Barbara McCauley - Callan's Proposition

“Didn’t I tell Tina that Joe Gastoni was bad news,” the brunette was saying into the phone. “But does she listen to her best friend? Of course not, so now she’s crying her eyes out, poor thing.”

The brunette glanced up again from her call, and Cal frowned darkly at her. He started to move toward the desk, but stumbled over a package lying in the middle of the floor. The earthy swearword he muttered had the brunette sitting up straight.

“Gotta go, Sue. I’ll call you later.” She hung up the phone and smiled. “May I help you?”

“Who are you?” he all but growled.

She raised one thinly shaped brow. “May I ask who you are first?”

“Callan Sinclair.”

She narrowed her eyes in thought, then opened them wide. “Oh, Sinclair. You must be Gabe and Lucian’s brother. They own this company, but I haven’t met them yet.”

“We all own this company,” Cal said tightly. “And your name is?”

“Francine. I’m from the employment agency.”

“Where’s Abigail? Is she sick?”

“Abigail?” The brunette furrowed her brow. “Oh, you mean the woman who used to work here.”

“No,” he said slowly and carefully. “I mean the woman who does work here. Blond hair, big glasses. About five-seven. Abigail Thomas.”

“Oh, her. Right. Well, she quit,” Francine chirped. “I’m her replacement.”

Quit? Impossible. Abigail wouldn’t quit. Cal glanced around his office, then back at Francine. “What the hell happened here?”

Eyes wide behind a thick layer of mascara and purple eye shadow, she looked around the room. “Well, it’s only my first day, for Heaven’s sake. I still have to learn your filing system. It’s very confusing.”

The alphabet was confusing? Cal felt his skull pressing in on his brain as he waved a hand at the hanging blueprints. “And this?”

“Oh, gosh, Wayne feels awful about that.”

“Wayne?”

“Cute little old gray-haired man, mustache.”

“The civil engineer?”

She nodded. “I was helping him roll out the plans for one of your projects, and he sort of spilled his coffee.”

Cal gritted his teeth. With the way Francine was about to fall out of her top, he was surprised Wayne hadn’t had a coronary.

When he noticed that the computer screen on the desk in front of the brunette was flashing “Fatal Error, File Deleted,” Cal was certain he was going to have a coronary.

How could this have happened in one day? Cal had spoken with Abigail only yesterday. Everything had been fine. Terrific, in fact. How could she just leave him like this? Without any notice or even a word of goodbye? She wouldn’t do this to him.

“Do either of my brothers know about Miss Thomas leaving?” Cal asked his new, and soon-to-be-former, secretary.

Francine shook her head. “They haven’t been in the office today. Miss Thomas told me that Gabe mostly works out of his house and Lucian rarely comes in here. Can I get you some coffee, Mr. Sinclair?”

Cal glanced at the coffeepot on the counter behind the woman. So that was what he smelled burning. With a scowl, he looked back at Francine. “Did Miss Thomas say anything to you about why she left, or where she went?”

The question seemed a difficult one for Francine. She chewed on her bright-pink bottom lip. “No, not that I can remember.”

Not that she could remember? Cal clenched his jaw so tightly he thought his teeth might crack. “Are you sure?” he asked with a patience he’d offer a six-year-old.

When the woman narrowed her eyes in concentration, they seemed to disappear behind heavy black strokes of eyeliner. “No, she didn’t say a word. Oh—” she brightened, and her eyes returned “—but she did ask me to tell you she left a letter on your desk.”

Francine was still rattling on about something or other when Cal made a dash for his office, found the envelope sitting in the middle of his desk and ripped it open.

Dear Mr. Sinclair,

I regret to inform you that it has become necessary for me to leave my position as secretary for Sinclair Construction. I apologize that I was unable to give you proper notice. I realize that it is unforgivable, and I can only hope that Francine will be a competent replacement.

Thank you for employing me for the past year. I enjoyed working for you.

Sincerely,

Abigail Thomas

Cal stared at the letter. It was typed and signed, neat as a pin.

That was it? I enjoyed working for you, but hasta la vista, baby? No reason, no explanation?

He crumpled the letter. Dammit, he’d find her and make her tell him what the hell this was all about. He’d pay her double, triple, her wage, if that’s what she wanted. She could have more time off—not too much, of course—sick days, pension, car mileage. Anything.

He’d drive over to her house right now, he decided. Forget the shower, forget the beer. Forget everything. This was an emergency. He started for the door and stopped.

Where the hell did she live?

She’d worked for him a year, and he had no idea where her house was. Or apartment. She could live at a hotel for all he knew. Or with her family.

Did she have family? He wasn’t certain. Dammit, dammit, how could he know so little about her?

He would start with his files. There had to be an address somewhere. He’d find her, and when he did—

The phone rang, and he snatched it off the hook in his office before that so-called secretary in the outer office could get it. “What is it?” he shouted into the phone.

“That’s a fine way to answer your phone,” his brother Reese said on the other end of the line.

“I’ve got a crisis here, what do you want?”

“Does it have anything to do with your secretary?”

Cal’s hand tightened on the phone. “What do you know about my secretary?”

“Not much,” Reese said. “Except that she’s sitting in a booth in my tavern about twenty feet away from me, and she seems quite determined to get herself drunk. I just thought—”

Cal slammed down the phone and headed for the door, ignoring the look of surprise on Francine’s face as he rushed past her. Abigail getting drunk? Cal thought incredulously. She didn’t drink. Or did she? He had no idea. She could be a raging alcoholic, for all he knew.

He’d find out soon enough, he resolved. He intended to learn everything there was to know about Miss Abigail Thomas. And then he’d bring her right back here, where she belonged.

No matter what the cost.

Abigail had never been inside Squire’s Tavern and Inn before. For the past year she’d driven by the establishment every day on her way to and from work, but until today she’d never considered going in. Like its name suggested, the tavern’s theme was Old English: the ceiling was open beamed; the walls were covered with dark wood paneling; the huge fireplace had been built of rugged stone. Except for the television over the bar and the Bob Seger song playing from the corner jukebox, Abigail could easily picture the restaurant-bar as a setting for a pub in one of Shakespeare’s plays.

It was still early in the day, and she was thankful there were only a few other people in the tavern: a man and woman at a small table sharing a bottle of wine and three men at the bar drinking beer and eating pretzels. No one seemed to notice her, but that wasn’t unusual. No one ever noticed Abigail Thomas.

And that was exactly the way she wanted it.

Taking a deep breath, Abigail sat straighter, then took a sip from the thin, red plastic straw in the drink the waitress had brought her.

And choked.

Good Lord! She felt as if she’d swallowed liquid fire. Grabbing the white paper napkin that her glass had been sitting on, she pressed it daintily to her lips and breathed through her mouth. She’d managed to reach the ripe old age of twenty-six without knowing that hard alcohol tasted so awful, and she wouldn’t mind another twenty-six years without tasting it again. She’d ordered the harmless-sounding drink from a small plastic menu, and she realized now she probably should have asked the waitress what was in the mixture.