Mixing Business...With Baby

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“Yes, we have. Tell me again why the very thought of marriage and family makes you break into a cold sweat.”

“You know why.” He pressed a button on the armrest with more force than necessary. The window slid down, allowing him to slide the parking-garage access card through the reader. He hated this conversation. He’d always hated it. “I’m flying up to Tahoe next week to talk to a man about renovating a casino. How about joining me? You’ve never met a slot machine you didn’t like, and I promise to keep a never-ending supply of quarters handy—”

“You are thirty-six years old, Rick. It’s time you settled down.”

“Mom—”

“I want grandchildren!”

“Then rent some.” Regretting the snap of his tone, Rick sighed, eased his vehicle into his parking space and shoved the transmission into park. “Mom, please. Trust me when I say that I am doing the females of the world a favor by removing myself from the marriage pool.”

Her voice softened. “Don’t let my failures harden you.”

“You didn’t fail. They did.”

She sighed, a whisper of disappointment that stirred something deep inside Rick’s soul. It was the sigh of a woman scarred by pain, wounded by betrayals that she refused to acknowledge. But Rick acknowledged them, those traitorous emotions that had blinded his beloved mother to the cruelty of misplaced trust. After all the hurt, all the pain, she still viewed life through an optimistic aura of hope, the staunch belief that there was no pain so intense that it couldn’t be eased with love and chicken soup.

As much as Rick adored his mother, he saw in her the same cynical na?vetе that he’d recognized in Catrina Jordan’s eyes, eyes that reflected past pain and betrayal, yet still sparked with wounded vulnerability and a silent hope that had touched a chord deep inside him.

He didn’t know why he’d felt such instant kinship, such intense desire to nurture and protect. He didn’t know why her image haunted his thoughts, why her scent floated through his dreams. It was as if he had suddenly discovered a lost part of himself, an appendage of his soul that had been missing for so long he’d forgotten it ever existed.

“Rick, are you still there?”

“It’s late,” he whispered. “You should get some rest.”

“I suppose so.”

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

He paused. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, dear. Good night.”

A soft click, a crackle of static and she was gone.

Darkness shrouded him in the dim parking bunker. An eerie concrete coldness enveloped him. It was, he thought, like being entombed in a vehicle graveyard, surrounded by idle hulks of steel that had been tossed aside and forgotten until they could once again be useful.

The analogy was strangely unsettling.

It was a discomfiting mirror of his own life, a life he reflected upon only during times like this, times when he was completely alone, undistracted by the comfortable chatter and bustle of people with which he deliberately surrounded himself.

Quietly alone. Silently alone.

Alone.

Panic crept softly, slithering through the shadows of his mind, chilling the unlit corners of his soul. Loneliness was a dark destiny, but Rick accepted it. There was no other choice.

Frowning, Frank Glasgow stepped off the elevator, clasping his hands behind his back. He took two steps into the hallway, then spun to glower at Catrina. “Surely you were informed that certain training sessions would be required.”

“Yes, of course—”

“Then it’s settled.” Pivoting sharply, he strode toward the warren of executive offices at the north side of the floor.

Catrina hurried after him, feeling frantic. “But a two-day seminar halfway across the state? Even if I could afford the travel cost, I can’t possibly leave my daughter for that length of time.”