Mixing Business...With Baby

Rick smiled, managed a painful nod. “If you see Frank Glasgow, could you…send him up?”

“Of course.” She glanced once more in his direction, then scooped up her duffel and left.

After what seemed a small eternity, Frank poked his head into the gym. “What can I do for you?”

“You can get this…damned thing off.” Rick gritted his teeth. “Then drive me to the hospital…I think I broke a rib.”

“I tell you, Gracie, it’s absolutely eerie. Every time I turn around, there he is. And he’s sending me presents.”

“Presents?” Gracie’s eyes popped. “You mean like diamonds and perfume and furs?”

“Well, no.” Catrina cleared her throat, glanced away. “Er, a case of panty hose.” Expensive panty hose, attached to a dozen colorful helium-filled balloons and shuttled to her apartment door by a uniformed courier who was most unhappy when she refused to accept the delivery.

Gracie blinked rapidly. “Oh, my, that does sound a bit personal.”

“Actually, it was kind of a private joke. You see, I dropped some coins at the coffee shop and ripped the knee out of my—” Blushing furiously, Catrina clamped her mouth shut, embarrassed by Gracie’s knowing grin. “Never mind. The point is, I think he’s stalking me.”

“Stalking you?” Gracie chuckled. “Perhaps he’s just interested in you. After all, you’re a very attractive young lady.”

“Well, I’m not interested in him.”

She quirked a brow. “Not even a little?”

Catrina shrugged, shifted Heather on her hip as she tossed a handful of pasta into a pot of boiling water. “I’ll admit he’s an appealing man, but that isn’t the point. I’m not interested in any man, appealing or not.”

“You prefer women?”

“Gracie!” Catrina laughed, shook her head. “You know what I mean. I’ve just extricated myself from one bad relationship. I certainly am not going to fling myself into another one.”

“Then how about flinging yourself into a good relationship?”

Catrina’s smile faded. “There’s no such thing,” she said firmly, and meant it. “My mother suffered through two terrible marriages. Two men used her, abused her then walked out on her. My eldest sister divorced a man so shallow and narcissistic that he ran off to Europe rather than support the child he had fathered, and I ended up with a fellow who thought women should have been born with scrub brushes instead of fingers, and a built-in beer cooler on their backs. Heather and I are better off alone, thank you very much.”

“Not all men are adolescent control freaks.”

“Of course not. Just the ones I know.” Sighing, she slipped Heather into the high chair, handing her a spouted cup of juice to placate her until dinner was ready. “I understand that it’s not fair to judge an entire gender by the behavior of a few, but the point is that I can’t afford another mistake. I have a child to think about, a child who means the world to me. I won’t risk having her hurt, her trust broken by yet another daddy who will disappoint and abandon her.”

“There are good men out there, Catrina, men who are worthy of your love and respect.”

A slow throb worked its way around her temples. “Then why couldn’t you find one?” The minute the words emerged, Catrina regretted them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you did.” Paling visibly, Gracie nonetheless attempted a smile. “I’m the first to admit that when it came to choosing husbands, I wasn’t the brightest porch light on the block.”

“Gracie—”

“No, no, you’re right. I’m hardly an authority on relationships.” She shifted her gaze, stirred the pot of spaghetti sauce bubbling on Catrina’s stove. “Just because you invite me for dinner once a week doesn’t give me license to tell you how to live your life.” A sly glance bounced so quickly that Catrina nearly missed it. “I’m sure you’re not the least bit interested in my silly musings.”

“Of course I’m interested,” Catrina assured her. “If I didn’t want your opinion, I wouldn’t have brought the subject up in the first place.”

Gracie laid the saucy spoon on the counter, wiped her hands on a tea towel. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“I wouldn’t want to intrude—”

“Gracie! Tell me what you think I should do.”

The older woman’s face spread into a wreath of smile lines. “Well, since you’ve asked, I think you should continue doing exactly what you’ve been doing.”

“I’ve been ignoring and avoiding him.”

“Exactly.”

Catrina frowned. For some reason, she’d had the impression that Gracie thought she should give the persistent Rick Blaine a chance. “So far, it hasn’t exactly chilled his enthusiasm.”

“Give it time. Just keep pretending you’re not interested and—”

“ Pretending? Gracie, I don’t have to pretend. Haven’t you been listening? I am not interested in Rick Blaine. Not, not, not!”

“Of course, dear, I understand.” The woman chuckled, swished her hand as if waving away a pesky fly. “Anyway, you just keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing, and sooner or later you’ll get exactly what you want.”

“Exactly what I want,” Catrina repeated. The words rolled around her tongue with a smooth feel, a unique flavor. “That would be lovely, of course, if I knew what I wanted in the first place. The truth is I haven’t a clue. Does that make me insane?”

“No dear,” Gracie said with a chuckle. “It simply makes you human.”

Chapter Three

“It’s about time you answered. I’ve been calling for two hours.” Rick shifted the tiny cell phone, touched the brake and cruised to a stop at the light. “You missed a terrific steak dinner.”

“I wasn’t aware we had a date.”

“We didn’t, but we would have if you’d answered your phone two hours ago.”

The familiar feminine chuckle on the other end of the line never ceased to make him smile. “I suppose I should be flattered that a handsome scalawag like yourself would waste a perfectly good Friday night on an old woman.”

“You are not old. You have simply blossomed fully.”

“Such a silver-tongued lad! No wonder you have to beat women off with a stick.” Her chuckle rolled into a tinkling laugh that warmed him from nape to spine. “I’m thinking you must have whacked a tad too hard if you’ve a free weekend. Either that or the young woman at the office who has taken your fancy must not be as easily persuaded by your charms as you’d hoped.”

“Can’t a fellow hold a Friday night open for a date with his favorite Mom without being taunted and abused?”

“She turned you down, did she?”

“Not at all.” An impatient honk from behind startled him. He touched the accelerator to join the thrumming rush of vehicles across the intersection. “I’m sure if I’d invited her to dinner, she’d have leaped at the opportunity.”

A gleeful whoop made him grimace. “Aha! She slammed the door in your face, didn’t she?”

“Not literally.” Although Rick had little doubt that if he’d had the chutzpah to appear on her porch, the seemingly unattainable and undeniably gorgeous Catrina Jordan would have done just that. “The subject never came up, that’s all.”

“Yes, well it’s difficult to ask someone out on a date if they won’t give you the time of day to begin with.”

Rick found himself giving the cell phone a wry stare. “Thank you for the maternal support and encouragement.”

“Why should I encourage you to break another woman’s heart?”

The allegation stunned him. “I’ve never broken any woman’s heart. Every woman I’ve ever dated has become a lifelong friend.”

“Your charm is both a curse and a blessing, dear. People are drawn to you like a magnet, but just as one side attracts, the other propels those who would move too close a safe distance away.” Her sigh was poignant, heavy with a sadness that Rick understood, although he wished he didn’t. “It seems that we always most desperately want that which we cannot have.”

“Mom, please. Don’t start.”

“Don’t start on what? The fact that I will be laid in my grave without a grandchild to grieve my passing?”

He whipped the steering wheel, pulled into a drive that sloped sharply below street level, and stopped at a striped gate. “We’ve been over this before.”

“Yes, we have. Tell me again why the very thought of marriage and family makes you break into a cold sweat.”

“You know why.” He pressed a button on the armrest with more force than necessary. The window slid down, allowing him to slide the parking-garage access card through the reader. He hated this conversation. He’d always hated it. “I’m flying up to Tahoe next week to talk to a man about renovating a casino. How about joining me? You’ve never met a slot machine you didn’t like, and I promise to keep a never-ending supply of quarters handy—”

“You are thirty-six years old, Rick. It’s time you settled down.”

“Mom—”

“I want grandchildren!”

“Then rent some.” Regretting the snap of his tone, Rick sighed, eased his vehicle into his parking space and shoved the transmission into park. “Mom, please. Trust me when I say that I am doing the females of the world a favor by removing myself from the marriage pool.”

Her voice softened. “Don’t let my failures harden you.”

“You didn’t fail. They did.”

She sighed, a whisper of disappointment that stirred something deep inside Rick’s soul. It was the sigh of a woman scarred by pain, wounded by betrayals that she refused to acknowledge. But Rick acknowledged them, those traitorous emotions that had blinded his beloved mother to the cruelty of misplaced trust. After all the hurt, all the pain, she still viewed life through an optimistic aura of hope, the staunch belief that there was no pain so intense that it couldn’t be eased with love and chicken soup.

As much as Rick adored his mother, he saw in her the same cynical naïveté that he’d recognized in Catrina Jordan’s eyes, eyes that reflected past pain and betrayal, yet still sparked with wounded vulnerability and a silent hope that had touched a chord deep inside him.

He didn’t know why he’d felt such instant kinship, such intense desire to nurture and protect. He didn’t know why her image haunted his thoughts, why her scent floated through his dreams. It was as if he had suddenly discovered a lost part of himself, an appendage of his soul that had been missing for so long he’d forgotten it ever existed.

“Rick, are you still there?”

“It’s late,” he whispered. “You should get some rest.”

“I suppose so.”

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

He paused. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, dear. Good night.”

A soft click, a crackle of static and she was gone.

Darkness shrouded him in the dim parking bunker. An eerie concrete coldness enveloped him. It was, he thought, like being entombed in a vehicle graveyard, surrounded by idle hulks of steel that had been tossed aside and forgotten until they could once again be useful.

The analogy was strangely unsettling.

It was a discomfiting mirror of his own life, a life he reflected upon only during times like this, times when he was completely alone, undistracted by the comfortable chatter and bustle of people with which he deliberately surrounded himself.

Quietly alone. Silently alone.

Alone.

Panic crept softly, slithering through the shadows of his mind, chilling the unlit corners of his soul. Loneliness was a dark destiny, but Rick accepted it. There was no other choice.

Frowning, Frank Glasgow stepped off the elevator, clasping his hands behind his back. He took two steps into the hallway, then spun to glower at Catrina. “Surely you were informed that certain training sessions would be required.”

“Yes, of course—”

“Then it’s settled.” Pivoting sharply, he strode toward the warren of executive offices at the north side of the floor.

Catrina hurried after him, feeling frantic. “But a two-day seminar halfway across the state? Even if I could afford the travel cost, I can’t possibly leave my daughter for that length of time.”

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