it turned out, he’d never wanted a wife, either. He’d wanted a housekeeper, a scapegoat, and a convenient bed partner. Soft footsteps scuffled closer, and she knew Gracie was beside her before she felt the woman’s gentle touch on her shoulder. “Sometimes we have to endure the bad times in order to recognize the good ones.”
Catrina sniffed, juggled the child in the crook of her arm to free a hand and wipe a stray tear from her own cheek. “I know. But when I think of my daughter growing up with the knowledge that her own father doesn’t care about her, it breaks my heart.”
Gracie opened her mouth, closed it, and took another moment to consider her words. When she finally spoke, her voice carried a peculiar quiver. “Maybe it just takes some men a while to figure out what’s truly important in life. You’ll find the right one someday. Just give it time, dear.”
“I don’t want a man. They cause nothing but heartache and misery, and sooner or later they always walk away. So what’s the point?”
“Why, love is the point!”
“Love is a myth.”
Gracie made a clucking sound with her tongue. “So young to be so jaded.”
“I don’t believe in fairy tales, if that’s what you mean.”
“Of course you don’t.” Gracie’s merry blue eyes twinkled. “That’s why you’ve spent countless hours in my humble establishment poring over great love stories of the ages.”
Feeling her skin heat, Catrina shifted her daughter in her arms and shouldered the diaper bag. “Thank you so much for watching Heather. Thank you for everything. Your friendship means so much to me.”
Gracie merely responded with a warm smile and a reassuring squeeze on Catrina’s shoulder. But as Catrina wound her way through the delicious shelves filled with fanciful tales of love and triumph, a memory echoed inside her head.
You can’t count on anyone but yourself, Cattie-girl. The world will break your heart if you let it.
“You were right, Mama,” she murmured. “You were so right.”
“Please don’t toy with me. I’ll do anything you want. Anything.” Kneeling before that which had imminent power, Catrina leaned in close, whispering softly as her fingertip traced a sensual path downward. “Whatever you want, whatever you need, your wildest fantasy fulfilled. Just grant me this one, teensy favor, and you can name your price.” She pressed her cheek against the cool, plastic skin. “Six measley copies, collated and comb-bound before the 3:00 meeting. Your operating manual says you can do this. Please, I’m begging you. I’ll polish your glass. I’ll vacuum your innards. I’ll stack your paper properly and double-check your controls every hour for the rest of my life.” She hesitantly pressed the Start button.
The machine whirred, hiccuped, fell silent.
Catrina exhaled all at once. “Or I can smear axle grease on your window, glue your gears together, and let my fingers do the walking through the office equipment pages of the telephone book. The choice is yours, fella. If you cooperate, you live. If not, there’s a screwdriver in my desk, and I know how to use it.”
A male voice from behind startled the daylights out of her. “I don’t know about the machine, but I’m certainly convinced.”
Catrina lurched to her feet so abruptly that she caught a heel in the hem of her swingy flowered skirt. With the sick sound of ripped fabric ringing in her ears, she spun to face a tousle-haired man wearing a pair of pleated khaki slacks, a casual golf shirt and a bemused smile.
He stepped back, raised his hands over his head. “Don’t hurt me.” A smile of uncommon brilliance brightened sky-blue eyes sprinkled with curiosity and sparkling with humor. “Look, I’m unarmed.”
Under normal circumstances Catrina would have appreciated the amusement factor of her bizarre situation. The circumstances, however, were far from normal.
She was tense, feeling both pressured by the expectations of a new job she hadn’t yet conquered and embarrassed by having been caught threatening a recalcitrant office machine. “If you don’t wish to be implicated in a crime, I suggest you leave the vicinity at once.”
The man hiked a brow. “Is there no other way? You don’t seem the type to contemplate violence against a helpless collating device.”
“Helpless? Ha.” Her cheeks burned until she suspected she must be glowing like a neon tomato. “That’s what it wants you to believe. It suckers you with its simplistic controls, its benign operating manual, then waits until your entire career is on the line before going in for the kill.”
“Is your entire career on the line?”
“If I don’t get these reports to the budget committee in the next fifteen minutes it very well may be.”
“Hmm, sounds serious.” Pursing his lips, he regarded the lumpy device as if actually giving credence to her concern. “Perhaps I can be of assistance. I have some experience with machinery.”
“You do?”
“I repaired a lawn mower once.”
“How impressive.” A covert perusal of his casual attire suggested that he was either an outside vendor or one of the draftsman from the engineering department. “Do you work here?”
The question clearly startled him. “As a matter of fact I do. Why?”
Too exasperated to do more than take vague note of the surprised glint in his eye, she shoved a tangle of hair from her face and glanced at a nearby wall clock. “Because I doubt management would appreciate me giving a non-employee access to company equipment. If you end up destroying the danged thing, I’d personally shake your hand, but the company would either take the replacement cost out of my paycheck or out of my hide. Neither alternative is particularly appealing.”
He cocked his head in a manner that was oddly self-effacing and arrogant at the same time. “Then I’ll have to be exceptionally gentle, won’t I?”
Catrina smiled in spite of her tension. There was a certain charisma about this man that wormed through a person’s defenses, a mellow charm that sneaked up slowly, insidiously. Before she could stop herself, she heard herself say, “Blow in its ear, and maybe it will follow you home.”
His pupils dilated, darkening into a pool of sensual interest that instantly put her on guard. “Is that all it takes?”
Embarrassed and angry at herself for having fallen into a trap of her own making, she yanked her gaze away and glared at the hapless machine. “If you can make this thing work, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise you’ll have to excuse me. There isn’t much time for me to make other arrangements.”
He recognized her request to depersonalize the conversation and respected it. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Stepping forward, he opened the access door and peered inside the machine. He hummed, grunted, reached into a cabinet nested in the corner of the alcove and pulled out a stack of tooth-edged plastic templates.
It took a moment for the significance of what he was doing to sink in. When it did, she was mortified. “Please don’t tell me that the binder cache was empty.”
