Mixing Business...With Baby. Diana Whitney

      “It’s late,” he whispered. “You should get some rest.”

      “I suppose so.”

      “Mom?”

      “Yes?”

      He paused. “I love you.”

      “I love you, too, dear. Good night.”

      A soft click, a crackle of static and she was gone.

      Darkness shrouded him in the dim parking bunker. An eerie concrete coldness enveloped him. It was, he thought, like being entombed in a vehicle graveyard, surrounded by idle hulks of steel that had been tossed aside and forgotten until they could once again be useful.

      The analogy was strangely unsettling.

      It was a discomfiting mirror of his own life, a life he reflected upon only during times like this, times when he was completely alone, undistracted by the comfortable chatter and bustle of people with which he deliberately surrounded himself.

      Quietly alone. Silently alone.

      Alone.

      Panic crept softly, slithering through the shadows of his mind, chilling the unlit corners of his soul. Loneliness was a dark destiny, but Rick accepted it. There was no other choice.

      Frowning, Frank Glasgow stepped off the elevator, clasping his hands behind his back. He took two steps into the hallway, then spun to glower at Catrina. “Surely you were informed that certain training sessions would be required.”

      “Yes, of course—”

      “Then it’s settled.” Pivoting sharply, he strode toward the warren of executive offices at the north side of the floor.

      Catrina hurried after him, feeling frantic. “But a two-day seminar halfway across the state? Even if I could afford the travel cost, I can’t possibly leave my daughter for that length of time.”