A Little Moonlighting

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Well…” She turned, looking toward where the baby slept in a travel chair. “I guess I’d better get them home. It must be way past their bedtime by now.”

“Yes, of course.” He looked pleased with something and she wasn’t sure why.

Deedee and Scamp came running up, ready to go home. Amy helped Deedee into her sweater.

“’Bye, Pooky,” Scamp called back at the huge orange-colored cat sitting on a pillow in the far corner of the room. “See ya tomorrow.”

“’Bye, ’bye,” Deedee said, copying her brother and waving at the animal.

The cat blinked its golden eyes and lashed its tiger-striped tail and didn’t say a thing.

“I’ll come with you,” Paul offered. “I’ll help you carry the baby, help you get the other two to bed.” He gave Amy a comforting smile. “You’ll need help, all right. They are a handful.”

“Are they?” Suddenly her confidence began to show some wear around the edges. Was she going to be up to this job? She’d never taken care of children before, never even baby-sat as a teenager. She was always too busy entering competitions and running for class office to have time for things like that.

And she hadn’t visited with Meg and her crew often enough to get a feel for it. Whenever she was over, Meg was a whirlwind of activity, usually ordering Amy just to sit and talk to her, tell her everything about what it was like to live in the fast-paced business world.

“Oh, sure,” Paul said happily as he headed out on the porch, baby in tow. “They’re not bad kids, mind you, but they are very, very active. But don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it right away.”

“Will I?” she had whispered to herself as she followed with the older children. “And what happens if I don’t?”

Snapping out of her reverie, Amy willed herself to drift off to sleep. She knew she’d need all her energy to face another day.

Chapter Three

You’ll get the hang of it, Amy told herself encouragingly as she watched the morning sun begin to form a light pattern on the bedroom wall. Just give it some time.

But there was no more time—the baby was stirring. She could hear the little murmurs that would soon grow into a full-throated cry. For just a moment she longed for her usual mornings, awakening to her clock radio, lingering over coffee and the newspaper, dressing in something sharp and business-like and arriving at the office in time to get a morning glance, along with a cynical comment or two, from a suave and debonair Carter.

Carter. She felt an ache of regret that twisted inside her. Instead of that grown-up, sophisticated way to start her day, she had to share a bedroom with a noisy white mouse. There had been a time when she’d dreamed of sharing such a room with Carter.

But the baby’s noises were getting more insistent. No time for nostalgia. Sighing, she threw back the covers and rolled out of bed. Time to start the day.

“Carter, we really have to get the final numbers on the Milan estimate. They’ve been calling all week and I put them off because you were in France, but they know you’re back and…”

Carter looked up from the papers he’d been staring at and frowned at Delia, his secretary. Middle-aged and motherly, she ran the office with a fine efficiency and attention to detail; she liked her boss a lot, but didn’t necessarily approve of everything he did.

“I don’t have those numbers,” he told her. “Pendleton was working on those.”

“I’ve looked through her desk, but I can’t find them.” Delia waited expectantly, her large brown eyes earnest.

He hesitated, then shrugged impatiently. “Give her a call,” he suggested.

Delia set her lips and put her hands on her hips. “Mr. James, I will not bother her with office business. She doesn’t work here anymore. We have to do this without her.”

Carter stared out across the room at the desk where his administrative associate was supposed to be. There was an interloper sitting in her chair. A short, eager young woman with a head of bouncing red curls sat looking through files where Pendleton ought to be. He had an impulse to growl like a guard dog seeing an intruder, but he reined it in and managed to speak calmly to his secretary.

“I’ll work on the Milan figures later,” he told Delia. He held up a piece of onionskin-thin paper. “Right now I need someone to interpret what this letter from the Lee Group in Singapore is all about.”

“Well, give it to Martha. If she’s going to be your associate, she’s going to have to learn to do these things.”

He gazed at Delia as though she’d advised him to call in a palm reader.

“She won’t have a clue,” he told her scornfully. “Pendleton was the only one who ever knew what these screwballs were saying.”

Delia shrugged. “She’ll have to learn sometime. And you’re going to have to teach her.”

He groaned, almost writhing in his chair.

“You taught Amy,” Delia reminded him sternly. “She didn’t know anything at first, either.”

“Maybe not,” he rumbled. “But she had an instinct for the business like no one I’d ever seen before. I’ll never find anyone else like her.”

Delia threw up her hands. “You are resistant to change, aren’t you?”

Change? Was that what he was resistant to? He scowled at the woman. What was she so cheery about, anyway? She was going to miss Pendleton, too. He couldn’t believe she thought this Martha person was a fitting replacement any more than he did.

“Oh, she’ll do fine, in time,” Delia assured him as though she’d read his mind. She turned to leave. “Give her a chance,” she flung back over her shoulder.

He didn’t want to give her a chance. He wanted Pendleton back. He wanted to look out across the room and see her sleek blond head bent over a problem, see her jump up in excitement when she’d figured out an answer, see her striding toward his desk with a look of triumph on her beautiful lips…Where the hell was she, anyway?

Looking out at where she ought to be, he felt something painful in his chest. “Gas pain,” he told himself hopefully. “I’ll get over it.” But he knew better.

The day seemed to drag. Even sparring with his nemesis in Finance, Gary Brown, tight-fisted holder of the travel advance purse strings, didn’t perk him up much. He spent an inordinate amount of time staring at the telephone and thinking of different things he needed to say to Pendleton. But he couldn’t call her. That would be like…well, like admitting defeat or something.

Or admitting that you need her, said a little voice in his head.

But he’d already admitted that. In fact, he’d pretty much taken out billboards to make sure she got the message. So why not call her? Why not?

And then Martha, his new associate, was coming toward his desk, a look of eager expectation on her cute little face. She was so young, so earnest, so…so un-Pendleton.

“Mr. James,” she said brightly, her smile fixed. “I need to find a file on land prices in Australia. It’s listed in the file index but it’s not where it’s supposed to be.”

Ignoring the smile, he frowned at her. “We were just using that file recently. Have you checked the copy room? Someone might have left it in the copy machine.”

“That was the very first place I looked.”

His frown began to fade. “Have you looked through the desk?”

“Yes, sir. Twice.”

Carter leaned back in his chair. He glanced out at where Delia usually sat. Her desk was empty. A faint smile began to play at the corners of his wide mouth.

“I guess we’ll have to call Pendleton,” he said slowly. “I can’t see what else we can do.” He gave his new associate the first genuine smile she’d ever seen from him. “But there’s no need for you to bother about it. You just go on back and do some typing or something.” He sat up straight in his chair and flexed his shoulders. “I’ll make the call.”

Martha blinked at him uncertainly, then quickly went back to her desk. Carter stared at the telephone for a long moment, anticipating, then reached for it.

Amy felt like a woman under siege. If yesterday had been difficult, today was impossible. It had started out badly and just gotten worse.