LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER ONE

      JARED HUNTER took a deep breath as the elevator doors slid open. Stepping into the large open office filled with workstations and desks, he looked straight ahead, toward his private office in the far corner. For a moment he wished he had postponed this. His briefcase gripped in one hand, he began the long walk, ignoring the heads that turned his way.

      “Sorry about Mrs. Hunter,” Jeb called from his station.

      Julie Myers stood as he passed her desk, her features serious and sad. “I’m so sorry, Jared,” she said softly.

      He nodded grimly and kept walking. Still dazed by the turn of events, he longed for the sanctity of his office. It was hard to believe MaryEllen was dead. He didn’t realize people died from pneumonia these days. With all the fancy medicines in the world, they couldn’t have stopped the devastation of such an old disease?

      “Jared, are you all right?” Helen Walter, his secretary, rose from her desk outside his door and moved toward him. Her eyes brimmed with sympathy.

      Jared nodded. “It was a bitch of a trip, but at least I’m home now. How are things here?” He clenched his jaw, feeling the strain. It wouldn’t get easier.

      “Morale is down. But with the rapid expansion over the last three years, only the old-timers actually knew MaryEllen. Still, many of the employees have talked to her on the phone, and everyone knew she was the other partner.”

      Noticing she’d avoided the obvious, that MaryEllen had also been his wife, Jared wearily pushed open the door and entered his office. Mail was stacked in neat piles on the right side of his desk. A small mound of folders sat on the far left side. Pink phone messages were centered with a long cream-colored envelope across them.

      He rounded the desk and dropped his briefcase on the credenza behind his chair. The view of San Francisco Bay sparkling in the afternoon sunshine went unnoticed as he surveyed the work waiting. God, he was tired!

      “You just get in?” Helen asked, hovering in the doorway.

      “Flight finally landed about an hour ago. I came straight here.”

      “Are you really okay? I know you and MaryEllen lived three thousand miles apart these last three years, but she was your wife.”

      He glanced at her. “Helen. you know that was a legal technicality.” He paused. “Is the gossip mill humming?”

      “No more than usual. Those of us who have been here since the beginning made sure the others knew you and MaryEllen had been married purely to facilitate the start-up of Hunter Associates. I think some of the new employees didn’t realize she was your wife. They never met her. She stayed in New York, you know.”

      He nodded. He skimmed the top message, then flicked the envelope. “What’s this?” The rest of his mail had been opened and lay in one of his folders.

      “I separated those messages. They’ve been calling every day for the last two weeks. Yesterday we received the registered letter. I tried to explain why we couldn’t reach you in Bangkok. Obviously they weren’t monitoring the news or they would have heard about the typhoon.”

      Jared shrugged. He slipped out of his suit jacket, draped it across the back of his chair and slowly sat. “Anyone from here attend the funeral?” he asked.

      “No. But most of the New York office went. Bob Mason sent a report. I put it in the folder with the rest of your mail. Don’t blame yourself for not being there, Jared. You would have been there had it been possible. MaryEllen would have understood.”

      “Why are these lawyers calling?” Jared didn’t want to discuss the reasons he had not been able to get to New York in time. He’d tried his best, but fate had decreed otherwise. It was over and done with, time to move on. His anger at fate had abated, and a philosophical calm replaced it. If anyone had understood business , problems, it had been MaryEllen. She had thrived on them.

      “They didn’t tell me, just insisted they had to reach you. I gave them the Bangkok telephone number, so they could see for themselves why we couldn’t get through. You know lawyers—not very trusting. Why they’d think we were trying to hinder communications, I

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