CHAPTER ONE

      TRAFFIC WAS A BITCH, as always. Nate Kendrick ended one call when he was halfway across the I-90 bridge over Lake Washington and resigned himself to making the one he’d been putting off. Sonja would be pissed.

      Nothing new about that.

      She answered immediately, her tone suspicious. The minute she heard what he had to say, she screeched, “You always do this! What’s your excuse this time?”

      “I’m putting together a deal. It was supposed to be a go today, but one of the major investors got cold feet overnight. I have to find a replacement.”

      The silence unnerved him, since it was unlike her. Still quietly, she said, “Do you know how many thousand times I’ve heard that?”

      “You knew what I did when you married me.” Venture capitalism was high-risk, high-adrenaline and sometimes high-flying, like when a company in his portfolio went public in a big way or sold to an industry leader for a billion or more. You did not succeed in the business by taking a working day off to accompany a mob of six-and seven-year-olds to the beach. Or was it a river park? Nate couldn’t remember.

      “Some of us want an actual life.” She sounded sad. Playing him. “I, for one, want my daughter to love me enough to come home for Christmas when she’s an adult.”

      “Goddamn it, Sonja,” he growled.

      “We’ll be fine without you.”

      Call ended.

      Of course they would be. He loved his daughter, even as he knew she’d been slipping away from him since the divorce. But being one of two partners in a venture-capital firm meant demands that were never-ending. Who’d put Molly through college, if not him? Certainly not Sonja, who lived on her settlement from him. The settlement she wouldn’t get if he crashed and burned.

      Traffic opened up enough for him to merge onto I-5 for the short distance into downtown Seattle. By then he’d already taken the next call, obliging him to accept a no answer with outward amiability. But he and this guy would do business together again, so he ignored another incoming call to chat about the investor’s son, excited about starting at Stanford this fall. Molly was ten years away from making any college decisions, thank God. Long practice let him think furiously as he talked.

      What was his next best possibility? Stu Gribbin? He tended to like start-ups better than on-the-ground manufacturing, but it was worth a try.

      Exiting from the freeway onto crowded streets hemmed in by tall buildings, Nate decided to wait to make the next call until he reached his office. He’d long since jettisoned his daughter’s summer day camp field trip from his mind.

      * * *

      HONESTLY, THIS WASN’T the most exciting outing the camp director could have planned, but Melissa might have chosen the park without actually having visited it.

      Anna Grainger wasn’t complaining. Lounging on the picnic table bench with Kyle while the nearly forty kids ran off an excess of energy on the extensive mowed field was fine by her. From long habit, she kept an eye on her own two children—seven-year-old Josh and four-year-old Jenna—as well as the three additional kids she’d been assigned to