His Best Friend's Baby by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby Read Free Book Online

“Why do I have to decide now?”
    “Because Fenton Security employs fourteen people and has a couple of hundred clients. The employees are waiting to find out whether they still have jobs. Without Dean, the clients are going to start dropping away. A business doesn’t run itself.”
    “Mick...”
    “Is a fine dispatcher. He can’t charm businessmen or handle billing. He might hire, but he’ll never fire anyone. Besides,” Quinn continued inexorably, “Dean didn’t work sixty-, seventy-hour weeks for fun. He did it because trouble happened if he wasn’t around, because there are things he couldn’t delegate. And,” he paused, waiting until she defiantly met his eyes, “the business can’t afford to pay someone to do what Dean did. Mindy, you’ve got to look at the books. If you hire someone to replace Dean, you’re not going to be making a thing. And you’ll be trusting a stranger.”
    She felt as if he were trying to stuff her into a small closet. Dark, claustrophobic, the air thick and musty. She was grabbing for the door to prevent him closing it those last inches.
    “So what are you suggesting?” She heard the rasp of her breathing, as if she were asthmatic. “That I run it?”
    Worse than that idea was the slight curl of his lip and the pity in his eyes. Don’t be ridiculous, he might as well have said.
    “No. I’m suggesting you sell it.”
    She moved restlessly. “I don’t even know how...”
    “So you’re going to take another nap and refuse to think about it?” he asked with raw contempt.
    “No!” Her eyes filled with tears. Yes. He was stripping her bare, finding out how utterly incapable she was and holding up a mirror so she could be sure not to miss her own inadequacies. Clasping her arms around herself, she said, “Why won’t you leave me alone?”
    “Because I owe it to Dean to make sure you don’t lose everything he worked so hard for. He’d expect me to be sure you’re all right.”
    “I’m not all right!”
    His voice softened. “I know. But you still have to make decisions. That’s the way it is.”
    So, despite her nausea and the tears that kept flooding her eyes, Mindy sat down and pored over computer printouts. What salaries and taxes and benefits cost, the expense of keeping a fleet of Fenton Security pickups prowling dark corners of the city at night. She looked at income and outgo and Labor and Industry statistics, discovered how much Dean had been involuntarily contributing to build Safeco Field and the Seahawks Stadium. She saw personnel records and realized with dismay that the average security guard didn’t stay with the company more than eight or ten months. Dean had been hiring constantly, wasting money on training, then regularly having to let shirkers go.
    “How,” she whispered at last, “did he make any money?”
    “By cultivating clients and by making sure his guards were doing their job, not spending the night sipping coffee at a diner.”
    “Oh.” Exhausted, she sat back. “Will anybody want to buy the business?”
    “Sure. He’s in the black. Not many small businesses are.”
    “Do I advertise it?”
    Quinn frowned. “No. You might scare the clients.” He paused. Hesitated, she might have said, if it had been anyone but him. “Do you want me to ask around? There are plenty of cops with the same dream Dean had.”
    “Please,” she said, but without the gratitude she would have felt two hours ago. Why couldn’t he just have made this offer then?
    “All right.” He squared the pile of papers. “Now, the bills—”
    “No!” Despite her tiredness, Mindy shot to her feet. “Not now. Maybe tomorrow.”
    With scant sympathy, he said, “They’re piling up.”
    The attorney had left half a dozen messages, too, and she didn’t want to talk to him, either.
    “I did what you wanted. Now, will you just go?”
    “All right.” He nodded. “We’ve made a start.”
    A start, she thought hysterically.
    After he left, she took a nap.