“Um, no, not quite yet. When do you need it?”
“Five o’clock today.”
“Okay.”
“Want me to pick up lunch for you?”
“Sure, that would be wonderful.” It was a cinch she wouldn’t have time to go out to eat. She would be lucky to get this sucker done before she had to leave at 2:45 to pick up Kaylee from preschool.
She had arranged for an after-school babysitter, but Mrs. Billingsly couldn’t start until next week. Jane had explained about her shortened workdays to Max, who hadn’t taken the news with a smile. He probably already regretted hiring her.
Jane reached for her purse in her desk drawer, intending to give Max some money, but he waved it away. “I’ll take care of it. But you will get the ad done, won’t you?”
“I’m doing my best.”
Max flashed a strained smile. “Great.”
Jane returned her attention to the screen and yelped in surprise. Her photo had turned green. The people looked like Martians. She must have hit the Okay button by mistake when she was adjusting the color balance.
She held her breath and hit Control-Z, the panacea for undoing mistakes, and thankfully the photo turned back to its normal colors.
Jane worked steadily, making slow progress and glancing worriedly at the clock.
By 2:45 she had everything roughed in like she wanted it-but she needed to make some refinements. Now that she was getting the hang of it, she found the graphics program to be incredibly powerful. She could certainly be finished by five-if she didn’t have to pick up Kaylee.
She grabbed her purse and attempted to slip out of the office unnoticed, but as luck would have it, Max came into the hallway just as she did.
“Oh, Jane. Are you done with the ad?”
“Um, almost. I have to pick up Kaylee. But I’m coming back, and I’ll finish up before five, for sure.” She turned away from him and headed for the exit.
“Wait. You’re bringing your daughter here?”
Jane turned back slowly. “That was the plan.”
“Jane, this is a place of business. It’s not a day-care center.”
“This is an unusual situation. Once I have my babysitter, this won’t be a problem. I did explain that to you, right?”
“Yes, but that was before I knew you would take all day to do an ad that should have taken you a couple of hours.”
“I haven’t been wasting time, really. Most of today was spent learning the program. Anyway, I only need a few more minutes to finish up, and Kaylee won’t cause any problems, I promise.” She mentally crossed her fingers. Kaylee was very well behaved most of the time. But every so often she still threw a hideous tantrum, a holdover from the Terrible Twos.
He tried again. “The office isn’t a safe place for a child.”
“She’ll be fine. I’ll keep her with me in my office. You won’t know she’s here.”
Max clearly wasn’t happy about the arrangements, but he didn’t argue further. “The ad will be done by five? And you’ll e-mail it to me?”
“Absolutely.”
Finally he relaxed his stance. “All right.”
“I really have to go or I’ll be late. They charge extra if I’m late picking up, and I can’t afford it.”
“Do you need an advance on your salary?” he asked suddenly. “’Cause if you need money for food or something-”
“That’s not necessary,” she said quickly. “I’m okay.” She hurried away, pondering the Jekyll-and-Hyde routine. First Max was Simon Legree, then he was Mother Teresa.
She was a bit surprised at his hard-nosed attitude regarding children. The corporation where Scott worked as a marketing manager featured its own day-care center and liberal policies for working parents. She knew Max’s company was tiny by comparison, but his attitude seemed antiquated.
Well, some people were simply uncomfortable around children, she reasoned. That was something to keep firmly in mind whenever her heart did its annoying little pitter-pat in his presence.
Yes, he’d done her a huge favor by hiring her. But that was no reason to feel anything but professional toward him.
Kaylee was cranky when Jane picked her up from the private Montessori school, which Jane’s mother had offered to pay for. Her mother had warned her that if she divorced Scott, she shouldn’t expect to move back home and live off her parents’ largesse, not that Jane would have considered that. But when Jane had told her mother about her new job, Wanda Selwyn had tut-tutted about young children needing their mothers, then had offered to pay tuition if Jane would enroll Kaylee in the best preschool available.
“Just because you’ve made some foolish decisions, that’s no reason your child should suffer,” Wanda had proclaimed. Wanda wasn’t so much upset about the divorce as she was about the settlement her daughter had accepted. Jane hadn’t confided her reasons for bowing to Scott’s unreasonable demands.
Jane had been willing to listen to a sermon or two if it solved some of her child-care problems. Though Max hadn’t taken her up on her offer to work for free, her starting salary wasn’t much more than she could have earned as a waitress. But he’d promised her raises would be forthcoming once she proved herself.
“I don’t like that place,” Kaylee proclaimed as Jane buckled her into her car seat.
“Really? What don’t you like?”
“Icky food.”
“Maybe you’ll like tomorrow’s lunch better. Is that all?”
“Billy took my bunny. He’s
“Oh.” Jane slid behind the steering wheel, wondering what the appropriate advice was. Should she encourage Kaylee to share? Or was this mean boy a bully, someone Kaylee should stand up to? Lord knew she wanted to teach her daughter to be independent and learn to solve her own problems.
Jane’s parents had not raised her to be independent. They had raised her to be a rich man’s wife. Looking back at her marriage with some hindsight, she now knew she had been drawn to the security Scott offered her. She had convinced herself she was in love with the handsome but overbearing man, and she had mistaken Scott’s possessiveness for love.
Truth was, she didn’t really know what love was, only that her and Scott’s relationship had been unhealthy from the start. But she had been too scared to leave him, too scared to try to make it on her own. It was only when his behavior began to border on abusive that she’d filed for divorce-before he could carry out any of his threats.
“Macaroni for dinner, Mommy?” Kaylee asked, the bunny incident apparently forgotten.
“Absolutely. But first I have to finish some work at my new job.”
“What’s a job?”
“You know. Like Daddy goes to work every day to his job. Now I have a job. I…draw pictures, and I get paid money for them.”
Kaylee frowned. Her father’s long working hours had been a continual source of friction in their family. Maybe Kaylee believed her mother would stay away all the time, too. No doubt about it, Jane’s job would require a lot of adjustments. Kaylee was used to having almost constant access to her mother.
“I’ll be going to my job every day to work,” Jane said. “But I’ll be home every night for dinner. We’ll still play together and I’ll tuck you in and read you a story every night.”
Kaylee still looked worried. She was growing so fast, getting more complex every day. Jane usually had no idea what was going on behind her daughter’s bright blue eyes. The child had taken her parents’ breakup reasonably well. Not having her father around wasn’t much different than before the divorce, as Scott had spent very little time at home. He had either been working, playing golf or dragging Jane around to this party or that while Kaylee stayed home with a sitter.
Once parked at the office building, Jane grabbed a tote bag filled with favored toys, unbuckled Kaylee from her car seat and walked with her inside the cool lobby.
Carol looked surprised to see the child, but then her face melted into a smile. “What an adorable little
