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Kate was honestly having the worst week of her professional life, anything and everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, she’d been bad moods most evenings by the time she and Anthony had fallen into bed, she was too tired and too annoyed to do more than just let him play big spoon and fall asleep with his hands on her breast, feeling the rhythmic beating of her heart as they slept.
To make it worse, she was due on her period so she was in that lovely place between wanting to scream into a pillow, cry into a bucket of ice cream or go put her fist through a wall.
Monday hadn’t been too bad, though her stupid assistant that she shared with finance had managed to lose the files on the proposal for the online marketing, and Kate had some legal terms to consider for Simon. It had taken until Wednesday to find them and the work was due next week. She was seriously in need of her own assistant. She really did but she just didn’t have the time and Thomas hadn’t been feeling well for a few days so he had been off on leave, which left Kate in charge by default apparently.
She had no idea how Thomas worked like this, it was unstructured and disorganised even by Kate’s standards.
Tuesday she had to fire someone. She had asked Anthony, and Daphne both of whom said as he was Legal, it had to be someone in legal who fired him and as sudo-boss it was her duty to do so. She didn’t feel good doing it even if it was the right thing to do, as he had leaked details and broke confidentiality agreements, the guy was lucky really he was just being fired and not sued. The guy had cried, then got angry and then had to be escorted off the premises by Security.
And it just got worse from there so by the time Anthony stuck his head in her office on Friday, she had driven them to work that morning and was looking forward to spending some time together over the weekend and said “Hey Kate, I need to shoot off early today” her face fell which Anthony noticed but he quickly added “but if you want to come to mine tonight still? Go grab Newton and come over about 7ish?” he said with a small hopeful smile on his face, Kate felt a tiny bit better, yes not seeing him this afternoon in his gym gear would be a disappointment but seeing him later.
An hour later Kate was in absolute agony, her period came with a raging force and she threw up, she had to cut a meeting short to go be sick from the sheer pain she was in, maybe going to Anthony’s was a bad idea, all she wanted was a hot water bottle and to cry to some shitty film.
It broke her heart but when she got back to her desk she text him
Hey… erm i’m not sure i’m gonna come around. I’ve been sick at work 🤢😭 xx
It took less than 30 seconds for a reply to come through
😲 Oh no! Are you alright? Was it something you ate at lunch? Can I get you anything? 🥰 A xxx
Kate smiled at the thoughtfulness of her boyfriend as she replied
A cure for body crippling cramps… otherwise it’s just mother nature🖕🏾. I’ll be fine in a few days🤞🏽. I just feel rotten😫. K xxx
She sat there at her desk, pressing her fingers to her temple trying to stave off the raging headache that was now forming.
A: Oh lovely🥺. Why don’t you head home early? Just take the rest of the day. I don’t want you to work if you’re not feeling up to it ❤️❤️ xxxxx
K: I’m not sure my boss is a bit of a hardarse 🤪 don’t want him to fire me 😘 xxx
A: Well I am sure I can have a word with him for you.😍 Go Home Kate.😘😘 xxxx
K: Fine. i shall message you later and see how I am 😘😘😘xxx
It had taken Kate’s every ounce of self-restraint to not write “Love you” at the end… that would just be awkward. She knew she did love him or was well on her way to doing so but telling him in a text was just awkward
She got a reply which was just a gif of someone blowing kisses and chuckled as she felt another wave of nausea washing over her and she decided to just call it quits.
She turned her out of the office on and left for the day.
She collected Newton and drove herself home, stopping to throw up twice. Honestly, Mother Nature had a lot to answer for with these cramps and the bleeding and just everything. She got home and realised she had no ice cream in her freezer and that pretty much was the sum of her really shit week.
She made herself a hot water bottle, put on the fluffiest jumper she could find and a pair of Anthony’s spare shorts he had left behind, put on A Cinderella Story and fell asleep on the sofa.
She awoke about 2 hours later with a light knock to the door and Newton barking, ”Newton please stop barking I have a headache” she grumbled wondering who could be bothering her at 4pm on a Friday afternoon when everyone would assume she was at work.
Not even bothering to look through the peephole she opened the door “Anthony?” she blinked at him rather stupidly.
She hadn’t actually expected him to turn up, she wasn’t supposed to go to his til 7 and she was going to cancel but here he was, a backpack on, shopping bags in one hand and a huge bouquet of Tulips in the other and a wide handsome smile on his face.
“I figured if you were feeling shit that I would just come to you instead of you coming to me… I had planned to surprise you with a nice meal but i’ll save that for tomorrow if you’re feeling better” he grinned at her “are you gonna let me in or do I have to stand out here all night?” he smirked at her shocked expression.
“Oh right yea sorry…” she said, moving out of the doorway, taking the tulips from him, her heart hammering at the sheer thoughtfulness of her boyfriend.
“I didn’t know what usually worked for you so I brought loads that my sisters all prefer and I wasn’t sure if you had Ice Cream so I stopped by Tesco’s and got you some Hagen Daz Dolce du Leche and some Kulfi as I know you like that as well” he grinned as he just strode into her house and straight into the kitchen.
Kate followed him and stood at her kitchen door staring at him open mouthed as he put stuff away “I got you some more of the ginger nuts that you like as well, I noticed you seem to eat them during this sort of week and that you’d ran out this morning when we left. I had gotten them for mine but since I was coming”
“You noticed I eat ginger biscuits the week I'm due to come on?” she blurted out in shock
“Of course I noticed… I notice everything about you” he said with a bemused smirk on his face.
Kate walked purposefully in the kitchen, put her tulips on the bench and grabbed him and kissed him “Oh Anthony, you are so sweet! you are the nicest man in the world” she said as she broke away after a moment.
Anthony’s hand had snaked around the middle “oh I'm not sure about nicest… most handsome, or maybe dangerous” he grinned.
She pressed another kiss to his lips “nope definitely, the nicest” she said.
Now he had finished putting away his shopping he pulled into the living room saying “if you insist, now come on. Let’s go watch some trashy crap on the TV, I'll refill your hot water bottle and we can have a Chinese for tea later” he grinned as he placed her on the sofa, taking her Hedwig covered hot water bottle from her and disappearing from the room.
Kate knew as she watched him walk away, that she really was in love with this man and if anyone wanted him from her, they were going to have to pry him from her cold dead hands… as she was not walking away from this…
It was the first time since before her father died that she felt so cared for and so loved, he had done all of this for her, without asking, without complaining, all because he wanted her to feel better… he might never want to marry but right now… Kate would take whatever she could get from him.