Last Kiss Goodbye. Rita Herron

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СКАЧАТЬ sighed and shrugged. “Sorry, that’s all I know,” he said in English. “Mama? Do you know where she is? Or papa?”

      He nodded.

      “Oh, so you’re not lost?”

      He shook his head.

      If he wasn’t lost, where was his guardian? He was too young to be on his own. “My name is Mr. Ward. Who did you come here with?” Jason said, softening his voice even more.

      “Mama.”

      “Okay, and where is she?”

      The little boy pointed vaguely down the hall.

      “Well, you should be with her. She must be worried about you. Do you want me to take you to her?”

      The child shook his head.

      “Why are you crying?” He almost regretted asking. It was a hospital after all; perhaps someone he cared about was sick, or worse, had died.

      The child looked at the chocolate-covered raisins in Jason’s hand.

      “Do you want some candy?”

      The child stopped crying and nodded.

      “You know, you shouldn’t be talking to strangers.”

      He nodded but kept staring at the candy.

      Jason sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you one, then I’m taking you back to your mom.”

      He poured some candy out and started to hand it to him when he felt something hard strike the side of his face. It hit him with such force he fell over, candy scattering on the ground.

      “You pervert!” a woman screamed. “Get away from my son.”

      Jason sat up and glared at her. “I thought he was lost.”

      “And you thought it was a good idea to give him candy?”

      Jason surged to his feet. “You shouldn’t have left him alone in the first place. What’s wrong with you? You think I’d sit here giving him candy if I had something else in mind? I could have snatched him in seconds.”

      Her eyes widened, and she picked up her son and backed away from him.

      “You’re completely irresponsible leaving a young child like him alone for so long.”

      Tears appeared in the woman’s eyes. “You have no right to talk to me like that. You don’t know the stress I’ve been under and—”

      “I don’t care.”

      A guard approached them. “Ma’am, is this man bothering you?”

      “Yes, he was trying to take my son.”

      The guard touched Jason’s arm. “Sir—”

      “I wasn’t doing any such thing,” he said in a low growl. “The little boy was lost, and I was just giving him some candy. I was about to take him to find his mother when this crazy woman hit me over the head with her purse and accused me of trying to steal her child!”

      The woman swallowed hard, having the grace to look embarrassed. “He’s right. Excuse me.” She hurried away with her child.

      Jason sighed, then touched the side of his face where she’d struck him. His hand came back with blood. What the hell was she carrying in her purse? Damn, he should have left the kid alone. He had just been trying to help, and she thought he had other ideas. Why did people always think the worst of him?

      “What happened to you?” his mother asked when she saw him in the waiting room.

      “Oh, nothing. I wasn’t looking where I was going and walked into a wall,” Jason lied.

      “It’s because you’re working too much, not looking where you’re going. If Gwen—” She stopped.

      Were here, he said silently, finishing the sentence she couldn’t.

      He still missed her, even though it had been over a decade, especially at times like this when he worried about his mother. Gwen had made him feel less alone. Connected to the world in some way. He thought of the dreams they’d made for the future. Dreams that wouldn’t come true. He thought of her when he’d come up with the idea for the resort—he could picture her smiling and telling him how smart he was.

      “She would want you to be happy,” his mother said.

      He wondered if that was even possible anymore. He’d stopped being happy after her death. Partly out of guilt, but mostly despair. His business had been his life, and that had been taken from him just as she had.

      Beatrice handed him the brochure again. “You need this. You have to change. You can’t use fear as a factor to get respect.”

      He didn’t want anyone to think he was easy. He demanded respect. He’d worked hard for it. As a kid, he’d been the small one who’d gotten bullied in school. He was the kid whose best friend got shot during a robbery at a gas station. He was the kid who used to be terrified he’d never escape the violence around him. But he wasn’t a kid anymore, and he remembered the initial look in the young mother’s eyes—it wasn’t respect, it was fear. He didn’t want to be feared anymore.

      Jason reluctantly looked over the brochure and sighed. His mother was right. He was in a totally new field, and without partners like Dennis to be his good manners, he needed to re-create himself.

Chapter 2

      She was all sugar and spice and arsenic. Judith Watson was a spiny woman and the head of the personal makeover division of Finishing Touches, Inc.

      “What do you mean by that?” she asked, touching her chest in dismay as she stared at Abby. The two women sat in the main sitting area that separated their offices.

      “I know you’ve been stealing my clients,” Abby said, keeping her voice measured. She knew Judith was a snake, and she’d do her best to charm the truth out of her. “I’m sure it wasn’t on purpose,” she said, although she knew otherwise.

      “I’m so hurt. I don’t know why you would think that, much less accuse me.”

      “Several of my friends recommended people they know, and I wondered why none of them had come to my office or made an appointment. So I decided to do some sleuthing of my own, and discovered that at least three individuals did come to the office, but, somehow they were convinced to use your services over mine.” Abby knew it had been a bad idea to share the office space with Judith in the first place but had had no other choice.

      At first, things had seemed perfect. The office was in a prime location, with excellent traffic and access to ample parking. As a corporate etiquette consultant, Abby knew location was critical, and for the potential clients she was seeking, they would need to be able to get to her office easily. And the price was right. The building was part of an incubation program, designed to help new entrepreneurial ventures. But Abby couldn’t afford СКАЧАТЬ