'Tis the Season Read Online Free Page A

kids had camp, and in the fall Gracie would start kindergarten. Evan could get her into the after-school program Billy was enrolled in.
    All he had to do was survive until New Year’s Day.
    Back in the conference room, the Pep squad were shuffling their collection of posters. Evan hoped they were figuring out which ones were nonessential and dispensing with them. If he sat through this long-winded lecture only to learn that the insoles were manufactured by exploited child laborers, he might just toss one of the representatives through the window. Or both.
    â€œWe were discussing the value of Pep Insoles to track performance,” one of them began as Evan, Jennifer and Stuart, the head of marketing, resumed their seats at the table. Evan fiddled with a pencil until Jennifer glared at him. He checked his watch again. He paid halfhearted attention as the Pep folks rambled on in their distinctly unpeppy way. He thought about Tank Moody and wondered whether this time would be better than the last time Champion Sports had hired a professional athlete for a special promotion.
    Well, of course it would be better. It couldn’t possibly be worse. Who was Tank Moody going to run off with?Jennifer? Given Tank’s modest intellectual gifts, she’d never be interested in him. Heather might, though. As far as Evan could tell, Heather cared more about size than IQ.
    Not that Evan had any inside information about Tank’s size. But sportscasters were always saying that football was a game of inches.
    He grinned, then felt Jennifer’s suspicious gaze on him, as palpable as a jab in the ribs. Sobering up, he lifted his eyes to the chart on the easel and struck a rapt pose. The guy had launched into a discourse on the similarities between Pep Insoles and shock absorbers. If Jennifer weren’t glaring at him, Evan would have started doodling on his notepad.
    After about ten minutes on shock absorption, the Pep Insole people finally pulled out a chart concerning their production facilities, which were located in a suburb of Tegucigalpa, and gave a high-minded explanation of why they’d chosen that location. Cheap labor costs had not been their primary consideration, of course; they’d been eager to create jobs in a region suffering from terrible unemployment. Such a lofty rationale might have brought tears to Evan’s eyes if he’d believed it.
    â€œWe obey the wage and safety laws of the country and hire no one under the age of fourteen,” one of the Pep boys said, and Evan began to feel a little better. Fourteen was still way too young for a kid to be working full-time, but different countries had different cultures. At least the company wasn’t employing eight-year-old kids. A few years ago Evan might not have felt quite so passionate about the issue of child labor, but a few years ago he hadn’t had Billy and Gracie. Fatherhood had given him a whole new perspective on things.
    Fatherhood had also honed his senses to an unusual degree. His hearing was keen enough to detect the sound of two sets of footsteps on the carpeted hall outside the conference room—Heather’s aggressive stride and a syncopated scamper. Gracie was in the building.
    â€œMy daughter’s here,” he announced, hoping this news would inspire the Georgians to wrap up their presentation.
    â€œFine. Now here—” Georgian Number Two pulled out another chart, while Georgian Number One continued rambling “—we have a graph illustrating how we’ve derived the wholesale price for Pep Insoles…”
    Annoyed that the men seemed in no hurry to conclude their spiel, Evan rose from his chair. “I’m going to have to let her join us. My secretary can’t watch her—she’s leaving for the day.” Heather, motivated by that yearend bonus, would probably have been willing to stay an extra fifteen minutes to keep Gracie safely occupied in another room, but Evan thought