The Good Father

Chapter Nine

Max knew what he did in the next five seconds would have a profound impact on his life. He might cause Jane to quit. He might open himself up for a sexual harassment lawsuit. Or he might be involving himself with a woman on the rebound from a bad marriage-never a good idea.

At the moment, though, he didn’t care about any of that stuff. He just wanted Jane in his arms. And she wanted the same thing.

Her reaction surprised him. He’d been counting on her to be the voice of sanity. But sanity was noticeably absent from the room.

Just one kiss. That was all he wanted. That was what he told himself, anyway.

The air between them crackled with electricity and time slowed to a crawl. Max deliberately stepped around the table, and in two strides he was there. He grasped her delicate shoulders and backed her up against the wall. She stared up at him with huge eyes, her moist lips parted slightly, her breasts rising and falling rapidly.

“Last chance to say no.”

She remained silent, so he leaned in and captured those enticing, full lips with his-and was immediately in a different world. The room around them fell away. Time and space were nonexistent. There was only Jane, the feel of her, the scent of her, the wanting that welled up in her as palpable to him as his own desire.

Her response was quick and intense. She kissed him like she wanted to inhale him, snaking her arms around his neck, her fingers grabbing handfuls of his hair-

“Hello, where is everybody?”

Max and Jane sprang apart, instantly putting six feet between them, but it was too little too late. Carol was halfway into the break room already.

She skidded to a stop. “Oh. Ohh.”

Max wanted to object to her reaction, to stop the thoughts running through Carol’s head, but what could he say? Denials were useless.

“What is it, Carol?”

“Those real-estate magazines are here. Where do you want them?”

“In, um, in the storeroom.” His brain was having a hard time coming back to life.

“Okay.”

Carol backed out of the room with a wink.

“Oops.” Jane sank into the nearest chair. “That was less than discreet of us.”

Max had no idea what to say. He’d never jumped an employee before. “I, um, better check on those magazines.”

“I didn’t know we were printing any real-estate magazines.”

“It was a job we did before I hired you. In fact, working with the freelancer in Dallas was such a bad experience, it convinced me to hire someone on staff.”

Max felt some measure of relief that he was still capable of a normal conversation-and that Jane didn’t seem to be mad at him, though what he’d done was inexcusable. Yes, she’d been a willing participant, but he’d started it. He’d taken advantage of her.

“Let’s go have a look at the magazines.”

“Um, Max…” She gestured for him to wipe his mouth. “You have my lipstick all over your face.”

He smiled at her. “You have it all over yours, too.”

As soon as they’d repaired the damage with another of Jane’s ever-handy wipes they went to the storeroom, where a deliveryman with a dolly stacked up five boxes.

“How many boxes are there?” Max asked.

“That’s all,” the man said with a shrug.

“What? That can’t be right. You can’t fit ten thousand magazines into five boxes.”

The man shrugged. “That’s all I have.”

Maybe the rest were coming later, Max reasoned. They still had a few days before their deadline. But he got an uneasy feeling in his gut.

“Ten thousand?” Jane said. “That’s a lot of magazines.”

“It’s my biggest job so far. Not that I’m making a whole lot of profit. I bid the job low because I really wanted the account. But if the client is pleased, we might be doing this monthly, so there’s potential for the future.”

He grabbed a box cutter and sliced open one of the cartons. When he saw what was inside, he nearly passed out.

The magazines were pink. Everything had an unhealthy pink tinge-the photos, the background, the type.

Jane gasped. “Are they supposed to look like that?”

“Hell, no!”

“Maybe it’s just the one carton.”

Max sliced open another carton, and then a third, but they all looked the same. Pink.

“Good gravy,” Carol said under her breath.

This was bad. This was worse than bad, this was an unmitigated disaster.

“We don’t have to pay for these, do we?” Carol asked.

“We’ve already paid half up front.” He strode to his office, intending to get the artist on the phone and find out what had happened. These magazines didn’t look anything like the proof he had approved. Obviously the artist hadn’t gone to the printers to approve the printed proof, as he’d said he would.

The artist’s phone rang and rang. No answer.

“Damn it!”

Jane stood at the door. “What can I do?”

“I don’t know. The client is expecting ten thousand four-color magazines in five days. Five hundred pink magazines isn’t going to make a favorable impression.”

“You can’t call the printer and insist they do these over? And print the correct number?”

The printer. Of course. What kind of idiots printed five hundred pink magazines and thought that was just fine?

Max had never worked with this particular printer; they were some outfit the artist had claimed was great.

Perfect Printing. Max checked the return address label. It was a P.O. box. He looked them up on the Internet and couldn’t find them. He called Dallas information. No phone listing.

What was going on here?

The situation disintegrated from there. By the end of the day, Max was forced to conclude that he’d been bamboozled. The artist had screwed up the job so badly that he’d gone into hiding. The printer was probably some friend or relative with a printing press in his garage who had no clue what he was doing. When they’d realized the job was far beyond their capabilities, they’d split the money and run.

Max felt sick. Not only had he wasted money he couldn’t afford to lose, his reputation would be in shreds once the client learned what had happened.

Was this it, then? Would he have to close the agency in disgrace and crawl home, begging for his old job back? He could just imagine what his older brother, Eddie, would have to say about that.

Jane felt terrible about what was happening. She’d tried to be as supportive as possible, calling people and chasing down information when she could, or sitting in her office working on the computer when she could do nothing else.

Now, at the end of the day, the news wasn’t good. It seemed Max had no way out of this dilemma.

“Do you have the original art?” Jane asked. She stood at Max’s office door, wanting to do something, anything, to take that look of utter defeat off Max’s face.

“I have the page proofs on my computer…somewhere.”

“We could find another printer.”

“Finding a printer who can do a job this size in under five days…it’s impossible. Even if we found someone, the expedite fees would be staggering.”

“Wouldn’t losing some money on the job be better than losing the client?”

“Sure. But the brutal truth is, I don’t have the money.”

“How much do you think it would take?”

He threw out a figure that made Jane nauseous. It rivaled her annual salary.

“Maybe we could get the money somehow. Or get a loan.”

“I’ve already reached my credit limit.”

Jane refused to be defeated. “You find the printer. I’ll try to find the money.”

“Jane, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but where would you find the money? Last I heard, you didn’t have enough to fill your gas tank.”

True enough. But that was her money. She knew lots of rich people. “Let me try.”

“I would need an answer quickly. Any printer who agreed to the job would give me a narrow window, and I would have to commit. I’m not going to commit when I know I can’t pay.”

“I understand.” She looked at her watch. It was after five. She would be late picking up Kaylee, but Mrs. Billingsly, the woman who ran the after-school program, was far more lenient than the school about tardiness, so she wasn’t too worried. “I’ll have an answer by tomorrow morning.”

Finally he smiled. “Thanks, Jane. You don’t have to take this on as your problem, you know. I don’t pay you enough for that.”

“But it is my problem. If your agency goes under, I’m out of a job.”

“The agency won’t go under.” But he didn’t sound completely convinced of that himself. “Listen, Jane, about what happened…” He nodded in the general direction of the kitchen, and she nodded back. “I was out of line. Way out. There’s no excuse for it.”

Jane swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry as old parchment. She’d been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to put it out of her mind, to write it off as one insane moment to be forever cherished but never repeated.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“It won’t happen again.”

Was she supposed to be relieved? Because all she felt was supreme disappointment. “Are you sure about that?”

“No.”

She applauded his honesty, at least. Her heart lifted. She felt clueless in this situation, but apparently so did he. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She made a quick escape before she said or did anything foolish. More foolish.

Tonight, she would think hard about what to do with Maxwell Remington. After she swallowed her pride and called her parents to beg for a loan.

“MOMMY, WHO’S THAT MAN?” Kaylee asked as she and Jane made their way from the parking lot to the dock.

Jane tensed. There was, in fact, a man loitering on the dock near the Princess II. After a few moments, he heaved a wistful sigh and moved on, stopping to look at another pretty cabin cruiser.

“I think he’s just admiring the boats,” Jane said, relaxing. The man’s interest wasn’t unusual; her boat had always attracted attention. It had certainly attracted hers six years ago when she and Scott had bought it. They’d gotten unsolicited offers on it several times-

Wait a minute. The answer to her dilemma was right under her nose.

Jane picked up the pace. As soon as she was inside her boat, she dropped everything and headed straight to the fold-down desk next to the galley where she kept all her papers.

“What are you doing?” Kaylee asked.

“Mommy’s had a brainstorm.” She rummaged around until she found the business card she was looking for. Dave Shenkler. He was the CEO of some Internet auction site, and he was rolling in money. A couple of weeks ago, Jane had discovered him and his wife standing on the dock, admiring the Princess II. He had offered to buy it on the spot, and Jane had automatically turned him down.

But the Princess II was worth a lot of money-enough to bail out the Remington Agency and then some.

Everyone had told her she ought to sell it and use the money to put a down payment on a nice little condo. She’d fought the suggestion time and again. She loved this boat. She had redone the interior with a loving hand, turning it into a cozy retreat that had always felt more like home than her big, echoing minimansion back in Houston.

Most of her happy memories from her marriage had to do with the boat. She and Scott had sailed it all along the Texas coast and to Mexico. They’d gotten their scuba certifications and gone diving on every coral reef they could find within the boat’s range.

Of course, all that was before Kaylee, back when Scott had still been trying to please her.

She took out her cell phone but hesitated before dialing. This was a big step. But then she remembered the look on Max’s face, and imagined how he would feel if he could make his real-estate client happy by reprinting the magazines. That was worth more to her than clinging to a few memories that had passed their expiration date. She dialed.