It was only in the past year that Sammy had begun rebelling, wanting more than she could give, more than he could earn. He was a good kid, but he’d done without for a long time. She couldn’t really blame him for wanting all the fancy things his friends took for granted. Yet that didn’t mean she was about to condone his buying stolen property.
“What does this man look like?” she repeated. Though she wasn’t entirely convinced that the man she’d accosted in Washington’s Tavern was innocent, she wanted to be certain. As she’d told him, she wasn’t impressed by his clothes, his smooth talk or that sales slip he’d waved under her nose. The seemingly refined grandfather had made her pause, but she supposed it was possible the whole family was involved in a well-paying life of crime.
Still, she hadn’t expected a thief to have eyes that could melt stone, gentle gray-blue eyes that had at least momentarily filled with compassion once he’d gotten over the shock of that reasonably accurate left hook to his jaw. She would really hate to think she owed the guy an apology. In fact, she would hate like heck to have to see him again at all. He’d made her nervous in a way no man ever had before, a way that guaranteed trouble even for a woman who considered herself an expert at dodging it.
“I didn’t pay that much attention,” Sammy said evasively.
“Then how did you expect to meet up with him again? Was he supposed to find you?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
Sammy squirmed uncomfortably. “Yeah. No. I don’t know. Come on, sis, gimme a break.”
Dana sighed. This was getting her nowhere. “Was he tall? About six-one?”
Sammy shrugged.
She thought of the man’s wind-tousled golden hair and deliberately asked, “Dark hair?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
She studied Sammy’s pale face, but couldn’t for the life of her tell if he was lying or telling the truth. What difference did it make? She wasn’t going to turn the guy in, not when she was still so uncertain of his identity. She might as well let it go for now. She cupped her hand around Sammy’s chin and forced him to meet her gaze.
“If one thing comes into this house without a proper sales slip from a regular store, I will personally turn you over to the police and let them deal with you. Got it?”
He didn’t look nearly as intimidated as she might have liked, but he mumbled an affirmative response. Dana nodded. “Okay. I’ve got a design presentation to do this weekend, if I’m going to have a prayer of getting that ad agency job.”
Dana took twenty dollars from her purse. She didn’t want Sammy to get the idea she was rewarding him for his dishonesty, but she really needed the peace and quiet. “Why don’t you call one of your friends, maybe take in a movie? Stop at the store on the way home and buy something for dinner, maybe spaghetti. I’ll make homemade sauce.”
For the first time since their fight over the VCR she’d discovered in his room that morning, Sammy’s expression brightened. He wrapped skinny arms around her for a quick hug. “You’re okay, sis.”
Dana sighed. “You’re pretty okay yourself. Don’t forget the onions and green peppers and be back here by six-thirty.”
“You got it.”
As soon as he left, Dana pushed aside all her doubts and worries. The only way to deal with Sammy—with any teenage boy, from what she’d seen in the neighborhood—was to take each day as it came. She couldn’t panic over each and every failure. If she did, it would mean conceding that she had done the wrong thing by trying to raise him by herself. No matter how bad things got, she refused to believe that they would have been better off separated and placed in a couple of loveless foster homes.
With a sigh she got out her art supplies and set up her drawing board in front of the living room window. The light was terrible in the dreary apartment, but at least she had a view. It was better than the cubbyhole she’d been assigned to in the back room at the printing company. It was there that she proofread type and, if she was lucky, designed an occasional cheap flyer for the dry cleaners down the block or the bookstore two streets over.
On Friday she’d applied for a better job in the graphics department at an advertising agency. Despite an impressive portfolio, they had required that she do an actual assignment before offering her the job. She pulled out the materials she’d been given by the art director and began to read about the textile manufacturing company that was looking for a new corporate logo to jazz up its staid image.
By the time she’d read the first half dozen pages of the company’s annual report, she suspected that their idea of a more modern image would be a nudge into the twentieth century, not a daring leap into the twenty-first. It was the sort of assignment she’d hated in her night school design classes. It required little imagination and even less skill to create a bland logo, which would be barely distinguishable from the old one that had satisfied for the past hundred years.
Dana flipped through the rest of the report. She had just turned to the last page when she felt her heart screech to a halt, then begin to hammer.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered under her breath as she stared at the page of photos of the company’s corporate executives. Unmistakably, right in the middle and listed as the head of marketing was the man she’d accused just a few short hours ago of being a thief: Jason Halloran—as in Halloran Industries.
Oh, God,
