“No,” Edmund said. But that was all he said about his tardiness.
Then his phone rang. He pulled it out and swiped it. That was when Maude saw the nameTeriwritten on his screen along with the face of that beautiful black woman that had fled his house. But he declined the call and put his phone back in his pocket.
But Maude needed to know. Their relationship was different now. On a different level. At least she thought it was. “Is that your girlfriend?” she blurted out before she meant to.
Edmund looked at her. It was the first time they were together since their sexual encounter and he was still feeling the effects. And that joyous feeling he always felt whenever he was around her overtook him again. Teri was the last person on his mind. “No. She’s not my girlfriend.”
“But she’s the lady that fled your house the other night though, right?”
Maude could tell he was a bit offended by her characterization. “I wouldn’t call itfleeingmy home,” he said. “But yes. She’s the one.”
“Why was she so angry?”
Edmund leaned back and crossed his legs. Maude looked back at him as if she demanded an answer. He wanted her in bed again. “You’ll have to ask her why she was so angry.”
But Maude was shaking her head. “Nope. Not good enough,” she responded.
By that harsh look he gave to her, she could tell he wasn’t accustomed to anybody giving him backtalk. But he didn’t lash out at her. “Perhaps I have a tendency to piss people off.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to ask them that.”
“But it’s something you must be doing, Edmund, to make people feel that way. For real though,” she added, and Wyatt glanced at them through the rearview mirror. He wasn’t as shocked that Maude would speak so boldly to Doc. She seemed like the type. But what confounded him was that the boss was allowing her to do so. Even Teri, who’d been in a relationship with him the longest of any woman he’d ever been with, wasn’t that bold. At least not that he ever saw.
Edmund considered Maude. He’d never met anybody quite like her. But her sincerity was infectious. “I don’t know how you expect me to respond to that, Maude. Yes, I pissed her off. Was it intentional? No. If that’s what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m just curious to know why do you tend to piss people off.” Then she smiled. “I kind of have a stake in knowing.”
But when he didn’t return her smile, but just sat there as if he was assessing her worthiness the way so many men before him had done, her insecurity of even considering being with a man so different than her surfaced when she added: “Or do I?”
He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to confirm that their relationship had shifted. And it had, and had done so in ways he would have never thought possible. But was he ready to publicly admit that? Was he ready to gothatfar? “That’s for you to determine,” he said.
It felt like a slap in the face to Maude. But she’d never let him know that. “Why do you piss people off?” she asked him again. The way you’re pissing me off, she wanted to add.
Edmund shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t the foggiest.”
“You have to have some idea, Edmund. Come on now.”
Don and Wyatt glanced at each other again. They’d never seen a woman speak to Dr. Keating that way without getting a significant dress-down in return.
But Edmund was getting used to Maude’s bluntness. They shared that trait. “Perhaps I call it like I see it,” he said. “That’s the only answer I can come up with.”
Maude nodded. “I think that’s right,” she said, agreeing with him. “And I think it’s a good thing.”
Edmund looked at her. And he actually smiled. “As do I,” he said.
His smile relieved Maude of some of her fears, although that terror was still there. Which she knew she needed to ask him about. “I need to ask you something,” she said. “Is there any way we can . . .” She nodded toward Wyatt and Don.
“Of course,” Edmund said as he pressed a button that raised the shield of privacy between himself and his employees up front. But it wasn’t fraught with concerns for him. What on earth was on her mind now? “They can’t hear you,” he said.
Maude turned toward him. “You didn’t use a condom,” she said.
He immediately understood. “Yes, I know.”
“You don’t believe in them?”
“I’m a medical doctor, Maudetta. Of course I believe in them. I have never had sex without one.”
