LITMIR.BIZ

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you tell me?”

      She sniffed. “Tracey was getting married. You had that project at work. Adrian was coming…it didn’t matter.”

      “Didn’t matter? Rochelle, what are you talking about? It’s been years. Long years. I’ve been going through this, too.” I grimaced. No wonder she’d been acting so strange. Why hadn’t I picked up on the signs? I thought she’d just finally cracked and gone man crazy with the rest of the world. Now I wondered if that wouldn’t have been better. That I could fix.

      Is my arm too short to save? I can fix this, too.

      “Can you talk to Jordan? Get him to understand that this isn’t a good idea?” I said the words and regretted them as the passed my lips. It was like asking if she could take a ride on the sun.

      “Talk to him? Dana, come on. You know him. Better than anybody.”

      The truth of it hit me like a brick. I knew him all too well. And I wasn’t proud of it. I rubbed my forehead and cradled the phone with my shoulder.

      “How is it that I ended up with Jordan as a brother and you as a friend? It doesn’t seem fair.”

      A dance of unsteady breaths was Rochelle’s only response.

      Chapter Four

      Thirty-one minutes. I’d tried to be careful, to watch the clock, to count my time, but the thought of my brother, calling after all this time, taking Rochelle through the pain of losing him all over again…As always, I’d be left to clean up the mess.

      Renee appeared in the doorway. “I can’t believe him. Coming back now? And that Mexico thing? That’s rich. Really rich.” She picked her teeth with a miniature plastic sword, no doubt salvaged from her weekend.

      Had she actually clicked in on the line this time or what? I didn’t even have the strength to ask. Her ears were like fine-tuned receivers anyway. “I really don’t want to talk about this, okay?”

      As usual, she ignored me, this time stabbing at her lip with those ridiculous nails. “Do you think they’ll get back together? Now that would be a wedding. We could call it in for one of those reunion shows on TV. Keep me posted.”

      My hands smoothed across my denim skirt. “Uh, I’ll try. I hardly know what’s going on myself. I haven’t even talked to him.” Why suddenly did that seem important, that no one had called or written me when I was Jordan’s sister?

      She lingered, her hands on the doorknob. “Yeah, that’s pretty messed up. That he’d call them and not call you. Especially him being your only brother and all.”

      I took a deep breath. Renee wasn’t going to get me stirred up today. “He’ll call me when he’s ready. But since we’re discussing family, how is your brother?”

      My assistant’s eyes flickered, a bleak hopelessness replacing her haughty gaze. “He’s okay, they’re moving him to federal next week. I can visit him there. It’s closer.”

      Why did I say that? Sometimes I could be bone cold. “Right. Well, if you need time, just let me know.” I hadn’t meant to go there, to remind her of her own problems, but I needed to get back to my desk before Naomi emerged with a stun gun or something. She popped up at the most unlikely times.

      I paced through the maze of cubicles hoping my boss would be too busy plotting her next scheme to be promoted to know about my phone call. As bad as the call went, I could have hung up and made it back to my desk on time. Bad enough I’d wasted my lunch on it. Another starving trip through the drive-thru tonight…and then straight to Rochelle’s. Maybe I’d do better then. The one thing I could have done to help Rochelle—pray—had totally eluded me on the phone. The shocking news of my brother’s mysterious reappearance and the shaky story behind his absence had blown my mind. Had he really been in another country all this time? And all alone?

      Renee’s question about Rochelle and Jordan’s relationship bothered me as well. The two of them getting back together had never occurred to me. Surely she wouldn’t be that stupid. He was my flesh and blood, but he’d left her before. What would make Rochelle think he’d stick around now? Or was that really my heart talking…about Adrian? Both of them had given Rochelle and I something to hang our disappointment on, something to shield us, warn us about giving our hearts away again.

      Shuffling back to my cubicle, I prayed for Jordan, wherever he was, asked God to give me grace when I saw him, to keep from exploding like I’d done on Rochelle this weekend. I’d have to drive around to the racetrack tonight and find Daddy and give him the news. That’d sober him up. Quick.

      I pushed back my chair and sat down at my desk, grabbing the Cool Cucumber file from my inbox, where I’d shoved it this morning. And then that call…It’d be time for my meeting with Naomi soon. I’d probably have to skip lunch and just—

      “So there you are.” Naomi’s voice grated like cat claws on a kitchen sink.

      Smile. No matter what she says, smile.

      I swallowed hard before turning to face Naomi Titan, a thirty-eight-year-old barracuda in heels, recently overlooked for a promotion she’d worked three years for. She’d been hunting heads ever since, and from her tone, it was my braids she wanted on her platter today.

      “Hello, Naomi.” I used my best conflict-management voice.

      She puckered her lips and yanked her blazer closed. “It’s nice of you to come back to work. Sorry to break up your little phone call—”

      “I was—”

      “I know exactly what you were doing. We had a phone monitoring system installed last month. Didn’t you get the memo?”

      Monitoring? She had to be kidding. Was that even legal?

      Her nostril—yes, nostril, very scary—flared. “Don’t even think about it. All legit. The whole team signed off on it at the quality assurance symposium.”

      My eyes bulged. “That was over a year ago. How am I supposed to remember that? And I definitely don’t remember anything about monitoring being mentioned.”

      “I believe it was called productivity banking, a consultant-based analysis of how we spend our time.” She grinned wickedly. “And I’ve been assigned as the consultant conducting the analysis.”

      I blinked. It was a first, this smile of Naomi’s, and a much more hideous sight than I’d imagined. It looked as though her adult teeth had staged a sit-in and her baby teeth hung around to watch. There had to be fifty-two on the top alone. With shoes like that, you’d think she could afford an orthodontist. People were weird that way.

      Naomi lingered on each word to let the implication soak in, twirling one of her frizzy curls. I stared at her hair, trying to figure out, once again, what nationality she was. She had Jennifer Lopez hips, Barbara Streisand hair, Angela Davis rage and a nose that curved like the photo of my Cherokee great-grandmother’s. Today I didn’t ponder the question long. Whatever she was, she wasn’t happy.

      Neither was I.

      “So I talked on the phone a minute over, Naomi—”

      “Ms. Parker.”

      Back to the maiden name, were we? This could get ugly. “All right…Ms. Parker, I’m sorry for my infraction. Now if you’ll let me get back to work so I can prepare for our meeting this afternoon—”

      Another sinister smile zipped across Naomi’s lips. If her lipstick had been a few shades redder she’d have been a dead ringer for the Joker.

      “You won’t be meeting with anyone today, Dana. Not here anyway.”

      The stale Cheerios I’d eaten for breakfast knotted in my stomach. I suddenly wished I’d downed a few bear claws, too, so I could offer them up on Naomi’s precious shoes.

      We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers….

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