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“I think he might be from England or Australia or something. He had a little accent.”
“Stop. Stop it right now. Just how jealous do you want to make me?”
“I know it’s dumb, and I know there’s no way in the world that I’d know yet, but I think I am,” Ayla said. “Pregnant that is. Shit.”
“We’re going to fix that,” Tara reminded her. “Natalie has a friend who has a friend who can get you that pill for free.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to ‘fix’ anything,” Ayla insisted. “If I am, I am.”
“Your parents will freak the fuck out,” Tara said, wide-eyed. “You’ll probably have to move in with me or something. If it’s a girl, you have to name her after me. If it’s a boy, I don’t know, name him Scald. Scald Murray.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ayla replied. “I’m not naming my child ‘Scald’.” Ayla furrowed her brow. “I had a great-uncle in Texas, Grandpa Murray’s brother, he died when I was in elementary school, third grade, I think. His name was Preston. I always liked that name. Preston Murray.”
“That’s not bad,” Tara allowed. “But we can agree on Tara for a girl, right?”
“Whatever,” Ayla laughed.
Tara looked at Ayla, the expression on her face solemn.
“Seriously though. You’re not pregnant. There’s just no way.”
Mick was back to work the next day, reporting to Winston that he ought to avoid Scald. He’d noticed some of the drug-dealing that was destined to get the club raided eventually, and although that alone wasn’t so unusual, he embellished it a bit to make sure he wouldn’t have to return to the club in a professional capacity.
Work and working out kept Mick busy, but he kept finding his mind wandering to the girl in the blue dress. In his spare time, he visited area malls, hoping he might happen upon her, on the off chance she was a local. Where else might young, beautiful women hang out? He’d recognize her angelic face, or her sinful body, anywhere. He just knew it.
He even considered touching base with one of his old intelligence buddies to track her down, but such an allocation of resources would be frowned upon by higher ups and would certainly be looked upon unfavorably by his own superiors.
It seemed she was destined to become a memory; doubtlessly the fondest kind of memory, but a memory, nonetheless.
Chapter 7
“Come in, sit down for a minute, this won’t take long,” Randy, Ayla’s boss’s boss, said, with a smile. “I know you have to get down to the belt soon to get started.”
Ayla returned his smile with a nervous one of her own. She’d come to work early, as he’d requested, despite being up later than she expected the previous night. The novel she’d been reading, which she only wanted to get deep enough into to get to one of the “steamy” sections, was too good to put down, so she’d finished it after her bath. She was exhausted. But it was Thursday, so she was on the downhill part of the week. One more day and it would be off to Southern California.
“It’s about your attendance,” Randy began. He shuffled some papers on his desk, pulling out one with her name at the top and lines highlighted in different colors; days she’d been late and others she’d left early. “I know you have your son, you know I have three boys of my own, I can sympathize. But I also have people I report to, and work that has to be done every day. And by done, I mean completed. Emergencies are one thing, but when you’re leaving early too often, it stretches everybody else. It puts me in a bind. I want to work with you, to make it as easy as I can for you, heck, for everybody, but when I let you slide, other people think they can slide, and pretty soon half the people on the belt are ducking out early, or trying to. Am I making sense?”
Ayla nodded. Randy had been more than fair with her, and he was making perfect sense.
“Jeff was livid when he came in here after we got finished yesterday. I mean furious. You know he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, and he had to finish loading your trucks. Save me from having to listen to him bitch and moan anymore, okay?”
Ayla laughed, relieved.
“I don’t want to do any discipline on you, so consider this an unofficial verbal warning. And hopefully you have your childcare situation straightened out?”
“I do,” Ayla confirmed. “I promise. I really, really need this job. I would never do anything to jeopardize it, if I could help it. Thank you, Randy.”
“Thanks for your hard work,” Randy replied. “Now get down there before I have Jeff in here looking for you.”
Ayla’s day went without incident, although Jeff just scowled at her when she got overwhelmed with work, rather than offering any of the support he provided to others doing the exact same job.
Lupe showed up as scheduled, Desiree left for work on time, and between the two of them, they armed Preston with enough Spanish to continue his progress toward becoming bilingual.
Even Teri was on her best behavior, an almost-bearable version that rarely showed up at work.
That evening, after putting Preston to bed, Ayla sprawled out on the sofa next to Desiree to dig into a pint of mint chocolate chip that she’d managed to keep hidden from her son in the back of the freezer.
“Behind the frozen broccoli,” Ayla bragged to Desiree. “Vegetables are like Kryptonite to him. He won’t even touch the bag; he might accidentally absorb something healthy by osmosis.”
