Free A Promise of Forever by M. E. Brady

two, you dropped everything to follow him in his private plane. I’ll be over at noon and we can talk during lunch,” she said before hanging up the phone.
    Katelyn had decided last night, while lying in bed, that she would tell Gianfranco the truth; she would do it tonight. She would ask Rosa, when she came for lunch, if she could take Jenny overnight and she would invite him for dinner. She would attempt to tell him the truth and they would decide how best to break the news to their daughter.
    Katelyn stared at the phone and sighed. She had never told Rosa about Jenny’s father before and this was definitely going to be a lot to take in at one time for her friend. She had never told this to another living soul. It was her secret and it had been well guarded for so long that it finally felt as if a giant weight were being lifted from her shoulders as she prepared herself to tell the truth. It felt good. Finally, she would be able to admit the truth to someone else; who better to tell first than Rosa.
    The next hour or two went by quickly, Katelyn barely had time to clean the apartment and catch up on laundry before her friend was due to arrive.
    Rosa and a delivery truck from a local florist arrived at the same time. Katelyn smiled as the man handed her a beautiful and unexpected arrangement of red roses. They weren’t her favorite flower so she knew they weren’t from Gianfranco. “They’re not from him, are they?” Rosa asked, she noticed the disappointment in her friend’s face. Rosa knew roses were not Katelyn’s favorite flower; she also suspected that the mystery man knew that too, by the look on Katelyn’s face when she was handed the arrangement. So she assumed the roses had to have come from the only other person in Katelyn’s life, Adam. She couldn’t put her finger on it; but she just didn’t like Adam Taylor. Call it a woman’s intuition but she knew that Adam was not the right man for her good friend.
    “Why don’t you stop seeing Adam? You know, he thinks there’s more to your relationship than there is, right?” Rosa questioned. She walked passed Katelyn as her friend filled a vase with water for the flowers. Rosa had been emptying the grocery bag she brought in; she had everything she needed to make her famous chicken salad. She began to heat up the chicken in a frying pan and clean and shred the lettuce as the chicken cooked. She turned to her friend and told her to relax; she would take care of lunch. Katelyn smiled and continued her attempt at small talk while setting the table and opening a chilled bottle of wine. It took only a few moments for Rosa to join her again.
    “I’m sorry about that remark in the kitchen. It was uncalled for, regardless of how I feel about Adam,” Rosa said as she gently placed the lunch plates on the table. “Your feelings matter to me; and I shouldn’t have said that.”
    “So much has happened in one day that I’m not sure where to begin my narrative. I quit my job yesterday. Jack Taylor requested a private meeting with me yesterday morning. I went to it thinking we were going to discuss the article I just completed when, in fact, he had called the meeting to discuss my relationship with his son. He made me so angry during our meeting that I reacted before I had a chance to think,” Katelyn said with regret.
    She briefly told her about the events of the previous day and Rosa was a little shocked, to say the least, and she hadn’t gotten to the best part yet. Rosa knew Katelyn loved her job and did it well. “Why does Jack Taylor want to jeopardize your career when he was obviously impressed with your work?” Rosa asked.
    “Apparently, he finds the thought of Adam involved with someone who has a child to be repulsive. He called my Jenny a bastard and said she would never inherit a dime of his money if he had anything to say about it. He actually said that and then complimented my work in the next breath. He said that if I discontinued my