She gave a short curtsy. “Thank you, kind sir.”

“Don't mention it.” Peter edged around her to get the door.

They walked together through the front doors and out into the sunset. The rain had stopped, but fast-moving clouds scudded across the sky. A few leaves rustled at their feet.

“Just like the old days.”

“What's that?” he said.

“When you used to walk me home from school.”

“It was a lot closer then. Be about a five-mile run from here.”

“True.” They shuffled along silently. She held her purse in both hands in

front of her, kicking leaves as she went.

He thought of something someone told him once, or maybe he had read it.

You remembered the bad things about the past and forgot about a lot of the good.

Right now, he was thinking about Kate the little girl, walking her home from school, her purple My Little Pony backpack bouncing on her shoulders. The Kate he had grown close to, not the one he had drifted apart from in high school.

The one he was wondering if he had lost, or if maybe he'd been given another chance to find.

They shuffled on. He started kicking leaves with her, smiling.

Just like the old days.

Chapter Fourteen

Frank Madsen looked up from Kate's report on his laptop, peering at her over his

reading glasses. “And this is the extent of the report so far?”

Kate fussed with the collar of her shirt. The conference room seemed

awfully warm today. “Yes, so far. It's just the preliminary report. Nitrovex is turning out to have a more extensive reach than we—than I thought.”

Madsen nodded slowly. The three other senior members of her group

continued to shift through the thin stack of papers that made up her report. None

of them were smiling.

That's it then, back to the business cards. She wondered if the KwikCopies

on the corner had any job openings? She waited for someone else to speak, fingers laced together.

She'd spent the trip back on Sunday with the radio off, a yellow-lined notepad and a pen on the passenger seat beside her. Thinking, driving, taking notes. More notes once she got to her apartment, Then a quickly made slide presentation when she'd hit the office this morning. She hated doing things so last minute, and she was annoyed with herself for feeling so out-of-her-depth.

The talk with Peter had helped. She'd pursued the Nitrovex problem from a

different angle, a more personal angle, and had managed to cobble together some

new ideas for her proposal. Enough, hopefully, to convince the group that she could finish the job. Which meant another trip back to Nitrovex and Golden Grove.

And Peter?

She couldn't decide how she felt about that. She'd even thought that blowing

this deal might be a good thing. She'd never wanted to go to Golden Grove in the

first place—dreaded it, in fact.

But there was her job to think about. Danni had made it clear what the expectations of the group were. A failure here would most likely be a career killer. And her career was something she'd worked on too hard and for too long

to consider losing.

She straightened her spine. At least she could pretend that she knew what she was doing. Even if she was about to get fired.

Danni spoke up. “Although the report is rather…thin, I think we may have

something to work with.”

Good ol' Danni. Thank you, Danni.

“Although there's going to have to be a lot more work done regarding the basic premise of your proposal. For example, what are some of the core concepts

you're working with? What about the international aspect of the company? How

does that fit in with Nitrovex's Midwest origins?

“Yes, the international aspect. Well, I feel that first, we must come up with

the foundation—the core of what makes Nitrovex unique. The essence of the company may seem very basic, but the overarching theme of its products is much broader than we suspected. To that end, I feel we must do a deeper examination of all the different aspects of the company's very diversified holdings, especially in Europe, where they are making significant inroads in, um,

flocculating solvents.”

It was a stall, a non-answer. She felt like a politician, or a beauty contestant

trying to answer her question about world peace without really saying anything.

“Flocculating solvents?” a group member said.

Kate nodded. “Yes.” Just yes. She couldn't say much more about flocculating

solvents, especially since she'd just made it up in order to save her job.