LITMIR.BIZ

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guilt.

      

      “I know about the bid opening tomorrow morning, Roger. I’ll be there.” Shifting the cellular phone, Nick paced around the sofa in Chessa’s small living room, using his free hand to riffle through his appointment book. “Have my secretary reschedule all appointments to end by two o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next ten weeks.”

      “Impossible.” Roger Barlow’s voice was thin and strained, as always, and high-pitched with the stress of being second in command for a business growing faster than a paranoid pragmatist could comfortably handle. “We’re meeting with the CEO of National Technologies on Thursday to pitch a marketing strategy for outfitting their corporate headquarters and three satellite manufacturing facilities. That contract could be worth a half million dollars. We can’t reschedule.”

      Barlow was a good man, with a by-the-book persona that provided needed balance to his own loosely creative management style. His constant whining was irritating, but Nick respected his business acumen. “If it can’t be rescheduled, you’ll have to handle the meeting yourself.”

      “Me?” The poor man’s voice squeaked like a rusty hinge. “I don’t know a surveillance cam from a zonal keypad. I’m only a lowly finance director. You’re the technology guru. Without you, there is no meeting.”

      That was true. Nick had always been good with electronics, he had put himself through college installing alarm systems designed by others. Now he designed his own systems and had built a successful company from the ground up.

      “Okay, fine. Cancel the meeting.”

      “Cancel it? Have you lost your mind? What in hell could be more important that a half-milliondollar contract?”

      “Soccer.”

      The poor man sputtered as if he’d swallowed a peach pit, but Nick was distracted by voices upstairs, where Chessa was explaining that Bobby couldn’t stay up any later because it was a school night. The frustrated boy was pleading his case, quite eloquently at that, insisting it wasn’t every day a kid got to meet his very own father.

      Nick’s chest tightened. He was suddenly impatient with Roger’s nattering on about meetings and money as if there was nothing more important on earth. A week ago Nick might have agreed with that. Today he knew better.

      Today he was standing in a home filled with odd bric-a-brac, decorative crafts and unique furnishings that would have appeared garish in less-talented hands. Chessa clearly had a knack for creating character out of chaos. A giant cable spool had been turned into a telephone table from which huge, dried flowers bristled in an oddly appropriate wilderness bouquet. Coats by the front door dangled from the plywood antlers of a Bullwinkle cartoon character, five feet high and lacquered in primary colors bright enough to make the eyes bleed.

      An olive-green sideboard stenciled with Dutch designs towered beside a brocade sofa spruced up with embroidered throw pillows and a draped afghan, studded by riotous cartoon characters. Every space on the wall was filled with twisted wreaths of dried twigs and flowers, puffy quilt miniatures trimmed with handmade lace, and peculiar garage-sale items like gigantic carved salad tongs, eighteenth-century bedwarmers and a rusted wagon wheel studded with spears of dried lavender and windflowers.

      And of course there were photographs. Dozens of them, set proudly on the spool telephone table, the green sideboard, an iron plant stand that had been converted to a knickknack shelf, and dotting the walls—all lovingly framed with handmade lace or tucked into a nest of braided twigs.

      Every photograph was of Bobby. Bobby as an infant, as a drooling toddler, as a grinning first-grader with no front teeth. Bobby in a football jersey. Bobby at the beach. Bobby throwing a snowball. School portraits, candid snapshots, year after year of his son’s life captured in pictures.

      Nick had already missed all those years. He wouldn’t miss any more.

      Closing the appointment book, he tucked it back into his pocket, interrupting Roger’s sniveled protest with a tone that brooked no argument. “I’ve agreed to assist my son’s soccer coach. The team practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll be unavailable on those afternoons for the duration of the season. As for the National Technologies meeting, you can either reschedule it, cancel it or handle it alone. You decide.”

      “But—”

      “I’ll be in the office tomorrow morning. We’ll discuss it then.”

      The poor man sounded apoplectic. “But what about the fish?”

      “Fish?”

      “There’s a goldfish in the water cooler.”

      “Oh, that fish.” Nick chuckled, having nearly forgotten what was bound to have been one of his most memorable pranks. “Is the fish in question causing any distress?”

      “Er, well, Ms. Pipps from Accounting is quite troubled. She won’t drink the water, of course. No one will.”

      That came as no surprise, although the cooler had been disabled lest an unobservant soul attempted to use the converted fish tank for its original purpose. “You’ll find several cases of imported spring water in the lunch room. Oh, and there’s a box of fish food on my desk.”

      “Fish food?”

      “Just a pinch, Roger. Mustn’t overfeed, you know.” With that, Nick thumbed the cell phone off, folded it into his jacket pocket, and focused his attention on the soft footsteps descending the stairs. He knew it was Chessa. There was a distinctive pattern to her movement, a delicate rhythm to her step.

      Over the past few hours he’d studied everything about her, from the timid smile that she offered too rarely to the way her eyes widened when she was taken by surprise, as she had been when Bobby had insisted Nick stay for dinner. He’d recognized her anxiety and felt guilty about not having graciously extricated himself from the situation.

      The truth was that he’d wanted to stay, had wanted to continue his study of this intriguing woman with the haunted eyes. Everything about her fascinated him, even her unique manner of wielding a dinner fork as if it were something regal. Nick had pieced every mannerism into his memory, searching for something, anything that would jog him into recalling details of their past together. The image remained elusive, a fleeting ghost from a past he’d escaped long ago and the memories he’d left behind.

      Halfway down the stairs, Chessa paused when she saw him, gripped the varnished oak banister so tightly that even from his vantage point in the living room, Nick could see her fingers whiten.

      She moistened her lips, regarded him with thinly disguised disapproval. “Bobby would like to say good-night to you.” Avoiding his gaze, she descended the final steps and crossed the living room without so much as a glance in his direction. “Please leave his bedroom door open and turn the hall light on when you’re through. Bobby is afraid of the dark.”

      With that she disappeared into the kitchen. Nick went to say good-night to his son.

      

      Thirty minutes later Nick came downstairs just as Chessa emerged from the kitchen carrying a flat sheet of carved apples. Her eyes widened a moment, but she recovered quickly and swished past him as if unaffected by his presence. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten how to get downstairs.”

      He stepped around the old steamer trunk that enhanced the eclectic decor by serving as a coffee table. “Bobby is a very verbal young man,” he said. There seemed no reason to explain that he’d spent the past half hour explaining why refusal to move into their guest room didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be a part of his life. Not that the idea didn’t hold a certain appeal, although it didn’t take a psychic to realize that Chessa would be less than amenable to the idea.

      Stopping at a closed door behind the stairwell, she propped the flat pan against her hip, freed one hand and opened the door, disappearing inside before Nick could spring forward to assist her.

      The hollow sound of footsteps on wooden stairs

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