That Beautiful Orange Gown Read online

  "Okay."

  "After we come up with a plan, I will expect you to follow the plan. That's when we'll have a discussion if you don't follow the plan we devise."

  She looked a little alarmed. "Like if I forget to do something, or pay something?"

  "Absolutely, because I'll be reminding you."

  "Oh, well, that's okay then. That's my problem; I forget to pay some of these things. If you're going to remind me, that's what I need."

  "I will definitely be reminding you. Hopefully, it will become habit for you then. Now, let's see what we have here. Let's make a pile of bills that need paid that are current, and a pile that are past due."

  When they finished, they had two piles, sort of. There were two in the current pile, with a large stack in the past due pile. Emily's face was red as she glanced up at him. "You said you wouldn't be upset with me today, remember?"

  He tried to ease her concerns with a big smile. "I do remember, and I meant it. I'm not upset with you, but I do see we have some work to do. We'll get these taken care of, come up with a plan, and this is when you have to be careful. If you blow off the plan we come up with, that is when I may become upset."

  "How upset will you get? I mean, if I forget to pay a bill—"

  Nick stood up, pulling her up with him. He sat down in the chair she was occupying, pulling her down on his lap. "This is as good a time as any to tell you exactly how this is going to work, my sweet little lady. I can see now that we have a serious problem here. You've said that you worked with two other credit counselors, but that neither one helped. That tells me a lot, as well. As a credit counselor, there are only so many things we can do to try to motivate someone."

  Emily blushed, and looked down.

  "But I see myself here as more than just a credit counselor. You've become more than just my girlfriend. You're the lady I care about enough to do everything I can to protect you, and make sure you're safe, healthy, and happy. Having credit problems, constantly throwing away money on late fees, and getting threatening letters and phone calls are not conducive to you being happy. Therefore, I plan to do whatever is necessary to keep you safe, and happy."

  Emily looked at him, listening. She liked hearing how much she meant to him, and had snuggled in against his shoulder. When she heard his last words though, she sat straight up. "How?"

  "The same way I intend to protect you and keep you safe from anything else, with a spanking."

  She started to stand up, but he held her tight. "Emily, listen to me a minute. Correct me if I'm wrong on anything I'm about to say."

  "Okay."

  "I spanked you one time."

  "And I didn't like it."

  "I'm aware of that. However, a few days afterwards, after you'd had time to recover and think about it, we talked about it. Do you remember that?"

  She nodded, but he wasn't accepting that. This was important, and he wanted there to be no misunderstanding. "Emily?"

  "Yes, I remember."

  "Thank you." He kissed the top of her head, knowing that always seemed to bring a smile to her face. It worked again, so he continued. "You admitted, albeit reluctantly, but you admitted that you'd been warned, and had earned that spanking, did you not?"

  She nodded again, but his stern expression had her quickly answering, "Yes."

  "That's better. You also agreed then that you would prefer that over arguing and fighting, or not speaking to each other, as most couples do when they have a disagreement. Again, am I right about that?"

  She nodded, but simultaneously admitted, "Yes."

  "And you said this relationship was something you wanted to pursue. I will tell you right now, in my opinion, this relationship is definitely something I want to continue. I've come to realize that although we've only been seeing each other about a month, I've fallen in love with you, Emily. I will readily admit it was a shock to me that I could have such strong feelings for you this quickly, but it's proof to me that we have something strong, something lasting between us."

  Emily had grown quiet and was looking down. He gently used his finger to lift her chin, and saw unshed tears in her eyes. Instantly concerned, he pulled her into a hug. "What is it, honey; am I moving too fast? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel rushed. I'm not asking for anything from you in return, I'm really not, but I felt I needed to tell you what my feelings for you are."

  She was shaking her head, and after taking a few seconds to use the tissue Nick handed her, she whispered, "Nick, I feel the same way."

  He let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and looked deep into her eyes. He saw the sincerity of her words, and the love in her eyes.

  She smiled at him and took a cleansing breath. "I was upset with myself when I realized I'd fallen in love with you. I thought it was too soon, but I couldn't help it. I thought something was wrong with me. I didn't know you could love someone this deeply this soon. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to scare you off. I couldn't stand the thought of not seeing you again."

  He took her face gently in his hands and leaned in to kiss her. It was a deeper kiss than he'd given her before, and he was ecstatic when she returned the kiss with more passion than she had before. One hand left her face and went to cup the back of her head, as the kiss intensified. He eventually pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. "I love you, Emily."

  "I love you, too, Nick."

  He pulled her in against his chest, where they held each other, enjoying the moment. Eventually, though, Nick knew he had to finish their talk. He kept her on his lap to do so. "Honey, now that we've established that this relationship is something we both want to continue, we need to finish this."

  "I know," she said, leaning against his chest.

  "I sincerely hope we're in the beginning stages of a forever relationship. But for that relationship to be a happy one, we need to take care of this situation. I definitely don't want us to be arguing about this, or not speaking to each other, or have hard feelings developing over it. That's why, like I said, I plan to motivate you with spankings."

  "But—"

  He grinned as he held up his hand to stop her. "Yes, your butt is exactly where you'll be feeling that motivation. Let me explain this before you get too upset. I told you I will be reminding you, and I will. I will be reminding you more than I would any other client, and I will be encouraging you along the way. I want to see you succeed. But if you do slip up, you will be getting spanked, the same as if you do anything else that puts you or our relationship in danger."

  She studied him a moment. "You're saying the only things I'll be spanked for are things that put me in danger?"

  "You or our relationship, but maybe I need to explain what I mean by being put in danger. I want you to be safe, healthy, and happy. You can be in danger of different kinds of things. Having a temper may not put you in danger physically, but losing your temper and having tantrums repeatedly can do all kinds of damage. Besides putting our relationship in a dangerous place, you can lose friends, lose your job, even get arrested. That puts you in danger of a lot of things."

  She nodded in understanding.

  "Not paying your bills promptly puts you in danger of paying a lot of late fees and having bad credit. Any of these things will interfere with your happiness, and that's something I will not allow."

  "Okay, I'm starting to understand. You're basically not going to let me get away with much, are you?"

  He chuckled. "I aim to help you be the best you can be. I've seen how that makes you happy, and I want you to be happy."

  "The best I can be," she murmured, thinking through what he said.

  "You are brilliant at work. You are creative and come up with very good campaigns. Then you take charge and supervise them with pinpoint accuracy. I see how happy you are when you're doing that. You're truly in your element. I want you to feel that way with your financial affairs, too. And you can. I'll help you."

  She sighed. "I would like to get this cleaned up. It's beco
me such a mess I didn't even know where to start or how to go about it."

  "So you'll let me help you?"

  "I would appreciate your help." After another kiss, she had the cutest little mischievous grin on her face. "So are you going to make me sign a contract to work with you?"

  "Nope," he said with a grin of his own. "I don't have one that spells out the spankings you'll be getting if you don't work the program." He brought her in for another hug, and a final kiss before they got down to business.

  He just shook his head when he found out she had an idea, an estimate as to how much she felt she had in the bank, but didn't really know for sure. They went on the internet to try to figure out what her bank balance was. He showed her how to take the balance they showed, and how to check off the checks she's written lately that had already been deducted. They deducted any other checks that hadn't been deducted from the bank yet. He explained that there may be older checks still out, so they would have to check the balance over the next few months carefully. Once they had a closer guess as to her balance, they set about paying bills, oldest first.

  They worked diligently until midnight, when he declared enough for one night.

  She wasn't ready to stop. "But we're not done."

  "I know that. We're a long way from done, but we're not going to do any more tonight. It's late, and we both need to get some sleep. We'll work on it more tomorrow. Once we get the bills under control as much as we can right now, we have to come up with a budget, and a plan."

  "A plan?"

  "A plan for when, how and where you're going to pay your bills, and then put something in place that will double check it, catch anything you miss."

  "Wow. I thought you just pay them when you can think about it."

  "We can see how well that's worked for you, so let's try it my way now." She nodded.

  Chapter Five

  The next afternoon, Nick and Emily were at her kitchen table, hard at work again. He tried to get her to understand the need for good credit. She didn't know that her credit affected so many things, like her premiums for her car insurance. "What does my credit have to do with my driving?" She was livid.

  "You'd have to ask the insurance industry, but my guess would be that good credit indicates a person who pays attention to what they're doing. I can understand why they would assume that someone who's careless with their finances would be careless with their driving, as well."

  "But I'm not. I'm a good driver," she objected.

  "I agree. But that's still one of the things they use to determine your insurance rates. I didn't say I agree with it, I'm simply saying it happens. So it's just one more reason to work on your credit rating."

  She reluctantly agreed. "I guess."

  As they'd gone over her bills, he was quite surprised at several things. She was behind on more of her bills than he would have guessed. She had six credit cards, all of which were maxed out. He was shocked to find three denial letters, where she'd applied and been turned down for three more. The biggest shock, though, was that she had just been accepted and received another one!

  He looked at her, shaking his head. "Let me see that credit card. What bank was crazy enough to give you another card?"

  She looked upset at his statement. "Hey!" She handed him the card. "I make good money. Why shouldn't they give me a card?"

  "Because you don't pay them back," he stated clearly. He took his wallet out of his pocket and put the card she gave him in it.

  "Hey, what are you doing? I need that card. What if I have an emergency?"

  "Then you use this or your phone." He handed her five $100 bills. "Keep them tucked away somewhere in your purse, away from your other money. I want you to keep them for exactly what you just said; an emergency. I'm going to check on that money regularly, and it better all be there, unless you've had an emergency. And I mean a real emergency. I don't mean a gorgeous pair of shoes that are on sale."

  She blushed. "How do you know I like shoes?"

  His eyebrows flew up almost to his forehead. "Really? In case you haven't noticed, I pay close attention to you. I've noticed you rarely wear the same pair of shoes twice. The same for your clothes. From the looks of your credit cards, that's a problem."

  "I just forget to pay my bills. I make enough money to afford nice clothes."

  "Not right now, you don't."

  "What do you mean? You haven't even asked me how much I make yet."

  "We'll get to that when we do your budget, but right now it's pretty clear you can't afford to keep buying new clothes and shoes. I agree that once we get these paid off, you probably will have sufficient money to buy clothes again, but until we get these credit cards paid off, no more clothes or shoes or purses or jewelry unless we talk about it first."

  "Wait just a minute. Who do you think you are? You can't tell me I'm not allowed to spend my own money."

  "I'll tell you who I think I am. I'm the man who loves you and is hoping to have a future with you. But we decided last night that in order for this relationship to work, we have to get past this credit problem. You also agreed last night to let me help you. I didn't say you can't buy any clothes. I did, however, say I want you to talk to me about it first. If you can prove to me that you need something, and you don't have anything already in your closet that will work, I will approve it."

  "But nothing at all?"

  "Give this a chance, honey. You have to start paying more than the minimum amount due or you'll never have them paid off. You make enough money that we can get you through this, but you have to give it some real effort. We're going to focus on one card at a time and get it paid off. As you pay them down, you'll be paying less each month for interest, which will give you more for the principal. For the next few months, you're going to have to be paying extra on each just to get caught up."

  She saw the troubled look in his eyes and knew he was concerned for her. She was reminded of how much she loved this wonderful man. "You don't have to give me the five hundred. I can go to the bank and take some out."

  He looked at her with a serious frown. "No, Emily, you can't. Haven't you been paying attention to what we've been doing? We've been paying bills, but each time we write a check, that comes off of the amount of money you have in the bank. Haven't you been doing the math, keeping a running balance like I showed you?"

  She blushed, and looked down. "Sorry. I just—"

  "You just assume you make enough that you don't have to worry about it, right?" She didn't answer until he cleared his throat. "Emily, I'd like an answer, please."

  "I guess that is what I did," she admitted.

  "Well, that has to stop," he said adamantly. "Until you get things paid off, you have to realize that it's going to take all you make to fix this problem." He gave her a few moments to digest his words. "Now, take that $500 and put it in your purse. But I'm serious; I will be checking on that money. Unless you have a real emergency, you better not touch that."

  "What do you consider an emergency?"

  "I think you know what I'm talking about, little one, but just to be sure, I mean something like car trouble, or another unexpected expense."

  "But if you take that credit card what am I going to do about meals? I have to buy lunch."

  "You'll be on a cash and carry basis for the next little while."

  "But I never carry cash on me."

  "You will be now. That's one of the first things I do with all my clients. People often spend more than they realize when they put it on a card. If you pay cash, it's clear to see." She looked doubtful, so he gave her an example. "Let's plan for this week. How much cash do you think you'll need for this week?"

  She looked totally confused. "I don't know."

  "How much do you normally spend in a week's time?"

  "I'm not sure. Maybe seventy-five dollars?"

  "So if I give you that amount, that will do you until Friday night?"

  "Probably. Maybe I better make it a hundred to be sure."

  "
Okay." He took more money out of his wallet and counted out a hundred dollars in smaller bills and put it in front of her. "Okay, it's Monday morning and you're going to work. Do you go straight to work?"

  "Yes. Well, I stop at Starbucks to get a latte and scone, but then I go to work."

  "Okay. Take out whatever it costs for that, and put it off to the side. Now, it's lunch. Take out what you normally spend for lunch." They continued through the day, up until bedtime. By Wednesday she'd run out of money.

  "Wow. I guess I spend more than I thought."

  "Yeah, I guess you do. I did this for a reason. I think now we're ready to work on a budget."

  She sighed and nodded. They spent the rest of the afternoon coming up with a budget they both felt she could live with. She put the $500 in her purse and he was pretty sure she understood what she was to use it for.

  She looked exhausted and defeated by the time they finished. He didn't want her to feel defeated, and that concerned him. "What's wrong, honey? You look like you just lost your last friend."

  She sounded very depressed. "I thought I was doing okay, but it turns out I'm broke. What a mess I've made of my life."

  "Whoa, hey, I don't want to hear you talking like that again, young lady. Your life is not a mess. You have a lovely home, a very good job, and a man who loves you more than life. You're going through a trying time financially right now, but it's not anything you can't overcome."

  She shrugged. "Maybe."

  He picked her up and sat her down on his lap again and pulled her chin up so she was looking at him. "I don't want you sitting there feeling sorry for yourself. Do you know how many people would love to be in your shoes?"

  "What do you mean? I owe a ton of money."

  "You do owe a considerable amount of money at the time, but you also have a home that's mortgage-free. And you have a good job. Your home is the only other thing I wanted to talk to you about, but I wasn't sure you're ready to talk about it yet. Since you're feeling sorry for yourself, though, we may as well."