His First Choice by Tara Taylor Quinn Page B

California baseball team, he’d had to face the fact that even though he’d healed well enough to have a normal range of activity, he’d never be able to throw a baseball the same. He then became a water-sport man.
    â€œListen, Mick, I know Tressa comes on strong sometimes, but you know as well as I do that she’s gifted when it comes to knowing when, where and how to move money around.” He shot wide and pretended to care.
    â€œShe told him to fuck himself.”
    He cringed. Closed his eyes and pictured himself and Levi sailing the ocean on a finished schooner that looked amazingly like the half-built one in his garage.
    â€œShe went that far?” he asked as the bank’s regional director, in from LA, made a perfect shot to the green and picked up his bag. With his own bag on his shoulder, he followed along, letting the older man set their pace.
    â€œShe didn’t tell you?” The gray-haired man gave him a sideways glance. Mick Hunter, in his late sixties, had a gaze that was as sharp as any Jem had ever seen. Wrinkled skin and slowed pace aside, the man was as strong-willed as ever.
    â€œOnly that she’d been understandably upset and had said more than you thought appropriate.”
    Nodding, Mick walked in the direction of Jem’s misplaced ball. He’d do better to get the game right so that he didn’t wear out the man he was there to appease—on his ex-wife’s behalf.
    â€œShe needs this job, Mick.” He couldn’t believe even Tressa had lost her composure to that extent. Not at work.
    And wished he couldn’t believe that she’d let him come into this meeting ill-prepared.
    â€œI can’t have the head office getting calls from wealthy investors because one of my managers doesn’t have the ability to reel herself in.”
    â€œHe called her a thief.”
    â€œHe’s a bit senile, Jem, and he wasn’t understanding his most recent investment statement. All she had to do was listen to his concerns and explain things to him. And then, when he saw how upset she was by his accusation, he apologized. In person and in writing.”
    â€œDidn’t he offer to pay her off for her trouble?” Jem said, dropping his bag as they reached his ball. Pulling a nine iron out of his bag, he lined up a shot for the tee. If he focused, he’d make it. “That’s bribery.” If he gave a rat’s ass about the game, he’d probably be good at it. “Usually when a man offers a bribe, he has something to hide.” Jem played his best card.
    â€œHe doesn’t want his kids to know that he forgot about moving money from one fund to another. And he only offered her money after her response to his apology was...so inflammatory.”
    Straightening, Jem looked over at the other man. Mick’s hat shaded his forehead, but not the serious light in his eyes, or the frown beneath that grayed mustache. That afternoon was the first he’d heard that the man had apologized at all, let alone in writing. Tressa said he’d tried to “pat her on the head” afterward.
    â€œShe mouthed off when he accused her,” he clarified. She’d specifically said she’d been a bit tactless when the elderly investor had first accused her. Tressa wasn’t one to admit to wrongdoing. So when she did, he knew she was telling him the truth.
    â€œThat’s when she called him an asshole.”
    Obviously the “tactless” reference. Oh, hell. Tressa, will you ever learn to hold your damned tongue inside your mouth?
    She wasn’t anything like her parents; he’d give her that. And couldn’t imagine what it had been like growing up with them constantly berating her, withholding love on a regular basis.
    But how much did she have to lose before she realized that people did not tolerate the verbal lashes that seemed perfectly normal to her?
    Lord knew he’d tried to tell her. She thought