Free Shivers 7 by Stephen King, Clive Barker, Bill Pronzini, Graham Masterton, Rio Youers, Ed Gorman, Rick Hautala, Norman Partridge, Norman Prentiss Page A

working for her for seven years—not directly, but climbing the corporate ladder in a way that had attracted her notice, until I was the head of division, London-based in theory but actually spending most of my life in other parts of the world. It was fun, exciting, rewarding, exhausting, all those good things, and as much as I was enjoying myself, I knew it couldn’t last forever.
    Crunch-time was coming, and I was going to have to make decisions that would affect the rest of my life.
    By many standards I was successful—I made good money, I liked my job, what I did made a difference—but I was not yet where I wanted to be. If I was to make my youthful dreams come true I had to cut loose and start up my own business. It would be risky, and lots more hard work, but neither of those things scared me. I even had an idea that I knew I could turn into a marketable business plan, and the time seemed right to launch it.
    But even as I was aware of the opportunities opening up in the business world, I saw the entrance to another world shrinking. I was well into my thirties, young and fit in terms of work, many productive years ahead of me, but the window to motherhood—maybe even to marriage—was narrowing by the day, and if I didn’t do something about it soon it would close, and I would end up by myself. Maybe that suited Florida, but it gave me a chill to think of growing old alone. And it was looking more likely by the day: I might have been too busy to care, but the simple fact was that I hadn’t had so much as a date in nearly a year. More and more, the men I met through work were married—recently, happily, smugly, sporting their new, gold rings. Not that they were better, smarter, or luckier than me, but they had been quicker off the mark, realizing what they wanted, and going after it. It had taken me so long to notice that life’s dance-floor was almost filled with couples, and I was going to have to put some serious effort into finding a partner, if that’s what I really wanted.
    The obvious thing to do, if I was serious about wanting to meet someone, was to go out more, to places where that might happen. Join a club, try something different, spend less time working…
    Exactly the opposite, in fact, of what was required for my start-up. For that, I needed to concentrate on wooing investors, a different pool from potential husbands.
    The thought of putting my business plans on hold made me even more uneasy. What if somebody else took my idea and ran with it? Things can change awfully fast, and if you drop out for a couple of years, nobody holds your place. You have to start all over again. And if I came back from my sabbatical a bride, people would wonder how soon I’d get pregnant, and how I’d manage to divide my attention between home and business. Of course it wasn’t fair, since a man getting married proved how solid and dependable and bankable he was, but there was no sense whining about that.
    Florida always took a mentoring interest in her employees, especially the most ambitious, workaholic females. Her latest invitation to lunch arrived in the midst of my soul-searching, and while I didn’t want to let her know I might be leaving her employ, I had hopes that she’d provide the answer.
    I’d made some vague remark about the difficulty of balancing outside work with child-care when she suddenly asked me if I’d ever been pregnant.
    “No,” I said. “But I’m keeping my options open. I’m on the pill.”
    “So was I.” She gave me a long, measuring look before going on. “I thought it was making me bloated. And when I stopped, and didn’t get a period, I thought it was just my body re-adjusting.” She looked down and toyed with her salad. “It never once occurred to me that I might be pregnant.”
    I felt shocked, and a little queasy, wondering why she’d decided to confide in me, but said nothing.
    “I was nearly forty,” she went on. “So, the fact that I’d put on a little