Mind Over Matter

changes are made, the contract will be passed along to my client for signing.’”
    “Do you want this out today?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Today, A.J.?” With a puzzled smile, Diane studied her employer. “You want the letter to go right out?”
    “Oh. Yes, yes, it’d better go out.” She checked her watch. “I’m sorry, Diane, it’s nearly five. I hadn’t realized.”
    “No problem.” Closing her notebook, Diane rose. “You seem a little distracted today. Big plans for the holiday weekend?”
    “Holiday?”
    “Memorial Day weekend, A.J.” With a shake of her head, Diane tucked her pencil behind her ear. “You know, three days off, the first weekend of summer. Sand, surf, sun.”
    “No.” She began rearranging the papers on her desk. “I don’t have any plans.” Shaking off the mood, she looked up again. Distracted? What she was was a mess. She was bogged down in work she couldn’t concentrate on, tied up in knots she couldn’t loosen. With a shake of her head, she glanced at Diane again and remembered there were other people in the world beside herself. “I’m sure you do. Let the letter wait. There’s no mail delivery Monday, anyway. We’ll send it over by messenger Tuesday.”
    “As a matter of fact, I do have an interesting three days planned.” Diane gave her own watch a check. “And he’s picking me up in an hour.”
    “Go home.” A.J. waved her off as she shuffled through papers. “Don’t get sunburned.”
    “A.J.—” Diane paused at the door and grinned “—I don’t plan to see the sun for three full days.”
    When the door shut, A.J. slipped off her glasses and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. What was wrong with her? Shecouldn’t seem to concentrate for more than five minutes at a stretch before her attention started wandering.
    Overwork? she wondered as she looked down at the papers in her hand. That was an evasion; she thrived on overwork. She wasn’t sleeping well. She was sleeping alone. One had virtually nothing to do with the other, A.J. assured herself as she unstacked and restacked papers. She was too much her own person to moon around because David Brady had been out of town for a few days.
    But she did miss him. She picked up a pencil to work, then ended up merely running it through her fingers. There wasn’t any crime in missing him, was there? It wasn’t as though she were dependent on him. She’d just gotten used to his company. Wouldn’t he be smug and self-satisfied to know that she’d spent half her waking hours thinking about him? Disgusted with herself, A.J. began to work in earnest. For two minutes.
    It was his fault, she thought as she tossed the pencil down again. That extravagantly romantic dinner for two, then that silly little bouquet of daisies he’d sent the day he’d left for Chicago. Though she tried not to, she reached out and stroked the petals that sat cheerful and out of place on her desk. He was trying to make a giddy, romantic fool out of her—and he was succeeding.
    It just had to stop. A.J. adjusted her glasses, picked up her pencil and began to work again. She wasn’t going to give David Brady another thought. When the knock sounded at her door a few moments later, she was staring into space. She blinked herself out of the daydream, swore, then called out. “Come in.”
    “Don’t you ever quit?” Abe asked her when he stuck his head in the door.
    Quit? She’d barely made a dent. “I’ve got a couple of loose ends. Abe, the Forrester contract comes up for renewal the firstof July. I think we should start prodding. His fan mail was two to one last season, so—”
    “First thing Tuesday morning I’ll put the squeeze on. Right now I have to go marinate.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Big barbecue this weekend,” Abe told her with a wink. “It’s the only time my wife lets me cook. Want me to put a steak on for you?”
    She smiled, grateful that he’d brought simpler things to her mind. Hickory smoke, freshly cut grass, burned meat. “No, thanks. The memory of the last one’s a little close.”
    “The butcher gave me bad quality meat.” He hitched up his belt and thought about spending the whole weekend in bathing trunks.
    “That’s what they all say. Have a good holiday, Abe. Just be prepared to squeeze hard on Tuesday.”
    “No problem. Want me to lock up?”
    “No, I’ll just be a few more minutes.”
    “If you change your mind about that steak, just come by.”
    “Thanks.” Alone again, A.J.