The Only Solution(3)

       
           



       

"Miss?" His voice was sharp now. "What did you say your name was?"

There were worse things for a child than lack of money. Besides, Wendy  had a little time before the situation really became critical. There  would be a way; there would be another job. They'd make it  –  somehow.

"Where are you calling from?"

Wendy ignored him. She watched idly as Jed turned off the lights in his  office and headed for the door. Jed was obviously distressed, but he  wasn't making noises about disowning his kids just because things were  going to be tough for a while. The Landers family would make do, as  families always had.

And Wendy could do that too. For Rory's sake. She and Rory were a family, now.

"Never mind," she said crisply. "I've obviously made a mistake. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

He was saying something when she hung up on him. She didn't know what it was, and she didn't care.



*****



In the next week Wendy sent out a blizzard of resumes and took a  precious personal day off so she could make the rounds of all the  companies in Phoenix which might be in need of a mid-level marketing  executive.

Nothing came of it immediately, of course. She was competing with not  only the usual applicants but the entire department which had been laid  off with her, and naturally other companies were not going to jump to  hire anyone until they'd looked over the whole field.

But it would work out, she told herself. She was good at her job, and  her education was impeccable. If only she had a little more money in  reserve, so she didn't have to worry as she waited for something to come  along... But it was too late to think about that.

Her mood lifted each evening, of course, when she picked Rory up from  the sitter's. There was something very ego-soothing about a baby who  turned into a bundle of energy at the mere sight of her, laughing and  babbling and cooing and flailing her arms and legs like a windmill in an  effort to be held an instant sooner. The child really was getting to be  a delight.

But in the long nights, when Rory was asleep and Wendy was too exhausted  to rest, things weren't quite so clear and straightforward. She had  just a few more days to work, and her last paycheck would be smaller  than usual because she'd made arrangements to pay their health insurance  in advance. Her savings would let them survive for a month, maybe two  if she was very careful, while she looked intensively for another job in  her field. But if she hadn't been successful by then, she'd have to  take whatever work came along just to feed the two of them.

And if sometimes in the dead of night she thought of Samuel Burgess, and  the first few moments of that conversation  –  when his warm, soft voice  had made her start to think that Marissa had been wrong about her father   –  she didn't let her mind dwell on him for long. She'd made one  mistake, and she wasn't about to make another.

She had a job interview set up for Thursday afternoon, and Jed Landers  had told her to slip out of the office early. It hardly mattered, now  that their work was done and the final liquidation was underway. She had  come to work in her best suit  –  the rust-colored one she'd bought early  in the fall because it picked up the mahogany highlights in her hair  –   and she'd caught her hair up in a french braid. She looked pleasant and  professional, but not too sleek; looking like a clothes horse left a bad  impression with some interviewers.

She was checking her leather portfolio to be certain everything was at  hand when she noticed a man standing at the department's secretary's  desk.

He was about thirty, she guessed, and not bad-looking, though he  appeared to be the arrogant sort  –  or perhaps that was just his  eyebrows, dark brown and heavy and drawn together at the moment in a  frown. His hair was surprisingly light, considering the shade of his  eyebrows  –  brown, with blond streaks which spoke of hours on a beach or  perhaps under a sun lamp. He was certainly put together well. He was  lean and tall, and his dark gray suit had obviously not seen the inside  of an ordinary department store. His shirt was blindingly white, and  she'd bet his tie was silk and his briefcase the best and most delicate  leather.                       
       
           



       

She didn't recognize him as a representative of any of the companies  they usually dealt with. In her experience, he was too well-dressed to  be a government sort, which left the probability he was one of the  attorneys involved in the bankruptcy. In any case, it was nothing to do  with her, and she turned back to her portfolio just as the secretary  stood up and pointed to Wendy's cubicle.

Her heart missed a beat. But only, she told herself, because his  business  –  whatever it was  –  was apt to make her late for her interview.  She muttered a couple of words under her breath and started to stuff  her portfolio back in the drawer. Then she reconsidered and left it on  the blotter. She had Jed's permission to leave early, and surely at this  late date no one could blame her for not feeling much loyalty to the  company.

The man crossed the room without hurry and paused in the opening which passed for a door.

Wendy picked up a note pad and pushed it into her portfolio. She didn't  look up. "I'm so sorry, but I'm just on my way out of the office.  Someone else can help you."

"I'm afraid not, Miss Miller."

Her hands froze on the portfolio, and she thought, illogically, that he  sounded different in person, without fifteen hundred miles of telephone  wire between them.

No. That couldn't be. She slowly raised her head to look at him,  reminding herself that this man couldn't possibly be Samuel Burgess. He  probably didn't sound anything like him, either  –  not really. It was  only a trick of the mind.

He had braced one hand against the back of a chair and was leaning on  it. "Our conversation was interrupted," he said levelly. "I've come a  long way to finish it."

"You're not Marissa's father," she said irrationally. But his eyes were  almost the same color  –  a bit deeper blue than Marissa's had been,  perhaps, and without the dark ring around the iris.

"No. I'm her brother."

"But I talked to … "

"You asked for Samuel Burgess. Since my father's retirement, I'm the  only one of that name at the Burgess Group, so the call automatically  came to me. What's the matter, Miss Miller? Would you have been more  comfortable dealing with an old man? Did you think he might be starting  to lose his faculties and would be easier to persuade?"

"I didn't – "

"And what did you want to persuade him to do, anyway? I'm afraid I  didn't give you much of a chance to make your demands, but I'm all ears  now."

She bent over the portfolio again. Her hands were shaking. She'd starve  herself to death before she'd expose Rory  –  precious, helpless little  Rory  –  to this sharp and sarcastic man.

"Nothing," she said. "No demands. No requests. No favors. I told you  –  I made a mistake."

There was a second's pause. His voice was almost casual. "So there's no baby?"

"No." She picked up the portfolio and stepped around the end of her  desk. But the cubicle was narrow, and he was blocking her path to the  opening.

"That's a monumental error, I'd say," he mused. "And a rather strange  one, too. The people at your apartment complex told me there's a baby."

She hadn't given an instant's thought to how he had traced her to the  office, or what he had already known about her before he came, and she  had to scramble for an answer. "I meant, she's not Marissa's baby. She's  mine."

Another pause, and then he said levelly, "So the Burgesses have nothing to do with it."

Wendy looked him straight in the eye. "Absolutely nothing."

He seemed to relax a little.

She had expected that sort of reaction  –  relief, perhaps, that there  were no loose ends to his sister's life after all. No wonder Marissa  hadn't wanted her family to raise her baby! Wendy was glad he wasn't  going to push it farther. Still, the easy way he'd passed over Rory's  existence, without even bothering to check it for himself, stung a  little, and her voice was thick. "If you'll excuse me, Mr. Burgess..."

Trying to push past him was like attempting to shove a building out of  the way. "Just to satisfy my curiosity, Miss Miller, were you intending  to sell the baby to my father, or were you simply trying out a spot of  blackmail?"