Family in Progress. Brenda Harlen

decided she would indulge—just this once—and take a taxi. She had less than twenty minutes before she was due to meet Jenny on the other side of town and she wasn’t sure the bus or train or any combination of the two would get her there on time.

      The cab driver whizzed through the streets, depositing her at the restaurant fifteen minutes later—and twenty-seven dollars poorer. She refused to think about her rapidly dwindling savings account as she paid the fare and added a small tip for the driver, but she couldn’t help but wonder why she’d thought it would be a good idea to start her life over halfway across the world.

      She’d had a good job in Tokyo, friends and family there. She missed them sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. Her four sisters and their families, even her father. And she missed Izumi, her great-grandmother, most of all.

      It had been Izumi who encouraged her to follow her heart, wounded though it had been at the time, and find her own path rather than continue to walk along the one that had been laid out for her. Since she’d embarked on her journey to do so, she’d returned to Tokyo only once—for Izumi’s funeral seven months earlier.

      Jenny and Richard had flown over for it, too, which had meant the world to Samara. And it was then she’d started thinking about returning to the States, though several more months passed before she actually did.

      Initially, she’d only planned to come for a visit. But a few days had somehow turned into one week and then two, and Samara found she wasn’t anxious to leave.

      Jenny and Richard both insisted she could stay with them as long as she wanted to, but they both had busy lives—even busier now that they were preparing for the arrival of their baby in only a few more weeks. So when Samara heard about a furnished apartment for rent near the Lincoln Park area, she’d jumped at it.

      She’d traveled and lived economically over the past couple of years and had managed to save a fair amount of money, which meant she didn’t have any trouble paying the required first and last months’ rent, but she did need to find a job soon if she was going to continue to put food on her rented table. She’d tried waitressing, responding to a sign in the window of a little café just down the street from her apartment, but that experience had been brief and unfortunate.

      When Jenny told her about the opening at Classic, Samara had been thrilled and relieved to think that she might actually have the opportunity to stay in Chicago and do something that she was good at. If she convinced Steven Warren she was good at it—and she wasn’t certain she’d managed to do that.

      But she pushed the worries and concerns aside as she entered the restaurant.

      Jenny was already seated and waiting for Samara, but she stood up and hugged her friend as best she could considering the baby bump in her belly.

      “How did it go?” Jenny asked, lowering herself into her chair again.

      Samara tucked her backpack under the table. “I think it went well enough.”

      Jenny’s eyebrows rose. “You think?”

      Samara shrugged, not wanting to give voice to her doubts or her friend any reason to pressure her brother-in-law. “He’s not an easy man to read.”

      Easy on the eyes, a little voice in the back of her mind taunted, but not at all the type to give away what he was thinking.

      “Well, what did he say at the end of the interview?” Jenny asked.

      “He said he’d let me know.”

      Her friend frowned at that as the waitress came to take their orders.

      “Cheeseburger and fries,” Samara said. Not having looked at the menu, she fell back on what she knew was a staple in most American restaurants.

      “What kind of cheese?” the waitress asked. “Cheddar, Swiss, Monterey Jack?”

      “Cheddar.”

      “Gravy on your fries?”

      “Sure.”

      Jenny looked at her with undisguised envy. “Chef’s salad with light dressing.”

      Then, after the waitress had gone to place their orders, she confessed to Samara, “I have to pick and choose my calories carefully these days, and I want a huge slice of banana cream pie for dessert.”

      “I didn’t think you liked bananas,” Samara said.

      “I don’t,” her friend admitted. “This baby, on the other hand, seems to love them. Bananas and ice cream. I have six different flavors in my freezer at home right now. Actually, it was seven before I finished the butter pecan last night.”

      “Then I would think a banana split would be more satisfying than pie.”

      The expectant mother laughed and laid a hand on her belly. “Junior certainly thinks so.”

      Samara watched her friend’s hand move over the curve of her expanded tummy as if to soothe the baby. Her eyes were lit with joy and soft with emotion, and Samara felt a tug of something that might have been envy deep within her own heart.

      “We were talking about your interview,” Jenny reminded her.

      “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

      “Maybe I should talk to Steven, to get his perspective on it.”

      “No,” Samara responded quickly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but if I get this job, I want it to be because I deserve it—not because the man doing the hiring is my best friend’s brother-in-law.”

      “You will get the job because you deserve it,” Jenny assured her.

      Samara wished she could share her friend’s certainty. Instead, she said, “You never did tell me why he was looking for a new photographer at the magazine.”

      “Did you look at the back issues I gave you?”

      “The pictures were good,” she said. “Uninspired, maybe, but technically good.”

      “Definitely uninspired,” Jenny said. “But Steven has some great ideas for the magazine, so when he realized he had to replace Erik Hendriksson, he decided to look for a photographer who could implement them.”

      “Why did he have to replace Hendriksson?”

      “Off the record?”

      Samara rolled her eyes. “I’m a photographer not a reporter, and your best friend, so ‘off the record’ is implied.”

      “Professional hazard of having been a journalist in a previous life,” Jenny explained. “But to answer your question, the managing editor found out Hendriksson was taking more than pictures of the vehicles. He was pilfering parts and fencing them to support a gambling habit.”

      Samara winced sympathetically. She understood betrayal. But even if she wasn’t a scrupulously honest person, there was no fear of her stealing anything on the job. She didn’t know the difference between a spoiler and a spark plug and was counting on her skill with a camera making up for that lack of knowledge.

      The waitress brought their plates to the table then disappeared again.

      “Speaking of previous lives,” Samara said, picking up the thread of the conversation as she reached for a fry. “Do you really not miss being a reporter?”

      Jenny shook her head as she stabbed her fork into a wedge of tomato. “I thought I would, but being the media communications coordinator for the newest division of TAKA-Hanson is such a challenge. Not to mention that I have the pleasure of working with my handsome husband now, as well as continuing to build a relationship with Helen and her extended family.”

      Despite her friend’s easy response, Samara knew she’d had some difficult moments when it had been made public that she would be working for the new TAKA-Hanson Hotels, a branch of the corporation that would ultimately and directly compete for business with Anderson Hotels,