Sara's Child
Dedication
Barbara;
My friend and my
Staunchest supporter
In all things.
Thanks Sis’
ra’s Child
Text Copyright © 2012
by Susan Elle
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return
it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and Characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Photograph
© Sebastian Czapnik/Dreamstime.com
pter One
“Damn it, Ben, why the fuck didn’t you tell me you are so far behind?” Catherine rages quietly, making some attempt at control. “This is a big account, and one I don’t want to lose.”
Shit! Shit! Shit!
“I didn’t tell you because I knew what you’d do,” Ben replies, not looking up, his fingers continuing their feverish dance across his computer keyboard.
“Really…and just what might that be?” Hands on hips, Catherine moves to stand right in front of Ben’s desk.
Right then!
At five feet ten, she cuts an imposing figure and her brilliant blue eyes can stop a man dead in his tracks.
His fingers finally still and Ben sits back to eye Catherine steadily. He has worked for her almost from the start of Compusafe’s lowly beginnings out of Catherine’s one room bedsit.
She managed on her own for just over a year, but her reputation for innovative thinking and dogged determination to see each job completed to the client’s satisfaction, and up to her own exacting standards, meant that the workload became unmanageable. “You’d work until you dropped,” he states knowingly. “Just like you did six months ago after Pete’ left.”
Fuck!
Catherine opens her mouth to deny it, but can see Ben’s planned retort written plainly across his concerned but firm face. “That was just a temporary glitch,” she replies with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Just because I got a little over tired and had to take a few days off doesn’t mean I can’t cope with a little extra work to get this account back on track.” For heaven’s sake! Hands back on hips her face set in stone, Catherine narrows her sparkling blue eyes. “Just leave me to make my own decisions about how much bloody work I can or can’t cope with…I’m still the damned boss around here!”
Are you listening, matey?
Ben does not falter under Catherine’s withering stare, but instead glares right back at her. “Over tired be damned,” he scoffs. “You were mentally and physically exhausted and should have been admitted to the hospital. And would have been,” he adds hotly when her eyes fire at his reminder, “if you’d listened to your doctor instead of digging your obstinate heels in.”
Obstinate! I’ll give you obstinate!
Barely able to take a breath, Catherine stands stock still, her anger now all consuming. Ben waits for the explosion, wondering if this time he’s gone too far. But Ben’s damned if he’s just going to sit meekly back and watch her make herself even sicker than the last time. He knows she still isn’t back to full health yet, her recovery being slowed down by the fact that she still insists on working the clock round. Well, she can’t fire me, he reasons silently, not now it’s just the two of us. At least, that’s what he hopes.
Ha, I get it!
“You think you’re safe,” Catherine guesses, and knows she is correct when Ben has the grace to blush. “Well don’t get too comfortable in that damn awful chair you insisted I buy you.” To her eyes, it truly is awful, some new fangled design meant to help posture and minimise back problems for overworked desk jockeys. And it’s bright red, of all things
. Fucking bright, in your face, red!
Giving herself a mental shake, Catherine’s voice lowers to a dangerous hush that tells Ben, she is one-step away from losing it. “Pete may have jumped ship for an easier life but I thought you had more spine than that dickwad. If I was wrong,” she takes a deep, steadying breath, “you know where the door is.” Spinning around, not waiting for his reply, Catherine walks over to Ben’s office door, then slows, and turns back.
I thought we were friends. I trusted you!
“If I was wrong about that…” her voice suddenly loses all its heat, her eyes so full of hurt she would be mortified to see what Ben is so clearly seeing on her beautiful, very pale, face “…maybe I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.” She does leave his office then, her shoulders just a little lower, as if the world and his dog are sitting atop them, and her usually stiff spine, that told the world and his dog not to mess with her, not quite so straight. Not quite so braced to face whatever anyone is stupid enough to throw at her.
Ben sighs deeply, pushing his hands back through his already tousled chestnut hair. It always looks shaggy, he hates going to the barbers, but now it looks positively deranged as he fists two hands full and gives them a mighty squeeze in frustration. Letting out a pained growl, he stalks over to slam the door that Catherine has left open. For a full five minutes he stalks, though that takes some doing in his box of an office, around and around then up and down all the while muttering to himself.
“Try to look out for someone. Try to ease their burden and make life just that little bit easier…,” growling now he paces, his hands seemingly throttling an invisible neck “…but no, not for this woman. She has to do every flaming thing herself. Or tries to,” he glowers at the door, seeing the image of Catherine as she’d looked before she left.
Turning his face up to the ceiling, asking the powers-that-be for strength, Ben takes in an enormous breath, holds it then dispels it very slowly. Who is he kidding; Catherine has never taken the easy way in anything. He doubts she has ever had the opportunity. When he met her, is it really six years ago, he’d been a twenty-one year old computer sciences major fresh out of university, and she’d been a skinny nineteen year old self taught computer genius just starting to make it big in the world of security systems. And she hadn’t been installing other people’s security programmes; Ben remembers proudly, she had been writing them herself, customising them to her client’s exact needs. Moreover, as yet, they have never been breached.
Smiling, Ben remembers why he puts up with her snarling insults and tumultuous rages. She is as temperamental as any dedicated artist is. And her computer programmes are a work of art he acknowledges, slumping down into his pride and joy of a chair. Whatever happened to Catherine before they met, and he’s sure something very bad did happened, it drove her to succeed.
“Time to make a large mug of steaming hot chocolate, me thinks.” His smile deepens and reaches his pale grey eyes putting a twinkle in them. Walking to Catherine’s office five minutes later, the mug he brought her back from his last trip abroad in hand, Ben knocks on the door and waits…, and waits. About to stalk off, his smile slipping as he calls himself a fool for bothering to make the damned drink, the door finally opens.
Catherine stands looking at him, her shoulders back and her spine ramrod straight, warning him, without the need for words, that she’s ready to go another round if that’s what he’s come for. But he just stands there, his placatory smile back in place, his hand wafting over a mug, her mug she notes, pushing the steam rising out of it in her direction. Then she catches it - the scent of her favourite hot chocolate drink, no doubt made exactly as he knows she likes it. Assailing her olfactory senses it melts her mood away, just as he hoped it would.
Oh baby, come to momma!
“Give me that,” and snatching the proffered mug right out of his hands, barely manages to avoid scalding them.
“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” Ben smiles, though still a little tentatively. Moving over to take a seat in front of Catherine’s desk, Ben eyes her again, this time with concern as he notes her reddened eyes. “Have you been crying?” he gasps in amazement. “I mean…,” Ben is almost stammering “…you never do…I’ve never seen…”
Shit!
“And you haven’t now,” Catherine denies, coughing on a mouthful of very hot chocolate that she had been enjoying a moment before. “So don’t you go round saying any different!”
For god’s sakes, where’s a mirror when you need one!
Standing up, eyes darting about, Catherine searches for a mirror she already knows she doesn’t own or a handy reflective surface that might at least indicate how bad the problem is. “My bloody eyes are just a bit tired,” she defends quickly, “and I’d just been rubbing at them before you came creeping at my door.”
Fuck it!
She knows she is being mean, but she will not have him thinking she is weak. Will not let anyone think she is weak. Catherine has experienced the consequences of weakness, has suffered the vile hands of her first employer grasping and groping all over her young body.
Oh, shit!
A hand flies over her mouth to stifle a scream at the unexpected bombardment of a crystal clear memory. She can even smell his foul tobacco breath, stale from a cigarette break he’d taken out back of the shop. The remembered stench fills her nostrils and Catherine flees the office for the next-door loo, Ben’s cries of “Are you alright?” barely registering.
Watching her mad dash; not even taking the time to pull the loo door closed after her, Ben listens as Catherine retches into the bowl until she is retching up nothing but air. Hearing water running in the tiny sink, he imagines her splashing it over her face as he listens to the repeated scooping and falling of water. Stepping back into her office, Ben hurriedly retakes his seat, knowing she will feel humiliated if she comes out to find him standing there, witness to her loss of control. He grimaces as he hears her close the door quietly behind him.
Oh god, now what?
Rounding her desk and taking her seat, Catherine can’t lift her eyes to meet Ben’s, knowing what she will see there. “It appears I owe you an apology,” she begins, holding up a still trembling hand to stay any response Ben might make. “It seems I’m not as well as I’d thought.”
No shit, Sherlock!
Taking a shaky breath, she taps into her computer and brings up the progress reports for the Kingsley account. The account she is going to have to leave to Ben after all. “Your progress reports show a lot of work still to do.”
Slipping firmly back into work mode, Catherine flicks through screens of reports, making brief notes on a jotter to indicate priority areas for completion, and instructions for alterations to others. Handing him the torn off sheet of paper, still not meeting his eyes full on, Catherine stands as she says, “We’re due to install the first layer of programming and start the information dissemination process at Kingsley’s by the end of the month. That gives us just over two weeks.” She almost meets his eyes then, but uses the manoeuvre of picking up her scruffy sack bag as she makes her way out of the office to avoid full eye contact. Even before he could voice a reply, Catherine is gone.