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much I love you?”
Sera’s eyes welled up thinking her in laws and her kids were worth
the pain of knowing Peter.
    “Yeah well, me too kiddo.”
    Sera cleared her eyes and sat up
straight. “Listen, I've got to go. I’m on my lunch break and since
I don’t have any food and don’t want to spend any money, I might as
well get back to work to impress the boss before he gets
back."
    "Tomorrow wear that new little red top
with the flowers on the collar that I gave you. That's one way of
impressing your boss."
    “I'll think about it,” Sera
smiled while making a mental note of what she could wear to a job
with three men and contractors filing through... Definitely not the little red top Deb
gave her. “Hey, you know how much I appreciate what you’re doing
for us, don't you? I love you guys so much even though your brother
is an idiot.”
    Both women were quiet and then Sera
broke the silence to ask, “And other than being a demon, how’s my
little princess?”
    “Let's see, she’s still about 27”
long, has brown curly hair, and is kind of pretty when she’s not
trying to kill me with her screaming.”
    “That bad?”
    “No sweetie. She’s a lot worse than
bad.”
    Sera hung up relieved that she had a
family and a friend like Deb. The fact that Deb was Peter’s
brother’s wife was irrelevant. They were wonderful people and had
been invaluable since Peter had disappeared, and before. They
weren’t as impressed by Peter as she had been.
    Sera knew those who didn’t know Peter
probably thought she was callous about his disappearance, but she
didn’t care. He up and left without a goodbye, aware of their
finances, and she assumed he remembered he had left not only a
wife, but four kids as well! Sera knew he was probably living it up
with Brandy, or whoever the flavor of the month was. She had been
in denial for a while and finally figured out he was not only
impatient, stubborn, and selfish, but he was unfaithful to boot.
And as for leaving her, there had been clues before he left,
threats even, but Sera hadn't had the time or energy to cater to
Peter's fits when she was still trying to get used to
Emma's.
    Sera had waited a week, out of
embarrassment mostly, and then filled out a missing person's report
and explained the situation to the nice cops at the precinct. "Find
him," she had said, "and remind him that he has four kids who have
to eat at least three times a day.”
    Sera had taken only a half hour for
her lunch break. She wondered if Jeff would be back today just as
she was getting ready to start working on his desk. He had
disappeared right after signing their ‘agreement’. Men disappearing
on her seemed to be the story of her life.

Chapter 5
     
    Jeff left his office kicking
everything that got in his way. He had had a lousy morning, had
hired a total stranger without even checking first with Mitch, who
was after all part owner of Mason Landscaping, and to top it off,
now he was having his own doubts about hiring someone like
Sera.
    Sera came with tons of baggage, he
didn’t know her from Adam, hadn’t done a background check on her,
gave her a salary that no employee had ever been lucky enough to
start out with, and had for all practical purposes written off her
debt.
    How would Mitch feel about this? Jeff
had never bypassed Mitch since Mitch bought one third of the
company business. Once again, Jeff proved to be lacking on the
business side of the job. Once again he acted like a total idiot,
and once again – why not? – he hoped it had absolutely nothing to
do with how attractive Sera was. He really wanted to think his
judgment was more highly developed than that, although he knew from
experience that man, and especially man working too hard and on
lengthy dry spell, hadn't really evolved.
    Well, it was almost one o'clock now.
Jeff had visited a site they had been having problems with,
specifically with the irrigation system, and he couldn’t stay away
from his office any longer. He had