A Little Moonlighting. Raye Morgan
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Название: A Little Moonlighting
Автор: Raye Morgan
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные любовные романы
isbn: 9781408945186
isbn:
“Maybe not,” he rumbled. “But she had an instinct for the business like no one I’d ever seen before. I’ll never find anyone else like her.”
Delia threw up her hands. “You are resistant to change, aren’t you?”
Change? Was that what he was resistant to? He scowled at the woman. What was she so cheery about, anyway? She was going to miss Pendleton, too. He couldn’t believe she thought this Martha person was a fitting replacement any more than he did.
“Oh, she’ll do fine, in time,” Delia assured him as though she’d read his mind. She turned to leave. “Give her a chance,” she flung back over her shoulder.
He didn’t want to give her a chance. He wanted Pendleton back. He wanted to look out across the room and see her sleek blond head bent over a problem, see her jump up in excitement when she’d figured out an answer, see her striding toward his desk with a look of triumph on her beautiful lips…Where the hell was she, anyway?
Looking out at where she ought to be, he felt something painful in his chest. “Gas pain,” he told himself hopefully. “I’ll get over it.” But he knew better.
The day seemed to drag. Even sparring with his nemesis in Finance, Gary Brown, tight-fisted holder of the travel advance purse strings, didn’t perk him up much. He spent an inordinate amount of time staring at the telephone and thinking of different things he needed to say to Pendleton. But he couldn’t call her. That would be like…well, like admitting defeat or something.
Or admitting that you need her, said a little voice in his head.
But he’d already admitted that. In fact, he’d pretty much taken out billboards to make sure she got the message. So why not call her? Why not?
And then Martha, his new associate, was coming toward his desk, a look of eager expectation on her cute little face. She was so young, so earnest, so…so un-Pendleton.
“Mr. James,” she said brightly, her smile fixed. “I need to find a file on land prices in Australia. It’s listed in the file index but it’s not where it’s supposed to be.”
Ignoring the smile, he frowned at her. “We were just using that file recently. Have you checked the copy room? Someone might have left it in the copy machine.”
“That was the very first place I looked.”
His frown began to fade. “Have you looked through the desk?”
“Yes, sir. Twice.”
Carter leaned back in his chair. He glanced out at where Delia usually sat. Her desk was empty. A faint smile began to play at the corners of his wide mouth.
“I guess we’ll have to call Pendleton,” he said slowly. “I can’t see what else we can do.” He gave his new associate the first genuine smile she’d ever seen from him. “But there’s no need for you to bother about it. You just go on back and do some typing or something.” He sat up straight in his chair and flexed his shoulders. “I’ll make the call.”
Martha blinked at him uncertainly, then quickly went back to her desk. Carter stared at the telephone for a long moment, anticipating, then reached for it.
Amy felt like a woman under siege. If yesterday had been difficult, today was impossible. It had started out badly and just gotten worse.
The only high point had been a call to the hospital that told her Meg and Tim were improving steadily and might be able to take phone calls in another day or two. What a relief it was to know they were probably going to be all right.
But from there on it was all downhill.
The baby woke up fussing and had kept it up all day. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, only wanted to be held and carried around. Amy’s arms still ached from that activity. She’d finally had to put Jillian down, letting her fuss all to herself. But the sound of her wails was like the constant scraping of fingernails across a blackboard and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. Luckily, the baby’s crying subsided after a while.
Scamp had decided at breakfast that the only way he wanted to communicate was by barking like a dog from now on. One bark meant yes, two meant no. The trouble was, he loved the barking so much, he usually went on and on until it was darn hard to figure out what he was trying to say. Amy had pretty much given up trying.
She’d tried to lose her cares in laundry work, but someone had left a crayon in a shirt pocket and the entire washload ended up stained with purple streaks by the time she’d pulled it out of the dryer.
“Oh, no,” she moaned, looking at the ruined clothing. There would be no way to hide this. Humiliation was dogging her now.
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