An Unexpected Christmas Baby (The Daycare Chronicles 2)

“Maybe. They have to want to invest to get involved in the conversation.”

The bill was delivered and he reached for it. He’d suggested the place, but when she took it from him, he didn’t try to stop her. This was her lunch, he knew it would be expensed, and he didn’t want to insult her. But he hoped there’d be a next time, and that it would be his treat.

As he’d observed earlier, she’d been put in his path at a critical time. And she already knew all about his mother. She’d seen his employee file, so she’d know about his own troubles eight years before. And she’d met Diamond Rose.

She was only with him because she had to be. He didn’t miss that point. But if she accepted a personal invitation...

He waited until they were almost back at the office, until they were talking about the weather, clearly not a business discussion, before he asked, “Would you be interested in doing this again sometime? Not as a date, but just having lunch together? If you come up with any more questions about what we do at Owens, I’d be happy to answer them, and you’ve given me so much insight on raising newborns, I’d just like to say thank you.”

Anything later than lunch involved Diamond Rose, and he wasn’t ready for that.

“I...” Shaking her head, she let her words trail off.

She was going to turn him down. He was more disappointed than he’d expected to be, but waited for what would no doubt be a polite brush-off.

Or, God help him, was she going to report him to Howard for sexual harassment? He hadn’t touched her. Or indicated that he wanted to. He’d just invited her to lunch.

He started to sweat anyway. In his experience, based on who he was, his background, people were more apt to assume he was guilty than the guy next door. Even if he was the guy next door.

That mess eight years ago had nearly stolen any hope he’d had of making a decent life for himself.

His mother’s death three days ago had stolen even more...

“I’d actually like that, thank you. I’m pretty sure that between now and then I’ll come up with more questions and the way you explain things, enough but not too much...” Tamara said after a noticeable time had passed.

Flint had no idea why she’d changed her mind, but he was certain she had. And he was glad of it, too—enough so that he wasn’t going to question his luck.

He’d press it, though. “Sometime this week?” he asked. He had a business lunch scheduled for the next day. “Thursday?”

“Thursday would be good.”

Okay, then. That was set. He’d been off-line from Diamond Rose for at least twenty minutes and from commodities reports for almost two hours. Holding the door open for Tamara, he thanked her for lunch, told her to contact him if she had any other questions, then wished her a good rest of the day and hightailed it to his office.

Keeping to his priorities was paramount. That was a promise to Alana. And to Diamond Rose.

Chapter Nine

Tamara was too busy Tuesday afternoon to think about the co

mplexities of her lunch meeting. But they were there, a steady presence in the background of her day. She’d visited the head of every department. Had looked at their bottom lines.

Finding very little, even as an efficiency expert, to offer her father, she started to feel overwhelmed. She had some ideas on making the mail room run more smoothly. Thought maybe a delivery service would work better than the current system of having a driver on-site, ready to go if the need arose. Yes, the driver handled other menial tasks when he wasn’t driving, but they were tasks that could easily be incorporated into the daily routines of several different employees.

None of which was going to make a damn bit of difference if she couldn’t find something really out of place.

Granted, she’d only gone over one broker’s files in depth—Flint’s. There was at least a week’s worth of information to weed through, already downloaded on her computer that morning, pertaining to all accounts and monies. Everything from commissioned earnings to an annual fund-raiser to benefit underprivileged children that her father had been running around Christmastime every year since Tamara’s first miscarriage.

Next, she’d be looking at supply purchases and expense reports.

And figured she could study numbers, tally up columns, run down bids and purchase orders for months and still not find what she needed.

At the end of the day, she went to her father. She needed to know more about the specifics of what his accountant had found.

“I don’t think it’s Flint Collins,” she said the second she sat with him on the solid leather couch at the far end of his office. He’d poured her a glass of tea with ice. And had a shot of whiskey for himself.

One shot. That was what he had every day before leaving the office. His way of unwinding, he’d always said, of leaving the stresses of his business day right where they belonged.

“He’s worked too hard to get where he is to jeopardize it over money,” she said. That was her gut instinct. At least, that was what she called whatever it was that was driving her to want to help him.