Free The Cottage Next Door by Georgia Bockoven Page B

reached up to twist her hair into a coil and lay it across her shoulder.
    “It isn’t me, either,” he said. “I’ve been lucky to have backpacked through Europe and New Zealand, but I’ve never seen the Great Wall or the Barrier Reef or the Ganges River.” He twisted to face her. “Did you know there’s a river dolphin that lives in the Ganges? It’s endangered and will likely disappear in a ­couple of decades. I want a chance to see one before they’re gone. Maybe even try to do something to save them.”
    “I don’t know if I could do that,” she said. “It breaks my heart just thinking about it.”
    He smiled, purposely lightening the mood. “You could always visit one of the temples while I’m out on the river.”
    “I could do that,” she said, playing along.
    “Back to your story,” he prompted.
    “Are you sure you really want to hear this?”
    “Positive. It’s a mandatory part of the employment package.”
    Everything he said, every look he gave her, every smile that lit up his eyes, made her like him more. Yet, past experience told her that there had to be a downside. Every man she’d ever gone out with had a downside.
    “I’d been working at WKB for seven years, when my boss told me he had something important that he wanted to talk to me about. He had his secretary set up an appointment for ten o’clock on a Friday morning.
    “That should have been the first clue that I wasn’t being given a promotion. Friday is the day they fire ­people at WKB, but never in the morning, always the afternoon, which lulled me into a fantasy of my own making. The Friday thing is such a cliché, but like all clichés, based in fact. Fire a person late in the day, send someone to watch them clean out their desk, then quietly and quickly escort them out of the building. It’s an incredibly effective way to get rid of ­people, practiced by all kinds of businesses, big and small.”
    “Not to mention heartless.”
    “Thanks to my own naiveté, it turned out to be particularly cold in my case.” She smiled again, surprising herself. It was the first time she’d been able to look at what happened without feeling utterly humiliated.
    “I’d used the money I had tucked away for a down payment on a new car to buy a dynamite knockoff Stella McCartney suit and a pair of Manolo Blahnik heels. It was the best thing that came out of that day. And one of the few things from that time that I still own.”
    “Did you bring them with you?”
    “I brought everything I own with me. It took me less than an hour to pack, and I had enough room left in the trunk of my car to bring Cheryl the dishes my mother promised to send her when my grandmother died.”
    “Sorry—­but that’s a little hard for me to imagine. I don’t have sisters, but I have a mother.”
    “Wait for the rest, you’ll understand.” Not wanting to see the look on his face when she told him what she’d done, she stretched out her legs in front of her and leaned back her head to focus on the blanket of stars filling the sky. “It turned out I wasn’t the only one being fired that day. The company had decided to outsource my entire department. I was invited to apply for a job with the accounting company they’d hired. Of course it would mean I had to relocate to Louisiana and that I’d be hired at entry-­level wages with minimum benefits. But what the hell, a job is a job.”
    “I assume you told them what they could do with their offer?”
    “Oh, trust me. I thought of some brilliant comebacks, but not until I was in the car headed home. All I could do when it happened was hold myself together. I knew that if I started crying, I wouldn’t be able to stop. And if I started screaming, they’d have me hauled off.” She smiled. “And if I started throwing things the way I wanted to, I’d never get another job. This was the guy I had to go to for a reference letter, which he not so subtly reminded me in the same breath he used to fire