Page 25 of His Wounded Heart

I look at the clock on the microwave. I have three and a half hours before I need to leave to pick up Bella. That’s plenty of time to get in a little work for my new client. I eye the dishes in the sink, then think about the fun work.

Dishes.

Computer.

Dishes.

Computer.

The dishes really need time to soak.

I plug up the sink and turn on the hot water so they can soak. That will surely help get them clean before I put them into the dishwasher. One day I’m going to have to look into upgrading the damn thing, considering the fact I almost have to completely wash the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.

After the sink is full, I turn off the water and dry my hands then head to my teeny, tiny office. I pull up my Photoshop program and grin. Seriously, this is really coming together. I really like how the background looks against their logo, especially the way I’d made the logo pop with a three-dimensional effect.

I need to find some stock photos to depict just the right image that the client is going for, so I hit the icon for the web. As soon as I do that I can start working on the back end, which is another part I love doing.

How lucky am I?

I totally adore all parts of making websites. When I go to click on the stock photo gallery website I see I have more email, and I shudder.

When that second email came two days ago, it put me in a bad place. It had been titled You Sinner and cut me to the core. When I thought about what had happened the second to the last day I was in Nashville, that is exactly how I’d felt. But when I opened it, the message didn’t make any sense. STAY AWAY, OR YOU’LL REGRET IT. Who could possibly think that I would ever want to go back to Nashville?

After deleting that email and deleting my trash, I had unsubscribed from every mailing list I’d ever signed up for. I would have changed my email address except it was on all my business cards. So now the incoming email was either business, friends and family, or from the evil AOL address.

Don’t be a wimp!

I have to open my email server and look at it. It might be Piper needing something or my current client requiring an update. I click.

You Whore

Another title that stabs me in the heart. Even when I was a nineteen-year-old virgin, living at home, trying to take care of my younger siblings, how often had my mother, Wanda, called me a whore? How many times?

Then there was that day in Nashville when I’d heard it again. That hideous, that monstrous, that devastating day when my world fell apart.

I looked down at the cookbook again. I had to use Brantley’s paperweight from his office to keep it open, because I’d just bought the cookbook yesterday, and it was stiff so it wouldn’t stay open to the page I needed.

I was trying to cook him chateaubriand; according to the butcher at the high-end market I’d gone to yesterday, it was the best piece of meat I could purchase. I’d purchased the tarragon and demi-glace at the store, and knew that Brantley had good bottles of red wine at the condominium that I could use for the sauce.

According to the cookbook it said I needed to cook it with chateau potatoes. It took me over fifteen minutes to figure out they were just baby new potatoes sauteed in oodles of butter and some garlic, then popped in the oven and served with some herbs on top. My mouth was already watering.

I opened the oven to put them in when I heard Brantley come in. Damn, he was early. I hadn’t had a chance to dress up yet. I wanted tonight to be special. I got the feeling that this might be the night he was finally going to propose.

“Darling, I’ll be right out.” I always liked using that word, it sounded so sophisticated.

I closed the oven and wiped my hands with the kitchen towel.

He didn’t say anything so I went down the hall to see him. I always liked seeing him in his suits.

“Brantley?” He wasn’t standing in the foyer or the living room. I would have noticed if he’d passed me to go to our bedroom.

The acrid scent of cigarette smoke made me turn to the window.

“Who are you?” I asked the skinny woman in a very pretty lavender suit and sky-high lavender heels.

“I think the better question is who are you?”

“I’m Trenda Avery. I live here. How did you get in here?”