Aching for Always Read Online Free Page A

number.”
    â€œ
Another
loan?”
    â€œIt’s not a loan exactly.”
    â€œHoney,” Di said, “when a man’s already agreed to the price for the company and you’re going back to ask for more, that’s either a loan or insanity. Peter, please take the highlighter out of your mouth. Your little brother was playing with it.”
    Peter, who had jumped off the credenza, sighed and, with a Day-Glo green pout, handed the marker to his toddler brother, coincidentally named Todd.
    Joss frowned. “Should we—”
    â€œNot poisonous,” Diane said without looking up. “Well, not too poisonous.”
    Marty extracted the projector’s power cord from the grip of the third Daltrey brother, a baby in a portable car seat at Diane’s feet.
    â€œDo you know if this next one’s a boy, too?” Joss gestured to the Epcot Center–sized ball under Diane’s sweater.
    â€œI told my obstetrician I’d kill him if it was.”
    â€œI wasn’t great at college biology, but I’m pretty sure he’s not the one who decides.”
    Peter tugged Marty’s pant leg. “Did you know if you suck enough highlighter your pee turns green?”
    Marty pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Actually, I didn’t know that.”
    â€œIt’s true. Green works best.”
    Di flipped the page of the report and, without looking up from the paper, deftly dropped a Tory Burch–clad foot on the leash attached to the two-year-old’s ankle, bringing him to a dead halt just out of reach of the stapler on the table.
    Joss, who had long ago decided running a barely surviving company was nothing compared to raising three boys under the age of five, said, “I really appreciate you coming in.”
    â€œOh, please. If I didn’t get out of the house sometimes, I’d go nuts.”
    â€œI can see where trips like this would be pretty relaxing.”
    â€œI’m almost ready,” Marty said to Joss.
    â€œGo ahead. Di can work the numbers while I take a look.”
    He flipped a switch and one of the projectors filled the far wall with a huge gray map of straight and curving streets, some blue, some yellow, some white, each with its own name printed in tiny Helvetica caps.
    â€œCool.” Peter let the saber fall to his side.
    â€œCity?” Joss asked Marty. If she’d had more time, she’d be able to figure it out on her own. One of the benefits ofowning one of the world’s largest printed map companies was that every city felt like home.
    â€œPhilly.”
    â€œAh. City of Brotherly Love.”
    Marty grimaced. “Yeah, well, unless brotherly love includes free use of intellectual property, we got a problem. Here’s the map from our favorite competitor, Duncan Limited.”
    Marty clicked the On button on the adjoining projector. A second map, light blue instead of gray, and with a Garamond typeface, was projected directly over the first. It, too, was a map of Philly, and when he adjusted the width, height and area of the display, the streets lined up exactly with the first. Not a problem in itself, Joss thought. Street maps, after all, were supposed to give you a nearly accurate representation of the area in question, and even a competitor like Duncan Limited could be counted on to represent the area correctly. The problem occurred when a competitor didn’t bother to do the survey work to identify the streets themselves, and there was one sure way to find that out.
    Joss typed a few commands into her laptop. “I just checked our database. We have three trap streets in Philly.”
    â€œYep,” Monty said. “Cranberry Lane, Hastings Drive and Compass Rose Alley.”
    Compass Rose Alley.
Joss smiled. That was so her mother. “And?”
    â€œAnd”—he walked to the wall and touched different places on the Duncan Limited map—“we have Cranberry Lane, Hastings Drive and