"Yes!" I blurted out.
Paul was off again, this time to Dallas for a week. Matching our schedules proved troublesome. I was due for a one week training session. After Texas, Paul would fly to England for ten days. We arranged he'd fly directly to Washington where I'd meet him Friday evening. We'd have two days before our schedules would make a reunion impossible for three weeks. I knew this tryst would be far different from our first few days together. We would be lovers.
The very thought of sex created a new wave of anxieties. In spite of my age, I was woefully inexperienced. Years married to Doug and the requisite love making didn't give me an iota of confidence in being with a different man. After my husband's death there was a lengthy period of celibacy, the only break a two night fling, my first ever, with a man-boy several years my junior. This brief encounter occurred during my college night school tenure. While it was robust, there was no intimacy to it, only sex to which I was an unschooled recipient. Then there was George, a seventy year old, the only other unattached man on the small Alaska Island where I taught for two long and lonely years. How could Sarah Blanding be appealing to a man she truly cared for with a sexual track record as wimpy as that?
When the fateful day of Paul's visit arrived, I was a total basket case. My anxiety level was off the chart, ever ascending from where it began on the first day I'd agreed to the rendezvous. I agonized over what to wear, outer and under, even shopping for new items in stores I'd never visited. My feelings were mixed; provocative silks or everyday ware? Should I fain surprise when he suggests his hotel room or invite him back to my apartment? I cleaned like a mad woman. Should I be lustful and eager or modest and shy; a tart or a school girl? What about a suitcase; clothes for a weekend of sex? No, that's far too pushy, but I slipped extra panties in my purse. Finally I compromised; settling on a new dress and under things from my top bureau drawer not cotton-school-girl, but not revealing Victoria's Secret, whatever that was.
My anxiety was not diminished by the confusion of meeting Paul's plane. After furtive inquiries at the main terminal I determined he was arriving in a private jet and not on a scheduled flight. I suppose I should have guessed but multimillionaire Paul North was a different person than the man whose nightly phone calls I so enjoyed. Any snide comment I might have made was lost when I finally located his terminal, saw his smile and felt his arms engulf me.