The feeling of career bliss to which I had grown accustomed, excluding the disturbing phone conversation, took a mere two months, sixteen days, three hours, fifty-seven minutes, and thirty-five seconds to change.

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Enter Beauregard Fitzgerald Kingston, Jr.—Beau’s father and Coral’s husband.

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The hours before my first encounter with Mr. Kingston and what happened after were still fresh in my mind. Coral’s day had been manic with meetings and work-related fires only she could extinguish. Only once did she take a break, and that was to let me know she would have to cancel her lunch date with her husband who was picking her up here at the office. It should have been she who informed him of the change, but she instructed me to do it when he arrived. The request didn’t seem out of the ordinary, so with an air of sympathy, I told her I’d be happy to pass along her apologies. Getting back to work, I never gave it another thought.

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I hated what I was doing at the time—sticking a company flyer in each of a zillion envelopes and licking them closed. A man had to have invented the wretched envelope sealant that left a putrid taste on one’s tongue. A woman would have adhered an agreeable flavor like peppermint or wintergreen to freshen the breath instead of making it reek of glue. The only way to rid the harsh taste from my palate was to scrape my tongue over the bottoms of my top teeth but then what did I do with the accumulated film? Spit or swallow? I couldn’t very well discard it in a Kleenex each time I licked an envelope; I’d have no more saliva left to do either. I had one choice: swallow followed by a sip of coffee.

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Scowling and wrinkling my nose in a grimacing facial expression as a result of the ordeal, I happened to look through our glass office door and into the lobby where a magnificent stud—the two-legged kind; not the four-legged kind Hazel would ride—sauntered into the building. Hubba, hubba. What a magnificent specimen of the male species. Scrutinizing the man, I considered him to be about my age, perhaps a couple years older, was tall and smartly dressed from head to toe. His camel-tan suit and white shirt accented by a deep wine color tie hung on him like they were tailored specifically for him. I know expensive when I see it and this getup screamed of money as did the obviously pricey, two-toned leather shoes in shades of musk and brown with a detailed cut-out wingtip.

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To top off his classy attire, he donned a beige fedora like the style Humphrey Bogart wore in the 1942 production of “Casa Blanca”. Secretly in love with Bogart and his ability to make me practically faint dead away when seeing him in any role on the big screen, which I never passed an opportunity to see, the same appetite overwhelmed me with this newcomer. It's okay to swoon; I'm not dead yet. The way he carried himself oozed of intrigue and mystique, just like my imaginary, Hollywood paramour.

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My first thought, as I watched this picture of perfection stroll across the floor, was how drop-dead gorgeous he was. Nothing wrong with ogling, either. My second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts came next. Who was this flutter bum with a sculpted jaw and a hint of dark hair peeking out the side of his hat? Which office did he work in, and why didn’t I work there, too? I’ve never seen him before. Was he new to the building?