“As long as Jason gives Tex Jr. a good home, we’ll call it even.”
“No worries there,” Steve assured her. “He’s already asked me if I’d buy Tex his own bed tomorrow.”
“I hope you told him that he has to double up for a while,” she said.
“I did and he seemed okay with that.” Even as he related the story, it still left him somewhat in awe. He had his old Jason back and the relief he felt was unbelievable. It wasn’t anything he ever planned to take for granted. “Really, Erin, I can’t thank you enough for bringing that toy into my son’s life. He’s like the little boy I knew again.”
That was more than reward enough for her. “Glad I could help.”
Even though he appreciated the gesture, Steve felt he should ask one more time—just to be certain. “And you’re sure about wanting to see that kid movie?”
“Absolutely,” she said with feeling. “I’m looking forward to seeing it and looking forward to seeing Jason—and you, too,” she added in case he had any doubts.
She wanted to go very slowly here, not just because there was a child involved but because the thought of dating left her more than a wee bit nervous. Having the boy along helped ease her tension. She was better with kids than she was with adults—unless she’d known them for years, the way she had the people she worked with.
“I’ve got the listing for Sunday right here,” he was telling her. “You want to pick a time so you can pencil it into your schedule?”
“I’m not planning on penciling it in,” Erin said to him.
Had she changed her mind already? he wondered. “Oh?”
“No. Pencil can be erased. I’ll be using my permanent marker for this,” she said, just in case he didn’t think she was being serious about looking forward to the outing.
Steve started reading off the showtimes. “First showing’s at ten-thirty. Is that too early for you?” he asked.
“You consider ten-thirty early?” she said incredulously. “By ten-thirty I usually have about five to six hours of work done.”
“On a Sunday?” he questioned, impressed by her dedication.
“Especially on a Sunday,” she emphasized, then explained, “No major interruptions.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” he said with a touch of amusement. “I’ll call you on Saturday night to confirm.”
Although she liked hearing the sound of his voice, there was no need for him to call, if he thought she was going to reconsider.
“Consider it already confirmed. I’m not about to pass up seeing a feel-good movie with two handsome men,” she told him.
“I’ll be sure to pass that along to Jason. If he starts to act cocky, that’s on you,” Steve told her. And then he went on to ask, “Out of curiosity, since you actually seem to want to see this movie, why haven’t you gone to see it already? It’s been out in the theaters a couple of weeks already.”
“I don’t mind shopping alone. I’ve gotten used to doing things like that. But there is something exceptionally lonely about going to the movies all by myself,” she said. “I just can’t bring myself to do it. Besides, a movie is too much of an indulgence, considering the kind of work schedule I have.”
“Okay, I’ll still call you on Saturday night, but it’ll be just to talk.”
If he was calling her on Saturday night just to talk, that meant that there really wasn’t anyone else around for him to spend time with. Erin caught herself smiling broadly.
“I’ll talk to you then,” she told him.
After hanging up the phone, she stood there for a moment just smiling at it.
Erin was grateful that there was no one around right now to observe her because she probably looked like some sort of an idiot, smiling like that at an inanimate object.
“Oh, like talking to stuffed dinosaurs is any more normal,” she mocked herself, using Tex’s voice to put her in her place.
But Tex—the idea of Tex, she silently insisted—had paved the way to what was on its way, for all intents, to become a very lucrative business someday. If anything, what she’d told Steve was downplaying the truth. Orders were coming in so fast and furious, Judith, Neal and Christian were barely keeping up the production end.
And what she’d told Steve was the truth. She really was afraid to hire more people, afraid that once she took those people on, for some unknown reason business would begin to fall off and then she would be forced to let those people she’d just hired go.
She wasn’t any good at firing people.
Actually, she doubted if there was anyone worse at it than she was. She’d done it only once before and it had been agony for her, even though Wade Baker more than deserved to be fired for so many reasons. It wasn’t just because he wasn’t a team player and kept telling everyone else what to do. His greatest offense was that he wanted to get familiar in ways that had nothing to do with the company and everything to do with her.
She’d fired him and he’d refused to leave. It had gotten to the point that she had to threaten him with a restraining order because he’d kept showing up at work and then even her home.
Each time, he grew more and more belligerent and nasty until it got to a very unbearable point.
But her life had been Wade-free for a couple of months now and she truly hoped it would remain that way for many years to come.
Maybe he’d found a new cause to espouse and a new person to annoy. Why he was gone didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he was gone.
With a yawn, she went to the kitchen to prepare her usual cup of tea before bedtime. It was her way of unwinding, and tonight she felt like a giant metal coil that had to unwind for more than a couple of minutes. This just might turn into a major undertaking.
Once the tea was brewed, she poured it into a cup that had Dorothy’s famous words about not being in Kansas anymore written on the side.
As Erin took her first sip of chai tea, a thought struck her. Her mouth curved even as she lowered the large cup.
She had a date.
A real live date. Her mother was going to be thrilled.
But as she reached for the phone to call her mother, a little voice inside her head warned, No! Don’t do it. Not yet.
Erin paused, debating. The little voice was probably right. As much as she loved sharing things with her mother and as happy as she knew her mother would be over this news after spending the past several years lamenting about her single status and the fact that she wasn’t doing anything at all to even attempt to change that status, Erin also knew that her mother had the ability to get utterly carried away with the least amount of provocation. And in her mother’s eyes, this would be more than just a little.
If she said anything at all about going out on a date, she felt certain that her mother would be out there like a shot, searching nonstop for the perfect wedding dress as well as interviewing different pastry chefs in an attempt to zero in on what would be the perfect wedding cake.
Erin blew out a long breath, making up her mind. It was far better to let her mother know about this after the fact rather than before.
Because the phone had been ringing when she first walked in, Erin realized that she’d completely forgotten about picking up her mail.
Not that it mattered all that much. There were probably just bills and miscellaneous catalogs she had no interest in stuffed into her mailbox.
It certainly wasn’t anything that wouldn’t keep until the morning.
Still, because the mailbox was small, she knew that if she didn’t empty it now and left tomorrow without getting the mail—something she was more than likely to do because she had done it once or twice before—there wouldn’t be much room for the mail carrier to leave whatever mail would arrive that day.
She didn’t like creating problems.
&nbs
p; So with a sigh, Erin got her mail key out. Reluctantly, she stepped back into her shoes, then walked out of her house and made her way down the driveway to her mailbox.
The moment the sun had gone down, it had grown chilly outside, a subtle hint from Mother Nature that summer wasn’t meant to hang around indefinitely and that cooler days were just around the corner.
Opening her front door, she heard what sounded like the howl of a coyote off in the distance. She’d spotted one or two in the area since she’d moved here. For the most part, she knew they lived somewhere around the greenbelt but except for those two sightings, she had been coyote-free.
Hearing one howl now sent a chill down her spine. Was that some sort of an omen?
You’re not superstitious, remember?
Erin darted to the curb and her mailbox.
She opened the slender rectangular door, grabbed the handful of envelopes she found there, pushed the door back into place and hurried back to the house. She tossed the mail as well as the key on the coffee table, thinking she’d look at it in the morning.
But something caught her eye.
It was an envelope, off-white in color, whose shape—square and small—stood out. It didn’t resemble the rest of the envelopes. The others came from companies—those providing a service and others looking to make a connection. This one came from an individual.
For one thing, it was handwritten.
There was no return address.
Curious, Erin debated just leaving it where it was, but in the end, she opened it.
The next moment, she really wished that she hadn’t.
There was only one line written in the middle of the page. The sender had used all capital block letters.
YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO ME WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE.
Chapter Ten
There was nothing else tucked inside the envelope or written on the outside of it. Neither was there anything written on the single sheet of paper besides the one ominous sentence, all in capitals.
Erin blew out a breath, doing her best not to panic. “Okay, not a fan letter,” she said, refolding the paper and slipping it carefully back into the envelope. She made sure to hold on to only a corner of the letter so as not to get any more of her fingerprints on it than she already had.
It was probably nothing, she silently insisted. But if her life were being lived out in an episodic police procedural, this letter might be the only clue that would help the investigative detectives track down her killer—after the fact.
“Way to go to make yourself crazy, Erin. This is probably just Wade’s stupid idea of making me feel paranoid and nervous,” she said out loud. For once she hadn’t fallen back on using Tex’s voice.
Even so, she put the envelope away in the top drawer of her bureau in plain sight—just in case.
Closing the drawer, she blew out another long, steadying breath. She was not going to think about what was in the note and allow it to ruin what had turned out to be one of the best personal days she’d had in a long time.
* * *
She couldn’t help herself.
Try as she might not to let it, the contents of the envelope—and the intent behind it—preyed on her mind for most of the night.
The darker the night grew, the darker the thoughts that assailed her became.
What if it wasn’t Wade? What if the note was sent by some random crazy person? Stranger things had happened. There were people out there whose twisted thinking processes were way beyond her comprehension. She belonged in a world where people responded to grinning dinosaurs wearing cowboy hats, to kindness rather than cruelty.
But since the envelope was actually addressed to her, the possibility that it was all a big mistake seemed slim and she also rather doubted that this had been done by a complete stranger. These days strangers were far more likely to hack into a computer, planting some sort of a virus or unleashing a scam, than rely on something evolving via snail mail.
So who would be threatening her like this?
She couldn’t get herself to believe that it was actually Wade, yet right now, that seemed to be the only logical answer.
* * *
“Not going to think about it,” Erin told the bleary-eyed reflection that stared back at her in her bathroom mirror the following morning. “Yeah, right,” she murmured as she put away her toothbrush and forced herself to get ready for work.
Work was her saving grace. Work was what she turned to whenever anything else was bothering her. Because when she was working, she forgot about everything else except for the joy that the toys she was creating would bring.
She hardly remembered locking her front door and getting into her car, let alone making the trip to the ground-floor office Imagine That occupied.
“Wow, you look like hell, Fearless Leader. Did you get any sleep last night?” Mike asked her when she walked into the office.
Accustomed to coming into an empty office, Erin swallowed a gasp of surprise when she suddenly realized that she wasn’t alone.
Getting hold of her bearings, she took a long look at Mike. He looked rumpled—and then it dawned on her that it was his shirt that was rumpled, as if it had been slept in.
“You should talk,” she countered. “At least I went home. Isn’t that the same shirt you were wearing yesterday?”
“Maybe I have more than one shirt this same color,” he answered defensively.
That was a nonanswer—which meant only one thing. “Not answering my question is answering my question,” she told Mike.
Mike shook his head, turning his attention back to what he’d been doing when she walked in. “Gotta get you to stop watching those cop shows,” he muttered. Since she was obviously waiting for some sort of an explanation, he gave her the bare bones of one. “I was trying to work out something and maybe time got away from me. I suppose I kind of fell asleep at my desk,” he admitted.
Having crossed to his desk, she got a better look at him. “That would explain the paper-clip imprint on your cheek,” she decided, then asked, “Exactly what is it that you were trying to work out?”
“He didn’t want to tell you,” Rhonda’s voice said directly behind her.
Erin turned to find the woman standing in the doorway, taking everything in. This was quite early for Rhonda, too, she couldn’t help thinking. What the hell was going on?
“Tell me what?” she asked the other woman. Her tone left no room for evasiveness.
So Rhonda told her the truth. “Someone is suing us. The company,” she emphasized.
“Suing us?” Erin echoed, stunned and utterly bewildered. “Suing us for what?” she asked. “For making overly cute stuffed dinosaurs? There’s absolutely nothing even remotely hazardous about Tex and his friends,” she declared, her mind instantly jumping to the conclusion that the suit involved some consumer agency. “Other than perhaps their being terminally adorable. Last time I checked, that wasn’t a reason for either recall or shutting down the factory.”
By now Christian, looking as world-weary as the rest of them, had joined the group and fielded the question. “We’re not being sued by a parent or some EPA-type group,” he told Erin.
“Then what’s going on?” she asked. “Just who is suing us?”
She got no further with her questions. Looking as if he was bracing himself, Christian gave her an answer. One she wouldn’t have begun to guess and found repugnant once she knew it.
“Wade Baker is behind the suit,” he said.
Erin was aware of her mouth dropping open. Closing it, she stared at Christian. That just didn’t make any sense whatsoever.
“You’re kidding.” But even as she said it, she had a sinking feeling that it was true. Still, she crossed her fingers mentally.
It didn’t help.
“
Wish I were,” Christian told her with sincerity.
“What could Wade possibly be suing about? That I fired him because he was not only lazy and disrespectful to the rest of you but because his idea of hands-on experience meant having his hands on me?” she cried. “If anything, we should be suing him, not the other way around.”
Christian shook his head. He sat down next to Mike and Rhonda. “Apparently, according to the suit, Baker claims that Tex the T. rex was actually originally his idea.”
“His idea?” she repeated incredulously. The man hadn’t had a single original idea the entire time he’d worked for her. “If Wade had an idea of any kind, it would have died of loneliness in his head,” she said angrily.
It was obvious that Mike was wrestling with something and just as obvious that he came to the conclusion that she might as well know the worst of it sooner rather than later.
He avoided her eyes as he told her, “Well, it seems that Baker claims that you stole it from him after the two of you...made love,” he mumbled after hesitating a moment. “He said he told you his idea while the two of you were having pillow talk.”
Utterly speechless, Erin couldn’t even find the words to describe her disgust for several seconds. Finally she managed to croak out a stunned “What?”
“You want me to repeat it?” Mike asked her uncertainly.
“No, I want you to shoot him.” Numbed, Erin shook her head. This was insane. “Unless that man owns a talking pillow, there was never any so-called pillow talk between us. There was never even a pillow between us.” She shivered as she tried to rid herself of the very thought of what the suit suggested.
“Hey, you don’t have to prove anything to us,” Christian assured her.
“We know you have better taste than that,” Rhonda said, adding her voice to the chorus.
Erin sighed, still shaken—and swiftly working her way to livid. “I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m stating it flatly. Wade is just doing this because I fired him after he tried to get more up close and personal with me than I ever wanted to. It’s his way of getting even.”
Dating for Two (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 11
