Lost and Found (9 page)

Business went on as normal, and the
woman simply melded in.

Darcy did her best to keep track of
numbers and lists, but Zach Benson’s reaction to her still had her
itching for more information.

During the meeting, Zach would often
lean in to the woman who had sat down next to him. There was great
comfort between them, but by Ed’s reaction when she’d walked into
the room, this wasn’t his aunt. Perhaps this was his uncle’s
assistant, whom she hadn’t met yet. The woman was in her late
fifties, at least. When Zach would quietly make a comment to her,
it was returned with a nod and a note written on the
pad.

Comfort between two, like she was
seeing, was something built over time. Zach and his assistant had a
history.

It was then Darcy’s mind began to
spin. What kind of history did they have? Had they simply worked
together for a very long time—or was there a secret buried between
them?

Darcy’s hands began to shake. As she
bore down on her pen to make a note, she pressed to hard and broke
the tip off the pen. Blue ink instantly pooled on the paper she’d
been diligently keeping notes on.

All eyes were on her, and the woman to
Zach’s side was quick to grab a stack of napkins from the coffee
credenza and head her way.

“
That isn’t the first time
I’ve see that happen,” the woman said as she scooped the pen out of
Darcy’s hands and quickly disposed of it with minimal damage from
dripping ink.

She gave Darcy a napkin for her hands
and then retrieved another notepad from a cabinet in the corner.
With a quick smile she was back, sitting next to Zach, and the
meeting continued.

Darcy could feel the sting of tears
threatening to let loose, but this wasn’t the place to lose her
composure. Accidents happened, though she’d had her fair share this
week.

Ed leaned over to her and pushed his
engraved pen toward her. “Here, this one will hold up.”

Darcy pursed her lips and took the
pen. “Thank you.”

Ed touched her hand and then retracted
his, quickly but calmly, as if it was second nature to touch
someone so gently in a meeting. No one had noticed the exchange,
but it had done a number on Darcy’s insides.

She willed her heart to stop pounding
and her breath to slow. Lord, she hoped she wasn’t
sweating.

Busting open a pen during an important
meeting had been bad enough, but this giddy feeling she got when Ed
touched her was ridiculous.

Could she be so in need of personal
attention that the slightest caring reaction from her boss could
keep sending her into shock?

“
Okay, I like how this is
all laying out. Let’s break for lunch and meet back here at two,”
Zach announced as he stood from his chair.

Darcy gathered her notes and the
ruined pad, as well. Perhaps she could decipher what had been
written before her mind caused her to make a fool of
herself.

Ed gently touched her shoulder. “I’m
going to run down to the deli and get us some lunch. I want to go
over some other projects before we have to be back in here. Do you
like pastrami?”

The amount of information buzzing in
her head was a bit overwhelming. She’d have liked to have sat out
by the river for a bit and calm down, but she only nodded at Ed’s
offer.

“
Great. I’ll be back up in
a half hour.”

As he hurried away, the woman who had
helped her clean up her mess was walking toward her. They were the
only two left in the large room.

Darcy tried to compose herself, and
she could only hope she looked half as professional as the woman
walking toward her.

“
You must be Darcy. I’ve
been hearing good things about you.” The woman stuck out her hand.
“I’m Mary Ellen.”

“
Nice to meet
you.”

“
I’m Mr. Benson’s
assistant. He couldn’t do anything without me,” she said on a
laugh, and Darcy choked one out as well, realizing the woman was
trying to keep the mood light.

“
Thank you for coming to my
rescue.”

“
Oh, I’ve had that happen
to me a million times. I blame it on the shoddy manufacturing of
your basic stick pen, but really, sometimes these meetings get so
bogged down with number writing that my hand just crushes the
pen.”

Darcy laughed again. Whoever this
woman was—aside from Zach Benson’s assistant—she was easy to
like.

“
Why don’t you come up with
me, and we’ll type these notes up quickly. I know you probably
can’t read too much of what’s left on your page.”

Darcy looked down at the paper that
now looked like kindergarten art. “Thank you.”

They both gathered their things, and
Darcy followed Mary Ellen out of the office. Her desk was only
around the corner, and she set her notebook down and pulled an
extra chair around the desk for Darcy.

“
Have a seat. It won’t take
me long to type these up. Besides, while Zach works out, I’ll have
someone to talk to.”

“
He works out during the
day?”

Mary Ellen nodded as she began to
type. “It keeps him focused. If you saw his office, you’d think it
was a small apartment. All the luxuries of home.”

It was time to ease this woman into
some conversation. “You seem very comfortable with Mr.
Benson.”

“
I should be. I’ve been
with him since he took over that desk.”

Mary Ellen was going to be a great
asset, too.

Darcy looked around the office. It had
quieted down. Everyone must be at lunch. She took a deep breath and
crossed her legs, trying her best to act casual.

“
So how long
have
you been his
assistant?”

Mary Ellen shot her a sideways glance
and then focused back on her computer screen. “Isn’t that like
asking a woman her age?”

Darcy felt the blood drain from her
face. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

Mary Ellen laughed. “I’m just
kidding.” She flipped over her notes and continued to type. “Let’s
see, I started when I was fresh out of junior college. I was with
him for ten years before I hired his wife.”

“
You
hired his wife?”

Mary Ellen nodded. “I needed to
replace myself as his assistant. Seems like such a long time ago. I
was pregnant and desperate to leave him in good hands.”

As Mary Ellen finished typing up the
notes, Darcy rubbed her palms against her skirt. Why was it that
Zach Benson had looked at Darcy the way he had? And why was he so
comfortable with Mary Ellen?

Her mouth went dry.

Could it have been this simple? Had
fate thrown her into Ed Keller so that she’d get the job at Benson,
Benson, and Hart? She’d expected it to take years before she found
the people who gave her away. But, as she sat beside the woman who
had quickly come to her aid, she began to wonder—were Zach Benson
and his assistant her birth parents? Had they hid their secret all
these years and now here she was?

Darcy thought she just might get
sick.

Ed watched as Darcy pulled meat off
her bread, set it to the side, and then rebuilt her sandwich. Just
a little persnickety, he thought, until she started the process
over.

This time he reached for her hand and
stopped her. “Is there something on your mind? I bought the
sandwich hoping you’d eat it.”

Darcy looked down at the food as if
she hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry.”

“
You don’t have to
apologize. You don’t look so well.”

“
I’m very sorry. I have
something on my mind, and I just can’t get it to go
away.”

When Ed had set the sandwiches on the
boardroom table, he’d taken the seat right next to her. It hadn’t
been thought out. It had just happened. But he found himself
scooting his chair over so he could be close enough to her to touch
her in some comforting way.

He rested his arm around her
shoulders. “Everything’s all right though? Your dad, he’s
okay?”

“
Yes.”

“
You’re
homesick?”

Darcy dropped her shoulders, and Ed
pulled his arm away.

“
Maybe.” She picked up a
napkin and wiped her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not
now.” She reassembled her sandwich. “I’ll be fine by the time we
start the meeting back up.”

“
You’re keeping up
okay?”

“
Minus the pen catastrophe,
I’m doing great.”

Ed laughed. “Stupid stick
pens.”

They’d cleaned up their lunch, and
Darcy went back to her desk to attend to the pile Ed had started
for her. She decided it was a good thing that she was single and no
one would be waiting for her at home. It looked as though the more
competent in her job she became, the more work Eduardo Keller had
for her.

The pile on her desk hadn’t dwindled
too far when Ed came walking back into the office carrying a small
bag. She honestly hadn’t noticed he wasn’t even in his
office.

“
Zach wants to discuss a
project in Georgia before we start the meeting up. So, if you don’t
mind, we need to head down to the boardroom.”

“
Not a problem,” she said
as she reached for her notepad.

She opened her top desk drawer to
search for a new pen. That was when Ed set the bag he carried on
the top of the desk.

“
Try this one,” he
said.

The bag was a small, white bag with
rope handles. Tissue paper stuck out from the top.

Darcy bit down on her lip, trying to
keep her emotions in check. For all she knew, there was one of
those spring coiled snakes in the bag that would jump out at
her.

She reached inside and pulled out a
box. When she lifted the lid, she found an engraved pen
set.

DARCY MCCARY

She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“You had these made for me?”

Ed shrugged his shoulders. “You looked
like you could use a pick me up. And a useful one at
that.”

Darcy sat back in her chair and looked
up at the man whose dark eyes looked back at her.

“
Thank you.”

“
You’re welcome. Now grab
your pad and one of those pens, and let’s go. He’s
waiting.”

Darcy nodded and did just as he’d
said, but as she followed him back to the boardroom, her knees
began to shake. Perhaps she should stop all the silly thoughts she
had about finding her birth parents. It was going to get in the way
of her job. And her job was getting in the way of her feelings for
Eduardo Keller—she was very sure she was falling for the
man.

The meeting had gone on for another
three hours. Darcy had missed her first bus, and now she waited for
another.

She’d had three people ask if she
needed a ride, and she’d turned them all down. Of course they’d
been Ed, Zach, and Mary Ellen—and right now, all three of them were
making her brain hurt. Ed most of all.

The generosity of this man was beyond
anything she’d ever known. There was going to be a breaking
point—there had to be.

Why was it he never hired anyone and
only used temps? Was it because they didn’t work well when he fed
them and gave them gifts? Or was this more?

Did he over work his temps and they
quit? Was he just buttering her up and soon the whole world would
shut down around her, and she’d be forced into hard work like she’d
never known?

As the bus pulled up, Darcy hoisted
her purse up on her shoulder and pulled the money she’d readied out
of her pocket.

Tomorrow night was the fundraiser, and
she’d agreed to go with Ed. It would certainly prove to be an
interesting venture. She’d take it for what it was worth. A working
evening—in a cocktail dress.

No doubt she’d be there with Zach and
his wife. She wondered if Mary Ellen would be there too?

As the bus bounced through town, she
wondered how much Zach’s wife knew about Mary Ellen. She’d been the
one to hire her—Regan, right?—but then Ed had said Zach had fired
her.

Darcy’s head was spinning.

Only something so twisted could mean
that things had happened. Why would someone fire their own wife?
And why had Zach looked at her the way he had?

The more she got to thinking of it,
Christian had looked at her that way too—with curious eyes as
though they’d met.

Darcy clenched her purse in her arms.
This was stupid. Hadn’t she been told a million times during her
lifetime that she looked like someone’s cousin?

That’s when the sinking feeling hit
her stomach. She had been told that a million times, only she
didn’t know it was possible. She hadn’t known she’d been
adopted.

Someone had hit the signal for the bus
to stop, and when Darcy looked up, she realized it was her stop as
well.

She stood and filed off the bus when
the doors opened.