LITMIR.BIZ

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mother had disappeared when she was four. Rachel had felt the loss no matter what she was willing to admit to herself. And then her father died. Max suspected protecting herself against loss had become second nature. Pity the man who tried to break down those walls.

      “Who took you in after your dad died?”

      Rachel stared at her hands. “No one. I dropped out of school and went to work full-time to make ends meet until we received the money from Dad’s insurance policy. He took it out because you can be as careful as anything when you’re out on the gulf, but accidents happen. No one expected he’d be shot during a convenience-store robbery twenty minutes from home.”

      “You never graduated?”

      She shook her head. “I got my GED. I needed to take care of Hailey. Only it was a lot more expensive than I was expecting. And I was working all the time. By the time we got the insurance money, I was exhausted and worried about how I was going to handle everything. We had no medical insurance and Hailey’s asthma had been flaring up a lot more since Dad died. The medication was expensive. That’s when I called Aunt Jesse.”

      “Was she able to help?”

      “She told us to come live with her in Biloxi. We’d have a place to stay while Hailey finished high school. I could work and maybe go to a community college. The rest of the money could go toward a real college for Hailey. She was always the smarter one.”

      “So, what happened?”

      “For a while everything seemed okay. Then one day Aunt Jesse came home and asked if she could borrow Dad’s life insurance money for a couple days.”

      “And you gave it to her.”

      “It was supposed to be a loan until she got paid at the end of the week. I probably should have said no, but she took us in when we needed help and she was family.” Rachel’s bitter smile said more than her expression. “She took the money and disappeared. We were stuck in Biloxi with no money, no friends and no family.”

      Her story would have wrung sympathy out of the most jaded heart.

      “Did you call the cops?”

      “And tell them what? That I’d lent money to our aunt and she’d disappeared?”

      “Did you look for her?”

      Rachel shook her head. “For all she was our closest living relative, we knew nothing about her life or her friends. Or, we didn’t until people showed up looking for her. That’s when we found out she was dealing drugs and had some rather scary acquaintances.”

      “Did any of them hurt you?”

      “No. After the first guy came knocking, we didn’t stick around.”

      “What happened?”

      “I had a waitressing job. I picked up more hours. We found a small studio apartment in a relatively safe neighborhood and scraped by.” Rachel downplayed what must have been a scary time for her with a single shoulder shrug and a self-deprecating smile.

      Max’s admiration for her went up several dozen notches. “I’m sorry you had such a tough time of it.”

      Rachel’s eyes hardened into sapphire chips. “It was my fault we were in the mess.”

      “How do you figure that?”

      “Hailey begged me to stay in Gulf Shores. She wanted to finish high school with her friends. But I was too scared about being solely responsible for her to listen. I wasn’t ready to be an adult. Don’t you get it? I screwed up. If we’d stayed put, Aunt Jesse wouldn’t have stolen the insurance money. It would have been so much easier.”

      “You were eighteen. Cut yourself some slack.”

      “Life doesn’t cut you slack,” she said. “Life comes at you hard and fast and you either meet it head-on, duck, or get blindsided. I’ve promised myself not to get blindsided again.”

      Yet Max had the sense that something had blindsided her recently. Something that wasn’t him. Something she wouldn’t let him help her with.

      “You said people helped you.”

      “What?”

      “Last night. You said people. That’s plural. Who else took advantage of you?”

      She offered him a sad smile. “Sorry. I only reveal one major mistake from my past at a time. Tune in next week for the continuing saga of Rachel Lansing’s journey into bad judgment.”

      “Don’t shut me out. I want to know everything about you.” Max hated the way she kept deflecting his questions. It created a chasm between them when all he wanted was to get close to her. “You know you can trust me.”

      “Of course I do. It’s just that I get depressed when I think about all the mistakes I’ve made. Can’t we talk about something else?”

      As much as he wanted to push harder, he recognized the stubborn set of her mouth and knew they would only end up fighting if he bullied her for answers.

      He tossed a file across the desk toward her. “Take a look at the Williamsburg numbers in their strat plan. They don’t add up. I didn’t have time to check it over this weekend and I’m supposed to be on a conference call with them at eleven.”

      Her relief at being back on professional footing was so palpable she might have stood up and given a double fist pump. Max watched her head out of his office, a slim silhouette in her long pencil skirt and fitted jacket. He wanted to take her in his arms and promise he wouldn’t let her down the way others in her life had. But was that something she’d believe when he wasn’t sure himself if it was something he could deliver?

       Eight

      Rachel sat down at her desk and opened the file she’d been working on before Max summoned her into his office. The numbers blurred on the page. She sat back and rubbed her eyes, then reached for her tall coffee with the three shots of espresso. Max was a bad influence on her in more ways than one.

      What had possessed her to tell him about Aunt Jesse?

      She owed him no explanations. The intimacy they’d developed was physical, not emotional. Yet, she couldn’t deny that sharing the story had lifted a little weight off her shoulders. Not much, but enough to help her get through the day. To clear her mind for how she would handle things with Brody. She simply had to find the twenty-five thousand she still owed him.

      You could borrow the money from Max. If you asked, he’d help.

      And have to explain to him about Brody and why she’d married him. As if his opinion of her wasn’t bad enough already, Max could add opportunist and user to her list of flaws. Besides, she didn’t want her ex-husband to come between them again. Although, at the rate she was screwing things up on her own, it wouldn’t matter what she told Max. Given the way their conversation had gone last night, he was probably done with her right now.

      Rachel made notes on the file Max had asked her to look at and checked in with Devon to see if anything had come up. He was proving to be a great manager despite his reservations about taking on the responsibility. Maybe this meant she could take a long weekend for herself after everything was over. Four days with nothing to do and no worries sounded like heaven.

      But was it reality? Since coming to work for Max, she’d been drifting in a fantasy world. The time for daydreams was over.

      Right at eleven, Max’s conference call began with the general manager of their Williamsburg operations. While he was asking the questions she’d posed about their numbers, his second line lit up. Rachel answered the call. It was Andrea.

      “How are things going?” Rachel winced in sympathy at the loud cries in the background.

      “As well as can

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