Baby Steps. Karen Templeton

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      Scowling, Dana plopped behind the desk, snatching a tiny pink jumper off the pile. “Twelve bucks?”

      “Fifteen. Macy’s has them new for forty.” Cass shifted in her chair, making Jason’s hand fly about for a moment until his tiny fingers grasped her bunched up blouse. Envy pricked at Dana’s heart as Cass continued, more to the baby than to Dana, “C.J. is…mmm, how shall I put this…?” Zing went those eyes. “Magnificent.”

      So she’d heard. Dana phh’d at her.

      “As if it would kill you to spend the afternoon with the man with the bedroom, blue eyes.” Cass tugged her skirt back over her knee. “Butt’s not bad, either.”

      Just what Dana needed in her life. Lethal eyes and taut buns. She scribbled the price on the tag, then jabbed the point of the ticket gun into the jumper, entertaining vaguely voodooesque thoughts. “I think that’s called sexual objectification.”

      “Yeah. So?”

      She grabbed the next item off the pile, a fuchsia jumpsuit with enormous purple flowers. “Twenty?”

      “Sure. Sweetie, I nearly drooled over the guy myself when he helped me sell the house a few months ago. And don’t you dare tell Blake.”

      Dana’s head snapped up. “Excuse me? You were seven months pregnant, recently widowed—”

      Never mind that Cass’s second husband had been a dirtwad of the first order, but a friend has a duty to point out these things.

      “—your ex-husband was hot to get back together, and you were salivating all over your Realtor?”

      “Yeah, well, it was like having a close encounter with a chocolate marble cheesecake after a ten-year diet. Fortunately, since I’m not all that crazy about chocolate marble cheesecake, the temptation passed.”

      Unfortunately, Dana had a real thing for chocolate marble cheesecake. Which Cass knew full well. As did Dana’s hips.

      “This wouldn’t be you trying to fix me up, by any chance?”

      “Perish the thought.”

      Dana sighed, wrote out another price tag. “You forget. I had inside information.” She plopped the last garment on the “done” pile, then folded her hands in front of her on the desk. “C. J. Turner’s idea of intimacy is cozying up to his cell phone on his way to one appointment, making follow-up calls from another. The man is married to his business. Period.”

      A moment of skeptical silence followed. “You got this from Trish, I take it?”

      “Not that I know any details,” Dana said with a shrug. Her much younger cousin and she had never been close, despite Trish’s having lived with Dana’s parents for several years. She’d worked for C. J. Turner for six months before vanishing from the face of the earth, more than a year ago. Before the alien abduction, however, she had talked quite a bit about the apparently calendar-worthy Realtor. Professionally, she’d sung his praises, which was why Dana had recommended him to Cass when she’d needed an agent’s services. Personally, however, was something else again. “But I gathered the man hasn’t exactly listed himself on the Marriage Exchange.”

      Cass gave her a pointed look from underneath feathery bangs. “So maybe he hasn’t met the right woman yet.”

      “Boy, you are sleep-deprived.”

      “Well, you never know. It could happen.”

      “Yeah, and someday I might lose this extra thirty pounds I’ve been lugging around since junior high, but I’m not holdin’ my breath on that one, either.”

      “You know, sweetie, just because Gil—”

      “And you can stop right there,” Dana said softly before her partner could dredge up past history. She rose, grabbing the pile of newly marked clothes to cart out front. “I’ve already got one mother, Cass.”

      “Sorry,” Cass said over the baby’s noisy suckling at her breast. “It’s just—”

      “I am happy,” Dana said, cutting her off. “Most of the time, anyway. I’ve got a good life, great friends and I actually look forward to coming to work every day, which is a lot more than most people can say. But trust me, the minute I start buyin’ into all the ‘maybes’ and ‘it could happens,’ I’m screwed.”

      Silence hovered between them for a few seconds, until, on a sigh that said far more than Dana wanted to know, Cass said, “C.J.’s card’s in my Rolodex.”

      “Great,” Dana said, thinking, Why me, God? Why?

      “You keep staring out the door like that, your eyeballs are gonna fall right outta your head.”

      C.J. smiled, relishing the blast from the lobby’s overzealous air conditioner through his dress shirt, fresh out of the cleaner’s plastic this morning. “Haven’t you got phones to answer or something, Val?”

      “You hear any ringing? I don’t hear any ringing, so I guess there aren’t any phones to answer.” The trim, fiftysomething platinum blonde waltzed from behind the granite reception desk to peer through silver-framed glasses out the double glass door at the gathering clouds. “You giving that cloud the evil eye so it’ll go away, or so it’ll come here?”

      One hand stashed in his pants pocket, C.J. allowed a grin for both the storm outside and the Texas tempest beside him. Out over the West Mesa, lightning periodically forked in the ominous sky; in the past ten minutes, the thunder had gone from hesitant rumbling to something with a real kick to it. If it weren’t for this appointment, he’d be outside, arms raised to the sky, like some crazed prehistoric man communing with the gods. Ozone had an almost sexual effect on him, truth be told. Not that he was about to let Val in on that fact.

      “Ah, c’mon, Val—can’t you feel the energy humming in the air?”

      “Oh, Lord. Next thing I know, you’re gonna tell me you’re seeing auras around people’s heads—”

      The phone rang, piercing the almost eerie hush cloaking the small office. Already cavelike with its thick, stone-colored carpeting and matching walls, the serene gray décor was relieved only by a series of vivid seriographs, the work of a local artist whose career C.J. had been following for years. Normally the place was hopping, especially when the three other agents he’d brought on board were around. But not only were they all out, even C.J.’s cell phone had been uncharacteristically silent for the past hour or so.

      Unnerving, to say the least.

      “I hear you, I hear you,” Val muttered, sweeping back around the desk, assuming her sweetness-and-light voice the instant she picked up the receiver. A wave of thunder tumbled across the city, accompanied by a lightning flash bright enough to make C.J. blink. Behind him, he heard a little shriek and the clatter of plastic as Val dropped the receiver into the cradle. Some twenty-odd years ago, an uncle or somebody had apparently been struck by lightning through the phone; nobody in her family had touched a telephone during an electrical storm since. Still, the quirk was a small enough price to pay for unflagging loyalty, mind-boggling efficiency and the occasional, well-deserved kick in the butt.

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