Пепельный рассвет. Антон Демченко

support regularly. He’d fallen hard for the local doctor and was happily married. She didn’t begrudge Joe his newfound contentment. She was happy for him. Everyone should be lucky enough to find true love once in a lifetime.

      Joe’s success had inspired her to do more. To be more. His marriage to Mallory Peterson had given her hope. Maybe there was a special person in the world for her, too.

      “Mommy?” Chloe tugged on her sleeve. “Can we go?”

      Brandy took her daughter’s small hand. “I won’t be late again, Amy. Thank you for bringing the ‘situation’ to my attention.”

      Brandy stopped by the ATM to get money for the dry cleaning and gas. As she placed the bills in her purse, a familiar white pickup truck turned the corner and caught her attention. She couldn’t see the driver’s face, but the wide shoulders were unmistakable. So was the flaming logo on the door.

      Hotspur Well Control.

      Chloe piped up from the back seat. “I’m hot.”

      “I know, baby. The air conditioner stopped working.”

      “How come?”

      “Just old, I guess.”

      “As old as me?”

      Brandy laughed. “Much older than you.” Weird. Their paths had crossed again. Glimpsing him revved up all the emotions she’d suppressed, but she tried not to think about him while picking up her clothes at the cleaners. Like the dreams that haunted her, their encounter was hard to forget. She’d felt a sense of portent at his touch. What if she hadn’t seen the last of him? She laughed. Chloe wasn’t the only one with an overactive imagination. Seeing the sexy stranger again was a coincidence. Nothing more.

      A few minutes later at the gas station, she had to wonder. She parked alongside an available pump just as the same white pickup pulled away from the one next to her. The driver stopped at the street, his large, competent hands resting on the wheel, and watched for a break in traffic.

      Hotspur Well Control again. Who was stalking whom here? She started pumping gas but stared in the tinted driver’s side window over the top of her car. The man in the black Stetson startled her by turning around and staring back. He lowered his sunglasses for a better look, but the traffic cleared, another motorist honked and he drove away.

      It wasn’t so strange to run into the same guy three times in one afternoon. Awareness was like that. When she’d first become pregnant, she’d noticed other pregnant women everywhere she went. Driving a purple car made her notice other purple cars. Nothing weird about that. Just human nature.

      The sun was sinking fast by the time Brandy finished her errands and headed home. The day had lasted too long, and Supermom was super tired. Poor little Chloe had to be worn-out too.

      “You’re awfully quiet, punkin.” Brandy glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled at her daughter strapped into a booster seat, her blond bangs plastered to her forehead by baby sweat. “Everything all right?”

      “Yep. Just thinking.”

      Like mother, like daughter. “When you get the problems of the universe sorted out, will you let me know?”

      “Okay, Mommy.”

      She shouldn’t worry. Chloe was deeper than most children her age, more sensitive. All kids had active imaginations. An invisible playmate was her daughter’s way of coping with the new stressors in her life. They’d have a nice talk over dinner, and she’d make sure Chloe understood the difference between real and imaginary.

      Tonight she would prepare a real sit-down, we’re-a-family meal served on plates instead of from takeout bags. Country fried chicken fingers, mashed potatoes minus the yucky gravy, steamed baby carrots cut in tiny rounds and chocolate pudding. All of Chloe’s favorite foods. A surefire way to earn mommy points.

      Four blocks from home the cell phone rang. Brandy groaned when she read Futterman’s name on caller ID. She didn’t have to answer. It was after seven o’clock. She was a paralegal, not an indentured servant. She’d given the firm nearly eleven hours today. She was tired. Her child was hungry. She had a life outside Futterman-Ulbright.

      And the salary Fenton Futterman paid her financed that life. Well, put it that way. She took the call and listened as her frantic employer explained his latest problem. He had an early pretrial conference in the morning and had somehow lost the documents she’d meticulously prepared from sketchy notes and marginalia. Her hopes for a quiet evening flew out the window. Her boss considered motherhood a disability. He wouldn’t consider chocolate pudding a good excuse.

      Nor was he willing to find the file on her computer and print another copy. She’d have to return to the office. The task wouldn’t take long, but it would cut into time she wanted to spend with Chloe.

      Would forfeiting mommy points earn her a few employee points? She glanced into the back seat. She was working hard to give Chloe the kind of life she deserved, but it wasn’t really fair to drag her along for the ride. On the other hand, she couldn’t afford to tell her demanding boss no.

      Life was a series of trade-offs. Balance was the key.

      “Don’t worry, Mr. Futterman. I’m on it.” She disconnected the call and released an exhausted sigh. The scales were tipping and Mommy was losing.

      H.A.R.P. Field Report

      From: Celestian, Earthbound Operative

      To: Mission Control

      Re: Operation True Love

      Current Objective: Contact human ally and introduce matchmaking protocol. Initiate communication between male and female subjects and assess their respective relationship skills.

      Progress Notes: Contact with child established. Screening tests reveal depth of subjects’ differences. Limited success with current objective. Male subject exhibits resistance to operative’s environmental manipulation techniques. Measurements indicate commitment levels below acceptable standards.

      Female subject emotionally accessible and responsive to dream therapy. Exhibits interest in long-term commitment but is currently distracted by vocational duress. Internal stress and external pressure reduce suggestibility and make her less susceptible to covert tactics.

      Plan: Initiate emotional retraining of subjects and increase contact between them.

      Personal Assessment: Operative desperately lacks experience to complete this mission and respectfully requests to be relieved of duty.

      Chapter Two

      Brandy pulled into the fast-food drive-thru and ordered the usual. With the food cooling on the seat beside her, she drove downtown against rush hour traffic, an exhausted salmon swimming upstream without even the prospect of mating to motivate her.

      By the time she arrived at the office, the firm was closed for the day. All the smart people had gone home. Juggling her briefcase and purse in one hand and the bag of food in the other, she unlocked the dead bolt and ushered Chloe inside. The lever jammed when she tried to relock the door. The universe was conspiring against her today. She pulled the knob and jiggled the catch to secure the door and led Chloe to her small office at the back of the building.

      “Is this your work?” Chloe looked around curiously. She hadn’t visited the hallowed halls of Futterman-Ulbright before.

      “Yep. Sorry you had to come down here, honey. Mommy needs to get some papers ready for her boss.”

      “I know. They got losted.” Chloe peered at the computer monitor’s space-themed screen saver, then swiveled the desk chair in dizzying circles.

      “Right.” She hadn’t mentioned the missing papers. “How did you—”

      “Your boss should be more careful.”

      “I agree.” She cleared a spot on a corner of the desk and set out