Page 67 of Hotter than Wildfire

Her love for numbers naturally flowed into accounting. She wasn’t a genius mathematician. She was just good with numbers, and accounting was great for that. Money in, money out. When more money came in than went out, you were doing fine. When more money went out than came in, you were in trouble.

So simple. So easy.

She dove right into Nicole’s messy files and inside a minute, she was gone, too.

Nicole had a…creative filing system, which was code for no filing system at all. So the first thing Ellen did was put things in piles--invoices, rent payments, utilities, deductible bills. After that, she started to get a handle on Nicole’s business.

Nicole was doing well, so she must be good at what she did. There had been a period in which the company hadn’t been doing so well and it coincided with when Harry said her father had been dying. So that was understandable. Now it was thriving. No doubt, once the baby was born, it would be put a little on the back burner.

This was exactly as it should be.

Work is important. Family is more important. Not that she’d know that first hand. Her own family had been highly dysfunctional, the next best thing to not being there. But Ellen had eyes and she could see. Family was something she’d never had and now, considering what was awaiting her, possibly never would have, but she could see its power in others.

Sam’s love and concern every time he looked at his wife, every time he touched her, was clear. And Nicole’s love just shone in her eyes when she looked at Sam. There was no doubt that the little girl Nicole was expecting was very much wanted.

At 11 the office doorbell rang. Nicole opened the door to a giant of a man with a slab for a face and basketballs for biceps, holding a big cardboard box with the luscious smell of coffee and cinnamon tea wafting from it. Every line of his huge, muscled body spelled trouble. Ellen tensed for a second until she saw how untroubled Nicole was.

“Thanks so much, Barney.” She took the box, placed it on her desk and gave him a blinding smile. Ellen was standing to the side and she was nearly blown over by the force of the smile. “That’s really sweet of you. How’s Zip? The vet figure out what was wrong?”

Slab—evidently called Barney and if ever a man was misnamed it was this man—blushed red all over his rough face. He’d have tugged a forelock if he’d had hair instead of a shaved, tattooed skull.

“Doc says Zip’s gonna be okay, thanks for asking, ma’am. Kidney trouble. Gave me medicine.” He wound down and just stood there, a huge hunk of a man, standing in the door jamb, almost as big as the door frame.

“That’s great,” Nicole said gently. “Thanks again for the coffee and tea, we appreciate it.” She smiled as she slowly closed the door in his face.

“Wow. Your own personal gorilla.” Ellen lifted up her cup, pried open the lid and sniffed deeply, appreciatively. Was there anything better than cinnamon chai? “Who’s Zip?”

“His pet iguana. Three feet long. He loves that animal more than his motorcycle and that’s saying a lot.” She laughed. “Sam employs some colourful characters, but they seem to get the job done.” She took a sip of her decaf. “Gets great coffee, too.”

They both dove back in their work, Nicole tapping away at the keyboard, Ellen finishing up classifying Nicole’s paperwork.

At noon, Nicole’s cellphone rang. Distracted, she picked it up, saw who was the caller and sighed. She spoke quickly, all in one long sentence. “Hello, darling, no, I’m not working, I’m lying down on the couch with my feet up, just like you told me to, as a matter of fact I was taking a nap, no that’s okay, I needed to wake up anyway, I don’t feel tired, I feel just great, so don’t worry, see you soon.”

Ellen looked, startled, at the little couch where Nicole definitely was not resting. She was at her desk, working hard.

“I love you too,” Nicole said, blew a kiss into the receiver, disconnected and sighed. “If I don’t tell him I’m resting, he comes over and stands there with his arms crossed looking like Neptune on steroids on a bad day. Lying to him is easier.”

“He loves you,” Ellen said.

“Yes,” Nicole sighed. “And I love him. But he needs to back off a little. He was bad enough before but he’s gone overboard ever since I told him about the baby.” She smiled and rubbed her belly.

“Must be nice,” Ellen said without thinking. “To be loved like that.”

Nicole turned her deep blue gaze on Ellen and looked at her thoughtfully. It was like being hit by blue spotlights. She simply looked at Ellen for a while, assessing her.

“What?” Ellen gave a half laugh. “Did the foam leave a moustache? Do I have lettuce in my teeth or hay in my hair?”

“You’re loved like that. By Harry. You can’t see it because you don’t know Harry that well. Like Sam and like Mike, he doesn’t express his emotions well. But to someone who knows him, what he feels for you is right there.”

“I-ah. Um.” Ellen’s tongue flapped uselessly in her mouth. “He, ahm, he doesn’t love me. He can’t. We’ve only known each other—what? Five days? Six? And I was unconscious a lot of the time.”

“Sam asked me to marry him the fifth day after we met.” A memory that made Nicole smile crossed her beautiful face. “It was a terrible proposal, very badly botched, but I accepted anyway. I’ve never regretted it.”

No, Ellen could see that she didn’t.

Whoa. All of a sudden, Ellen realized that she could pump Nicole for information on Harry. He was so damned close-mouthed. They were lovers, yes, but she knew so little about him. Now that she thought about it, he always deflected personal questions. Often with a kiss, which always worked. He could kiss her through a nuclear detonation and she wouldn’t even notice.

“You say all three men have problems expressing their emotions. Is there a reason?”