LITMIR.BIZ

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      “DON’T FORGET, NICKY. Please, sis, you can’t forget.”

      Nicky Taylor ground her teeth, then stopped, worried that her older sister, Susan, would hear it over the Bluetooth connection.

      “What?” Susan asked. “What did you say?”

      “Aieee!” Nicky swerved her car, then slammed on the brakes as she tried to avoid a motorcycle zipping too fast down the oncoming lane. No less than three other cars had to do something similar, and their horns blared angrily all around her.

      “Damn cyclists!” she cursed even as she flushed in embarrassment. Truthfully, that near-accident had been her fault. She’d been trying to maneuver around a slow-moving bus. She was in a section of Chicago that had the triple threat: narrow lanes, heavy traffic and three streets intersecting in a confusing mess.

      “Nicky! Nicky, are you all right?”

      “Yes, yes,” she groused to cover her own guilt. “I’m meeting Tammy at that club and I’m late.”

      “You’re always late. What happened?”

      “Nothing, nothing. Just a motorcyclist and a city bus.” She glanced at the time and her chest tightened exponentially. Damn, she hated being late. “Tammy is going to have a fit. The first amateur act has probably already started.”

      “We’re used to you being late. I’ll text her that you’re on your way. Just drive carefully, okay?”

      Nicky winced, knowing that her reputation was well deserved. But she was building a career—didn’t they understand that? “I’m not always late. And I drive just fine.”

      Susan’s inelegant snort blasted through the line. “You drive fine when you’re concentrating on it. When was the last time you tried to do one thing at a time?”

      Nicky didn’t answer. She was too busy straightening out her car behind the gawd-awful bus. At least with it going slowly, she’d be able to check her e-mails as soon as she got off the phone. Her company manufactured plastic containers. It wasn’t rocket science, but they made a lot of containers. Unfortunately, the world was cutting back on its plastic consumption, which meant as regional head of five distribution nodes, Nicky had to find a way to scale back without firing hundreds of employees.

      Part of her just wanted to throw in her resignation along with the layoffs. Shipping plastic parts around the country wasn’t exactly what she’d planned when she received her MBA. She’d dreamed of making green products, of earning her living while saving the planet. Plastic was as far from that as she could have gotten. But they’d offered her money and a fast track to the executive boardroom. She hadn’t counted on the hundred-hour workweek or the fact that she’d stall out in middle management while the economy took a serious downturn.

      Fortunately her little sister, Tammy, knew a guy who specialized in shipping optimization. That’s who she was really meeting at amateur night. Nicky just prayed that Prof. Thompson could help her optimize without firing. But he’d have to look at the reports first, which had to be compiled from data from each division head, and then …

      “Nicky? Are you still there?”

      “Hmm?” She forcibly pulled her attention back to her sister. And the damn bus. And being late to see Prof. Thompson at some stupid amateur night, all before she looked at those figures from the East Coast factory. Her chest tightened further, and she had to force a deep breath. She would not have a panic attack here. Not

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