CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Edmund had the presidential suite’s valet go and buy an outfit for Maude that was not dissimilar from the clothes she wore to the hospital: A pair of jeans, a sleeveless blouse, panties and a bra, and a pair of tennis shoes, all the same size, or close to it, as her original wear.
It was as if he was making clear: If he was going to take her all the way back home, her same old clothes that survived an assault would not do.
Although those new jeans were a tad larger than her usual fit, and the blouse was too, they fit good enough.
But unlike her clothing, they were from high-end designers all: The blouse was Prada.
The jeans were Gucci. The sneakers: Jordans.
None of the items were the best fit she’d ever had.
Which meant she still didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
But they were new. They were comfortable. She had no complaints.
After she was dressed and was given her discharge papers, she was rolled out of the hospital in a wheelchair, although such a chair was wholly unnecessary in her view. But the nurse supervisor, who rolled her out, insisted that it was hospital protocol. Maude had no choice in the matter.
As they waited in the patient pickup zone, she kept looking around for Edmund as if she was still hopeful that he hadn’t changed his mind.
But she wasn’t extremely hopeful. The fact that Donnell was still around gave her some comfort, but that could just be a formality.
Once she got off of those hospital grounds, he was liable to disappear too.
Which would have been fine by her. She still had her bus fare back to Dillon, and she had enough change to take an Uber to the bus station if she had to. One monkey wasn’t about to stop her show. Although inwardly, she was rooting for that monkey to do just that!
Her hope rose a bit more when a gorgeous, champagne-colored Rolls Royce pulled up to pick her up.
“Wow,” the nurse supervisor said before she realized she had said it. “That’s for you?”
“I’m saying,” Maude tripped up and said even though she had no affinity for that nurse. But it was true. A Rolls Royce picking her up? Even she thought that was a tad much.
But when Donnell stepped off the curb and opened the back passenger door for her, she knew it was no mistake.
She was about to ride in the kind of luxury she never even dreamed was possible for her.
She and her shoulder bag got out of that wheelchair and gladly got into what she assumed was Edmund’s mode of transportation.
That nurse supervisor, with that now-empty wheelchair, couldn’t wait to go back inside and tell the news.
Since Maude was the news, she didn’t need to hear the gossip. And when Don assisted her onto the backseat, closed the door, and then sat on the front passenger seat, she so wanted to ask him about Edmund that it wasn’t even funny. But she held her tongue.
Don introduced her to the driver instead. “Miss Drayton, this is Wyatt. He’s Dr. Keating’s driver.”
Maude leaned forward. She sat in the middle of the backseat. “Please to meet you, Wyatt.”
“You too, Miss Drayton.”
“Like I told Donnell, please call me Maude.”
Wyatt looked at her through the rearview. She seemed nice. “Will do.”
“Although Don still doesn’t.”
What Maude didn’t know was that Don still hadn’t called her by her first name because Dr. Keating, his employer, had forbid it. Wyatt knew it too. That was why they shared a knowing glance.
Then they just sat there. Maude wanted to ask what were they waiting on, but she didn’t go there. She was hopeful, but she didn’t go there. “So,” she said, “how long have you guys worked for Edmund?”
Edmund? They glanced at each other again. They couldn’t even fix their mouths to call that always-official man by his first name. Teri and Shannon and the other ladies he sometimes entertained called him that, but they were more in the boss’s league than this waif of a girl.
“For me,” said Wyatt, “it’s been about ten years now.”
“Really?”
“And for me,” said Don, “it’s been close to sixteen.”
“Sixteen years? You’ve been his bodyguard for sixteen years?”
Don nodded. “His father originally hired me because I was a young guy too. His son was five years older than I was, but we were still pretty much the same age and therefore he figured we’d get along swimmingly.”
“Did you?”
“Originally? Nope. He was so quiet and into his own head that it was just boring working for him. He was so guarded. Even back then.”
“You considered him guarded?”
“Oh yeah,” said Don.
“So did I when I came onboard,” said Wyatt. “He’s a very private man.”
“But I paid attention,” said Don. “He was just a rich kid trying to figure it out too. And he had a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. He was like his father’s right hand man even though he had an older sister, and he was tasked with keeping that sister out of trouble. Which she always got into anyway.”
Maude was surprised. “He had to look out for Natasha?”
Don nodded. “It was his old man’s insistence even though he was younger than she was. But she was like his child the way she got in trouble and his parents expected him to handle it. I used to call him her handler until she went too far and he gave up.”
“What did she do?”
Don wasn’t about to go there. “That’s not my business to tell,” he said.
But you told all his other business, Maude wanted to say, but she didn’t go there. She wanted answers and for the most part he was giving her answers. “Since both of you have been with him for so long, he must be a nice guy to work for,” she said.
But her comment only got crickets from both men.
“He’s not nice?”
More crickets.
“Well okay then,” she said. And they laughed.
But as she sat back still waiting at that hospital, she didn’t know what to make of Don’s comments. Edmund was Natasha’s handler once upon a time? But she went too far and he gave up on her? What was that about, she wondered?
But before she could wonder long, Don suddenly hopped out of the car, Wyatt sat erect, and the back passenger door opened.
And before Maude could move from the middle of the backseat, Edmund, dressed in another one of his fancy suits, got on the backseat right beside her.
They were so close that her arm was overlapping his arm.
But there was an awkwardness there too. Because there was a great difference now. This man had been inside of her. Very deep inside of her. They had been in bed together, wrapped into each other’s arms. They had literally and figuratively slept together. They weren’t strangers anymore.
Or were they?
Don closed the back door, got back in on the front passenger seat, and then Wyatt drove away.
“Sorry I’m late,” Edmund said to Maude as they finally left that hospital.
“What happened this time? Another surgery?”
“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 name Teri written 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 it fleeing my 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 go that far? “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.”