Loves Redemption

for us taking up your morning. I saw you on the news, and you looked and
sounded great. I’ll give you a call tomorrow. Sweet dreams.”
Maya was surprised he hadn’t mentioned the flowers. She’d have to remember to thank
him tomorrow. She picked the flowers up and carried them with her into her bedroom.
After she’d placed them on her dresser, she stripped out of her clothes, anxious to take
them off, having had them on for over 15 hours. She was too exhausted to do anything else but take a quick shower and climb into bed. The last thought in her mind was Mark, and the
unexpected turn her life had taken with him in it.
* * * *
The following week was a busy one for Maya as she planned to take time off on the
weekend. She didn’t know the last time she had and was looking forward to it.
She’d spoken with Mark often during the week and found herself more and more
attracted to him. She believed what made a person interesting wasn’t the outer trappings. The inside, the spirit of a person, is what called to her.
She liked the very way he spoke, how she could often hear the smile coming through. He
would ask her questions about herself, and she could tell he was really interested in the answer.
On Wednesday, they’d talked long into the night. She told him about her short stint in private practice during her days in graduate school.
“That didn’t strike you in the least bit funny? Come on! I don’t see how you do it. I
couldn’t have kept a straight face if someone was flipping back and forth like that, right before my eyes!” he laughed outright.
She’d been telling him of a client who had multiple personality disorder. The client was a
middle-aged, overweight, white male, whose alter ego was a flirtatious young black woman in her mid twenties. Who was very sexually active.
“Mark, it’s what I do.” She knew she shouldn’t laugh, but his was so infectious she
couldn’t help herself. “I’m a therapist. How would it look if I laughed? That could have seriously damaged his already fragile hold on reality…”
“But what about when he was giving you advice on how to please a black man in bed?
That didn’t strike you as funny?” She could hear him holding back another deep chuckle.
“I’ve learned to roll with the punches. I thanked him for the advice and went on with the
session!” she said, tongue in cheek, desperately holding her humor at bay. She finally gave up and laughed out loud, right alongside him.
“I have to be honest, it would have driven me nuts, Maya.” She loved his laugh, so deep
and husky; the sound alone sent a quick jolt through her body.
They talked for a few minutes more and she caught herself yawning, and looked over at
her bedside alarm clock for the time.
“You sound exhausted Maya, maybe we’d better end this. It’s getting late. I could talk to
you all night.” He admitted in a husky voice and laughed again when she yawned for the third time in five minutes.
“So could I,” she said and Mark laughed.
Eventually they were forced to hang up, and Maya couldn’t remember the last time she’d
enjoyed talking on the phone with anyone through the night as she had with Mark.
At lunch the next day, Dalia had come into her office to tell her she had a visitor, and
moved aside to allow Mark, with a huge, overflowing basket in his hands, to enter her office.
“I hope you’re hungry!” he said, a huge grin on his face as he looked around the pretty
wicker picnic basket. He placed it down on her desk and gave her a casual kiss.
Between the kiss and the picnic basket, she didn’t know which one caught her more off
guard. “This looks wonderful,” she said around the growl of her stomach. She groaned as she hungrily viewed the contents. There were dinner rolls, strawberries, assorted cheeses, and a bottle of nonalcoholic wine.
“I felt bad for keeping you up so late last night. Thought this would make up for it.”
Maya turned to him and had to quickly look away, overwhelmed with the gesture as she pulled out food and placed it on the picnic plates in the basket.
“It all looks so wonderful, I don’t know where to start,” she said on a shaky laugh. She
felt a silly urge to cry. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, but his showing up so
unexpectedly, thinking of her with something so simple, made her want to bawl.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m starved,” he said, as he sat down in the overstuffed
chair near her desk.
“Thank you so much for thinking of me,” she said, and smiled when he gave her a sexy
wink, as he picked up a piece of chicken and sank his even white teeth into the breast.
“Delicious,” he agreed, licking his lips, and Maya had the feeling he was referring to
more than the chicken he held in his big hands.
The impromptu picnic kept a smile on Maya’s face for the rest of the day. By the end of
the week she was looking forword to their upcoming date on Saturday with nervous excitement.
* * * *
Saturday morning arrived as a clear and cloudless day, perfect for gardening. Maya had
gone into work early on Friday and worked through both lunch and dinner, wanting to get work out of the way. She knew she surprised her staff, including Dalia, when she’d informed them she planned to take the weekend off. With her day off she had plans to work around her yard and go out with Mark later in the evening.
She hadn’t been out on a date for, well, it had been a long time since she’d been out on a
date. Being honest with herself, she knew she wanted the day all to herself. Maybe it would help her rid herself of the