Resisting Redemption

by Amabel Daniels

  In his rage, he hadn’t even realized he’d destroyed his computer.

  He still couldn’t believe Roxie had seen his outburst. Emotions were something he seldom wore on his sleeve and he was embarrassed for her to have witnessed it. Not so much at his reaction, but what she would think of him now.

  “That was fast.” He gestured at the computer.

  She gave him a weak smile. “I’ll accept that as a thank you. Now, what for me? It’s almost six o’clock.”

  “Have somewhere important to be? I assume Lia explained your working hours. I often work late into the evening.”

  “She did. Which is why I’m asking you a third time now. What do I do now?”

  Grant felt a twinge of guilt for the exhaustion she tried to hide on her face. She’d actually been extremely helpful. In unique ways he never could have imagined. So far, she was much more than a gopher. Ordinarily, he’d set her up organizing the bulk of the files Chris was sending to him.

  His gaze settled on the box on his desk. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t even access his email yet. He refused to admit it, but he was beginning to like having Roxie around. Her lack of experience with his legal world was clear, an outsider floundering in the depths. But she was confident with her smarts and determination, traits he heralded and housed himself. He wasn’t cruel enough to keep her longer just to appreciate her presence, though.

  “Make arrangements for the IT technician to set up this computer before tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s all?”

  He couldn’t believe what he was saying. He was dismissing her at a decent hour and he didn’t have any plans to fire her. She’d made it through the first day. And oddly, he wondered what she’d bring to the table the next day—besides unwelcome fantasies of herself on the table, naked, begging—

  “Until tomorrow.”

  ****

  As she rode the bus to her new home, Roxie should have slumped to the floor like a dead-weight cadaver. Her feet killed her. She’d never ever walk miles on sidewalks playing fetch for Grant in heels again. The stress of needing to make it through the day dissipated the closer she came to the apartment she’d gotten for herself, Lucy, and Sophia.

  I made it. Juanita’s upfront cash bonus of twenty grand is mine. I did it, Lucy girl. She allowed herself an idiotic smile. Grant hadn’t fired her and she wasn’t going to let him.

  He was a demanding boss, and even on the first day she’d experienced how fast-paced and needy his work could be. When he was on, she was, too. And she’d handled it.

  Take that, anti-children man. She could shove his alleged bias against working mothers right up his ass. She’d taken everything he’d dished out that day, and he’d been none the wiser that she’d had a baby on her mind all day long.

  After she exited the bus at her stop, she trudged her weary body up the stairs. Her purse pulled on her left shoulder, laptop case on her right. She held a sack of groceries to her chest and had to look like a tripod camel lumbering up the steps.

  “Lucy, I’m home,” she sang out as she kicked the front door shut.

  “She’s finally sleeping. It’s awful the way she’s teething so.” Sophia rounded the hallway and took the groceries. Seventy-six years young, Sophia was not only Lucy’s godmother and only babysitter, she was a saint in disguise.

  Roxie met Sophia when the former hippie visited the rescue operation Roxie’s foster parents, Rory and Hazel, ran years ago. Tired of life on a commune, Sophia moved in with her brother, Rory, immediately becoming close to Roxie. Upon gaining her residency at Jimmy’s ranch, after Rory and Hazel passed, Roxie moved Sophia in with her at Luckey Downs. And when Lucy was born, Sophia stepped in, bless her, and followed Roxie to the city after the blackmail over the death of the famous thoroughbred.

  “Dang. You have no idea how much I missed her. At least at the ranch I could stop in to see her as often as I wanted.”

  Trio, the three-legged greyhound she’d rescued from Jimmy’s ranch, nuzzled her hand with her white snout, seeking belated affection. Roxie petted her as she made her way through the residence Sophia had found them, courtesy of a friend nearby.

  “Don’t go on complaining from the get-go,” Sophia said. In slippers and a pink robe, she waddled after Roxie into the kitchen.

  “Looks like your hip’s bothering you.”

  “Nothing new I can’t handle. You get the first-day bonus you texted me about earlier?”

  Roxie turned from peeking in the fridge. She winked. “You doubted I could?”

  “Good girl. Was it a piece of cake?”

  “No. But he’s a piece of work. Demanding. Changing his mind. Impulsively bossy. Bull-headed and stubborn.” The sexiest excuse of a man alive. Roxie took a bowl of spaghetti from the fridge. “Go there and pick up this. Stop here and ask this person for that. Take these documents to so and so at this office.”

  “If you ask me, that sounds like what an assistant is supposed to do.” Sophia leaned her hip against the counter.

  Roxie shrugged and then put the bowl in the microwave. “Yeah, yeah. I knew what I was signing up for. I never could have done it before, you know? When I was applying for vet school. If I had taken the option to enroll in a research assistantship, I would have given up. I’m not made to be a gopher. I’m smarter than this.”

  Sophia smirked. “Can’t always get whatcha want, cupcake.”

  Amen to that.

  Roxie followed Sophia to the couch in the living room, snacking on the noodles.

  “Another one.” Sophia grunted, pointing to the newscaster on the TV announcing yet one more fool to enter the local political race. Twenty-two candidates, now.

  “What a joke. Take a fancy suit who has enough money to piss on, and voila! Another idiot who thinks he can fix the world.”

  Roxie smirked. She agreed, but hey, everyone did what they wanted with their wealth. Roxie was trying to fix her own little world for her babysitter and daughter, so did her hunt for money make her just as scrupulous as the too many campaign-toting businessmen running for office? Apples to oranges.

  She bade Sophia goodnight and headed to her bedroom. Lucy lay in her portable crib with one tiny hand fisted in her hair and the other flat under head. Soft little ringlets of red tresses were strewn haphazardly on the pink mattress.

  Setting the spaghetti aside, Roxie leaned over the railing of the crib and stroked her daughter’s satiny smooth cheeks as she slept. All the frustrations, worries, and stresses of the day’s work faded as she listened to Lucy’s gentle snores. She smiled as she leaned there and took in the details of the single most precious person in her life.

  It was a challenge to keep thoughts of Lucy from totally distracting her throughout the day. Wondering when she was napping. Missing the sound of her giggles. Thinking about what toys she preferred that day. Even though she’d carried a full class schedule and worked a full-time job under the supervision of Dr. Wonn at Jimmy’s ranch, Lucy was always only one step away in the loft apartment. It was a new and unfamiliar heartache to be so far from her daughter for an entire day.

  When her lower back protested the awkward position over the crib, Roxie straightened, stretched her muscles, and moved through the small bedroom she shared with Lucy. Careful to not make a noise, she gave up on the spaghetti for dinner, changed her clothes, and perused the scant collection of garments in the tiny closet.

  She hadn’t missed the way Grant’s gaze had tripped and landed on her cleavage several times during the day. She wasn’t a skank. Nor was she slutty. Her wardrobe was simply scarce in clothes she would term “office-appropriate.” Not to mention her uncontrollable and unwelcome increase in breast size while she breastfed Lucy as needed.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she rubbed her feet and surveyed her options for the next day. On the ranch, her uniform had consisted of broken-in boots, dependable thick work socks, whatever plaid shirt was most comfortable, and well-worn denim shorts or jeans. Now she had to calculate the extra ex
penses of acceptable office wear, pantyhose, and a variety of aesthetically pleasing and completely impractical shoes.

  Other stark comparisons crept up on her as she tried to relax for the first time that day. Not only did she miss being close to Lucy, she missed the outdoors. The feel and smell of the horses and dogs. Trio barking in the side yard. The sun shining clearly from behind puffy white clouds, not peeking around imposingly tall skyscrapers. She had been so busy running around with and for Grant that she ignored the jumbled and irritating noises of the city, telling herself the itches of homesickness were phases of an adjustment to a completely new and foreign environment.

  With a loose idea of what she could put together for an outfit in the morning, she lowered back to her pillows and sighed, dreading what the next day would bring—other than noise pollution, blistered soles, and no peace.

  No sooner than her hair touched the pillowcase, Lucy woke up with a fussy cry.

  “Of course,” she whispered.

  Chapter Eight

  On the way to work the next morning, Roxie stopped for Grant’s Dirty Chai and bought a coffee for herself because there was no way she was going to survive Day Two without a caffeine boost. Lucy woke her up three times in the night, fussing because of her teeth.

  Recalling Lia’s warning that Grant felt working mothers couldn’t handle the demands of a “real” job, she put on extra makeup to hide the bags under her eyes and prayed the drink’s stimulant would jolt her to some supernatural productive state.

  As soon as she arrived at the office, she discovered the IT technician she’d called the previous night was nowhere to be found. She hunted him down and had to stand over him to ensure he set the new computer up before Grant came in for the day. While the technician managed to configure the computer, he also succeeded in spilling Grant’s drink when the man himself showed up, stepping into the office with nearly silent footsteps.

  Seemed the appeal of starting on the evidence files trumped his need for the Dirty Chai because he didn’t flip his lid when she explained she needed to go out to get another for him.

  And why, why can’t he stop somewhere himself? He had to have passed plenty of coffee shops on his way to the offices.

  “Don’t bother,” Grant said of the drink. He rattled off a list of tasks, most of them pertaining to printing and organizing the documents that had flooded his inbox.

  Not only did Chris email and copy all the bazillion documents from Ben’s police investigation, he delivered print copies of special files.

  Tall, slim, with skin the shade of the deepest chocolate and onyx ear plugs the size of pencil erasers, Chris was an efficient and kind man. Like a polite human search engine. His easy-going banter and lack of fretting at Grant’s scowls proved the men were friends from long ago, all the way back to college, Chris had explained. Lacking the desire to join the race to partner and scale the ladder at Kaniz, he’d settled as a junior associate, primarily concentrating on handling data—a skill at which he excelled.

  All of Chris’s research painted not only the landscape of how the APD came to charge Ben for murder, he essentially pulled a biography on Josh Warren. A flippantly racist, often sexist country turned pop singer, he’d caused controversy many times in his short career as a famed musician.

  Born in Pennsylvania, raised by a single mother, he used his ‘troubled childhood’ to connect to fans, commiserating the absence of the father he never knew. Though she cared not to know, she could confirm Josh’s political party, what brand of energy drinks he preferred, the ages of his dogs, and the charities he donated to. She still wasn’t impressed. Rest in peace, though.

  Roxie spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon running, not walking, but running, between Grant’s office, Chris’s workstation, the print room, and the copier. Because there were so many papers, and she had no desk as of yet, she organized them on the floor, like a life-size jigsaw puzzle. Stacks according to suspect. Piles separated by date. Documents arranged by officer. Still images from the video feed in another pile.

  Grant was surprisingly easy to deal with as they holed up in his office for the majority of the morning and afternoon. Roxie crawled around the carpet, placing and replacing papers in their respective piles and folders. He paced back and forth from his desk to the leather couch, reading the material. Preoccupied with the reports he had been so eager to receive, he had less time to make impulsive and constant demands. If he did want something, it was a document only a crawl away.

  When her stomach growled at one o’clock, she reminded him they should at least pause to eat lunch. Her trip to the deli in the next building was her only reprieve from his constant presence. She relished the freedom away from him. Even though he’d had his nose in the pages and lessened his nonstop instructions, she still couldn’t wait for a breather.

  Just being in the same room with him…it was agony. How hard could it be, she mused, how difficult could it be to not stare and ogle him like a love-struck teenager? Had not being around men for so long warped her into some kind of staring addict?

  Without Tara to interrupt the day and to sour his already default soured mood further, Roxie had the chance to see another side of Grant. The studious, hardworking, and determined lawyer. Her fantasies of Clark Kent and the forbidden professor were top sellers in her imagination when she wasn’t thinking about Lucy.

  Sophia sent text messages and photos of Lucy during the day—little mood boosters for Roxie—but they weren’t frequent. Teething, Roxie deduced. Her little minion was quite the hassle with her canines coming through. When her phone did buzz in her pocket, she grinned and pulled it out, expecting a silly Lucy image. Her lips morphed into a frown. Just a call from Grant. He couldn’t even last two minutes without her there.

  “Yes?”

  “Make a reservation for dinner tonight. For the Rohns.”

  Roxie smiled at the cashier as she collected the late lunch and headed out the door.

  “No need. Tara’s puppet already scheduled a dinner for seven o’clock at O’Maurey’s. At least, that’s what Tara’s calendar shows.”

  “Fine. That’s all.” He hung up.

  Roxie pocketed her phone and began the return trip to the office. With a nagging gut instinct, she harbored doubts of Tara’s scheduled dinner. She hefted the bag of food at her side—a habit well-rehearsed from the act of carrying multiple objects with a fidgety baby at her hip. She dug her phone out again and searched for the restaurant where they were meeting Ben’s family.

  “O’Maurey’s,” the crisp clear woman’s voice answered.

  “Hello, I’m calling from the office of Kaniz & Associates. I wish to update the reservation made for Tara Kaniz and Marcus Rohn this evening.”

  “Certainly, ma’am.”

  “Please add two more to the party.”

  “Absolutely. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “We will see you at six o’clock, then. Have a good d—”

  “Six?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  That bitch. “Right. Six o’clock. Thank you.”

  Roxie hung up the phone as she entered the elevator. Shaking her head, she fumed at the funny business Tara tried to pull. How often was she going to have to double check details and doubt the malicious woman? She let her head fall back to rest against the elevator’s wall. Now if she was working with animals, who operated on the laws of biology, she wouldn’t have had to bother with this petty deception nonsense.

  She deposited the food on Grant’s desk and he barely looked up from the papers he was reading.

  “The interrogation reports from the staff at Velocity.” He pointed to a space on the floor. “Sort them by employee.”

  She rolled her eyes and saluted the back of his head. Yeah, he was in his zone. She could sympathize. But would it kill you to say ‘please’? Taking her food with her, she fell back into the strangely quiet game of shuffling papers and handing him the docum
ents he requested. Hours passed and she grew antsy at the lack of messages from Sophia.

  Crossing off her annoyance as newfound separation anxiety, Roxie tried to focus on the names and items she sorted through. Are all these people suspects? Did they really need seventy-six photos of the same blood splatter on the carpet?

  When her phone buzzed in her pocket, she didn’t think twice, checking the screen in front of Grant.

  I tripped and fell. Heading to the ER with Lucy. Can you come home?

  Roxie inhaled sharply at the news. Was Sophia carrying Lucy when she fell? Is she in pain? How are they getting to the hospital? Lucy probably shouldn’t be exposed to the germs in a hospital. Can I go home?

  She glanced up at her boss and she found his dark blue eyes staring right back.

  “Something amiss?”

  Does he always have to sound so fricking priggish?

  Stalling for an answer, she checked the time. Five o’clock. They should be leaving for O’Maurey’s in twenty minutes. A late night on the job.

  “Perhaps.”

  Grant set the papers in his hand down and leaned back in his chair to face her. His silent solemn appraisal must have been his telepathic way of saying, ‘go on.’

  “A slight medical emergency.”

  “Yours?” He quirked a brow. “Suddenly contract influenza?”

  She gnawed on her lips. How could she tell him? She refused to appear weak and admit she had a child. Which is bullshit to begin with. It would only be another headache for her to prove herself even more. But she couldn’t let Sophia suffer and deal with Lucy on her own. And Lucy shouldn’t be in a hospital. An emergency was an emergency. It wasn’t like anyone could have foreseen or planned Sophia’s injury.

  Her phone buzzed again. Another text. She didn’t hesitate to check it. Stress fracture. I need to get X-rays.

  Oh, God. X-rays? Of what bone? Sophia already had arthritis and trouble with her hip. How could she get X-rays while she had Lucy? Would a nurse hold her while Sophia went to get zapped? Could Roxie trust a complete stranger to hold her child for that short period of time? Would the nurse wash her hands?