“Do you need me to go soon,” I said as I held Lilly to my chest.

If it were up to me, I would insist she leave her office right that instant and come home with me. I didn’t forget that she had that meeting later today. As much as I would have much rather lock her up in my bedroom for the rest of the day, I knew that wouldn’t be a possibility.

“Not yet,” she said with her head resting on my chest.

I leaned my chin on the top of her head and breathed in her sweet scent. I had been wild dreaming about this woman over the years. I had always figured if I ever had her again it would settle the matter. Like it was a thirst that only needed to be quenched once.

It wasn’t something that I was ever going to have enough of now that I had tasted her again. Finally she leaned back from me and I reluctantly released her. She slipped off the desk to collect and replace her clothes.

I looked over her desk and noticed a single picture frame. I turned it with trepidation. This is the moment I had wanted at the beginning of all of this. It had to be a picture of her daughter.

Sure enough it was. It looked like a school photo, and I guessed from a few years earlier. Aria looked to be five or six in it. One of her front teeth was missing and she was giving a big happy grin. What was unmistakable was the two pitch black ponytails with bows.

“This your daughter,” I said staring down at the picture.

“Yeah,” Lilly said taking it from my hand quickly and looking at it herself fondly. “It was a couple years back. I should really put the new one in. All kids look so alike when they are little and still have that baby fat.”

I looked at the picture in her hand. Was she trying to convince me that that similarities I saw were just happenstance? Maybe it was because the idea had already been planted in my head, but I was sure now, looking on the face of that little girl that she had to be mine.

“Is the father still around?” I asked as I took a seat in one of the two leather chairs that faced her desk. Instead of going behind her desk, Lilly took the other one next to me. She set the picture frame back in place facing away from us before tucking her feet under her.

“Um, no.”

“That’s too bad. Did he move away or something?”

I hated that I was prying but now more then ever I wanted to hear her tell me the words.

“He was in the Navy. A SEAL actually. He died while he was deployed though. Before Aria was born so…”

I could see the nervousness in her words. It was hard to tell if it was hurt or because she was making it up.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I responded. “That must have been so hard for you to lose him.”

"We didn’t really know each other. He was deployed before I even knew I was pregnant.”

“Did you tell him though?”

“No,” she shifted awkwardly in her seat. “It all happened really quickly. But I was fine with taking care of Aria on my own. I mean, I know it’s not the perfect situation but we do alright.”

“Yeah, I see that.” I said waving around to the office. “You must be a bigger deal then you made yourself out to be,” I teased.

“No, not at all,” she laughed and brushed her hair back. “But we get by.”

I thought on that as I made my way back to the office. I had no plans to return, but knew I probably should. If I was lucky, the rest of the staff would have taken off leaving me alone to work and think in some peace and quiet.

I was troubled by what Lilly had said. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her or worry about them financially. Lilly had clearly been a trooper putting the need of her daughter before everything else.

What plagued my mind was the fact that she shouldn’t have done it all on her own. Of course I repeated over again to myself there was no way I could have know she was pregnant and she had no way to tell me.

It wasn’t how I had wanted to end things eight years ago. After a meeting like that I had hoped that we could have actually started something. Lilly had blown out of that VIP room as fast as she had blown into my life.

I wonder if some part of me had known out in the universe there was my child, that she was the mother. Why else would I have attached myself so much to the memory of Lilly over all these years.

If I was truly being honest with myself, that memory of our night together had been an excuse for me never to start another relationship. Every time I even tried, all I did was compare the woman before me to the one I had known so briefly. The one that was gone in the blink of an eye.

I wasn’t the kind to believe in fate or coincidences. That never sat right with me when I went to these country where children starved to death on the street and people died from treatable diseases.

I had to believe now, though, that something had connected me to Lilly, and something had called her back to me all these years later. I wasn’t willing to give this chance up again. She could simply skate out of my life in an instant and I would regret it for a lifetime.

“Oh you came back,” a voice called into my office waking me from my thoughts.

I looked up to see Helen poking her brunette head in.

“Yeah, I just had some things I needed to finish up.”

“What about the emergency?”

“The what? Oh that. Yeah, I got it all squared away.”

“Is there something wrong?” she asked sense that I was more distant than usual.

I rotated in my chair to face her. She may have been annoyingly flirtations at times but she was a good employee and at least caring.

“Can I ask you something, actually?”

“Sure,” she said her face lighting up and stepping into the room.

“Why do women insist on keeping secrets? Even when they don’t have to? I mean, even when the truth is so obvious and they should jut come out and say it?”

She raised a brow looking at me surprised by my question. Maybe she was hoping I would ask her out or something.

“Well,” she said slowly trying to think through the jumble of words I just spit out. “It’s my experience that if a woman is keeping a secret from you it’s because she is afraid.”

“Afraid. That doesn’t make any sense?”

I was frustrated and unconsciously pushed at my sleeves already up at my elbow as I searched understanding out of my brain.

“Well, when a girl gets hurt in the past, that makes her want to close off. Keep everything close. Saves her from getting hurt all over again. People keep secrets because they don’t fear the truth coming out but the pitfall of it.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Thanks,” I said with a half smile.

“Happy to help,” she responded before bidding be goodbye for the night.

Lilly might have been the one to slip out on me that night, but I had unknowingly abandon her these last eight years.

Maybe she was keeping the truth to herself because she feared my reaction. After all we may have had hot attraction to each other but we had only know each other a few days. i doubted she couldn’t imagine how much I desired to be apart of her life and have a place in Aria’s too.

I would need to find a way to show her that she was safe with me. That I wouldn’t turn and disappear again. That she didn’t have to do it all on her own now. I could be there to help her and see her through it all thick and thin.