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Why?
She sighed and searched around for the budget file that Jose had made notes on.
“Bruce, have you seen my budget file?” she called out the door.
“I put it on the corner of your desk before we left for the meeting,” her assistant replied.
Grace went back to her desk and picked up a pile of folders, suddenly remembering that she’d put a story she’d meant to enter in a romance writing contest in a similar folder.
Oh, my God.
Frantic, she started searching through all the folders, not finding the budget report or her story “Adam’s Mistress.”
Oh, this was so not good. She had absolutely no excuse to have printed the document out here at work, but her printer at home was almost eight years old and it was difficult to find printer ink for it. Currently, she was out.
There was a knock on the door and she glanced up. Jose stood there with a folder in his hand. A folder that was identical to … well, every other folder in her office, since they purchased folders in bulk.
Calm down, Grace.
“Got a minute?”
“Sure,” she said, amazed that her voice sounded so calm and serene when inside she was ready to scream.
“I grabbed the budget report to double-check over lunch. I think we need to reevaluate the funds we have.”
She was partially relieved that Jose was holding the budget and not her story. “Please tell me we have more money than we thought.”
“I wish I could.”
She sank down in her chair and gestured for Jose to come farther into the room. “I think we’re going to need fifty thousand to make it until the end of the school year.”
“That’s a lot of car washes,” she said. The school had never held many fundraisers. They had a golf tournament every year in the fall to raise funds. But parents and alumni had already contributed to that.
“The kids are willing to participate to some extent, but the one thing we haven’t slipped on is our academic excellence.”
She understood what Jose was saying. If they asked the students to start participating in a variety of fundraising activities, it would distract them from their studies.
“I have a meeting tomorrow morning with Sue-Ellen. I think the parents will be a great resource for this. Jose, will you please call our alumni president and see if he’s available tomorrow at ten?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks,” she said. As Jose got up and left her office, she sank back into the chair. The next few months were going to be difficult. And she had to find that story she’d printed out.
She didn’t need the additional worry that a student would find it. Or worse, Sue-Ellen or Malcolm.
Oh, no. What if Adam had found it?
Was that why he’d taken her to lunch and said he’d help her with the school? Was he setting her up for a private meeting where he’d tell Malcolm about the story and fire her?
She had no time to dwell on that possibility as she spent the afternoon meeting with individual board members. Meetings that Adam had set up for her. The support she garnered was worth the time she spent with them.
The afternoon went by quickly. She had a small break and searched every inch of her office but couldn’t find her story. Jose e-mailed her his ideas for their fund shortage, and they were all really good.
“Grace, Dawn O’Shea called while you were in a meeting. She wants to talk to you about possibly getting her job back.” Bruce hovered in her doorway uncertainly.
“I can’t talk to her today,” Grace said. She felt sorry for Dawn, losing her job and her husband. But Dawn’s actions had greatly hurt the school, and saving Tremmel-Bowen was Grace’s priority.
“I told her you’d call next week.”
“Thanks.”
Bruce left at six. Grace researched fundraising ideas on the Internet and sent a few links to Jose and Sue-Ellen. She glanced up from her computer at seven-thirty when she heard voices in the outer office. Her head ached at the thought of how much work she still had to do.
The missing story scared her. It had the potential to put all the work she’d done today to save the school to waste. At least she hadn’t put her real name on it as the author. But the characters’ names—Adam and Grace—were pretty damning. She’d have to change those before she submitted it anywhere. If she submitted it.
She knew her assistant would rush back to help her if she called him. But she didn’t exactly want Bruce searching her office for that file folder.
“Grace? Got a minute?”
Adam stood in her doorway with Malcolm just behind him. The smile of welcome froze on her face as she noted the file folder held loosely in his hands.
The sinking feeling in her stomach grew as she waited for Malcolm or Adam to speak. She was a nervous wreck and she hated that. This was her domain. The one place in the world that she’d found where she really fit.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
“Ms. Stephens, do you have time to discuss your financial plan with me now?” Malcolm asked.
She wanted to say no. But she wasn’t going to turn away from the olive branch that Malcolm offered. All day long she’d heard from other board members that the decision to keep the school open had to be unanimous, so if Malcolm wasn’t on board by the end of the school year, Tremmel-Bowen would be closed.
“Sure. I was just about to order some dinner, can I get something for you both?”
“We won’t be that long. We can go down to the conference room so we’ll have more room.”
Grace followed Malcolm down the hall. She empathized with him. She would want to shut down the school as well if she were in Malcolm’s shoes. Betrayal. It was one thing she understood better than most.
Adam dropped behind to speak to the night-maintenance supervisor and Grace found herself alone with Malcolm. She explained the shortage error they’d just found and then spent forty-five minutes arguing over the tiniest details in the budget. Grace was careful to keep her temper, but she was beginning to believe it was going to be impossible to convince Malcolm to give the school a reprieve.
In the back of her mind was the fear that all the work that she and Adam had done today would be undone by her story surfacing somewhere. She thought of all the people who’d been in and out of her office throughout the day. She’d had the student council representatives in there and, to be honest, she would be even more horrified if one of them had found the folder than if Adam had.
“Ms. Stephens, if you aren’t going to pay attention you’re just wasting our time.”
“I am paying attention. I don’t see this as a waste of time.”
“I do,” he said. She felt the noose tighten and realized that Malcolm might have given in until the end of semester but beyond that he wasn’t vested in seeing the school survive.
She reached across the table and touched the back of his hand. He glanced up at her. “Yes?”
“What can I say to you?”
He didn’t pretend not to understand her. “Nothing. I’m sorry, Grace. I have a lot of respect for you personally but I can’t get around the fact that this school needs to be closed.”
“You know that knot you have in the pit of your stomach?” she asked, waiting only for his nod.
“That’s what you are going to give to the kids. Some of them don’t make friends easily. Some of them have their whole life planned with this school, with this education. And no matter that we’re in the red financially or that we’ve had an unfortunate scandal—educationally, we’re still top-rated.”
“And your point is?”
“That we’ll be betraying the trust those students put in this institution. And I know that someone who understands betrayal wouldn’t want to do that to anyone, especially not teenagers who are already struggling just to grow up.”
Malcolm leaned back in his chair, studying her with an impenetrable gaze. He gathered his papers and put them into his briefcase. “You make a good point, Grace. And I’ll consider what you’ve said until the end of the semester when the board meets again.”
She said nothing as the older man left her alone in the boardroom. But she knew she’d scored a victory. A temporary one, a small battle, but still she’d convinced him to give her until the end of the school year to make some significant changes.
And if she didn’t find her file folder, it could all be for nothing.
She frowned, thinking of what she had to accomplish. The short time frame she had to accomplish it made her want to scream.
Someone brushed her fingers aside and she glanced over her shoulder to see Adam standing there.
He massaged her shoulders and the tension of the day started to recede. Not totally of course. “Malcolm mentioned he was giving you until the end of the semester to prove the school should be left open.”
“Yes, he agreed to that. Thank you, Adam. For arranging all those meetings and for standing behind me. I don’t think the board would have given me a chance without that.”
She tried to keep her mind on the school. It was the most important thing in her life. But a part of her stared up at Adam and wondered if he’d somehow found the seeds to shut down her school anyway. If he was toying with her because … why? From what she’d seen of him, he wasn’t a cruel man.
“No problem. Everyone agrees that if anyone can turn the school around it’s you,” he said.
“Why do they believe that?” she asked, hating the weakness that question revealed. But tonight, she was a little overwhelmed. Maybe she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Maybe she should have taken the out the board had given her. She could have walked away from the school with a nice recommendation and gotten another job.
“Because you have this inner strength that makes everyone around you realize that you won’t settle for anything other than excellence.”
She wished she felt that what he’d said was true. But inside she feared she was a fraud. That the fear of having to look for another job, the fear of having to go to some new place and try to fit in had in large part motivated her to save Tremmel-Bowen.
“I’m not that woman,” she said.
“Yes, you are,” Adam said, using his hands on her shoulders to turn her around and draw her to her feet.
“I don’t feel like it.”
“You will tomorrow.”
“What’s going to change between now and then?”
“I’m going to make you dinner and convince you of the faith I have in you.”
“We can’t. I thought about it this afternoon, you know we can’t have dinner together.”
“We both have to eat,” he said.
She shook her head. If she wanted to save the school, she needed to stay focused on the school and not let Adam distract her. “Our being seen together is too risky. I don’t want to chance it.”
“Dinner isn’t a torrid affair.”
“I know that.”
“How about if I cook for you?”
“You can cook?”
He quirked one eyebrow at her and gave her a half smile that she felt all the way to her toes. “Yes, ma’am.”
She gave her unspoken consent by following him out the door. Already she felt lighter, not as tired, just at the thought of spending more time with him. Adam really was a one-of-a-kind guy. The kind of man worthy of a woman who wasn’t always pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
Her secrets felt like a heavy burden. And Adam might actually be privy to one that she wanted to keep very private. Going to dinner at his house would give her an opportunity to fish around and see if he’d found “Adam’s Mistress” on her desk.
Four
She knew she should tell him to leave, that her job was at stake, but she couldn’t give up the chance to be with him. To know him intimately. She caressed his chest, lingering over the well-developed pectorals.
His muscle jumped under her touch. She scraped her nail down the center line of his body. Following the fine dusting of hair that narrowed and disappeared into the waistband of his pants.
“Don’t go,” she said softly.
Excerpt from “Adam’s Mistress” by Stephanie Grace
Adam enjoyed cooking because so many people expected him not to know how to do it. Like he was nothing more than a stereotype instead of a real person. He’d been on his own for the better part of the last fifteen years and survival demanded that he at least make an effort to learn how to feed himself.
He’d employed his parents’ staff for the first five years after his parents’ death, but when he learned the truth of his family’s secret he felt like a fraud and couldn’t in good faith continue to pretend to be someone he wasn’t. One of the hardest things he’d had to do was let go of the staff. But if Molly and Hubert Johnson were working for him he wasn’t going to learn to stand on his own, so he’d asked them both what they wanted to do. Molly had always longed to open a small craft store in her hometown and Adam had helped her do that. Hubert had been happy to move back home with his wife and work in the shop.
Slowly Adam had started learning what he needed to do to carve a life for himself. A life that he was in control of.
Grace wasn’t one of those women who made false assumptions about him. She’d taken one look at the state of the art kitchen and understood that he would know his way around a good pot roast.
“I guess you really can cook,” she said, a wry grin lighting her face.
“Yes.”
“Most guys consider dinner throwing something on the grill or heating up rice in the microwave.”
He wanted to groan. “A man offered to cook for you and then made microwave rice?”
She laughed but the tension didn’t really ease from her face. She was still nervous and tense. Still unsure of something.
Him, he suspected. The situation that he was engineering to hopefully get her comfortable enough that she’d share the secrets hidden behind those shadowed eyes.
“No. My dad used to make rice for us for dinner whenever there was nothing else to eat.”
“Where was your mom?”
