Slow Hands Read Online Free Page A

propped her elbows on the desktop. “Let’s rethink this class idea. You know that if I don’t work Saturday, we won’t be ready for the new computers.”
    “I don’t care if we’re ready or not,” Dave said bluntly, and got up to leave. “I’ll give you credit, Clare.Five years ago you walked into my office and told me there wasn’t a job you couldn’t do. Well, you’re the company controller now, and you can do every job around here, up to and including rebuilding a racing carburetor, but—”
    “That’s my point! It took a lot of hard work, but we are finally making some money around here. I don’t want to blow it now. That’s why it’s so important for me to be
here
doing my—”
    Dave cut her off. “Clare, no. You can do every job, but you can’t do them all at once. Not twenty-four hours a day. I think one stress-induced heart attack per company is more than enough.” Dave pulled open the door. “By the way, I like the new guy. Can we keep him?”
    Clare hedged with a smile, “If he learns how to spell.”
    “Buy him a dictionary.”
    The big man wandered out of her office, having said what he came to say. He might sugar-coat his words with praise, but Clare understood the message. He had no intention of allowing her addiction to work to go any farther.
    Alone again, she tried concentrating on the back-order printout. Initialing the report should have been a simple task, but she stared at the list for half an hour while Tucker’s voice whispered to her,
People don’t volunteer to work two weeks for bosses they dislike. One maybe because they need the reference, but not two.
    Clare pushed the intercom. “Joshua, come in here.” As an afterthought, she pushed the button again. “Please.”

    “William!” Sam bellowed, and hung over the second floor railing. There were times when he could positively choke his butler. Now was one of those times.
    With great dignity the elderly man entered the marble-floored foyer below Sam and stopped. Before answering, he carefully adjusted a vase of flowers on a small table that dripped crocheted lace. To an innocent bystander, William might look like the perfect butler—starched white shirt, bow tie, pale parchment skin, hair peppered with gray, and a concerned facial expression that promised discretion.
    But Sam knew better. Beneath that calm exterior lay one of the sharpest tongues on God’s green earth. Forty years of employment with the Tucker family gave William the freedom to speak his mind, and he considered the Tucker children especially in need of guidance and wisdom. William didn’t care that Sam was pushing thirty-three, or that his sister, Pamela, was closing in on thirty-five. William had known them since they were babies, and that was that. He might look like a butler, but he sounded more like a Dutch uncle.
    “William—” Sam struggled to control his voice. “Have you seen my boxer shorts?”
    “Why? Have you lost them?”
    “No, I haven’t lost them!”
    “There is no call to raise your voice. I asked you a question, that’s all. You leave those wild things all over the house as if you were raised in a barn.”
    Sam ground his teeth. He was well aware of William’s opinion of his boxer collection. The gospel according to William said that gentlemen came home before midnight and wore white underwear instead ofwild prints and neon polka dots. “William, what have you
done
to my boxer shorts?”
    Folding his hands behind him, the butler considered the question for a moment. “Done?”
    Exasperated, Sam waved a pair of shorts decorated with billiard balls. “Someone has sewn name tags in every pair of boxers I own. I haven’t had name tags in my underwear since I went to summer camp twenty years ago!”
    “Ah,” William ackowledged as though light dawned in his memory. “I had Rebecca do that. I was worried about you losing them, seeing as how you can’t find the clothes hamper.”
    Sam silently counted to ten before he