Chapter 10

I sit and stare at the phone on my desk for fifteen minutes. Jeff the gym guy is my help? How? Is Toby slowly losing his mind? Or am I losing mine not so slowly? How am I supposed to go to this man who, until forty-five minutes ago, I thought was trying to steal Donna from me? What am I supposed to say to him? 'Sorry I thought you wanted my future wife. Now that I know you're gay, can we work together to make sure she doesn't thwart my plans?' That doesn't seem to be the way to go. Maybe I should say something like, 'Please keep showing Donna nothing but crap for the next eleven months, then it'll be time for her to move in with me and you'll be out any commission whatsoever.' Yeah, I'm sure he'll like that better.

I finally catch a glimpse of Donna walking past my office. I've been back for an hour, so I'm somewhat scared. It only takes about ten minutes to go through a house unless you really like it, so I'm worried that she loved it. She wasn't gone long enough to put an offer in on it, right? Unless of course, she sent Jeff to the office and he's going to fax the paperwork to her here. Is that what's happening? I mean, we were only in the homicide house for a minute and a half!

Or…what if it did only take ten minutes to go through the house and then she went driving around to let her anger for me boil over and I'm about to get it big time. My only comfort on that thought being that this building is full of secret service agents, so I'm probably not in physical danger. At least not until we leave.

She goes straight to her desk and starts working instead of coming in here and yelling at me, which scares me as well, because I don't know what to make of it. Is she so mad that she isn't speaking to me? I'd rather her yell, then it gets out in the open and out of her system. And what if she's waiting on the fax from Jeff? I'm going absolutely insane, this house-hunting thing can send a person to the looney bin.

Finally, she walks in my office with her head buried in one file and hands me another. Then she turns around to walk out, and I know I have to stop her. "Donna."

She takes a deep breath and stops walking, still facing the door and away from me. "I don't want to argue right now," she says in a controlled voice.

"I don't want to argue at all. How was the place?" Please say you hated it. Please say you hated it. Hell, say it was the most amazing townhouse in the world and that you're moving in tomorrow as long as you say it in a voice that sounds like you don't hate me.

She shrugs and turns around slowly. "It was nice," she says in a sad voice that sounded almost like it had a tear behind it. Oh hell, she's pouting. What happened?

"What happened?" I ask in a demanding voice as I stand up and walk to the front of my desk.

"Nothing."

I will kill those sons of bitches. "Did Jeff or Mark…"

She cuts me off. "No."

"Did it sell already? Cause we can take care of that Donna. I know you didn't want me to before, but…"

She shakes her head and looks down, cutting me off again. "It didn't sell."

"Then what?" And what am I doing? The sub-plan Josh! Look away from the pout and keep your mind on the sub-plan.

"It wasn't fun," she says quietly, kicking the corner of the chair by her foot.

This response confuses me. "What?"

She shrugs again. "I don't know. It wasn't fun. Mark and Jeff walked around the place holding hands and talking about what could be done to each room; they had fun. You go house hunting with your… it's not fun buying a house alone. Admitting that you're going to live alone for the rest of your life."

"Donna, the rest of your life?" I ask with a smile.

"At least the foreseeable future. It's like admitting defeat." I'm so in love with this woman.

"Have you felt like this the whole time?" She shakes her head back and forth and looks up at me shyly.

I try to suppress the grin on my face, but I can feel it appearing on it's own. I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, but was it fun before because she was looking with me and I'm her…. that she was talking about? "Why not?"

She just shrugs and keeps looking at me with that pout on her face and I'm tempted to kiss it off of her. Sure, I've been tempted before, but this is perhaps the most tempted I've ever been, and believe me, that's quite a tempt. I mean, this is the woman who caused me countless fantasies by wearing a certain red dress. This is the woman who kept me up nights thinking of her and a sixteen year-old punk named Freddy. This is a woman whom I almost proposed to the night of the second inauguration. This is the woman I almost killed a photojournalist for, not to mention a lawyer from Ways and Means. And this moment, in my office on a Wednesday afternoon, while she's wearing a simple gray pair of pants and a pink sweater with her bottom lip stuck out is the moment I'm not going to be able to stop myself? Step away from the woman, Josh. Step away from the woman.

I take a deep breath and one step backwards, and she obviously takes this as some sort of refusal from me, because she looks down at the ground again and kicks at the chair. "I gotta get back to work," she says quietly before turning around and walking to the door.

And I know. Watching her right there, I know. I can't let her leave. I can't let her stay unhappy. "Donna. I'm sorry you didn't have fun. And I'm sorry I was an idiot about Jeff and Mark. I do want to help you with the house. I wasn't just going to…"

"But it was that a little bit, right?" She turns around and asks, sounding almost hopeful and again, I try unsuccessfully to stop the smile on my face.

"Well," I say, flashing my dimples. "Since I was already there…"

She smiles too, which makes me inexplicably happy. "You're impossible."

I walk back to my chair and sit down. "You should've seen it coming, it was no different than how I usually act around your gomers."

Finally, her smile reaches her eyes. "Ahh… I was wondering when we'd get to that word. And how was I supposed to know your… bizarre behavior was because of a gay man?" She both know that the 'bizarre behavior' is really jealousy, but since a boss would never be jealous of an employee, we're careful not to call it that. You understand.

"How was I supposed to know he's gay?"

She raises her eyebrows at me. "Well, for one thing, I told you."

"Well…yeah, I guess."

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"What if I altered the plan?" I ask, plopping into the couch in his office. I don't want to say anything, but why is his office three times the size of mine? And this is one comfortable couch, I should know, I've slept on it countless times.

"What plan?" By the way, don't tell Donna about me sleeping here.

"What plan? The plan." He looks up and gives me the 'I've got work to do' look. "Don't give me that look, you said you were bored."

"Not bored enough to give advice about love."

"There's a good chance you'll be able to make fun of me at some point during the conversation."

He looks at me for a second, and then puts down his notebook. "Good point. Shoot."

"Ok, what if I altered the plan?"

"I don't know what the plan is. I'm going to need details."

What? "You said everyone knew the plan."

He looks at me like I've lost it. Why do people keep looking at me like that? Could it be the conversations I keep having aloud that I think aren't aloud? "I said everyone knows what plan?"

"The End of the Administration plan."

"It has a name?"

"Of course. All good plans have names."

"And I said everyone knows this plan?"

"Dropping to one knee and proposing in the bullpen, taking her back…"

He cuts me off. "You're really going to do that?" His eyes bug completely out of his head and it occurs to me that I've never seen his face with this much expression before. Hmm…

I nod. "Yes."

He stares at me for a few seconds. "That's just an office joke because no one thinks you'll be able to wait very long after we leave office."

"Oh…"

"There's really a plan?"

"You said you knew there was!"

"I just… I meant…I knew you'd start dating her once the term was over. That's all I was saying."

"Oh…."

"You're gonna propose to Donna in the bullpen? When?"

I shrug. "January 25th at 5:00pm. That's when she won't be my employee anymore."

"Is this a joke?"

I shake my head. "I even have a ring picked out."

"You don't think you should date her first?" I love how Toby can be completely freaking out and still have a nonchalant sound to his voice.

"Nah."

"So… the sub-plan is protecting a real plan," he says, standing up and pacing a little.

"Yes."

"And now you'd like to alter that plan."

"Yes."

"How?"

"I don't know. How 'bout I propose to her today instead?"

He stops walking and gapes at me. "In the bullpen?"

"No, well…no."

"Josh, you can't be engaged to Donna yet."

"Why not?"

He rubs his head and looks back at me. "Because you can't date Donna yet," he says quietly.

"I won't date her, I'll just be engaged to her," I say, propping my feet up on his coffee table.

"And you think you're gonna be engaged to her and not be tempted to…date her."

"To sleep with her you mean?"

He nods. "Yes."

"You have a valid point."

"Almost always. Anyway, it's not the plan that needs altered," he says, walking to his door, looking out in the hallway and then shutting us in before resuming his pacing. What is he, a spy?

"It's not?"

"No, it's the sub-plan." He rubs his head again. "God help me, now I'm talking like you."