Unexpected Treasure

  Chapter One

  Nate jabbed the buzzer on his desk for the third time. Where on earth was Jenni? He paced up and down the room, glaring at the closed office door.

  What could be keeping her? Today of all days he needed to get going, finish up the job in hand and escape. Away from the sympathetic glances of his employees and the murmured conversations which stopped abruptly whenever he came within earshot.

  He opened the door to her office and saw her in her usual seat behind the curved ash desk. So why hadn't she answered the buzzer? He crossed the pale green carpet in a couple of paces. As he got closer to her, he knew something was wrong. Her back was towards him and her shoulders quivered.

  "Jenni?"

  He moved round the desk to take a better look. A pile of post lay unopened in front of her, one envelope still secured in her slim fingers.

  "What's the matter? Are you ill?"

  Nate couldn't imagine why his super-efficient personal secretary appeared to be having some kind of breakdown. Jenni never broke down. She had insisted on returning to work after only a few days' leave after her adoptive mother died.

  She shook her head and he caught a glimpse of tears on her pale face. For a split second he wondered if Jenni had developed some kind of sympathy scenario for him based on the office rumour mill. He dismissed that idea as quickly as it had arisen. One of his main reasons for employing Jenni had been her complete lack of interest in gossip and speculation.

  "I'm all right." She wiped the tears away from under her glasses with shaking fingers.

  Nate sighed. "Well you don't look it," he remarked. In fact, now he came to think of it, Jenni looked positively unwell.

  "You're not doing one of those faddy diets?" He hoped he'd hit on the right answer. It had to be something like that.

  She blinked with astonishment and glared at him. "No!"

  Nate settled back onto the edge of her desk and folded his arms. He'd have to think again now his first theory had been shot out of the water.

  "Good. You're skinny enough. In fact, he ran a critical eye over her appearance, "- too skinny." He thought she'd lost a lot of weight, diet or no diet. Her black office suit looked baggy and her small face had a pinched expression.

  He felt a momentary pang of guilt. How come he hadn't noticed? He spent more time with Jenni than with any other living creature, except Rufus, his chocolate Labrador. Inspiration hit as he considered the many late nights and weekends Jenni had put in at the company over the last few weeks.

  "Boyfriend trouble?" he suggested, confident that he'd managed to solve the puzzle.

  "Nate!" The colour returned to her pale face and her expression assumed the cool blank look she reserved for the most irritating of their clients.

  "So do I get an explanation?" He tapped his foot against the side of the desk as he waited for a response.

  "I'm not sure that you do, to be honest," she said, sounding icy. At least she appeared to be returning to her normal, sensible, practical self.

  He made a mental note to be more considerate of her social life in future when he asked her to do overtime. Just because work saved him from being alone with his thoughts didn't mean Jenni deserved the same.

  "Maybe I'd better deal with the rest of the post and then we can get some work done today." He reached over to take the pile of letters from her lap.

  "No!" Her quick snatch took him by surprise. "Erm, that is, I mean..." She extracted the letter that had been uppermost in the pile. "Here you are." She passed the remainder over to him.

  "Jenni, what's going on?" Her strange behaviour bothered him.

  She hesitated. "I got a letter from my mother."

  For a moment he questioned her sanity. Dead people didn't write letters. Then it clicked. "Your birth mother?"

  "Remember I asked if it would be all right to use the office address because you said not to use my own?"

  It came back to him then, a late night conversation after work when Jenni had asked his advice about contacting her real mother.

  "She wrote back to you?"

  "I sent a letter with a self-addressed envelope. I thought it would make her more likely to respond." Her hands trembled as she smoothed the envelope. "I recognised it when I fetched the mail."

  "You haven't opened it."

  She licked her lips and with a desultory shrug of her shoulders said, "I was scared. What if she doesn't want to know me?"

  An overwhelming rush of pity surged through Nate. He knew from little things she had mentioned that she'd had a tough life, and she had been on her own since her adoptive parents had died .

  "Do you want me to open it?" He made the offer before he had time to think.

  "I..." She hovered for a moment, and then pushed the envelope towards him. "Okay."

  He ripped it open and thought at first the woman had merely mailed back Jenni's original letter. Then, as he flipped it over, he saw the short note scribbled on the back in unformed child-like scrawl.

  "What's the matter? What does it say?" Jenni's slender frame trembled and her face paled even further.

  He spoke quickly to reassure her. "It's all right. She wants to meet you." He passed the letter over.

  Jenni read it through, then glanced up at him with a worried expression. "Tomorrow. She wants to meet me tomorrow."

  "Do you know the café she's talking about?" Nate was deeply concerned. The hasty scrawl didn't smack of a mother desperate to make a good impression on a daughter she hadn't seen in years.

  "I think so. It's on the other side of town. Near where the new ring road is being built." She still looked shell-shocked as she studied her mother's handwriting as if it would yield some hidden message.

  He knew the area she meant. The buildings appeared run-down and gangs of youths hung around on the street corners. Many of the shops had been boarded over as once thriving businesses had closed down.

  "I'm coming with you tomorrow." He noted Jenni looked stunned rather than grateful.

  "That's very kind of you, Nate, but I'll be fine," she stammered. "It's nice of you to offer though."

  "It wasn't a suggestion, Jen. I'm coming with you. It's a bad area. There have been a lot of muggings around that part of town." He couldn't let her go on her own.

  "It's Saturday tomorrow, Nate. You can't give up your day off just for me." A pretty pink flush tinted her cheekbones and her eyes shone. Jenni had nice eyes. Very nice eyes. What was the matter with him today? He'd seen Jenni's eyes a thousand times before, hadn't he?

  "Really, it's no big deal. I haven't anything planned and you've done me loads of favours. Think of it as me paying you back a little." He shuffled uneasily on the hard edge of the desk while Jenni continued to study his face.

  She smiled at him, taking him by surprise.

  "Well thanks anyway, Nate. It's really nice of you and I do appreciate it.