For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,63

debate.

It figured, however, that as if to make a point tonight Lynn brought the book on investing when he and she carried their cups of coffee into the living room.

Which meant only that she wanted to know who on earth she’d married, Adam countered the voice before it could break the silence. Just as he did.

"Learning anything?" he asked, nodding at the book.

Lynn wrinkled her nose. "I think I’m getting more confused. All these formulas. P/E ratios." Sounding honestly puzzled, she asked, "Why not just stick to investing in companies whose products you like? Or stores that are well run and clearly busy? Avoid the stores you hate because merchandise is cheap or clerks are always slow or that you hear people grumbling about? I mean, doesn’t common sense work?"

“Yeah, to some extent," Adam agreed. "For the individual investor, that’s exactly the advice I’d give."

She looked pleased.

"However," he continued, "remember how many of the corporations on the stock market make products that are invisible to the average consumer. Operating software for computers, or a circuit board in airplane navigation systems, or whatever. Also, because a local store is well run and popular doesn’t always mean the whole chain is. Haven’t you had a place you really liked suddenly go out of business? Maybe go bankrupt?"

Lynn nodded thoughtfully.

"Could be the problem wasn’t even with that chain of appliance stores or whatever. They might be owned by a giant retailer who has been sucking them dry to plug a drain in another branch of their empire. Maybe this other branch makes jeans, and they haven’t kept up with the youth market. How are you going to know this?"

"I’m not?"

"Probably not," Adam agreed. "Our job is to know well ahead of time when problems are going to cause a corporation to retrench or go belly-up. So our clients don’t take a bath. It’s no different than you making informed decisions on what books to carry. Sometimes I imagine you just flat out love a book. Mostly, you’ve learned what your customers will buy. Or won’t buy. I’ll bet you carry stuff you personally despise because you know it sells."

"Sure I do." She gave a gusty sigh and with an air of dogged resolve flipped open the book. "You’ve convinced me."

"Are you planning to start investing?" he asked, trying to sound careless.

"Oh, sure. As soon as I franchise." Her cheeks turned a little pink. "I just thought it might be a good idea if I knew what you were talking about when you have a good day, or a bad one."

"Ah." A sense of warm satisfaction filled him. When she had said she would give this marriage her best, she’d meant it.

The evening was typical. They read, she asked questions that spurred brief, sometimes spirited, discussions, and finally she reached for her bookmark and said in that ultracasual way she had for this particular pronouncement, "I’m off to bed. If only the girls would sleep in."

Usually he didn’t try to hold her, but tonight, for reasons obscure to him, he hated the idea of her disappearing upstairs.

He set down his newspaper. "Before you go. I’ve been thinking. When do you go back to having the store open more than four days a week?"

"Usually April." She closed her book. "Why?"

"What are we going to do then?"

"Go back to weekends?" Lynn said tentatively. "And Mondays and Tuesdays? I’m always closed on Mondays and can hire someone to cover the store on Tuesdays. Or stay closed."

Two days here. Two there. Three apart.

"We were unhappy when we were doing it, and we weren’t married then." He didn’t give her a chance to respond. "What about when the girls start school? Does Rose go here and Shelly in Otter Beach?"

"I don’t know!" Her fingers clenched the book in her lap. "Is this where you suggest again that I sell the store?"

He hadn’t meant to walk this road at all tonight, or any time in the near future, even if he could foresee the potholes ahead. He’d only wanted to keep her from going off to bed.

But maybe they should face the problems before they arose.

"I want you to start thinking about the future," he said evenly. "That’s all."

"Keeping the bookstore and my own home was part of the deal." Her eyes were huge, beautiful and dark with apprehension. "You agreed."

He tossed the newspaper aside. "Maybe at the time, neither of us was thinking about this marriage as a long-term proposition. Now I am. And I’m asking that you do,