Predicting Rain?. Mary Anne Wilson

got plenty of time now, but once I’m on at the hospital, any help will have to be planned around my schedule there.”

      “Of course. That’s understood,” she said. “I wonder how you heard about us.”

      Rain didn’t need anyone’s preconceived ideas about her father tainting her. As much as she loved her father, when people found out about him and his lifestyle, they automatically included her in the equation. The way Jack Ford had. She was a clinical psychologist specializing in helping troubled children. That was all the credentials she needed here.

      “I actually heard about you at the hospital when I was going through the interviewing there. They’re very excited about the charity ball.”

      “We’re all very excited about it.” She tapped the top of the folder in Rain’s hands. “Just take that all up to Personnel and they’ll give you some paperwork.”

      “Personnel?”

      “Even though you’re not getting paid, we still need you to be on staff. Insurance, I think that’s what Lindsey said. The center has an office in LynTech Personnel for now. When you’re through there, Mrs. Holden would like to meet you. She’s in her husband’s offices on the top floor. She’s pregnant and been having morning sickness day and night, poor thing.” Mary told her how to get to Personnel and to Zane Holden’s office, then said, “Ask for Charles Gage or his assistant. They work for us. They’ll be expecting you. Take the elevator just across the corridor outside the main doors.”

      “Okay,” Rain said with a smile. “I’ll see you soon.” Then Rain left, quietly going past the sleeping children and out the entrance doors. The main reception area was to her right, more corridors to her left, and straight across the broad, marble-floored area, was a bank of elevators. She saw a lady step into the nearest car, and she called out, “Hold the car, please!” as she hurried past a couple of people.

      The woman, thin with short, dark hair smiled at Rain as she kept the door from closing. Rain stepped inside and pushed the button for the sixth floor. Before the door closed she saw Jack Ford walking toward the center.

      This Jack Ford wasn’t the same man she’d met in her ill-fated foray into the loft in the small hours of the morning. Now he was the image of what she’d labeled him that night, a corporate suit. He was in one of those suits, done in dove gray, double breasted, sleekly tailored and probably obscenely expensive, as expensive as the leather briefcase clutched in his free hand and the leather shoes on his feet. He was on a cell phone, and his face, even more sharply angular in the clear light, was set in an expression of extreme concentration. The tension in him the night before had only intensified, and she had the impression that whatever was going on right then, wasn’t good.

      He stopped right by the doors to the center, and closed his eyes as the elevator doors finally slid shut. She was inordinately relieved that he hadn’t seen her. At least working in the center, she wouldn’t have to be around him at all. There was no way they’d get involved. Her use of words shocked her slightly. Involved? He didn’t even exist in the same reality she did and even more importantly, he wouldn’t want to.