Keith frowned in slight confusion. “You said they would take her away if they knew of her existence.”
She nodded slowly. “That is because presently, she is his only child.”
“Presently?” now he was really confused. He walked up to his desk and placed his palm on the flat wood, leaning down, he put his weight on his hands. “You said he was dead.”
She looked away from him and brought her eyes to his palms splayed on the desk. “I said he might as well be.”
Keith sighed and lowered his head. “Donna…”
“Mr. Preston…” she cut him off and drew in a breath, feeling her eyes beginning to tear up as past memories flooded her mind, “I am sorry that I cannot tell you everything right now, but I just… I can’t…” she felt the tears threatening to drop so she looked up to the ceiling, and turned away from him. “Oh God,” she whispered and sniffed back the tears, quite unsuccessfully.
Keith lifted his head and watched her, he felt maybe questioning her was unnecessary and she had always been open to him about everything but if she did not feel like she could trust him with this one thing, then he should allow her to have it. He sighed and sat in his chair.
“You should take a seat, Donna,” he said to her in a calm and rational voice. He remained quiet until she had sat down, he handed her a tissue which she took before he continued. “I don’t want you to feel like you cannot trust me. I trust you completely and that is why you have been able to keep this job for so long. As my personal secretary, this relationship cannot function if there is no trust between us.”
She nodded her head and sniffed but didn’t look at him. “I know that, Mr. Preston.”
“Good. Since this is personal for you, I won’t push on it any further. I understand everyone has boundaries and privacy.” he paused and then got serious. “But I should have at least known the truth about your marital status.”
She chuckled slightly now. “I never lied about that, Mr. Preston. I am not married.”
He narrowed his eyes at her with a frown. “But then there’s Wayne…”
“He is… just someone I met recently.” she cut him off quickly. “I was never married, Mr. Preston, even though I almost was, it didn’t work out.”
Almost? He hummed in disbelief and got into his hair, leaning far back into the seat, and stroking his chin. “He drops you off at work and picks you up every day, Donna.” He clasped his hands together. “For someone you just met recently, he has gotten pretty damn close. And fast too.”
She looked at him now. “That’s only because of my car, it is still at the repair shop and he has offered to drop me off at work and pick me up until it is fixed,” she told him.
“Your car?” he frowned and dropped his hand from his chin. “What happened to your car?”
She frowned slightly. “I told you about it. It just suddenly stopped in the middle of the road…”
He leaned forward and reached for the top drawer, grabbed the handle, and pulled it open, then grabbed a set of keys and tossed one to her. “There’s a red car parked down in the garage right beside mine, you can have that pending your car being fixed.”
She smiled and placed a hand over the key, then slowly slid it on the table back toward him to reject it. “I can’t accept this, I don’t mind…”
“Take it,” Keith said sternly, his eyes fixed on her, he would not take no for an answer. He leaned back into his seat and brought his hands together, interlocking his fingers. “Makes me uneasy seeing you enter another person’s car. Especially a person I do not know.”
Donna smiled and pulled the keys to the side of the table close to her. “Wayne is my neighbor, I know him.”
“Well I don’t and it still makes me feel uneasy. “ he said to her with a tight frown. “Take the car and call him that there would be no need for him to come to pick you up today…”
“I will…” she was saying but he cut her off, still having more to say.
“…or ever,” he said and shut his eyes, the frown never leaving his face.
She pursed her lips and stared at him with furrowed eyebrows, wondering why he would get so serious about who she was seeing all of a sudden. She sighed and forced a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Preston.”
“Now that that’s out of the way,” he said and fixed his eyes tightly on her, a serious look in them. “About, the incident with Laura, which brings me to what I wanted to ask you that day at the park, why did you cover up for her? Why didn’t you tell me what she had done?”
She blinked severally, surprised that he would still remember that. “I didn’t want to ruin the relationship you two had by smearing her name.”
He frowned and his eyebrows furrowed deeply. “What relationship?”
Donna blinked severally in confusion. “Laura said you two were in a serious relationship, one that would possibly lead to a marriage.”
“Possibly lead to marriage, yeah?” Keith chuckled and then got serious almost immediately. “We might have had something between us but she had ruined it by attacking you.”
“You should not allow that to ruin what you have,” Donna said. She didn’t want to be the reason why Keith and Laura would break up if at all they had any sort of relationship between them, serious or not. Despite the fact that what Laura had done to her was criminal, she didn’t want to cause anything that would have her permanently in her bad books.
But Keith was serious about what he had said, and though he could not depict Donna’s reasoning, he had made up his mind, he and Laura were done. “Nobody touches my person.”