that a man and woman could be so comfortable together. Then she remembered that the guard had called her Mrs. Blake. Were they just friends, friends close enough to have an inside joke running about her? She cursed the fact that her face felt hot and she brushed at her cheek as they kept talking.
“Her idea of work is getting engaged,” Amy said. “I doubt that she’ll show up here.”
“I hope she doesn’t. The only reason I agreed to hire her on was that her father’s been so decent about things. And I could tell it meant a lot to him. He’s got the idea that if she just sits behind a desk, that something will kick in and she’ll show what she’s made of.” He laughed then, a rough sound that jarred Brittany. “Poor guy, hope springs eternal, I guess. She’s got to be in her twenties and he’s watching out for her as if she’s a teenager getting summer work.”
“She acts like some spoiled teenager,” Amy said.
“You’ve got that right, and just what I need. Babysitting a recalcitrant brat. If she shows I’ll have Rita put her in an office as far away from me as she can and lock the door.”
Brittany wanted nothing more than to go up to him, slap him across the face and walk out. But that would only feed into what he was saying. How she wished she had her father’s way with words, knowing just the right thing to say to bring grown men to their knees. That was another trait of his that had eluded her.
“He’s her father,” Amy said. “Parents always hope for the best. And maybe she’ll find someone else, get engaged again and this time make it to the altar, then she’ll be another man’s problem, and get her father off the hook.”
“Sure, and pigs fly,” Matt muttered, taking one last swipe at a huge scuff mark on his briefcase.
She’d had enough of their condescending ridicule and she was ready to leave. No agreement with her father was going to make her stay anywhere near this man. She moved quickly, made a grab for her purse, and would have just walked out if Matt hadn’t spoken to her.
“I’m sorry. I got sidetracked.”
She turned and saw thankfully that there was a buffer of space between them. “I guess so,” she muttered.
“I’m Matt Terrel. Now, why were you here?”
“I came to see about a job.”
“In here?”
Before she could say that she’d always thought this was the conference complex and not some crazy area with a fake tree in the middle of it where she’d been told to meet him, a smiling Amy came closer to her.
“Oh gosh, I know who you are.”
But there was no embarrassment for what she’d been saying about her. “You do?”
“Of course I do.” She held out her hand. “I’m Amy Blake, the person you were supposed to meet with. But I left a message for you that I had to cancel and would call and reschedule.”
She glanced at Matt, who was watching her. “I thought you were doing the interview? And I never heard anything about canceling.”
“Me? No, I have a totally hands-off policy when it comes to the day-care center. And I never heard about any of this.”
None of this was making any more sense than their attack scene moments ago. “A day-care center?”
“Well, anyway, you’re here, although I thought you’d come up to see me at the old center.” Amy motioned around the room. “But this is great. You can see the new place. There’s much more space, and the play tree. Lindsey’s idea, actually, for the kids. There’s a real kitchen, two of them and we’re going to have an outside play area when we figure out the best place for it.” The woman was in rapture over the place. “It used to be a conference complex, but Mr. Holden rethought his plans and decided that the conference rooms would be better on the sixth floor and the day-care center could be put down here. They’ve almost got the transition finished. We hope by the new year that we’ll be on track for the switch.”
All of that was of no interest to Brittany. Kids weren’t part of her world, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow Terrel to assign her to do some babysitting chores. “That’s all very nice, but—”
“Oh, of course, this is where you come in,” Amy said, walking to the closest plain white wall. “It’s here.” She motioned to the wall, then the ceiling. “Maybe even the ceilings. The woman who actually started the center wants this place to be magical, to be nourishing for the kids. And to be nearly indestructible.” She came over to Brittany again. “So, what do you think? Tell me it’s doable. It was my idea to hire a graphic designer for this, to get it into professional hands for the murals. Tell me you can make this all happen.”
Brittany pieced together what she thought was going on, that this woman thought she was someone looking for a job doing some graphic art on the walls of this place. She loved art, always had, and in her meandering path through higher education, had had a lot of classes in both traditional art and graphics. The thought was intriguing. It was too bad she wasn’t here for that job instead of a desk job under this man’s eagle eye.
“It’s got real possibilities,” she said, turning slowly in a circle to look at the space.
“You’ve got ideas already?” Amy asked.
As Brittany looked around at the partially domed ceiling over the tree, and the way the branches were suspended toward both side walls, she knew she did have ideas. Ideas that tumbled over each other. “It’s a babysitting thing, like preschool?” she asked.
“Day care. Both all day, and before and after school, so the kids range from babies to preteen.”
It could be great. She looked back at Amy, trying to ignore the man watching her so intently. “You want art on the walls and ceiling?”
“Both, or just the walls, whatever you think would be the most stunning and appropriate. It’s for the kids. Period. It doesn’t have to please adults.”
Pleasing adults. That phrase brought her dad into the picture. She could do this. She knew she could, and her father hadn’t said just what she had to do here. But as she glanced back and caught Matt’s eye, she knew that he’d never let her do this. He’d never turn her loose with paint and bare walls. Never. She looked away from him, glancing at a short hallway that she knew led out to the reception area.
“I could do this,” she said, as much for herself as for them. “I’d like to try.” And as she spoke, she knew this was the only way she’d get a chance without her father stepping in and calling in more favors. “I really would like to try,” she said, looking back at Amy and trying to ignore the man in black. “I’ve got some ideas.”
“Okay, but the last person who came in wanted to do wild animals all over the walls, and…” She motioned to the ceiling. “He wanted to do panthers on the ceiling as if they were coming out of the trees. I don’t mind telling you it gave me the chills. Can you imagine what it would do to a child trying to nap and seeing that?”
Ideas were coming to her fast and furious. “I wasn’t thinking of wild animals.”
“What do you see this all becoming?” Amy asked.
She
