A Heart Healed

*****

It was blissfully quiet in the hallways as Naomi walked to the hospital reception. She was pretty sure it was the amount of confidence she was faking that had gotten her this far. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her palms felt clammy.

Had it really been this long since she’d been on a date that she’s acting like a high school girl? Or was it excitement? She couldn’t tell the difference anymore honestly.

By the time she walked into the lobby, she had to stop to take a few breaths to calm down. She could do this. She could do this.

Naomi scanned the area and spotted Marc seated near the reception desk, a bundle of flowers on his lap. Were those… roses? For her? She had to admit that was a new one. There were very few people who she knew who ever brought flowers, let alone roses to a first date. One thing she did like was that they weren’t stereotypical red roses either. They were a lighter shade of peach instead.

They were beautiful and, in a way, so was the man holding them. Marc seemed to really clean up nicely. Even better than he did a few days ago when he had finally started styling his hair again. This time, he actually seemed to have gone for a haircut, leaving the blonde tresses about the same length as hers were now, except his were trimmed around the ears.

It actually suited him like this, she thought. He was clean shaven and dressed every inch the businessman he actually was in a gray tailored suit that seemed to hug against his chest as he was seated. Naomi liked it. She really did.

As much as she wanted to stand there and stare, they did have dinner to get to, so she had to remind her feet to move forward towards her date for the evening. When he saw her coming, he even seemed to pause for a few seconds with wide eyes before he jumped to his feet, almost forgetting the flowers in his lap.

Luckily, he managed to make a good catch on the end of the bouquet’s stems. He seemed to be as nervous as she was and something about it was almost sweet enough to make her relax a little.

“How was your day?” he asked, holding out the delicate blossoms out to her.

Naomi took the bundle and cradled it in her arms with a smile. “Same old, same old. Your brother enjoys giving me a hard time.”

“Sounds just like him.” The two of them smiled tenderly at one another before Naomi remembered where they were standing and glanced at the reception counter out of the corner of her eye to see the staff whispering amongst themselves already. So, it begins again.

“Shall we head out?” she asked Marc.

“Sure,” he said, offering his arm out to her. She remembered this move from all those romance movies that she liked to watch during the holidays. There was only a moment of hesitation before Naomi gingerly placed a hand on his forearm, making sure not to ruin the flowers. “The car should be right outside. Let’s go.” With that, the two of them walked out of the hospital together and found Marc’s car waiting.

It wasn’t a limousine like she expected it to be, but then again, after the recent incident with Ezra, she shouldn’t be surprised that he had switched to a black town car, a driver standing out ready and waiting. It was only when they were already inside and the car pulling off that he decided to say something about it. “I was going to drive myself; however, my assistant thought it better that I avoid driving myself around for a little bit. Something about my safety being a company priority or something like that. It was already a mission to get him to stop sending bodyguards after me.”

She wasn’t really surprised by that statement. After meeting the man as well as experiencing his questioning, the idea seemed totally plausible.

“It sounds like your staff really care for you,” Naomi reasoned.

He huffed. “I wonder about that. A lot of them care for their paychecks more than about the person behind them. Even if I left, the amount of people who would ask where I went would be fewer than the number of fingers on one hand.”

He made a good point. There were few people in corporate life who cared for the people who sat near the top of the pyramid. Sure, they had more money, but they were still people who had feelings. Even they had something that they sacrificed.

“Marc, what made you decide to enter into corporate business?” Naomi asked.

“Launching right into the heavy stuff I see,” he teased, but before she could say anything else, he calmed her down with a wave of his hand. “It’s not a bad thing, don’t apologize. I was just happy to skip the small talk that these things usually start with.”

“I can’t really stand small talk either,” she admitted.

“Then we’ll get along famously.” He grinned before his expression toned down to something a little more wistful as he thought about what he was going to say. “I entered the corporate world originally to look after my family. We weren’t born with money. Quite the opposite actually. Most days, when I was a kid, we had to beg for extra coins from people in order to buy food for lunch at school.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re still alive if that’s what you’re asking, and at the moment, I think my mother’s somewhere in France on vacation. My father wasn’t around long enough for me to remember who he was in the first place.”

A single mother. She had seen the struggles of that situation in her hometown with some of the girls who had grown up either without a father of their own or had become single mothers themselves. A lot of them had struggled immensely to look after one child already but more than one was a different story.

“So, it was just you and Ezra then?” Naomi asked, her eyes glued to the subtle changes in his face as his thoughts of the past went through his mind. Ezra may be right in saying that Marc wasn’t good at saying what he felt, but the longer she watched him, the more she discovered that he wasn’t that hard to read. It was all in his face when a person cared to look.

“We do have an older sister, Leah. She’s married to a man out in the UK. Chances were that my mother stopped there sometime on her way to France.” A small smile on his face. Half-lidded eyes that stared into the distance. There was something about this man that made her want to analyze all of these things and she didn’t know why. “I answered a question, so it’s your turn.”

She didn’t mean to flinch a little at that. “Ask away. I’m an open book usually.”

“Why did you keep your hair so short?”

Okay, she’ll admit that that wasn’t the question she expected him to ask. Especially since she had already dived into his work and his family. “Well, it’s not really a deep reason. It’s just easier to maintain, especially when it comes to hospital work. The last thing you ever want is something gross getting stuck in your hair.”

He covered his mouth with his hand for a second, looking away. For a second, Naomi thought he was shocked until he heard the start of a laughing fit coming from him.