Seeing Stars (31 page)

Her mind seemed numb. She had to
think.
"I'll talk to Dexter, and I'll find the social worker."

"Samantha, what if they don't let Kippy come back?"

"Of course they will. We're Kippy's family."

"You're coming, aren't you?" demanded Dorothy as the door to Samantha's office opened again. She had one hand in the air to shoo Marcy away, but her assistant ignored the gesture and strode across the office to drop a message slip on Samantha's desk.

Meet me ASAP in the boardroom. Cal.

Her fingers crumpled the note.

"I'll do some phoning," she told Dorothy in a super calm voice. "I'll find out exactly where we stand, get things in motion. Then I'll call you back. I'll look after this. What about
you?
This pain?"

"I'm
fine,"
snapped Dorothy in the voice Samantha remembered. "It's probably indigestion."

Marcy was waiting, motionless on the other side of the desk, while Samantha wrote down Dorothy's hospital-room phone number, then said good-bye, promising to call back as soon as possible.

"He wants to know how long," said Marcy as the receiver settled in its cradle.

"Fifteen minutes, and get me the phone number for Dexter Ames. He's a lawyer in Nanaimo."

"Where?"

"Nanaimo. British Columbia. Canada."

Fifteen minutes. It wasn't enough. If only this had happened on another day, another week, when she could rush to Nanaimo instead of acting at a distance. She had to find that social worker before her office closed for the day. She needed to talk to the lawyer, to Dorothy's doctor.

Exactly when did government workers quit for the day in Canada?

Diana Foley had the worker's phone number, but the woman wasn't at her desk. Samantha hit the intercom just as Marcy came through the door with Dexter Ames's phone number.

Only five minutes until she was due to meet Cal in his boardroom. "Get Ames on the line. Tell him it's about Dorothy Marshall."

She dialed her own phone, said, "Diana, it's Samantha Jones again. I haven't been able to get the social worker. Do you know anything else?"

"Hi, Sam." Diana sounded breathless, as if she'd run to the phone. "All I know is that there's going to be a hearing. I asked if they could put Kippy with me as a foster child until Dorothy's out of the hospital, but the worker said no. I'm so sorry, Samantha."

"Diana, I know you did your best. It's all right." Samantha saw that her telephone was flashing and hurriedly said good-bye.

Dexter Ames, and she was due in the boardroom in two minutes.

"I don't have the family court date yet," said Dexter. "I'll know more within the hour."

One minute late for her meeting with Cal and nothing was settled. Family court sounded bad and urgent. Please God it wouldn't be until next week. Tomorrow was Thursday. By Monday she just might be able to slip away, but it would be irresponsibility of the worst kind to walk out now, less than forty-eight hours before she was due to oversee a massive employee screening process at the recruitment open house.

She glanced at the pile of message slips on her desk, picked up her portable computer in its case, and walked out of her office. No time to check lipstick and hair. No time to think. She stopped at Marcy's desk, said, "I'm expecting a call from Dexter Ames. When he calls, put him through to the boardroom. And get hold of Del in development. Get a list of the volunteers he's enlisted for Friday."

If all went well Friday night, Tremaine's would be playing host to dozens of top e-commerce developers in a massive headhunting expedition. The developers who already worked for Tremaine Software were an essential element of the open house. They would greet the candidates, talk about their own experience with Tremaine's, and generally build enthusiasm to work in a rapidly expanding, forward-looking company rich in advancement opportunities.

The open house had been Samantha's idea. If it went well, she'd be one large step closer to a seat on Cal's board and a director's position in the company. Somehow, in the next few days, she needed to look after the welfare of Cal Tremaine's massive staffing needs, while rescuing her six-month-old niece from the clutches of the foster-home system.

Chapter 2

Cal Tremaine paced the boardroom. He disliked waiting, always had. He recognized his restlessness as one of the characteristics that had built Tremaine's into a company that could successfully bid on the Lloyd contract. But this week, he'd have been better off turning his back on things he couldn't control and leaving Samantha Jones to do what she did best.

He'd successfully landed the contract to bring Lloyd's into the world of electronic commerce, and next spring, once Lloyd's Web farm was finished, Tremaine's would take over external management of all Lloyd's information technology. The contract meant huge new racks of hardware in their New York server site, dozens of new employees, and a tight deadline.

He was itching to get to work, but nothing could happen until he had the men and women he needed, top developers who were probably even now working for the competition.

Tremaine's was reeling from the consequences of doubling in size overnight. New premises to house the new personnel, negotiations with bank managers, developers, and equipment suppliers. New human resources people to deal with the endless regulations and complications of being an employer. Without Samantha Jones, he'd be up to his knees in mud about now.

For the last year and a half, ever since he hired Sam from Mirimar Consulting, he'd been free to do the work he wanted, free to keep Tremaine's moving and growing. He loved the challenge of nailing a deal like Lloyd's from under IBM's e-commerce division, putting together a program design that could show the owners needs for information and e-commerce they hadn't imagined having. Loved the stimulation of seeing the project manifest from plan to reality.

But he hated the damned details of running a business. He'd never have started Tremaine's without Brent Martin as his partner to look after the admin, stuff—but Brent had walked out two years ago, leaving Cal in administrative chaos.

Desperate, he'd hired Mirimar Consulting, who had sent Samantha Jones, M.B.A. Cal had taken one look at Sam's shining brown hair and soft matching eyes, and he'd known she wasn't up to it any more than Brent had been.

Now he swung from the window and stared impatiently at the door Sam should have walked through three minutes ago. When he first met her, it had taken only five minutes to realize he was wrong about her.

"I'll need all your financials," she'd announced ten seconds after the introduction, "and access to personnel records, especially people who've quit in the last two years."

"Don't waste time on people who are gone. I need you to organize the future."

Her eyes had flashed with penetrating intelligence. "Programmers like freedom, not chaos. It's worth your while to know why the valuable ones left. I've made a list of the information I need. If you authorize me to have access, I'll look after everything."

She handed him a long list, then she relaxed in the chair, right here in this room, and for the first time he saw her smile. Why did Sam's smiles always seem to cover some secret he felt impelled to know?

"Tell me where you want your company to be five years from now, then give me two weeks to collect information. A week from this coming Friday we'll meet again. I'll make suggestions and you can decide whether my ideas make sense."

He'd quickly discovered it wasn't just Samantha Jones's ideas he needed. He needed the woman, her smile, her magic. Almost immediately, he'd felt the waters calm. Project leaders who'd been at odds for months seemed to have buried the hatchet, and Dee, Cal's assistant, stopped turning up at his desk with administrative emergencies several times a day.

When Sam gave Cal her recommendations, she offered to find a manager to put them into practice. Cal had a better solution. He wanted Sam full-time, with no divided loyalties. She liked her consulting job at Mirimar's, and he smiled now, remembering that it wasn't the outrageous salary that had won her over. It was the promise of a director's position and a seat on his board after two years if she did a good job.

When he bought Brent out, he'd vowed never to give up control of even the smallest part of Tremaine's to anyone again. But that was before Sam. The impulse to hire her away from Mirimar's was the best decision he'd ever made. Whenever he thought of the chaotic days before she came, he counted his blessings that, unlike many of his other employees, she seemed to have no private life. He just hoped to hell that she didn't do something stupid like decide to marry and have a couple of babies.

If he had any say in it, Samantha Jones's ticking clock would remain silent until they were both old directors of Tremaine's.

The clock had eaten another four minutes, and he fought the urge to pace through the new premises they'd just settled into, storm into Sam's office, and demand an explanation for her lateness. He'd been doing too much of that sort of thing lately. Frustrated because he had no choice but to wait until they ramped up their head count, he'd been looking over Sam's shoulder constantly. He shouldn't be demanding her presence in the boardroom for a review of Friday's strategy when in truth, he knew she would have the whole damned thing organized to perfection and would be busy as hell for the next two days keeping it that way.

He wondered suddenly if her lateness might be deliberate, a tactic to remind him of their agreement that he wouldn't interfere in her administrative realm, so long as she kept him informed in their weekly meetings.

No, he decided. Not Sam's style. They'd had a few territorial skirmishes, Sam's quiet firmness against his volatile impulsiveness. He doubted Sam had ever backed down from a battle, and he'd given her plenty of cause to balk by looking over her shoulder, interfering. But Sam was always direct. If she had a complaint, she'd tell him straight out.

When he finally heard her heels clicking outside the boardroom, he stepped across the carpet to open the door. She had one hand out, reaching for the handle, and he saw her freeze when the door opened.

"Did I startle you?"

She shrugged and slipped inside, but the smile didn't come. "Sorry I'm late."

She looked uncharacteristically harried. Why? He said, "I wanted to go over the procedures for screening the recruits Friday night, but if you're overloaded, we can do it tomorrow."

She stood in the middle of the boardroom floor, the expensive carpet she'd chosen all around her, her eyes troubled in a way he'd never seen before. Something was wrong, but what? There was always some crisis in the computer business, but Sam always handled the rough spots so calmly they seemed smooth.

This was different. She moved abruptly to one of the chairs at the side of the board table, and he thought her face wore the sort of look people had when they were about to say something unwelcome.

Something like:
Cal, I'm quitting
.

Panic boiled in his gut. Sam couldn't leave.

She opened her computer case and set her laptop on the table. "This is probably a good time to go over the screening procedure, just in case there's—this is a good time."

He frowned and prowled to the other side of the table. He didn't like the way she said
just in case,
as if she
had
come in here thinking of quitting.

Inactivity was making him paranoid. Sam wouldn't quit. She was an ambitious woman. Six more months would get her the seat on his board she'd held out for when he hired her.

"I've got the list of volunteers here," she said, turning her computer on. "All the project leaders are on it, except the two on vacation, and Tom Brennan. You left him in New York."

"He's working with Lloyd's IT personnel—such as they are—getting a handle on their network. Do you want me to bring him back?"

"We don't need him." Another of those smiles. "I've got a meeting scheduled with the volunteers today at five-fifteen. I sent you a memo about it?" He nodded and she said, "At the open house, when the recruits start coming in at three in the afternoon, Jason will take their resumes, prescreen them, and mark them as candidates or not, then introduce them to one of the volunteers. Accountants get someone from accounting; developers get a developer. Depending on the prescreening, the volunteer will either take the recruit to an interview or an information session about Tremaine's. The NFT's—not for Tremaine's—will get the information film about the company, refreshments—"

"And be told to buzz off."

"Nicely," she said with another of those smiles. "The ones we interview will either be passed on up for a second interview or marked NFT, and sent to the information session."

"This better work. We need those developers yesterday."

"We've had good feedback, plenty of phone calls. We're hoping for five hundred people at the open house. It's going to be hectic, but it's innovative. Developers don't like working for stodgy companies, and this open house tells them that we're part of the new wave, not the old guard."

"You've done a good job, Sam." Had he told her that often enough? What exactly was it that motivated her? He didn't think it was power—she was too good at delegating. Money? Praise?

"I'm having fun," she said, hitting him with that smile again. He had the urge to move closer instead of pacing back to the window. For perhaps the thousandth time, he blocked the images her smile so often drew to his mind: Sam wearing something soft and clinging in place of that gray suit, her feet bare, her shining brown hair flowing free. How long was her hair? Shoulder length? What if....

No! Samantha Jones was far too valuable to be risked in a temporary romance.

The ring of a telephone interrupted his fantasy.

"I told Dee not to put any calls through," he growled.

"I'm expecting a call." Sam walked rapidly to the telephone and picked it up. "Hi, Marcy.... Yes, put him through."

He frowned at the tension on Sam's face as she wedged the receiver between shoulder and chin and pulled her electronic organizer from her jacket pocket.