Regarding The Tycoon's Toddler...

She turned and found Amy Blake, her coordinator, at the open door of the small office. The tiny woman, dressed in jeans and a pink sweater, her long dark hair pulled back from a fine-featured face in a single braid, had her arms full of stuffed animals.

“Oh, sorry. I thought you were gone,” Lindsey said.

“Taylor’s still in the nap room, and I’m letting her sleep while I pick up a bit. What’s going on?” She came farther into the room as a smile grew on her face. “Come on, tell me. That sounded like a victory yell. We’ve got funding? We can get a new van? Start the Mommy and Me program?”

“No, we don’t have any of that—at least, not yet. But I have a meeting with Mr. Zane Holden, head of LynTech, tomorrow at nine in the morning.”

“That’s great,” Amy said, but the smile wasn’t as big now. Lindsey knew that Amy had more to lose than she did if the center had to make drastic cuts. She barely made enough now to support herself and her daughter. But being employed here was the only way Amy could be with her tiny daughter and still work.

“At least I can talk to the man face-to-face instead of through notes. It took me forever to convince his secretary, ‘the human iceberg,’ that I needed to see him in person.” Her sense of victory was starting to fade under nervous anticipation of the meeting. “I’ve got prep to do before the meeting.”

“You know everything inside and out.”

“I’d better,” she sighed as she smoothed the brown slacks she was wearing with a beige silk shirt. She looked around her cluttered office. Boxes and bare board shelves didn’t make it look very professional, but it was usable. Organization was not her strong suit, but she had to be completely in control for her meeting. “I need to go over the figures to make them look better. Maybe take away a few little things to make him think I’m compromising. But I’ll get the most important things, believe me. I’ll try to get you more money, too.”

“If you can do that, it would be terrific.”

Lindsey couldn’t spot her clipboard with her list of what they needed, then remembered she’d had it out in the play area. “I’ll give it my best shot,” she said as she moved past Amy and into the hallway to head for the main part of the center. She stepped into the space with clouds painted on the pale blue ceilings, walls alive with murals depicting various fairy tales, and dividers that looked like rows of giant crayons.

It was quiet now, but for ten hours a day the center was alive with children who desperately needed the care, children whose working parents knew that their children were close by and well taken care of, and children who weren’t coming home to empty houses and hiding in closets just to feel safe.

She spotted her clipboard on one of the tiny mushroom tables near the napping area on the far side of the room. “What to cut,” she whispered as she crossed to pick it up. Then she sank down on one of the mushroom-shaped stools by the flower petal tables in the story area. It was an awkward place to sit with her leggy five-foot seven-inch frame. But the only adult chair in the playroom was a rocking chair filled with children’s toys.

Amy was there, talking quickly in a low voice. “Do you think he’ll go for it? He’s rejected three attempts.”

She stared at the lists she’d made. It would be hard to cross off anything, but she could start with a few of the extras. The new storybooks. The new sleeping pads. They could make do for now. But they did need the stove for the kitchen area, and they needed a better van for transporting school-age kids to the center so they could wait here for their parents to get off work.

“I’m going to get everything I can,” she said, “even if the meeting is going to be ‘very brief.”’

“If anyone can talk Mr. Holden into giving us the funding, it’s you. Look what you did with Mr. Lewis. He didn’t even know about day care centers until you met him and convinced him to start this place.”

“He was anxious to make things better for his employees, not just worried about how much profit he could make. I just wish he were still here, instead of running all over Europe chasing that daughter of his.” She grimaced up at Amy. “Last I heard, he was in France with her celebrating her third engagement in three years and no marriages. Now, that has to be some sort of record.”

Amy shook her head. “I heard she’d gone through tons of colleges, too, and got kicked out of most of them. She’s running her parents a merry chase.”

“And I think she’s part of the reason he retired and sold out to the Holden group.” Lindsey exhaled. “Tell me, what’s the point in getting a corporation like this, then cutting it up into little pieces and selling the pieces off to the highest bidder?”

“Money, Lindsey. It’s the money. It’s called doing business for a profit.”

Lindsey wrapped her arms around herself in a hug, rubbing the flats of her hands on her upper arms. “I don’t care what it is, as long as it doesn’t ruin this program.” She looked at the other woman, as dark and tiny as she was leggy and blond, her face tight with concern. “I won’t let anyone destroy this program.”

“They’ve already started the layoffs. You might not have a choice.”

Lindsey hadn’t had a choice about not having parents, or being in foster homes, or being alone and scared, but she’d had a choice in making a life for herself when she was old enough to be on her own. And she had a choice now.

“No, I’ve got a choice. I can fight or I can give up. I’m not giving up. I’m not going to let Zane Holden ignore us any longer. For better or worse, he’ll have to deal with me in person.”

“Isn’t that like trying to reason with the Big Bad Wolf? All he knows is killing and eating.” Amy smiled. “I don’t mean he’s a killer, but you know what I mean. He’s ruthless.”

“Do you think he has kids?”

“Do people like that breed?”

Lindsey laughed at that, and it felt good to find humor in something at that moment. “Forced sterilization is against the law,” she said. “But, God help his kids. If they don’t perform up to expectations, he probably has them downsized.”

A tiny voice came from the other room: “Mommy?” Amy turned and called out, “Taylor, Mommy’s out here, in the playroom.” She looked back at Lindsey. “I need to get her, then head on home. How about you?”

“I have to face the Big Bad Wolf, and I’m not going to end up as his dinner. So, I have to have a good battle plan in place. I think I’ll be here for a while.”

“Don’t stay too late. You’ve looked tired all day.” She frowned at her. “Are you sleeping okay?”

Lindsey shrugged away the dream that disrupted her nights. “I don’t sleep well at the best of times, but I know what we need around here. I’ll get everything I can for the kids.”

“I know you will. If anyone’ll fight for the kids, you will. It’s a shame you don’t have any.”

Lindsey shrugged that off, too. “Some have kids, some help kids, some do both. I think I’m meant to help.” She pushed aside the idea of her own kids. She didn’t even have the prerequisite—someone she loved enough to want to be with forever. A child deserved parents that wanted to be parents, not parents forced to be parents. “Tomorrow morning at nine, Zane Holden had better be ready for me.”

“Well, word is his co-C.E.O. runs interference for him. You’d better watch out for him. His name’s Terrel. I don’t know his first name, but he sounds as if he’s built like a linebacker. You know the kind—no neck, huge?”

Lindsey stood, caught a glimpse of herself in an acorn-shaped mirror. She really should wear a suit tomorrow, something very businesslike. Something Zane Holden would take seriously. There was no way he’d take her seriously looking like this, in casual clothes, with fine blond hair that insisted on curling at the worst moments, no makeup and freckles. Freckles definitely didn’t engender confidence or fear.

“Okay, if I have to, I’ll go through Terrel, but Mr. Holden is going to listen to me.”

“Mommy?”

Lindsey looked around at a tiny little girl in a rumpled pink pinafore, standing in the arched doorway to the napping room. Taylor looked just like her mother—a two-year-old version with wispy dark hair, dark eyes heavy from her nap, and clutching an oversize white teddy bear that had seen better days.

She ran over to Amy, who scooped her up and hugged her. “I’m sorry, honey. I was talking. We’re going home now.”

“And I’m going to get to work,” Lindsey said, brushing the child’s silky hair with her hand. “See you both tomorrow.”

Amy looked over the child in her arms at Lindsey. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Just cross your fingers,” Lindsey said. “And hope that the Big Bad Wolf is all bark and no bite.”

“We’ll go out the back after I get my things in the kitchen,” Amy said. “Good luck.”

Lindsey watched Amy head into the back area, and, moments later, heard the back exit click open, then shut. In the silence, she took the clipboard back to her office, and, as she passed a mural of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf on the way, she stopped.

She and Amy had painted it, and the Big Bad Wolf was looking a bit worn and not so threatening, with chips in the color at his legs, and scuff marks where tricycle handles had brushed against him over and over again. The poor old thing looked pretty vulnerable to her.

She tapped the wolf on its painted snout just above his toothy snarl. “You won’t know what hit you when I get through with you,” she said. And hoped she was right.

Thursday

ZANE SAT ALONE in his office, the drapes still pulled to shut out the glare of the morning sun. In the dusky light with the blue flicker of the computer screen to his right, he stared into the shadows…thinking. He did his best thinking alone in the morning, before the full blast of the day hit him. He swiveled slowly back and forth, and admitted he did most things in his life alone. He always had.

Suzanne had known that and complained about it. Now her child was cluttering up things, making him trip over logical thinking and rational reasoning. If there were two things he valued in his line of work, they were ration and logic. Lead with the head, he’d always thought, and shove emotions out of the way.