I Love You More Than (4 page)

Felicia and Jenna spent the morning getting themselves situated in their temporary spaces. Saroya and Felicia’s office setup was one envied by a lot of other designers in the firm. The others thought they were getting the best spaces by skipping over the office that was chopped up by a wall. But not Saroya, who at the time was the newest designer to the firm. Felicia’s area was arranged so it was the first thing you saw when you entered the office and included a small seating/meeting area outfitted with a petite sofa and two cube chairs with a small circular table in between them.

Saroya’s office had a modicum of privacy if ever needed. When Felicia mentioned to Rich that a lot of Saroya’s favorite design books and etcetera were missing, he’d waived her concerns off stating she probably took a job or two on the side. Felicia thought nothing else of it. Their firm wasn’t as strict and as others, if they decided to freelance on the side, they were more than welcome to. Rich and Tom were smart enough to know that most of those side customers would become actual clients who just commissioned their preferred designer. On these jobs the designer received an extra bonus outside of their normal commission.

Working side by side as she and Saroya had done for six years, Felicia had a great relationship established with their clients. So things went smoothly when she called all the clients whose projects they were in the midst of and let them know that she’d be filling in, also giving them Jenna’s information as a point of contact. Those that had concerns were promptly laid to rest when Felicia was able to answer and address any and all of their concerns. She may just be an
assistant
in their eyes. But she has always been an avid learner. Schooling was the only thing Felicia felt she had control over for such a long time that she excelled at it and her jobs.

****

Felicia’s first day filling in as a lead designer ended great! She and Jenna would pretty much be in the field for the rest of the week seeing to the Livingston’s, Heyworth’s and Smith’s renovations. Wanting to get a little more work done tonight, Felicia elected to pick up dinner rather than cook. They would have been having leftovers but as usual, she was two-hundred percent sure David had ate them for breakfast. Whatever was left from that he would’ve packed up for work. The last thing he would do is spend his own hard earned money on food.

Deciding at the last moment that a salad would go nicely with the frozen fifteen minute chicken pasta meal she planned to cook, she headed over to the produce section. It was Dana’s favorite meal so she couldn’t go wrong. Felicia was focused so intently on the tomato she had in her hand, she didn’t see Harrison Kincaid stalking his way towards her. It was just his luck to run into Felicia. He had woken up this morning with her…well in his dreams he had been with her.

Felicia Montgomery made Harrison’s blood boil even while simply inspecting a piece of fruit. Harrison for the first time sympathized with Adam. Just as surely as his name was Harrison Kincaid, he knew if Felicia held an apple up for him to bite, he’d do so without a second thought.

Harrison could see she must be coming straight from the office. Felicia was nowhere near skinny, which is what drove Harrison wild. She had curves that would make Kim K appear anorexic. After spending many nights fantasizing about them, Harrison had finally determined that Felicia’s breasts had to be about a 40/42DD. Her perfect shape was accentuated with a small waist and hips for days. And her smile…she had a genuine innocent smile that made Harrison feel warm all over. That’s just how he was feeling now that she’d spotted him approaching.

Harrison tried his hardest to place a smile on his face to take away from the seriousness he knew he was exuding. Walking with a hard on had a way of changing one’s temperament. Quickly.

Felicia had begun to feel as if someone was watching her, looking around her, her eyes connected with Harrison Kincaid’s blue tinted grey eyes. She was stuck, unable to break the eye contact. And if she was being truthful with herself, she didn’t want to. Her pulse had quickened and was now pulsing triple time. She felt her face automatically break out in a smile as it always did when she saw her best friends’ brother. Emma and Felicia hadn’t talked since Felicia had been pregnant with Elena.

Whether or not Felicia could see or feel it, she was loved by many. David had caused her to lose out on so much over the years. Not just friendships. Those who were still around chose to love her from afar. She was always grateful Harrison has never treated her any differently than before she and Emma were on the outs. Felicia didn’t know what she would do if she couldn’t take her 99’ Accord to one of his many shops. Whether or not he knew it, Harrison had been her savior a few times over.

When she’d first purchased her house seven years ago her car had broken down that first week after she’d moved in. Praying it was a battery or the alternator she’d called Kincaid’s and had the car towed in. Turned out she needed a new transmission. There was no way she could afford that after she’d just put all her savings down on her house. Harrison seeing the turmoil and desperation in her gaze had told her not to worry about settling up the bill when the repairs were done. She could pay him when she was able.

Felicia balked at this of course, preparing herself to call her father and ask him for the funds David wasn’t even an option, there was no way he would be willing to pay for it. Harrison wouldn’t hear of her calling Jacob and even provided Felicia with a loaner vehicle. Thanks to him she’d have a way to get Dana to daycare and herself to work. It had taken six months, but she paid Harrison back every penny…at least she thought she had. He’d refused to give her an invoice for the work done.

Felicia had always secretly thought Harrison was the epitome of what sex walking on a stick would look like! He had to be six foot two easily and had a permanent tanned shade on his olive toned skin. And Harrison was hard. From his square jaw line that was often accompanied by a shadow from his beard down to his neck and shoulders that were broad and appeared to be hard under his navy blue Carhartt jumper. Felicia knew without a doubt that Harrison’s arms were ripped and he had to have washboard abs to match. Underneath a square cut wife beater. She would be willing to stake her life on him having a beater on right now…underneath that jumper.

“Hello Felicia,” just the way he said her name made Felicia feel a little
funny
.

“Hi Harrison. How are you doing?” she asked while trying to keep her eyes fastened on his and not on the skin that was peeping out from the unbuttoned column of his jumper.

“I’m good Felicia,” his baritone voice breathed out. “I haven’t seen you around in a while. How have you been doing?” he’d really enjoyed seeing her whenever something went haywire with her car.

“I’ve been good, can’t complain. My car has been great lately, hopefully I’m not jinxing it.”

“Well I can’t say the same. I enjoy seeing and talking to you whenever you bring her to the shop. That seems to be the only time I get to see you.” Felicia busied herself by putting her tomatoes in a bag unsure of how to respond. Sensing her uncertainty Harrison continued in an attempt to calm her nerves. She had suddenly grown very tense. “How’re things going at Tom Rich?”

At the mention of the design firm Felicia’s smile went from weltered to blooming once again.

“It’s going great! Just today I found out…never mind,” Felicia abruptly stopped herself. Here she was about to go on and on about some temporary position. She could be such an idiot sometimes. Harrison became pissed off when Felicia abruptly cut herself off as if whatever she had to say held no value. It was clear that she was happy about something, but she felt as if whatever it was didn’t deserve recognition.

“No finish what you were saying,” Harrison told her as he stepped closer, closing in on her personal space and making it impossible for her to escape. “Just today you found out what?”

“The lead designer I work with will be out of the office indefinitely and I am assuming the lead on our current projects.” Felicia finished feeling foolish. When she went home there would be no need to inform David of this. He would just find some way to make her feel stupid, insignificant or inadequate as only he could do.

“Wow!” Harrison genuinely responded. “That’s great news Li! I’m sure once Tom and Rich see what all you can do they’ll have a new permanent lead designer in their midst.”

“From your lips……” Felicia responded trailing off as she focused on Harrison’s full luscious lips outlined by his goatee. “Well I’ve got to hurry and finish here so I can pick the girls up and get dinner on the table.” Felicia thought she saw anger flicker through Harrison’s gaze, but it must’ve been her imagination. There was no trace of it now.

“Of course. Let me stop holding you up. Please tell Dana and Elena I said hello and to come and keep me company at the shop one of these weekends.”

Trying not to blush, Felicia told him she’d pass the message along. She hated the fact that another man who was not their father genuinely enjoyed spending time with her daughters. She had to beg and plead their actual father to spend quality time with them. Felicia knew Harrison’s request was not fluff, he honestly enjoyed whenever the girls had to accompany Felicia to Kincaid’s.

Sparing Harrison one more backwards glance before she left the produce section, Felicia was shocked and…well…excited, to find his gaze still on her.

Felicia picked her daughters up from their afterschool program with fourteen minutes to spare. She definitely hadn’t planned to get such a late start, but as usual rarely do plans go as, well planned. Thankfully the girls had already done their homework so all that was left was for them to get bathed and into pajama’s as she prepared their dinner.

Felicia was always relieved to find David gone when she came home. She can’t remember the last time she looked forward to coming home to him. When Felicia looked at David Foster she saw a nasty, greasy, slimy, foul smelling troll. Everyone else saw him as a typical teddy bear, overly soft and loveable. Nothing could be further from the truth. She wanted to laugh at the time when there was nothing she would not do for him even to the detriment of her own self.

But nothing was ever good enough, acknowledged or appreciated. Only as she had slowly but surely put a stop to being his beck and call girl had he started to notice her at all. David used to call Felicia up to twenty times a day asking where this store or place was and the best way to get there? It was as if the man still lived and existed in 1985. Talk about come back to the future, there are smartphones and Google maps to be used now. But David was a hypochondriac. The type that felt that if he came to the modern way of doing things, the government would have a task force keeping tabs on him.

The man didn’t even have an ATM or debit card. He used cash for everything, well really Felicia’s cash since it seemed like he never had any money on him to do this urgent thing or settle that bet. Feeling that because he’s writing her a check she could go and cash right away would make it a moot-point. But Felicia was tired of spending all her lunch hours running to her bank to deposit a damn check and had recently taken to keeping the bare minimum of cash on her. She had a debit card after all.

Besides being overly paranoid, David was obsessed about cleanliness. You couldn’t touch him unless he’d witnessed you washing your hands or using hand sanitizer. If their girls felt this was a tiring task, imagine how it felt for Felicia? He would wake her up out of her sleep in the wee hours of the morning to get into the shower and douche all because he wanted to have sex. Leaving no room for impromptu quickies. Anyone with kids knew how important those moments are.

And when it came to eating pussy? Let’s just say Felicia could really leave that. It seems like it’s a wonderful experience for many, but for her it was a tense, nerve-wracking experience and not in a good way. David was so occupied with examining her fucking fallopian tubes and making sure his tongue didn’t encounter any excessive wetness that Felicia started turning him down if he offered that as a way to get her to give in. This had caused their sex life to slow down tremendously from the two to three times a month they generally came together to once every month and a half or so before becoming nonexistent.

Felicia could care less about being intimate with David. Her love for him had died a long time ago. She had only been in this to provide her girls with some type of atmosphere resembling one of a family unit. Even to the detriment of her own happiness.

As anal as David was, the bathroom he used downstairs in the basement was the nastiest filthiest damn bathroom Felicia had ever encountered. She usually cleaned it every two weeks or so. But she’d started making a point of keeping their dealings separate when it came to chores and such. David had gotten used to her cleaning up behind him and he liked to inform her anytime he went out of town so she could clean in his absence. It has been about three months since she had been in there and a part of her regretted punishing herself by proving a point. The bottom of the tub had been black. It took Felicia three days to clean the bathroom.

When David had come back Felicia had bitched and yelled so much he finally agreed to do better at keeping
his
bathroom clean. David had laid low for a couple of days afterwards, not knowing how to take this new side of Felicia. She had always been his do girl with no complaints. He’d tried several unsuccessful times to give her some dick hoping it would help with her mood. Surprisingly to David, she continued to turn him down.

Felicia set the table for the three of them and called out to the girls that dinner was ready. Elena was just finishing up saying grace when David walked into the house. He walked past them without speaking as normal and continued into the kitchen where he washed his hands with soap and bleach. Grabbing five paper towels he dried his hands. After discarding that wad of paper towels, David tore off three more to use when he opened the refrigerator. It took everything in her not to roll her eyes at his shenanigans. Elena, the ultimate observer she was, had Felicia under her microscope lens.

“Mom did you see Auntie Saroya today?” Dana asked as she speared a piece of broccoli off her plate.

“No sweetie I didn’t. She will be out of town for a while.”

“Who’s going to do her work Mommy?” Elena asked not one to be left out of any conversation.

“I just found out today that I am sweetie.”

“So you have to do her and your jobs?” hardly anything escaped Elena’s notice.

“No. We actually have a new co-worker. Her name is Jenna and she’s going to fill in for me while I fill in for Auntie Saroya.”

“Wow, Mommy that’s cool! I want to design like you do when I grow up.” Felicia felt warmth spread over her. Nothing made her happier than for her daughters to look up to her as their role model. Especially this day and age when mothers had to compete against their favorite singers and actresses.

“Aww Elana, that makes me….”

“No daughter of mine is going to spend her days playing on the computer all day. You two will go to medical or law school. Get real jobs. Not fluffy ones that barely take care of your bills.”

As with anytime David had something negative to say, everyone got quiet. Waiting with abated breath to see if the cyclone would pass. Felicia hated having the girls in this type of atmosphere. Usually he could hold his nastiness in until they were put to bed.

“You won’t depend on a man to take care of you and your kids because you’ll be smarter than to get pregnant without a ring first!”

Felicia seethed on the inside as she tried to keep a cool demeanor to assure the girls that everything was fine or would be. David was good at spouting off his truth. The reality was he gave her six hundred a month for the girls and five hundred a month to stay there. The girls’ afterschool program was four hundred a month and Felicia spent six hundred monthly just on groceries alone! With all the food, bleach and paper products David went through.

He felt he was describing Felicia, when in all actuality David was describing himself. Dana and Elena’s heads were down looking at the food on their plates as they shuffled it back and forth. Felicia could see that dinner was over.

“Go clear the plates and I’ll meet you in your room to say goodnight in five minutes.” Felicia left the table to go get her work bag and laptop from the living room. As usual the family room was occupied by David, she’d have no choice but to setup shop in her room.

****

Felicia was in the zone when she looked up to see David standing in her doorway. Felicia had no clue how long he’d been there watching her work. She felt every bone in her body tense preparing for the verbal beating he would delve out to her tonight for dessert.

“I know you’re probably really excited about filling in for Saroya and all. But I wouldn’t get too attached to that job if I were you. There’s no way Tom Rich would ever promote you to lead designer. The shit you come up with is nowhere close to what I’ve seen Saroya do.”

Felicia looked at the man standing before her. The father of her children. The man she was once completely and utterly in love with…funny thing is, Saroya had always treated her as an equal. Often letting Felicia come up with the concepts they presented to their clients. But David would never have believed Felicia if she had told him this, which is why she never bothered to. He would just come up with examples of how what she did was child’s play.

“Have you showered tonight?” he asked when her eyes met his. Knowing immediately what he was getting at, Felicia replied.

“No.” Felicia had stopped showering at night two years ago. That put a stop to a lot of the late night
visits
, if you could call them that. Being nudged out of your sleep as a dick was trying to force its way in, wasn’t a
visit
in her mind.

“Why don’t you stop working and get in the shower? I’ll wait for you.” David unselfishly offered.

“Not tonight. I really need to finish this and I’m beat.” Felicia responded with a huge yawn to emphasize her exhaustion.

“It won’t take that long.” He replied giving her what was supposed to be a seductive look.
Was pointing that out supposed to make her rush and…do what?

“I know it won’t. But I’m just not feeling it tonight.” David was so self-involved he didn’t catch on that she just acknowledged that he was indeed a minute man.

“Your loss.” He declared as he started walking away, “Oh and if I were you, I’d lay off the carbs. It looks like you’ve put on a few.”