Holding the Dream Page 0,70

in front of Susan's face. "Look, Mrs. T! Seraphina."

"They're certainly from the right place and the right time."

Struggling to switch gears, Susan frowned over the coins. "You just found this one, Kate."

"No, this one." In a proprietary move, Kate snatched the coin from Margo's left hand. "Mine," she stated.

"I can't believe it. All these months since I found the first one. All these months we've been searching and scraping and hauling that silly metal detector around. And you just stumble over it."

"It was just there."

"Exactly." Margo crowed in triumph. "Just like the first one was just there. It's a sign."

Kate rolled her eyes. "It's not magic, Margo. It's luck. There's a difference. I just happened to be there after the coin got kicked up or washed up or whatever."

"Hah," was all Margo had to say to that. "We've got to tell Laura. Oh, who the hell can remember where she is with that insane schedule of hers?"

"If you'd bother to look at the weekly schedule I've posted in the office, you'd know exactly where she is." Feeling superior, Kate glanced at her watch. "If memory serves, she's at the hotel for the next thirty minutes, then she has a meeting with Ali's teacher. After that - "

"We don't need after that. We'll just - " Margo stopped short. "Hell, we can't just close the shop in the middle of the afternoon."

"Go ahead," Susan told her. "Tommy and I can mind the store for an hour."

"Really?" Margo beamed at her. "I wouldn't ask, but this is so exciting, and we're in it together."

"You've always been in it together," Susan said.

"It perked her up." Margo loitered in the lobby after their brief contact with Laura. "It's frustrating to have to wait until Sunday to go back and look, but with her schedule we're lucky to manage that."

"Don't you think she's taken on an awful lot?"

Kate scanned the sweeping lobby with its elaborate potted plants, half hoping to see Byron breeze by on some executive mission. Instead she saw wandering guests, bustling bellmen, a group of women standing near the revolving doors with shopping bags heaped at their feet and a look of happy exhaustion on their faces.

"I know she likes to fill her time," Kate continued. "And it probably helps keep her mind off... things. But she barely has a minute in the day just for herself."

"Ah, you finally noticed." Then Margo shook her head and sighed. "I can't nag her about it anymore. When I suggested that the shop could probably swing a part-time clerk and that she could cut back there, she almost took my head off." Absently she rubbed a soothing hand over her belly as the baby kicked. "I know the bulk of her salary here at the hotel is earmarked for the kids' tuition."

"That bastard Peter." Kate's teeth began to grind even as she thought of it. "He was a slimy creep for taking Laura's money, but taking his own children's... that makes him whatever's lower than slime. She could have fried his sorry ass in court."

"That's what I'd have done," Margo agreed. Amused, she noted that two men in one of the lobby's plush seating areas were trying to catch her eye. "What you'd have done. Laura has to handle this her own way."

"And her way is to hold down two jobs, raise two children on her own, support a full staff because she's too softhearted to lay anyone off. She can't keep working twenty out of twenty-four hours, Margo."

"You try telling her." Out of long habit, she sent the hopeful men a quick, flirtatious smile.

"Stop playing with those insurance salesmen," Kate ordered.

"Is that what they are?" Carelessly, Margo scooped her long hair back. "Anyway, Josh and I have pushed Laura as far as we can push. She's not budging. Nobody could tell you to take a vacation, could they? To see a doctor?"

"Okay, okay." That was the last thing Kate wanted to hash over. "I had reasons, and I'll explain it to you when we have a little more time. I should have told you before."

"What?"

"We'll talk about it," she promised, then baffled her friend by leaning in and kissing her. "I love you, Margo."

"Okay, what have you screwed up?"

"Nothing. Well, everything, but I'm starting to fix it. Now, back to Laura. We'll just have to do more to pick up the slack. Maybe take the girls off her hands a few hours every week. Or run some of the errands she's always got a