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I hadn't seen Ashley for two days. I missed her. I was sitting in the living room thinking about her just before midnight, when the lights went on in the house across the lot. I rang her number. I got a tentative, "Hello."
"I'm going to be in the gazebo in about five minutes."
"Okay." Click.
There was no moon, but the stars were out, even though with the city lights, they weren't too well defined. In the gazebo it was night black. "Milo?"
"Here, Ash Baby." She fell into my arms.
"God I miss you. Hold me." We both wanted to let ourselves go, but knew this wasn't the place for it. We sat and cuddled and told each other what we had been doing since Wednesday night, our glorious night we had spent together.
"How is your new employee working out?"
"I think enough of him that I let him take the truck tonight so he could visit his mother. Any teenage kid that is looking forward to the day he comes of age so he can become the guardian of his sick mother deserves a little help from me. More and more I want my girls here with me. Not so much away from Jean, but away from her husband."
"I want them with you too. What a nice family we will have if you get them to live with us."
"You really mean that, don't you?"
"Yes I do." We kissed and then Ashley asked what I was going to do with them tomorrow.
"Well I'm going to get you to feed them breakfast and then they are working in the deli until you come for them."
"That's going to be hard on them isn't it?"
"I don't think so. They will be close to me and close to Mark. They get along great with him. I have heard them introduce him as their big brother, proud as punch." We kissed a couple of more times and then we left for our respective beds.