Page 8 of Charmed by the Obsessive Boss

I stand. Knees hurt. Through the windows, late light has gone gold. I'm watching a woman kiss the top of her daughter's head. I want that voice. Want that hand. First time in my life I've wanted something like this.

The bet with Margaret isn't even in my head anymore. Left sometime around the green wool turning blue.

"If you'll excuse me," I say. "I need to make a call."

I find a corner of the stairwell. The looms thrum through the wall. My flight leaves at six-ten. I pull up the confirmation and cancel it. Call the Applewood and extend through Monday. Then just stand there, back against cinder block, tie still damp.

When I go back, she's at the end of the floor alone. Charlotte's on a stack of blankets by the sorting table with a book. Rosemary turns when she hears my boots. She's got the half-granola bar in one hand, wrist curled against her ribs.

"I'm staying through the weekend," I tell her. "Monday's a deadline. I'd rather not miss it. I'll work from wherever you'll let me."

She searches my face. Then looks at my hands. My collar. The tie with its small blue stain.

"You need to eat something first," says Rosemary.

"I'm fine."

"You haven't eaten all day. I've been watching you not eat since ten o'clock." She holds out the other half of the granola bar. Crumpled wrapper, squashed from a kid's backpack. I'm standing here with sixty-four hours until a vote that could end my career.

I take it.

Chapter 3 — Rosemary

Roman Caldwell eats my daughter's squashed granola bar standing in the middle of my weaving floor. Three bites. Like a man who's forgotten there's any other way to do it. That's when I know I'm going to have to feed him.

"Don't look at me like that," I say.

"I'm not looking at you like anything." He folds the wrapper into a neat square and then doesn't seem to know what to do with it. "It's possible I was hungrier than I realized."

"It's possible you were hungrier than a person can safely be." I hold out my hand. He puts the wrapper in it, and I'm caught off guard that he just did. "Come on."

"Where?"

"My office. There's soup."

Behind us Charlotte's head pops up over her blanket nest, library book pinned to her chest. "Is he eating with us?"

"He is."

"Fridays are our dinner."

"I know, bug. We're sharing."

She weighs this with the gravity of a customs agent. "He has to sit by the window. The chair by the door has the bad leg."

"I'll sit wherever I'm told," Roman says, straight-faced, and Charlotte's mouth twitches before she can stop it. She dives back into her book like it's the book that betrayed her.

My office is a glass box at the back of the floor. Desk older than I am, corkboard buried in shift charts, a row of Charlotte's school pictures where the teeth go missing and come back.

On the filing cabinet: hot plate, tin of lemon shortbread, a jar of honey with a wooden dipper standing in it. In the wastebasket, a crumpled paper bag with MAE'S stamped on it, grease through the bottom. The mini fridge hums in the corner. Roman stops in the doorway and looks at the picture over my desk. My father at the Draper with his sleeves shoved to the elbows, pencil behind his ear.

"Who's this?"

"Gil Brewer. Thirty-five years on those looms. Dolores learned half of what she knows from him, I learned the other half."

"He has your chin."

"He had my temper, too."