An Act of Persuasion - By Stephanie Doyle Page 0,88
accompanied by a host of discordant electrical noises. Mark had a feeling she would need a new keyboard.
His daughter, it seemed, had a temper.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“HE WANTS TO LIVE with me.”
“That’s funny. She doesn’t want to live with me.”
Anna and Mark were sitting in his office eating what constituted a ridiculous amount of Chinese food. To be fair to Mark, most of it was for her.
It had been several weeks since Ben asked the question and she still didn’t know the answer. She’d been able to hold him off each time with her standard line that she would think about it. So far all that thinking hadn’t gotten her far.
And she realized the debate was starting to become moot. He came over to eat dinner and watch TV with her every night.
Slept with her every night.
The days of telling him she needed space were gone, because the reality was she didn’t want space. Not from him. Even now he’d taken possession of closet space and two drawers in her dresser. Not to mention the master bathroom cabinet filled with shaving foam and razors.
Man stuff.
She was fairly certain the only thing Ben didn’t have at her place was his furniture and the tuxedo she knew he owned.
“I take it Sophie hasn’t come around yet to her new reality.”
“No. She’s threatening to petition the court for legal status. Her grandparents are a wreck. I’m a wreck.”
“She’s a wreck,” Anna added.
Mark tossed his chopsticks aside and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah. She’s a wreck. And I don’t know how to get through to her.”
“Don’t stop. That’s all you can do. If you stop, she’ll feel like you’ve left her all over again.”
Mark shrugged. “I wish I could believe persistence and patience will work. Turns out my daughter is very stubborn.”
“She and Ben have a lot in common. Are there any dumplings left?”
Mark checked one of the containers. But Anna already knew there would be more. Certain one order of dumplings wasn’t going to be enough she had made sure to order three. That should have given them plenty even if Mark was a dumpling man.
“There are, like, a million left.”
Anna pushed her paper plate toward him and held up three fingers. She watched as Mark dished out the food and then decided two more weren’t going to kill her.
“You’re a bottomless pit, you know that?”
“I’m eating for two,” she mumbled around the bite of steamed dough and pork meat in her mouth. “Cut me some slack.”
“So I know why Sophie doesn’t want to live with me. She thinks I abandoned her and now I’m no better than a stranger to her. She’s mostly right. What’s your deal?”
Anna didn’t know what her deal was. At first she’d needed time to think. Her relationship with Ben was changing at a rapid pace and moving in together was a major decision. Now that he was practically already there it seemed a bit silly to tell him she didn’t think she was ready for him to move in.
There was the argument for letting him move in completely. Her number-one reason to support that idea? She liked having him there. She really, really liked having him there.
Still, she couldn’t get past the fact everything was moving too fast. Her body was growing in leaps and bounds. The baby was mounting an attack from the inside of her body. Anna recalled vividly the doctor telling her she should expect to feel the first fluttering of movement from within.
Not her. The first thing she felt was a swift kick to the ribs. Not too long after that Ben had felt the baby kick, too. He’d spent the entire night with his hand on her stomach waiting for it to happen again. The man was belly crazy. Or at least crazy with what was inside it. One more reason to be cautious before committing to anything.
“We’ve only been dating for a couple of months,” Anna said as she dipped her dumpling in a sauce so perfectly tart and delicious she wanted to drink it. But that might be overkill. “That’s too soon.”
“You’ve known each other for six years and you lived with him once already when he was sick. If that isn’t seeing someone at their worst, I don’t know what is. I think you can safely say you two know what it’s like to live together. In good times and in bad.”
“This is different.”
“Why?”
Anna looked at the man who was her boss, but who had become her friend, too. She