford my own.”
His words made her pause, and she looked at him seriously, “you mean it, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“You really are sorry, aren’t you.”
“If I could find a way to time travel and never do anything as stupid as fake our wedding, I’d invest all of my money into making it happen. I could have found another way to protect
from Duchess.” He motioned to the app, “however, unlike Hollywood movie magic, I don’t have those skills, so I need to simply keep moving forward. Did you pick something out?”
you
“Not yet,” she leaned against the pillows and adjusted the laptop on her knees while he poured them each a glass of wine. “What happened to Davis?”
“Davis?”
“Don’t play coy, Gulliver.”
“I’m simply surprised you’re bringing him up out of the blue.”
Whenever I think of the time, I can’t help but think of him.
“That makes me want to shoot him in the head. Can I change my answer on you dating? Date anyone but him. He’s a fucker.”
She laughed, “he holds no appeal for me at all. I don’t find him the least bit attractive.”
“Good.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“He’s in jail right now. He was remanded for violating his court order to stay away from you and Kaylee. He was a flight risk since I was able to prove he could come and go using an alias since the government gave him a new name. Turns out,” he adjusted his legs out on the bed and leaned backwards, “he got his name changed by a guy in the FBI who knew he’d worked for my grandfather. It seems he was on the list of employees they were watching. He agreed to tell them everything he knew in exchange for a new identity, enrollment in Quantico and a role in a task force geared to take us down. I’ve been his Moby Dick for some time. He hates me for killing his brother.”
“Did you kill his brother?”
“I told you he was stabbed in prison.”
“Did you arrange
it?”
“No.” He grinned, “my grandfather did. He hates traitors. It’s taking me all kinds of energy keeping him from killing Davis now.”
“Why don’t you want him dead? I do.”
He pulled his head back at her comment and then took a sip of his wine, “okay there mafia queen.”
“I do. He lied and he violated our privacy so much. The notion there could be videos of me in some database when I was in my home. I can’t stop thinking of all the times I’ve wandered in my underwear. Usually, I didn’t. I mean, I was living with my father, but there were times when it was just me and Mom and Kaylee home and I wouldn’t be as modest, you know?”
“Yeah. I know.” He was serious for a minute, “I have a very good IT department. They are working on a hack to get into the files they have and to find out what it is, get us the copies and then delete everything they have. We need to be careful because we don’t want it coming back at us but rest assured, love, we’re working on it.”
