The Bride's Baby

Sylvie Smith checked the time. Her appointment had been for two o’clock. The time on her laptop now read two forty-five—because she hadn’t just sat there in the luxurious reception of Tom McFarlane’s penthouse office suite twiddling her thumbs and drinking coffee. Chance would have been a fine thing. The message couldn’t have been plainer. She was the enemy and so she’d been left to twiddle her thumbs without the courtesy of a cup of coffee to help fill the time. Not a problem. Her nerves were already in shreds without adding a surfeit of caffeine to the mix. And she hadn’t twiddled her thumbs either. She didn’t have time to waste thumb-twiddling. Didn’t have time to waste, full stop.