Balancing Act. Laura Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ much preferred it to handling a slippery fish. She wasn’t keen on fishing, but Zach enjoyed it, so she indulged him as much as she could.

      As they neared the campground at the shore late in the afternoon, Zach drifted off to sleep. Tessa glanced at him and smiled. His hair was as red as hers, but his eyes were dark blue, and he’d gotten the freckles that somehow missed her creamy skin. She knew he took ribbing about his looks. What redhead hadn’t? Add in the freckles and it just made it worse. He’d also inherited a double dose of intelligence, and a severe reading disability that made life at school miserable. Her mother and stepfather had worked with him and had him tested. Things had been getting better until last year when the call came about their parents.

      Tessa had broken the news to Zach. He had been quiet to start, but then the problems began at school. Tessa worked with the counselors and a psychologist. She took the first job she could find in her field to be near him. The job was part-time and kept her away many evenings. That was when the trouble with Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Edwin had first started. They claimed she shuffled Zach from one sitter to another and was too young and irresponsible to have custody. Tessa feared their grumbling would soon evolve into more than idle threats.

      It wasn’t her brother they wanted, just the trust fund that came with him, so she couldn’t afford to give them any fuel. They would crush Zach. He didn’t need more humiliation. He needed to have the talents he possessed nurtured. They would never understand the way his mind worked. Tessa could because hers worked much the same way, so she understood how important it was to get him away from everything now and then.

      Zach fished all evening from the pier. Tessa helped bait hooks in between watching other people and, she had to admit, thinking about her new boss.

      She had seen many of Seth’s moods during this first week, most of them unpleasant, but today something had rattled him. Whatever was in that envelope she had given him wasn’t good. She checked off what she knew. One of his sisters lived in North Carolina–she’d seen the address in the computer file. Preston. No. Anna was what it had said. Dr. Anna Barlow, without the Barrett attached. Something in that envelope must have involved her. It had shaken Seth. While he often growled orders and paced around like a caged animal, she’d never seen that look of angry frustration.

      Tessa didn’t like unsolved puzzles. Her mind went back to the package. The size, the weight. A plain manila envelope with Seth’s name typed on the outside. A CD or DVD? And if so, of what? Something involving Anna. What else did she know from the computer contact information? There was a child, she remembered. A baby.

      “Tessa!” Zach interrupted her thoughts. “I’ve caught something. Come help.”

      She jumped up and coached him through landing the fish he had on the line–a bluefish that put up a good fight. Not huge as fish went, but he worked the line enough it turned Zach into one happy ten-year-old. That was enough for Tessa.

      By the time they headed home Sunday afternoon, they were both tired. Zach pulled out his Gameboy and played it, more out of habit than actual interest.

      They were about halfway home when he looked up, game forgotten for the moment.

      “Will I have to go live with Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Edwin?”

      Tessa was used to the questions that often seemed to come out of nowhere. She glanced over at him, then turned back to the road. What on earth had started him worrying about that? Sometimes she wondered at the depths at which his brain was always working. It bothered her that a ten-year-old should even have to consider where he might be forced to live.

      “No,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “You’ll stay with me. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

      “Yeah. Aunt Kathleen smells like that porta-potty perfume, and Uncle Edwin smokes cigars. Yuck.”

      Tessa laughed. Zach had a way of making her look at things on the most basic level. She reached over and ruffled his hair, and he grinned back at her. They were covered in salt spray, flushed from the sun, and Tessa was happier than she’d been in a long time.

      Those feelings of peace and contentment lingered as she ran up the stairs Monday morning. She slipped her heels back on before she left the stairwell and smoothed the skirt and jacket of her business suit. In a matter of minutes, she carried a steaming mug of coffee to Seth.

      He sat at his desk, an ever-growing pile of snapped-in-half pencils lying in front of him. When she set the cup down, he grunted. As she started to remove the pile of broken pencils, he snapped, “Leave them. Leave me. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

      Tessa, unruffled, turned on her heel to go.

      “Will there be anything else this morning, sir?” From the relative safety of the doorway, she figured he wouldn’t dare throw anything at her–not that he had, but she’d heard rumors of such things happening to some of her predecessors.

      Seth glanced at her from under thick blond brows drawn together in a forbidding frown. “No. As I said, I don’t want to be disturbed.”

      Whatever had so upset him Friday afternoon must still be an issue, even after the visit to North Carolina. Tessa went to work on several reports in the works. There was another trip to arrange for Seth later that week. Since his brother, Brandon, wasn’t expected back until the end of the week, she would have to book a commercial flight. She scribbled the number for his travel account down on the back of an envelope as she began to work on the trip, but was prevented from doing anything else when the elevator doors opened and an athletically built man with wheaten hair and gray eyes stepped off. He was dressed in a navy sport coat and tie, not in the formal, conservative suits Seth preferred.

      “I’d like to see Barrett,” the man said. “Please tell him it’s Chris Stevenson. He’ll want to see me. It’s about his sister Anna.”

      Tessa invited him to take a seat as she stalled for time. Then she punched the intercom button.

      “Mr. Barrett?”

      “What?” he snapped back. “I thought I told you I was not to be disturbed this morning.”

      Tessa grimaced. A gut-feeling told her this visit was tied to that package. She pushed open the door and stepped into Seth’s office.

      “What the hell is it, Teresa?”

      “Tessa,” she corrected him, knowing he was provoking her on purpose. “It’s Tessa, sir.”

      “Whatever.”

      “I think you will wish to see this visitor,” she added.

      “Someone gave you permission to think?” Seth goaded her. She knew it, but she wasn’t rising to the bait. One temperamental person on this floor was enough. Instead, she glared right back at him.

      “His name is Chris Stevenson. He said he wished to see you about Anna.”

      Seth stood up. He towered over her, but she didn’t give ground.

      “Why the hell didn’t you say so?”

      “Because you didn’t give me a chance?” she suggested.

      Seth frowned. She frowned back.

      “Show him in.”

      She smiled СКАЧАТЬ