Free The Cottage Next Door by Georgia Bockoven Page A

honesty as he could give her. “You have the personality and enthusiasm we need at the galleries right now. This has been a difficult year for Hester. She’s had a hard time holding it together for the past ­couple of years. Sometimes it comes out in her dealings with the customers, but most often it’s our vendors that bear the brunt.”
    He picked up another shell and tossed it toward the first. “Forget I said that. None of this involves you or is your problem.”
    “It’s helpful to know what I’m walking into. Is there anything I can do to make the transition easier? Would it help if I came in a ­couple of days early and let Hester go over the accounts with me?”
    He felt like the guy who’d painted himself into a corner with slow-­drying varnish.
    “I’m not sure anything would help at this point,” he said. “Leaving was Hester’s idea, not Peter’s.”
    “It’s a lot easier to leave because you want to instead of going into your boss’s office expecting a raise and walking out unemployed.” She shifted so that she was sitting on the sand beside him, her back to the log.
    “Is that what happened to you?”
    “I thought you knew what happened.” For awhile, between her mother and father, her brothers and sisters, the firefighters who’d watched her grandmother’s house burn to the ground, and most of all Howard, she’d been convinced there were enough sources that the gossip had reached Outer Mongolia.
    “By the time the story got to me it had gone through so many tellings, the only thing I paid attention to was that a really good bookkeeper needed a job, and Peter needed a really good bookkeeper. Serendipity.”
    “I love that word.”
    “Bookkeeper?”
    She playfully punched him on his arm, hitting muscle that was rock hard. It was nice having a guy like Michael as a new friend, someone who either didn’t know or didn’t care how deeply she’d humiliated herself, and how profound the consequences had been. She didn’t want to go there anymore than she wanted to tell Michael something that would make him doubt Peter’s decision to hire her.
    Still . . .

 
    Chapter Nine
    D IANA BROUGHT UP her legs and wrapped her arms around them, careful not to disturb the delicate shells in her pocket. Staring at the ocean with the realization that what she could see was only a tiny fraction of what was out there helped put what had happened to her into perspective. She was one person in a world of seven billion. Her story was insignificant compared to that of a woman who had to battle crocodiles every day to get drinking water for her family.
    She took a deep breath and began.
    “The day after I graduated from the University of Kansas, I went to work for WKB Industries in their accounting division. Back then it was one of the hottest companies on the Dow Jones, and I was convinced they were a great fit for the way I imagined my career going—­two years to get myself established in a job, night school to study for my CPA license, steadily accruing benefits, Florida vacations in the winter; all in all, a solid upper middle class life. WKB was known for promoting from within, which meant that with normal attrition, there would be an opportunity for me to move up as soon as I was licensed.”
    She paused and watched the waves, thinking how boring her life must sound to someone like Michael. But it was what it was. Trying to make it sound better or more glamorous would make as much sense as Donald Trump’s comb-­over. “I saw myself retiring from WKB. I’d have a nice income from the stock-­sharing program and I’d finally be able to travel.
    “I was twenty-­two at the time. Can you imagine? How does anyone that age actually plan to spend a lifetime behind a desk, when there are so many places to go and see in a world filled with all those billions of ­people? That’s my sister. It isn’t me.” More out of nervousness than need, with only a light breeze coming off the ocean, Diana