An Unexpected Christmas Baby

Chapter Two

“Dad, seriously, tell me what’s going on.” Tamara Owens faced her father, not the least bit intimidated by the massive cherry desk separating him from her. Or the elegantly imposing décor throughout her father’s office.

She’d seen him at home, unshaved, walking around their equally elegant five-thousand-square-foot home in boxers and a T-shirt. In a bathrobe, sick with the flu. And, also in a bathrobe, holding her hair while she’d thrown up, sick with the same flu. Her mom, the doctor in the family, had been at the hospital that night.

“You didn’t put pressure on me to move home just because you and Mom are getting older and I’m your only child.” It was the story they’d given her when they’d bombarded her with their “do what you need to do, but at least think about it” requests. Then her father, in a conversation alone with her, had given Tamara a second choice, an “at least take a month off and stay for a real visit” that had made the final decision for her. She’d gotten the feeling that he needed her home. She’d already been contemplating leaving the East Coast, where she’d fled two years earlier after having lived in San Diego her entire life. Her reputation as an efficiency consultant was solid enough to allow her to branch out independently, rather than work through a firm without fear of going backward. Truth be told, in those two years, she’d missed her folks as much as they’d missed her, in spite of their frequent trips across the country to see each other.

She’d lived by the ocean in Boston, but she missed Southern California. The sunshine and year-round warmth. The two-year lease renting out her place by the beach, not far from the home she’d grown up in, had ended and the time seemed right to make the move back home.

“And you didn’t ask me down here to have lunch with you just to catch up, either,” she told him. Though his thick hair was mostly gray, her father, at six-two, with football shoulders that had absolutely no slump to them, was a commanding figure. She respected him. But he’d never, ever, made her feel afraid of him.

Or afraid to speak up to him, either.

Her parents, both remarkably successful, independent career people, had raised her to be just as independent.

“I wanted to check in—you know, just the two of us—to see how you’re really doing.”

Watching him, she tried to decide whether she could take him at face value. There’d been times, during her growing-up years, when she’d asked him for private conversations because her mother’s ability to jump too completely into her skin had bothered her. And times when he’d wanted the same. This didn’t feel like one of those times.

But...

“I’m totally over Steve, if that’s what you want to know,” she told him. “We’ve been talking for about six months now. Ever since he called to tell me he was getting married. I spoke with him a couple of weeks ago to tell him I was moving home. I care about him as a friend, but there are truly no regrets about our decision to divorce.”

The passion between them had died long before the marriage had.

“I was wondering more about the...other areas of your life.”

Some of those were permanently broken. She had an “inhospitable” uterus. Nothing anyone could do about that.

“I’ve come to terms with never having a baby, if that’s what you mean.” After she’d lost the fourth one, she’d known she couldn’t let herself try again. What she’d felt for those babies, even when they’d been little more than blips in an ultrasound, had been the most incredible thing ever. But the devastation when she’d lost them...that had almost killed her. Every single time.

She couldn’t do that again.

“There are other ways, Tam.”

She shook her head.

“Adoption, for instance.”

Another vigorous shake of her head was meant to stop his words.

“Down the road, I mean. When you meet someone, want to have a family...”

She was still shaking her head.

“Just give it some time.”

She’d given it two years. Her feelings hadn’t changed. Not in the slightest. “Knowing how badly it hurts to lose a child... It’s not something I’m going to risk again. Not just because I’m afraid I’d miscarry if I got pregnant again, although it’s pretty much assured that I would. But even without that, I can’t have children. Whether I lost a child through miscarriage or some other way, just knowing it could happen... I can’t take that chance. The last time, I hit a wall. I just don’t—I’ve made my peace with life and I’m happy.”

A lot of days she was getting there. Had moments when she was there. And felt fully confident she’d be completely there. Soon.

“But you aren’t dating.”

Leaning forward, she said, “I just got back to town a week ago! Give me time!”

He didn’t even blink. “What about Boston? Didn’t you meet anyone there?”

“I was hardly ever home long enough to meet anyone,” she reminded him. “Traveling all over the country, making a name for myself, took practically every second I had.”

The move to Boston had been prompted by an offer she’d had to join a nationally reputed efficiency company. She’d been given the opportunity to build a reputation for herself. To collect an impressive database of statistical proof from more than two dozen assignments that showed she could save a company far more money per year, in many departments, than they’d pay for her one-time services. Her father had seen the results. He’d been keeping his own running tally of her successes.

“You did an incredible job, Tam, I’m not disputing that. I’m impressed. And proud of you, too.”

The warmth in those blue eyes comforted her as much now as when she’d been a little kid and fallen off her bike the first time he’d taken off the training wheels. She hadn’t even skinned her knee, but she’d been scared and he’d scooped her up, made her look him in the eye and see that she was just fine.

“I guess it’s a little hard for me to believe that emotionally you’re really doing as well as you say, because I don’t see how you do it. I can’t imagine ever losing you... I don’t know how I’d have survived losing four.”

“But you did lose four, Daddy. You were as excited as anyone when you found out I was pregnant. Heck, you’d already bought Ryan his first fishing rod...”

She still had it, in the back of the shed on her small property. She’d carried Ryan the longest. Almost five months. They’d just found out he was a boy. Everything had looked good. And then...

Through sheer force of will, she stopped the shudder before it rippled through her. Remembering the sharp stabs of debilitating physical pain was nothing compared to the morose emptiness she’d been left with afterward.

“I’m not as strong as you are.” Howard Owens’s voice sounded...different. She hardly recognized it. Tamara stared at him, truly frightened. Was her father sick? Did her mother know? Was that why they’d needed her home?

Frustrated, she wanted to demand that he tell her what was going on, but knew better. The Owens and their damned independence. Asking for help was like an admission of defeat.

“Of course you are,” she told him, ready to hold him up, support him, for whatever length of time it took to get him healthy again. If, indeed, he was sick. She slowed herself down. She’d just been thinking how healthy, robust, strong he looked. His skin as tanned as always, that tiny hint of a belly at his waist... Everything was as it should be. He’d been talking about his golf scores at dinner the night before—until her mother had changed the subject in the charming manner she had that let him know he was going on and on.

Tamara had been warmed by the way her mother had smiled at her father as the words left her mouth—and the way, as usual, he’d smiled back at her.

She and Steve had never had that; they’d never been able to communicate as much or more with a look as they had with words. In the final couple of years, not even words had worked for them...

“Anyway,” she continued, pulling her mind out of the abyss, “you’re the one who taught me how to do it,” she said, mimicking him. “It’s all about focus, exactly like you taught me. If I wanted to get good grades, I had to focus and study. If I wanted to have a good life, I had to focus on what I wanted. If I wanted to overcome the fear, I had to keep my thoughts on things other than being afraid. And if I want to be a success, I just have to focus on doing the best job I can do. Focus, Dad. That’s what you’ve always taught me and what I’ve always done. In everything I do.”

It was almost like she was telling him how to make it through whatever was bothering him.

He’d always been her greatest example.

Howard’s eyes closed for longer than a blink. When he opened them again, he didn’t meet her gaze. And for the second time fear struck a cold blow inside her. Focus on the problem, she told herself. Not on how she was feeling.

To do that, she had to know the problem.

“What’s going on, Dad?” There was no doubt that his call to her asking her to come home had to do with more than missing her. How much more, she had to find out.

“Owens Investments was audited this past spring.”

Her relief was so heady she almost saw stars. It was business. Not health. “You’ve got some misplaced files?” she asked him. “You need me to do a paper trail to satisfy them?” Her Master’s in Business Administration had been a formal acknowledgment of her ability, but Tamara’s true skills, organization and thoroughness, were what had catapulted her to success in her field. If a paper trail existed, she’d find it. And then know how to better organize the process by which documents were collated so nothing got lost again.

Her father’s chin jutted out as he shook his head. “I wish it was missing files. Turns out that someone’s been siphoning money from the company for over a year. And I’m not sure it’s stopped. If it continues, I could lose everything.”

Okay. So, not good news. Also not imminent death. Anything that wasn’t death was fixable.

“I need your help, Tam,” Howard said, folding his hands on the desk as he faced her. “Money is a vulnerable business. A lucrative one, but vulnerable. If our investors hear there’s money missing, they’ll get nervous. There could be a massive move out...”

She could see that. Was more or less a novice about the ins and outs of what he did, but she knew how companies worked. And the importance of consumer trust.

“I was hoping I’d be able to figure out what’s going on myself, no need to alarm you or bring you home, but I haven’t been able to find the leak. I need you to come in and do what you do. To give us a once-over, presumably to see if you can save us money. In reality, I’m hoping that you can give everything more of a thorough study without raising suspicions the way it would if I was taking a deeper look.”

She nodded, recognizing how hard it was for her father to have to ask for help. Thinking ahead. Focusing on the job.

“People are going to know I’m your daughter. They might be less comfortable speaking with me.”

He shook his head again. “I’ve thought of that. A few will know, of course. Roger. Emily. And Bill. For the rest, it works in our favor that you kept your married name because it was the name you became known under in the business world. People will have no reason to suspect.”

Roger Standish, Emily Porter and Bill Coniff. CFO, VP and Director of Operations, respectively. Her father’s very first employees when he’d first started out. She’d met them all but it wasn’t as if he’d been close friends with his business associates. He was closer to his clients. Many of those she knew better than her own aunts and uncle. Still, none of his top three people would rat her out to the employees. Unless...

“What if the problem rests with one of those three?”

“I guess we’ll find that out,” he said, raising a hand and then running it over his face. Clearly he’d been dealing with the problem for a while. Longer than he should have without saying anything. She was thirty-two, not thirteen.

“Does Mom know?”

“Of course. She wanted me to call you home immediately.”

“You should have.”

“Your happiness and emotional health mean more to me than going bankrupt.”

Feeling her skin go cold again, she stared at him. Was it that bad?

“Your well-being is one of the top factors that affects my emotional health,” she couldn’t help pointing out to him.

With a nod, he conceded that.

He was asking for her help. Nothing else mattered.

“How soon can I start?” she asked.

“That was going to be my question.”

“When you finally got around to telling me you needed something...” The slight dig didn’t escape him.

“I was going to tell you today. I was just having a bit of trouble getting to it. You’ve been through so much and I don’t like putting more on you...”

“I make my living by having companies put more on me. It’s what I do, what I strive for.” She grinned at him. He grinned back.

Her world felt right again.

“So...is now too soon?”

“Now would be great. But...there’s one other thing.”

The knot was back in her stomach. Please, not his health. Had he waited until the stress had taken a physical toll before calling her? “What?”

“I don’t want to prejudice or influence your findings, but there’s one employee in particular who I think could be the one we’re after. Although I wasn’t able to find anything concrete that says it’s him.”

Pulling the tablet she always kept in her bag onto her lap, she turned it on. Opened a new file. “Who is he? And why do you suspect him?”

“His name’s Flint Collins. I took him on eight years ago when he was let go by his firm and no one else would hire him. He’d only been in the business a year, but had good instincts. He was up-front about the issues facing him and looked me straight in the eye as we talked. He was... He kind of reminded me of myself. I liked him.”

Enough to have been blinded by him? “Have I ever met him? Flint Collins?”

“No.” Her father didn’t have office parties at home. And rarely ever attended the ones he financed at the office.

“So what were his issues eight years ago?”

Not really an efficiency matter, she knew, unless, of course, he was wasteful to the point of being a detriment to the company. But then, this wasn’t just an efficiency case.

This was her father. And she was out for more than saving his firm a few dollars.

“His mother was indicted on multiple drug charges. She’d been running a fairly sophisticated meth lab from her home and was dealing on a large enough scale to get her ten years in prison.”

Had to be tough. But... “What did that have to do with him, specifically?”

“The trailer she lived in was in his name. As were all the utilities. Paid by him every month. He had regular contact with his mother. He’d already begun to make decent money and was investing it, so he was worth far more than average for a twenty-two-year-old just out of college. Investigators assumed that part of his wealth came from his cut of his mother’s business and named him as a suspect. They froze his assets. Any investors he had at the firm where he worked got scared and moved their accounts. It was a bad deal all the way around.”

“Was he ever formally charged?” She figured she knew the answer to that. He wouldn’t be working for her father as an investment broker if he had been. But she had to ask.

“No. He says he had no idea what his mother had been doing. Seemed to be in shock about the whole thing, to tell you the truth. A warrant for all his accounts and assets turned up no proof at all that he’d ever taken a dime from anyone for anything. All deposits were easily corroborated with legitimate earnings.”

“How’d he do for you?”

“Phenomenal. As well as I thought he might. He’s one of our top producers. Until recently, I never suspected him of anything but being one of the best business decisions I’d ever made.”

“What happened recently?”

“He hooked up with a fancy lawyer. His spending habits changed. He bought a luxury SUV, started taking exotic vacations, generally living high. I’m not saying he couldn’t afford it, just that a guy who’s always appeared to be conservative with his own spending was suddenly flashing his wealth.”

As in...he’d come into new wealth? Or felt like he’d tapped into a bottomless well? Or was running with a faster crowd and needed more than he was making?

“There’s more,” her father said. “Last week Bill told me he’d heard from Jane in Accounting that she’d heard from a friend of hers in the office of the Commissioner of Business Oversight that Collins was planning to leave. That he was filing paperwork to open his own firm. Bill says he heard that Collins was planning to take his book of business with him.”

She disliked the guy. Thoroughly.

“He can’t do that, can he? Solicit his clients away from you?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean he won’t drop a word in an ear here and there.” Howard slowly tapped a finger on the edge of his desk, seeming to concentrate on the movement. “As I said, money is a vulnerable business. His clients trust him. They’ll follow him of their own accord.”

“So he’s going to be direct competition to the man who took a chance on him?” Hate was such a strong word. She didn’t want it in her vocabulary. Anger, on the other hand...

“I left another firm to start Owens Investments.” Her father’s words calmed her for the immediate moment. “He was doing what I did. Following in my footsteps, so to speak. I just didn’t see it coming from him. I thought he was happy here.”

“Unless he’s leaving because he knows someone is on to the fact that money is being misplaced.”

“That’s occurred to me, too. About a hundred times over the past week. A guy who’s opening his own business doesn’t usually start spending lavishly. And if he was the decent guy I thought he was, he would at least have let me know his plans to leave. Which is what I did when I was branching out.

“And, like I said, he’s the only one here who’s made any obvious changes in routine or lifestyle over the past year. I did some checking into health-care claims and asked around as much as I could, and no one seems to be going through any medical crisis that would require extra funding. I’m not aware of any rancorous divorces, either.”

“So... I start now and my first visit is to Mr. Flint Collins.”

Howard nodded. “We need to get a look at every file he has while everything is still here.”

Which might take some time. “Do you know how soon he’s planning to leave?”

“Technically, I don’t actually know that he’s going. Like I said, this is all still rumor. He’s given me no indication or made any official announcement about his plans.”

“But it could be soon?”

Howard shrugged. “Could be any day. I just hope to God it’s not. Even if he’s not the one who’s been stealing from me, he’s going to do it indirectly unless I can get to his clients first. I’ve already started reaching out—making sure everyone’s happy, letting them know that if there’s any question or discomfort at all, to contact me. I’ll take on more accounts myself rather than lose them.”

Even then, her dad would have to be careful. He couldn’t appear to be stabbing a fellow broker in the back just to keep more profits for himself. She did know some things about his business. She also remembered a time when she’d been in high school and another broker had left the firm. Her dad had talked to her mother about a party for the investors who’d be affected, which they’d had and then he’d acted on her advice as to how to deliver his news. She just couldn’t remember what that advice had been. What stuck in her mind was that her father had taken it.

Which had given a teenage Tamara respect for, and faith in, both of them.

Standing, she asked her dad for a private space with a locking door that she could use as an office. Told him she’d need passwords and security clearance to access all files. And suggested he send out a memo, or however they normally did such things within the company, to let everyone know, from janitorial on up, that she’d be around and why, giving him wording suggestions. Everything that came with her introductory speech on every new job she took. She had a lot of work to do.

But first she was going to introduce herself to Flint Collins.

While her heart hurt for the young man who, from the sound of things, had a much more difficult upbringing than many—certainly far more difficult than she’d had—that didn’t give him the right to screw over her family. Karma didn’t work that way.

Chapter Three

Flint took the back way into his office. Leaving the base of the car seat strapped into the back of his SUV, he unlatched the baby carrier, carefully laid a blanket over the top and hightailed it to his private space.

Lunchtime at Owens Investments meant that almost everyone in Flint’s wing would be out wining and dining clients, or holed up in his or her office getting work done. His door was the second from the end by the private entrance—because he’d requested the space when it became available. He wasn’t big on socializing at work and hadn’t liked being close to the door on the opposite end of the hall, which led to reception.

He’d never expected to be thankful that he could sneak something inside without being seen. That Monday he was.

Everyone was going to know. He just needed time to see Bill. His boss, Bill Coniff, was Director of Operations and, he was pretty sure, the person who’d ratted him out before he was ready to go to Howard Owens with his plan to open his own firm. Jane in Accounting had told him about the rumor going around, and said she’d interrupted Bill telling Howard. According to Jane, Bill had twisted the news to make it sound like Flint had been soliciting his current clients to jump ship with him.

Flint would get out of the business altogether before he’d do that.

Business was business. Howard had taught him that. Flint was good at what he did and could earn a lot more money over the course of his career by having his own firm. Could make choices he wasn’t currently permitted to make regarding certain investments because Howard wasn’t willing to take the same risks.