“Ellis, is that you? Where the hell have you been?”
“What?”
His wife Isla, appeared at the top of the stairs, bathrobe flapping open, hands clutching her ear as she apparently tried to push her earring in. The frown on her face drew his attention away from the relative lack of clothing under the robe.
“You’re late!”
“Only twenty minutes, honey. The traffic was heavy, accident on the freeway.”
“Well, Scott and Abbie are picking us up in thirty minutes or have you forgotten?”
He gulped quickly, having forgotten they were going out to dinner with her brother and his wife tonight to celebrate the younger couple’s anniversary.
“I knew you’d forgotten. Now, get a move on.”
With that, Isla flounced back into the master bedroom and he dropped his laptop case off in the den before making his way upstairs to shower and change.
He was just pulling his shirt on when the doorbell rang.
“Get that please sweetie, it’s probably the babysitter.”
Ellis was fumbling with the shirt buttons all the way down the stairs and had only managed three of them before he arrived at the front door. Pulling it open, he was surprised to find a stranger standing there.
“Hi, you must be Ellis, I’m Laura. Carrie’s sister. Carrie couldn’t make it tonight so I said I’d substitute, you don’t mind do you, Carrie said she’d ring.”