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farther down the road. You’ve got a school zone coming up, and that would be a criminal charge.” He jotted a few things down on a pad. “I’ve got to go back to my vehicle and write this up.”
    Darby nodded and watched him walk away. Her throat was suddenly dry and she grabbed a water bottle from the back of the car and took a long swig. A criminal charge would jeopardize my real estate license. Her hands shook as she put down the bottle. But I would never speed in a school zone, would I?
    Slowly she shook her head. Why am I racing around like a madwoman? Her career was going well, and even in the flagging market she’d had some impressively large sales. She was fit, thanks to her early morning runs, and reasonably happy. And yet she raced from appointment to appointment, in a kind of a fog, not even enjoying the ride. I can’t blame it all on my grandfather , she thought.
    She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. That’s it, Darby vowed . I’m going to slow my life down a little. I’m going to focus on the present and stop dwelling on the past.
    When Eric Sanchez returned with the ticket, Darby tried not to wince as she looked at the amount: Three hundred and twenty dollars. She sighed and put it on the seat next to her.
    “I’m sorry, Darby,” he said, his round face puckered with concern.
    “Please, don’t be,” she smiled. “I think it was just what I’ve needed to get my life back on a slower track. Thank you for the wake-up call, Officer Sanchez.”
    He blushed a deep crimson. With dimpled fingers he waved as she pulled carefully back into traffic.
    ———
    “You are looking more relaxed than usual,” said Enrique Tomas Gomez, his dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. He plunked a stapler down on his desk. “Should I be concerned?” He was, as always, impeccably dressed in a Joseph Abboud designer suit, his black hair perfectly cut and styled. Darby swung her pocketbook onto a chair and turned to face her assistant.
    “I got a ticket getting onto the freeway,” she explained, grabbing a stack of mail and flipping through the envelopes. She paused, opened one, and handed him a check for twenty thousand dollars. “There’s the second earnest money deposit for the Wymans’ purchase of the lakefront house.”
    He glanced at the check and nodded. “Tell me more about your run-in with the law,” he urged. “I’m not used to my boss being a ‘bad girl’.” He made little air quotations with his tapered fingers. “You are always so squeaky clean. What some might call boring.”
    Darby laughed. Enrique Tomas Gomez, or “ET” as she called him, was an aging Ricky Martin with a sense of humor as big as his wardrobe, which was to say, vast.
    “I was speeding. The officer was that young guy who bought the ranch over on Palm back in the spring.”
    “The man who was shaped like a little bowling pin?”
    “Yup. Eric Sanchez.” She tossed down the pile of mail and faced her friend. “I thought he’d let me go, but I was on his radar. The whole thing made me realize how much of my time is spent racing from one thing to the next. I’m going to slow down a little, see if I can’t stop this frantic pace.”
    “Interesting idea,” ET murmured. “We’ll see how far you get, Speedy Gonzalez.”
    She laughed again. “Are we seeing Claudia today?” The mother of three school-aged children, Claudia Jones worked part-time as a sales agent at Pacific Coast Realty. She’d joined Darby and ET just a few weeks earlier to help them show property, and was a welcome addition to Darby’s growing real estate team.
    “No, today is the day she helps in the little one’s first grade class.” ET moved to answer the ringing telephone, leaving Darby free to think about her own day. Appointments with a few potential listings, but other than that, she was open. Of course, there was always desk work to do. Real estate was a never-ending, twenty-four-seven kind of job in which you could peruse listings